I bought three…

Posted on November 9, 2012 by hds

Yesterday I bought a bunch of plane tickets (well three) to get myself to Granada and back again for Christmas.

At lunch I mentioned this to one of the people here at the maths department in Paderborn.

I started off saying that I’d purchased “3 flies”. As in bzzzz, bzzzzzz.

This got a laugh, trying to correct myself I then stated that I’d purchased “3 flyings”, I was getting there, but this still invoked more laughter.

Finally someone worked out what the hell I was talking about and told me that what I’d really bought were three “Flüge” (flights).

Of course this just reminded me of the patience you have to have when you’re learning a new language. You’re going to make mistakes, and some of them will probably sound funny to native speakers. Then they’ll laugh, but it’s rarely mean spirited, you’ve just got to laugh along and try and remember the word.

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Jim Knopf

Posted on October 31, 2012 by hds

I enjoy reading, it’s probably my favourite solitary relaxing past time. I’m happier on the couch reading a book than watching random television.

Books are also a good place to pick up new vocabulary, there are phrases and words that I would never have heard of if it wasn’t for the books I read.

So, it stands to reason, that reading books in a language I’m learning is important. For vocabulary, but also just to ingrain correct grammar in your subconscious. It’s much easier to get a correct sentence out of your mouth if you’ve read a phrase so many times that it “sounds” natural, without you having to justify its correctness with rules you half remember.

When I started reading books in Spanish it helped my spoken Spanish a lot, it certainly helped make up for the language classes that I couldn’t afford at the time.

Of course, you have to start somewhere. My German is not as good as my Spanish was when I started reading, so I’m beginning with the children’s book Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer. Of course I’m reading it with a dictionary (or equivalent) next to me, but I hope that will improve.

The book was suggested to me by my thesis director, along with a few others of increasing complexity by the same author, Michael Ende. The last of the 4 books I’m planing on reading by him is The Neverending Story. The movie they made of this book was my favourite film as a child but I never read the book. I’m really exciting about getting up to a level where I’ll be able to read it (and in the original language as a bonus).

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Jetzt in Paderborn

Posted on October 10, 2012 by hds

Well, to top off my busy month, and get this site to within a week of current events, I’m now in Paderborn. I’ll be here at the Universität Paderborn for the next four months doing a research stay as part of my PhD.

I’m with the Computer Algebra and Number Theory research group, studying, getting to know everyone here and trying to improve my German while I’m at it.

Ever since I studied German at school I’ve wanted to spend some time living in Germany and gaining a better grasp of the language. So including it as part of my PhD seemed like a great idea.

So far it’s been fantastic. I’m sitting in on a graduate level course on number theory and I’ll be starting a German course next week as well, so I’m keeping busy. Everyone I’ve met in the mathematics department has been very friendly and I’m doing my best to speak only German – although that’s not always the case, I hope to improve.

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A wedding in London

Posted on October 9, 2012 by hds

Skipping three uneventful weeks in Barcelona, next up was another wedding, this time in London.

Ben, or ITBen as he’s affectionately known around Titan, married Michelle, an Australian girl who worked in Titan Magazine’s editorial department. Since I moved to Barcelona I’ve tried to make a point of catching up with these guys whenever I get back to London for work, they’re great company and as an added bonus Michelle and I can talk about listening to Triple J and how great Mr. Squiggle was.

The wedding was at a lovely spot on the river in Putney and I got to catch up with a whole bunch of ex-Titan people that I don’t see very often. There was lots of lovely food and drink, including a wedding cake made entirely out of cheese, which was great. Andrea and I weren’t put on the heavy drinking table with Neil, Jess, Gary, Ray and others, which was probably just as well, as I don’t think I could have handled 6 rounds of Jäger-bombs.

Due to my spectacular lack of photo taking, I have almost no good shots at all, but I do like this one of Ben the nervous groom waiting for Michelle to arrive.

It was a beautiful celebration and I’m sure the happy couple will have a wonderful life together!

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A wedding in Stuttgart

Posted on October 5, 2012 by hds

I’ve known Rebecca Busch for about 13 years. We first met in Heidelberg while I was there on a school trip. My mate Ben stayed with the Busches, and they both came to rescue me when my own host family left me alone in the house most of the weekend.

We haven’t caught up much in those years, but Rebecca and her younger brother Pascal came and spent Christmas with the us Stainsbys while I was still living in Australia.

Rebecca married her long time boyfriend Felix just over 3 weeks ago, and Andrea and I were invited. We were conveniently close, Andrea had just started her stay in Munich and Stuttgart, where they married, is only 2 hours from there by train.

The wedding was lovely, and it was a fantastic day for it, not a cloud in the sky all day. Unfortunately we didn’t understand any of the advice that the celebrant passed on to them (although apparently it was very good), but we met lots of wonderful people and had a fantastic meal, with dancing and music to follow.

There was also some traditional elements to the wedding, whereby Rebecca and Felix had to saw through a log with an old rusty saw, it was very amusing and not at all what you expect a bride to be doing in her wedding gown.

So, hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with Rebecca and Felix while I’m in Germany, it would be great to catch up with the new happily married couple.

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It’s been a busy month

Posted on October 4, 2012 by hds

Today it was brought to my attention that my lack of posting on voo-du has caused a number of people to become misinformed about my rough geographical location.

I am in Munich no longer (and haven’t been for most of the last month), but I’ve been busy and haven’t quite got around to updating my web site.

Over the next couple of days I’ll rectify that.

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Wir sind in München!

Posted on September 2, 2012 by hds

Andrea and I have just arrived in Munich, where she’ll be spending the next three months on a research stay.

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Croatia

Posted on August 13, 2012 by hds

At the end of July, Andrea and I met up with Thea and Bruce in Croatia. They’ve been travelling the world (well, Africa, the Middle East and Europe) for the last six months and I haven’t seen them since I was in Australia a year and a half ago. It was also the first time that Andrea met my parents (or they met her). So,  bags packed we headed off and met them at Dubrovnik airport.

 

We had a fantastic week, first a bit of touristy stuff in Dubrovnik, walking 2km around the city on the top of the walls and catching the funicular up to the top of one of the mountains behind the city (where we didn’t ride the donkey).

We then headed to Brač, an island just off the coast of Split for some much needed relaxation. We spent a few days on the pebbly (rocky, really) beaches and even made the trip to the island’s one sandy beach. The sandy beach wasn’t nearly as long as it was advertised to be, but was lovely all the same.

After our time on the island, Andrea headed back to Barcelona and on to Granada by air, while the three of us drove back to Barcelona via 7 other countries, but that’s another story.

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San Diego Comic-Con

Posted on August 6, 2012 by hds

As it happens, the week that ANTS-X was on was the same week that the San Diego Comic-Con started. Fortunately for me I managed to come by a ticket from work (Titan has a stall at Comic-Con each year) and went along on the weekend after the number theory conference had finished.

Comic-Con was pretty much as I expected it to be, full of stalls promoting and selling things. As a rule the bigger the company the more promotion and less actual selling actually goes on.

It was, however, bigger than I thought. The conference room was enormous, and there was a whole other space for the bigger panels in another building.

I did geek out a bit, going to the Penny Arcade panel (after having already gone to get a poster signed by them), as well as meeting Jorge Cham who writes PhD comics. I also met Roman Dirge, creator of Lenor, who was doing signings at the Titan booth as well as the writer and one of the colourers for the Zenescope’s Wonderland series.

Of course, I got photos of Pepe with all these famous people.

I also got lots of photos of Pepe with cosplayers, for laughs. It was great going up to people and asking if I could take their photo with a lemur.

I had a good time overall, although I think that not being able to return to the Titan stall to hang out there (I even sold some T-shirts), would have made the days long.

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Tenth Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium

Posted on August 3, 2012 by hds

At the beginning of July I went to San Diego for the 10th Algorithmic Number Theory Symposium (ANTS-X). It was a week of meeting a group of number theorists from around the world (lots from Sydney which surprised me).

I had a fantastic time, even though I struggled to understand most of the talks given.

Most importantly, I met a number of people doing things similar to what I am (in a broad sense) and even got a bit more understanding of what I’m doing as I had to explain it several times during the week to people who could do more than smile, and shake their heads at why anyone would choose to continue to study mathematics at graduate level.

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