Schöne Tage!

Let's keep it simple: I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Slow system?

I just found out that I'm working at UC. That is, there exists an e-mail address for a UC employee called O. Tieleman, different from my student address. This did not yet exist while I worked in College Hall, which was logical: the students working at the reception weren't actually full employees, and had one common address (the reception address).
Apparently, my data have finally made their way into the the university administration system, a procedure that must have started somewhere in the first half of 2006, when the payments to the reception students were being centralised. And now the system has decided to give me an e-mail address. They're not paying me anymore, though...
So, if you'd want to e-mail me on my solis account, take care to use the address 'at students dot uu dot nl', not 'at ucu dot uu dot nl', since I can't access the latter one.

Plans

I have a ticket! I'm coming home on Saturday the 23rd of December, around 2 pm. I suppose that means I'll stop posting for a while, since I won't be in Heidelberg, and hence will not be able to tell you about my doings here.
I will be in Holland for two weeks, until the first weekend of January. Then I'll be in Heidelberg for about a month, and around the second weekend of February I'll come back to Holland again, to see a Shakespeare play, find out whether I've been following the right courses for my master's, and more such things.

So, see you (most of you) in a few days :).

Counterpoint

I have unofficially been following a course in counterpoint composition for a few weeks now, to get the physics out of my head from time to time. Last Monday, there was an unexpected exam, which I decided to take, mainly out of curiosity.

So, I sat down, took a sheet and asked my neighbour for a pen, since mine, being a strict follower of Murphy's Law, was empty. Then, I looked at the sheet, which contained four cantus firmi and a number of empty staffs. Not completely understanding the assignment, I turned to my neighbour again, and she kindly explained to me what was to be done. We had to compose two- or three-voiced 'motets' (no longer than nine bars, nine notes in the cantus firmus), and if we wanted to have them back in time for singing them at Christmas, we had to mark our work with an 'X'.
I started to write, while next to me, a lively, albeit whispered, discussion arose between my neighbours over a few issues concerning note lengths and forbidden intervals in their work. The instructor, who was sitting all the way up front, was reading something, and did not appear to notice, or mind, or consider the option that students would discuss their work at all...

When handing in my work, I told the instructor I was not on the presence list, in order to save him a surprise when checking presence list against work handed in. He decided to add my name, with the comment that I was participating außer Konkurrenz, and that I had found my way to his course through a choir¹, which seemed a source of joy to the good man.


¹Darryl, my Canadian friend from the Capella Carolina, who has been promoted to Repetitor in order to allow him to play on the piano in the rehearsal room of the choir, took me along once.

Die Physikanten

Christmas is pervading the city: on every bit of street broad enough to be considered for the title of 'square', there is a Weihnachtsmarkt. It also affects the university: the numbers of students attending tutorials and lectures are decreasing, while the number of tutorials and lectures being cancelled is increasing.

This week's physikalisches Kolloquium, usually a talk on some physics topic supposed to be understandable for a general physicists' audience, was a show similar to the Wetenschapsquiz as presented by Wim T. Schippers, with the difference that it focussed on physics. It was presented by a comic duo, called die Physikanten, a mix between Physiker and Praktikanten (interns). The duo consisted of a German 'Professor', announced by the other half, the Dutch assistant Herr Harry, as: 'Professor, doctor, doctor, Otto, Professor, ähm, entschuldige, Otto, doctor, Liebermann!' and by this time, the professor was on stage and looking somewhat impatiently for his assistant to finish and the show to begin.

Then they did many nice tricks, including an electric lamp consisting of two forks and a gherkin, a small 'boat' floating in the air, a turning flame of a few metres high, 'unfinished water' consisting of oxygen and hydrogen mixed in proper amounts, and the standard method for closing cardboard boxes applied to humans... and then sent the audience home: 'Now, we are going to perform an experiment with your kinetic energy: you can go home!'

Advent singing

The Capella Carolina traditionally sings Christmas carols on the street in the Advent season, and collects money for good causes. Considering the options I had for spending my Saturday afternoon, the chief of which were

• doing homework I'm a bit behind on,
  
• converting Prof. Schmidt's notes on covariant field equations and their quantization into Latex-legible text,
  
• or singing Christmas carols,
  

I decided the last one was by far the most attractive. So, I went to the rehearsal, sang through some seven short Christmas carols in German and English, and followed the choir to the street, feeling quite uncertain about having to sing these songs in front of random people.

It turned out to be quite okay: we sang through the whole repertoire three times, and collected some 80 euros for a school in Armenia. The audience was quite varied, as to be expected on the street: some people walked past us without noticing, some passed between choir and conductor without noticing, some stopped to listen, and some joined in and sang along as far as they knew the songs :).

After the third time of singing through everything, I felt I knew the songs quite a bit better than at the beginning, and I also felt quite cold, having stood outside for an hour and a half. Since the latter held true for most of us, we concluded the afternoon on the Weihnachtsmarkt with a cup of Glühwein.
It was a nice afternoon :).

And then there was internet...

In the beginning, there was a room, and it was empty, except for a bed, a desk, a bedside table, a closet and a cupboard. And then I moved into the room, and filled it with my books, my clothes, my music instruments, my compter and other trash. And for a time it was good.
But then I was aware of a wish to be connected with the world outside my room. And I gave thought to this problem, and decided that there must be internet. So I said: 'Let there be internet!' But nothing happened. And then I went to an internet provider, and in return for a promise to pay a certain amount of money every month, the internet provider said: 'Let there be internet!' But still nothing happened. And I waited for a month and a half, and went to the provider many times, and said: 'You have promised that there would be internet, but behold, there is no internet.' And the internet provider's employees said 'Let there be internet,' and they said it to Telekom, and to their boss, and to everyone to whom it seemed to make sense to say this, and then, after a month and a half, my flatmate happened to catch a technician who had just connected someone else, and made him connect my room, too.
And then there was internet, and I saw that it was good.

Job

I have a job :). And one that seems almost ideal, provided I will indeed have internet in my room. I have to process Professor Schmidt's notes on QFT into a generally legible version, called Skript, and will get paid for it :).
First, I had offered to proofread what someone else would produce, but then I ended up also correcting it, which took quite some time. And then the other guy quit, and I got the job. Which means I will be spending a little more time on it, hopefully understand it a little better, and get paid quite a lot more...
The first chapter is ready (high time, too, given that in class, we're at chapter six by now), and can be found here. Corrections are welcome :p.