Catching Up

I posted for the 2nd and 3rd of the month. I will post soon about the return home, how things are now that I'm back, my trip to Jackson Hole, Wy and being back in CU.

The End

Today was the last day in Turin. Mark and I horribly failed our Probability exam this afternoon. The failure was disappointing, but it was such a thorough failure I can’t complain. In the spirit of my last night and a Wednesday I cooked dinner for those still in Sponda. It was a nice quiet dinner with four or five people.

Saying good bye at the end of the night was not particularly difficult. At this point I am rather used to it I guess. The chances of me seeing Laetita or Marina again are pretty slim, and considering that I wasn’t particularly close to them I don’t think they will care either. Mark will be back shortly at which point I will see him around campus. Caglar can go either way, but I have a feeling will run into each other at some point.

Tal should have been perhaps the hardest to say good bye to, but it was more of a “I’ll see you later.” I know we will see each other again because we both want it. As an architect, Chicago is an important destination, and Tal will more then likely make it out here. Plus my sense of adventure and travel will at the very least bring me back to Europe, which is close enough, if not to Israel. In the words of Pambos “It needs time.”

New Year

My goodness they are crazy with the fireworks here. The city barely has any official fireworks, they leave it to the citizens to entertain themselves. I can’t even begin to describe the danger and hazards in this approach. People were lighting fireworks everywhere in the town. The favorite of most people seemed to be firecrackers, but not the little harmless type, the big M16 and M80 style stuff. Tal and her Israeli friend described it like being in Tel Aviv while under attack. Although that would seem a bit extreme, it was pretty crazy. Early in the evening some of the losers in our neighborhood threw two M80s right at our group across the street from them. Later downtown someone threw one towards our group. It was kicked back at them, and then back at us. It went off about 4 feet from me and I lost hearing in my left ear for over half an hour. I would not want to celebrate the new year there again.

Exams and Switzerland

Exams are done with for the most part, and I can resume contact with the world again. Of the four exams that I took before the holidays I passed two of them with 100%, one I’m sure I failed although I won’t know for another week, and the last one I failed and did the retake already. I managed a 100% on the retake. With all my exams at the beginning of last week I didn’t have time to study for all of them. The extra days for the one exam proved enough to pass the one exam. I don’t think there will be a chance to retake the other exam although you technically have three tries here. My leaving the country is a bit of a problem though. We’ll see. I have one more exam on the 3^rd of January, so study time isn’t over yet.

Christmas in Switzerland was wonderful. There was unfortunately no snow except for the very tops of some of the mountains. It was great getting away from Torino for a bit, much quieter and cleaner in Biel where my relatives live. It was great speaking pretty much only Italian all day for three days, huge improvement in my ability to speak in conversation along with an increase in vocabulary. It also forced some of the younger generations there to speak Italian for the first time in many years. Usually they only speak French amongst themselves, but my lack of French would have made that difficult. Although I didn’t notice that I understand much more French than before. During simple conversations combined with hand gestures I can understand 30-50% of what is being said. There are a lot of similarities to Italian and English. The goal is to be able to speak French with them next time I visit. (Gabe, Ashley, and Mariam I’m counting on you three to help me with that.)

Back in Turin I’ve packed up my room to see what I would need to send home. All of my books and a few pieces of clothing combined with leaving some old worn out stuff behind have done the trick. Unfortunately mailing the books was crazy expensive, but if I had to buy them again it would cost even more.

Other than the exam things are coming to an end here, and I’ll see all of you soon.

Me, Linux and The World (or Linux, The World and I) I know. Do you?:)

I thought I should post before people think I feel of the edge of the Earth. I have my first of 6 exams tomorrow morning at 10am. I have been putting in as much time as possible studying while trying to say goodbye to people at the same time. Some people have already left for break since most don’t have exams till after the holidays. Since that falls on January 8^th I will not be seeing any of them again any time soon. That is the short of were I have been.

Two weeks ago I was playing around with a project to finish up fixing Marina’s computer. Being in the computer mood I decided to try installing Linux on my computer. The first attempt led to problems that I didn’t have time to resolve until returning from Venice. I finally straightened things up last week with some formatting and fresh install of Linux. Things are working great now other than the wireless. Although Ubuntu, the version of Linux, natively supports my wireless card I could not get it to work. I made some attempts at using some other programs and installing the Windows XP drivers, but no luck. I’ll wait until I return to CU to figure it out.

I have also been reading the news regularly lately. The situation between Ethiopia and Somalia has been quickly deteriorating, and will probably plunge a large portion of Eastern Africa into war by the end of the year or shortly thereafter. Aid workers have pulled out of Dafur in Sudan after increasing violence against them and in the refugee camps. Many have probably heard about this at some point with the numbers killed in the past two years by the rebels and government. For those who don’t know one of my roommates in Germany was from Sudan.

In European news:

• The EU has put a hold on 8 of the 27 topics of discussion with Turkey over entering the EU. The halt came after Cyprus vetoing an agreement that would have allowed talks to go forward. The tensions come from Turkey occupying the Northern third of Cyprus since 1974 and breaking the Geneva Convention by importing over 100,000 Turks to the Northern part of the island. Check out the Wikipedia link for more info.
• England has their THIRD serial killer in history. I first picked up the news thread last week when three girls were found dead and a fourth was missing. At this point a fifth girl has been identified after her bodied turned up late last week. All of this has taken place north of London. As an aside all the girls were prostitutes and known drug addicts that went missing from the Red Light district of Ipswich.
• In the weather we have been about the same temperature here the past as it is at home right now. While you all received that wonderful snow storm two or three weeks ago we have been practically sunbathing in Europe. The serious side affect of course is a ruined winter ski season. Only a handful of the highest altitude resorts are open for skiing, and even they are using snow equipment to maintain marginal conditions on the few open runs. So much for me skiing here before leaving. On a positive note the Rockies are having a great early season.
• On more positive note Time Magazine has named “You” as the 2006 Person of the year. The award goes to the person most influencing the news in a particular year. This year “Youtube” was granted the award for the millions of people creating a community sharing what is important to them. Although most of us think of Youtube for funny clips and illegally watching TV shows and movies there is real world commentaries that occasionally make the top viewed list. Plus the Google purchase of “Youtube” and the question of illegal content on the site, although usually not more than three days, has led to a political debate on media rights on the internet.

I’m sure most of you didn’t care about most of that, but I said long ago that this new attempt at blogging would include more of my thoughts and news commentary. I’ve been better about it than before, but the sparse posting and contact lately has led to more of my personal events. Writing this was more interesting to me than the usual mundane posts of what I’m up to. It also gave me an excuse to dig around for news. Tech world has been relatively quite lately based on Digg. This unfortunately has to do with a seemingly degradation of Digg posts. Too many people are posting crap that you have to sift through.

Don’t expect to here from me until Friday with a review of my exam week and then not until I return from Switzerland. Happy Holidays/Break/Graduation for those who don’t read any possible posts before then.