Alex's Alliterative Adventures

Unfortunately, the choir recordings were unusable, so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that they were really good.

We toured Copenhagen properly yesterday, it was a lot of fun.  After the changing of the guard, we saw a lot of statues and monuments, including two of the most famous, the Gefion Fountain and the Little Mermaid.

According to legend, a women named Gefion was to be given a reward from the king: she could have as much land as she could plow in one day and night with four oxen. She turned her four giant-begotten sons into oxen and plowed like it was going out of style.  The oxen were so plow-y that their plowing loosened the land and sent it into the sea, making the Danish island of Zealand.  Crazy ol’ Danes. The Little Mermaid was a gift from a Carl Jacobsen (of the Carlsburg Breweries) to the city of Copenhagen. He had it commissioned after he saw a performance of the ballet of the Little Mermaid.  I decided to defile the Danish landmark with my Canadian patriotism:

We then saw a Danish military wedding, climbed the Round Tower, which is a large observatory in central Copenhagen, and then we decided to find food.  We ended up in Freetown Christiania, which is a partially self-governing neighbourhood in Copenhagen. This place was the craziest shit I’d ever seen.  It was like walking into a mixture of one of Picasso’s paintings and a heroin overdose. The only phrase I can think of that even begins to describe this place is a post-apocalyptic drug trip.  The ground was littered in beer bottles, stray dogs weaved in and out of tourists’ legs as they were trying to eat, and a man ate a burger out of a garbage can in front of us.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the neighbourhood itself, so we couldn’t properly capture the sousaphone player belting out his bass line to the beat of the marching drummers while the rest of the wind players in white robes played along. (Iulia, I think you’d really like this place) The community functions on consensus, so the residents that want the communities public hash trade to disappear have met a lot of resistance.

There were lots of people taking lots of pictures, so hopefully I’ll connive some of them to hook me up with photos that don’t suck.  The photos I did take are available in a new album.  Check out the clock, it’s great. I won’t spam them all here, but I will leave you with the first photo I’ve taken here that I’m particularly proud of:

Especially waking up to catch a train at 9:15 on a Saturday.  Seriously, who’s awake that early on a Saturday?  Satan, that’s who.

There might not be a few updates for a day or two, seeing as I’ll be exhausted.  The men’s choir was cool, though, I’ll see if the recordings I made actually worked.

Or rather, I had class.  Today.  The other one.  It seems like a cool course, where we can make a 3D game for the final project if we so choose.

In other news, I managed to get a game I made on my new cell phone. I couldn’t get the coolest games, because this phone likes to touch itself, but that’s ok.

There’s a crazy party in Ã…rhus, Denmark for the next week or two.  A friend of mine from waterloo is spending the next 4 days in Germany, Italy, and Belgium, to name a few. I know a few more people who are spending the weekend in Stockholm. I think I’ll probably head down to Copenhagen with a few friends myself, and save Ã…rhus for next weekend. I have to learn to find just the right mix between working and adventuring.  I only have to pass, and I never get to see my grades, so I don’t want to stress myself out, but I would actually like to learn some CS material while I’m here.

I don’t know why, but I think I might have a minor phobia of cooking.  When shopping for ingredients for meals, I am overwhelmed with dread.  Uncertainty paralyzes me, and I’m unable to think anything except “I’ll burn this” or “I can’t cook, who am I kidding”. I think about the delicious meals I’ve seen others make and become depressed at my inability to consistently produce the same.  The bizarre thing is, I actually can cook. I’ve done it before, and I’ve personally cooked some of the best meals I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating.  I’m 100% aware that my aversion to cooking is irrational, but it’s so much easier to just cave in and buy another frozen pizza.

Weird.

One of the most popular clubbing songs in Sweden right now is Botten Anna by Basshunter.  I heard someone say that it ranks number two on the charts, having recently fallen from number one. Tonight I decided to look up the lyrics (in English and Swedish). The song opens with this catchy hook:

Jag känner en bot
Hon heter Anna. Anna heter hon,
och hon kan banna banna dig så hårt
Hon röjer upp i våran kanal.
Jag vill berätta för dig att jag känner en bot.

For those of you who don’t speak swedish, including me, here’s the translation:

I know a bot,
her name is Anna, Anna is her name
And she can ban, ban you so hard
She cleans up in our channel
I wanna tell you, that I know a Bot

Part of me is waiting for everyone to rip of their prosthetic faces to reveal the evil alien mouths underneath, because something has to be wrong.  This country has surpased the maximum level of allowable awesome.

Today, I had my first EDA110 lecture.  EDA110 is equivalent to the cs course at waterloo that’s notorious for being every cs student’s lowest mark.  In the lecture, we learned three sorting algorithms that I learned in grade 11. We then analyzed their efficiency, which I did a year or two ago. We also got the marking scheme for the course, which says that we we have to either pass the combined marks of the assignments and the exams or pass the exam. Also, if you fail your final exam, you get to rewrite it.  Twice.

Best. Term. Ever.

If you ever find yourself on exchange at Lund University, allow me to give you some friendly advice: in the period before you join a nation (kind of like a frat), keep your passport & letter of acceptance on you at all times. The added bulk is a bit of a pain, but I can tell you from personal experience that not being able to enter a party because you stumbled while reciting “your” birthday is not worth the forgetfulness, especially when your friends are waiting for you inside.Another helpful hint: Cell phones are no longer a fun little toy to show off to all of your friends, they are now a cornerstone of society. They’ve become part of this complete breakfast.

I had a great night at the malmo festival, but I was relying on someone else’s camera for all of the pictures.  I’ll have to post them when I get a hold of them, but in the mean time, I sleep.

The professor that I was supposed to meet this afternoon wasn’t in his office when I arrived, so I did what seemed appropriate given the situation: I knocked on doors and bugged people until someone helped me out. One of these people was a professor that teaches a mobile graphics course here at Lund. (For those of you who aren’t aware, I’ve spent 8 of the past 12 months working for a mobile gaming company, which involved a lot of work with mobile graphics). Unfortunately, this course has a prerequisite graphics course which I haven’t yet taken. He suggested that I should take his course, and that he would waive the requirements and do his best to make sure I don’t fail like Napoleon. I’ve never been invited into a course before.  I feel all warm and geeky inside. The only hard part is going to be convincing waterloo to let me learn things, instead of just stagnating.  We shall see.

I have a class tomorrow morning at 9am, so I decided to leave the party early. At half past midnight I got the impression that things weren’t dying down anytime soon, so I decided to make my exit. When I left the building, I passed a line of 20 or so people that were still waiting to get in. This country is nuts.

So apparently one of the courses I’m taking while on exchange is going to be taught in Swedish.  The prof recommends that exchange students just don’t come to lectures. On top of the prof personally telling me to not bother going to class, ever, I also get a chance to immerse myself in real, practical Swedish conversations and pick up as much as I can, provided I don’t sleep in. What a great country.

In other news, one of the Swedish banks will actually give me money! They are civilized over here!

 

edit: I’ve made some changes to the site. Most noteably, I’ve added Amir’s site to the links sidebar on the right. Oh, yeah, I added a links sidebar on the right. Anyways, Amir’s site has a bunch of pictures from Lund that I’m too broke to take right now. Give ‘er a read.