jonny goes to england

I’m in Eindhoven for the FAST workshop for the next two days. Tomorrow I’ll give a talk on our latest research, which will hopefully go well!

I took the Eurostar because I was a bit fed up with flying. Well not really the flying part, but the security checks and other harassments you have to endure when you take an airplane these days.
The Eurostar lounge at St Pancras is great, very spacious, nice and clean. Unfortunately, the eurostar people mistake their trains for airplanes!  The wagons are very densely seated so that you have not more space than on an airplane. Legroom is for weenies. But it’s probably much better at non-peak time.

The picture above is the reengineered and recently reopened Oxford Circus pedestrian crossing. The British learned some urban design lessons from Japan and took over the crossing from Tokyo’s Shibuya station. At their famous four-way crossing, 5000 people can cross the road with one green light without any jams.

I crossed Oxford Circus yesterday and it was a bit awkward because people, including me, just walked all over, but I’m sure everybody will get properly trained on how to cross the road in the japanese-way within a few weeks

Speaking of Japan, I got lucky and can tag along with my coworker to travel to Japan in December! We will be going to an information theory security conference in Shizuoka (not too far from Tokyo). Definitely more on that in some later posts.

Wow. Today, it’s exactly 3 years since I left Switzerland..

The arrival – just arrived on campus

One year – finished master, starting phd

Two years – hm still doing phd

Now – ack, still doing phd!

How will September 2010 look like? That’s quite undefined. I try to finish the thesis around then, but what happens afterwards is completely undefined. I probably won’t (and can’t, and don’t want to) stay at QM however I wouldn’t want to leave London already. In any way, I don’t have too much time to decide as (any kind of) job search takes a lot of time here. I keep you posted on my decisions

I think I haven’t mentioned this here, but my latest paper has been accepted for publication and I’ll present it at the Formal Methods Week in Eindhoven in November! Quite cool.

I get a lot of hits from google. Here is once again a summary of the all time top search queries. I can’t really explain most of them

From bottom to top: Cheerios, Tesco Value Coco Snaps, Malt Wheats.

For a better start in the day.

We recently bought very nice ice cube trays from Habitat, which produce perfectly squared ice cubes.

And I learned the following trick to make them even nicer: use boiled water to make the ice cubes clear when frozen! Here’s a pic

Here in an Old Fashioned cocktail (not a too nice picture though):

Anyway. Some more random pictures:

Fake bacon:

******

In other news, recently I got very interested in Forex trading, especially the possibility of automated (or algorithmic) trading via the metatrader platform. This consumes a lot of time .. too bad I have a phd to do too!

I do not own a car, but if I did I would certainly let it wash at Prestige Hand Car Wash around our corner.

As seen at Great Eastern street.

Watermelon carvings!

I just returned from a nice, relaxing holiday.  While travelling back and forth I realised how annoying flying has become. Too many controls, pointless procedures, security routines, and random policies. All driven by a fear of something which (probabilistically) does not really exist.

Anyway, I decided that I will take the train back to Switzerland this Christmas. I wanted to do that for a long time and I’m quite looking forward to hopping on the train in Waterloo (or so) and arriving in Basel 6-7h later (with a change in Paris).

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Something else. Today I was speaking to my Chinese coworker about why she’s getting married (next year in Bejing, maybe a good reason to go there!). She told me that in China there’s a saying (and now these are her words)

Women are like Christmas, after 25 everything’s on sale

and she meant with it that it’s important to marry quickly as woman. And if you are over 25 and still not married you just take what you get. She’s 27 and is the last (of 30 women) in her old university class to marry.

… OR how to wash hands. How many steps does it take to wash your hands? Two? Three?

Well, while more and more people catch swine flu (two in our department so far), NHS is putting up posters on how to wash hands on toilets, just in case you forgot how it worked. In our toilets, there’s an easy to memorise,  5-step action plan to get your hands clean:

In the office toilets of a friend, however, NHS put up the 13-step master plan to kill the germs:

I could swear steps 5 – 8 in sequence mean something dirty in sign-language:

View from the pretty rough Commercial Rd towards Aldgate. Recently, I went to a store called “Iceland” for the first time. I already thought it’s a bit a weird name but didn’t think too far. So I was in there and almost all I found was frozen stuff. I went to one of the cashiers and asked her if they had lightbulbs. She looked at me funny and said no. It only dawned on me later that it’s called Iceland because it only sells frozen goods …. sounds silly because it is.

Last weekend I moved into my new flat. It’s pretty cool and you feel at home very quickly.

Despite shields warning that there’s high vehicle crime, it feels like quite a nice, residential area