jonny goes to england

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.

Well, last night I made the mistake and tried to explain the tradition of Eiertuetschis to an English friend. Let’s say it did not match his kind of humour. His response was sarcastically “well, your weekend must have gone by very quickly”.

That was kind of funny

Spitz uf Gupf, and Gupf uf Spitz are just elements which are very hard to bring across lively.

This Thursday, I’m going back to Basel for a quick Easter holiday! Looking forward to that .. even though there’s probably quite a bit of work to do.

The picture above shows some pretty cool shape I found in my office, built out of train tickets. My best guess would be that it’s a nonconvex cubicuboctahedron .. or possibly something else.

I’m thinking of making a Tube category since I post so many underground related things. Anyway, I noticed Laax and Graubuenden Tourism is running ads on the tube! Here’s a picture. It says “SNOW?!” but the S and ? are only outlined.

Recently, when I was flipping through NewScientist, I found an article about Switzerland and how great a place it is for UK scientists. That’s great news. The article first describes a few popular places to go to: IBM research in Rueschlikon (not sure how I would feel in Rueschlikon though. The sound alone invokes one or the other unpleasant reflexes). Nevertheless, IBM has interesting research going on there. Next in the list is of course ETH/EPFL which naturally come up when you speak about Switzerland and science. Third is CERN and its LHC-fame.

Lastly, the article describes a British PhD student puzzled by his high salary at IBM. Looking at the salaries in academia in UK I’m sure he earned as much as his professor back in England.

Anyway, it’s nice to know my home country is a somewhat safe fallback option or so.

I left Switzerland exactly two years ago, 17 September 2006. Now it’s 17 September 2008 .. it certaintly doesn’t feel like two years. More like 2 weeks and at the same time 20 years. Oh well, happy birthday  

Diese Woche sieht so aus:

• Morgen Geburtstag
• Morgen ein Seminar an City Uni von Sabelfeld, einem Forscher aus Chalmers. Chalmers gehoerte zu den Unis, bei welchen ich mich fuer den Master beworben habe. Ende 2005 habe ich dafuer Goeteborg und Chalmers besucht… jedoch kam es nicht zum “jonny goes to sweden” und das ist auch gut so
• Freitag Abend (sehr) kurzen Abstecher nach Basel vom City Airport..

Google Maps enthalten jetzt geo-tagged Bilder von Panoramio. Hier ein Blick auf Basel! Zoom in.

Kuerzlich auf Reuters: Swiss government says Euro 2008 fans can have their chips

BERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) – The Swiss government has agreed to ease restrictions on the importation of potatoes following fears that Euro 2008 football fans could face a shortage of French fries next month.

A spokesman for the country’s department of agriculture told national radio on Wednesday that the government would allow an additional 5,000 tonnes of potatoes to be brought in.

Im Artikel lernt man auch, dass Cervelats mit Brazillianischen Kuhdaermen umhuellt werden..

Heute Nachmittag flog ich zurueck nach London, Luton, nach ein paar Tagen Basel . Luton war kein super Erlebnis, ich bevorzuge und empfehle eindeutig Stansted als Flughafen!

Diese Woche findet die phd postgraduate conference statt. Ich werde schon wieder ein Poster erstellen muessen …ich denke ich werde jedoch das Mastermind Poster von letztem Monat verwenden.