Exams

The next two weeks will be pretty boring. I'm spending most of my time revising for my exams or having the exam. So the next two weeks the messages will be really short. Wednesday spend some time invigilating an exam. Which had an exciting bit where someone sneaked in some paper. Not very nice especially because they are really strict here. If it is their second offense then they can be expelled. Thursday I had my own exam where I forgot some important bits. So I'm hoping for the best and spend some time cursing myself on how I could be this stupid. Friday first slept in a bit. Breakfast became lunch instead. Great fun. After lunch I spend some time writing a report. Saturday spend most of my time baking a cake. It was literally blood, sweat and tears. Cut myself between two fingers when I tried to pierce an orange. Something fun during in the rest of the week because the wound didn't heal that quickly. Had a Christmas party in the evening. Great fun. Sunday went to Roslin for the Christmas carols there. Great atmosphere and I would certainly recommend going here. Monday spend most of my time writing a report and making a presentation. Tuesday I had to present something and wanted to listen to the presentations of my classmates. Mine went ok but still I think there is more to the topic. I'll learn most of it over the course of the next year. In the evening went out for dinner to a nice Italian place. Thursday I had my final exam. Was difficult but that was expected. In the evening went to the Christmas carol of HW. The band was really good but the choir of UoE was better. Friday spend most of my time relaxing and finding Christmas presents. If you're going home for Christmas you can't arrive empty handed so I bought fudge and a hat. The whiskey was already bought in advance :). In the evening went out for dinner again. Saturday spend my time cleaning a flat and in the evening went to a ceilidh. At night celebrated the birthday of my girlfriend. Had to get up again early morning the next day to fly home. In the end I was too early at the airport. Really interesting. I was this early that I had to wait until the baggage drop off opened.  That all for these weeks.

Kilt and last lecture week

Yes this was the week in which I got to wear my first kilt. The annoying thing is that I'm writing this message halfway through the next week and the week after that :). But anyway. Most of my lectures have finished by now. Which means that I can spend time in the library to revise stuff.

Monday. In the morning I tried to get a robot to work but the only thing it said was: "computer says no". After sending the parcel home I spend most of my time in the library revising stuff. The thing was that I forgot about the system they have to place the books. Which meant that I spend the first half hour running around trying to find a particular book and than running to a computer to find that book. Only to figure out that I was on the wrong floor. Anyway this happens every once in a while.

Tuesday. Given that most of the lectures have been finished by now so this one only produced stuff that might come in the exam a.k.a. pay attention because this will be in the exam. In the evening spend some time to make a nice and simple bolognese saus. Could do better it was a bit too runny for my liking. Anyway it tasted nice and it was food so I'm not complaining :).

Wednesday. I was trying to get some code running because I wanted to show some results to my mentor on Thursday. Only I found that the code wasn't running and this I saw on Thursday because the code took longer than I expected.

Thursday. After my lecture I saw that the code wasn't running and also I saw that my mentor was in the same room. So whilst he was speaking with someone else I was frantically trying to get my code to work. Resulted in another computer says no and my mumbling about what I did find. No dancing in the evening. There was something else going on so we met in the pub.

Friday. First I had to pickup my kilt. Quickly tried it on and cycled to HW. Where I had a presentation/meeting about building a robot ourselves. It sounds cool and I definitely want to do it. But not now not just before the exams. After this meeting I finally found a way to get the code running and got some interesting results as well. First going out for dinner and then going dancing again. One has to make up for the loss of last night :).

Saturday. Quickly filled my backpack and fixed some stuff to it (with shoelaces :) ). Placed my sleeping bag on my kilt and went to St. Andrews. This time for SUSCDF (Scottish Universities Scottish Country Dance Festival). Met a crazy amount of new people in one weekend and saw an awful lot of dancing. We (as in me and a couple of friends) could stay the night at a mutual friend of theirs. With staying I mean sleeping on the ground hence the sleeping bag and mat :). Ah well it's just for the night and when your tiered of dancing you can sleep almost anywhere. First time a kilt and I think it is really nice. A bit cold a first but liberating. Also the freedom you have is a bit weird at first but anyway you'll get used to it.

Sunday, we went out and about in St. Andrews. Seeing some great views like the castle and a big tower. After this it was time to head back to Edinburgh for the first carol service. This is something I'm not used to because we don't have such a thing in the Netherlands. At least not that I know of. Great fun to see and you get a lot more singing than we used to get when I went to church. Only the people that dragged me along where complaining that there wasn't enough singing involved and too much talking.

Monday. Yes you're getting now two weeks in on message. Spend most of my day in the library revising. In the evening I went to ceilidh dem. Great fun to do and the last time I could where my kilt. So made great use of it. This time it was us (me and some others) demonstrating for a group of Asians. Still great fun to do.

Tuesday. My last lecture for this semester. Again revising stuff that might be in the exam. So paying extra attention to this. Went back in the afternoon to bring back my kilt. It was rented so I had to say goodbye to it.

The rest of the week was more on revising stuff for exams and not doing anything special. Apart from figuring out how programma's and algorithms work.

Friday night went out to the pub to see some people I met last weekend and to have some drinks with them.

Saturday. The trip to Gullane of a couple of weeks ago was nice so I decided to do it again. This happend in the morning. Spend the afternoon fixing the bike of a friend. The bike decided that it was old and I couldn't fix everything. Somethings had to be done in the bike shop to my regret.

Sunday morning went up one of Edinburgh hills. Had a great view from there. It was a bit windy and chilly but still a great view. Spend most of my afternoon fixing another bike. The shifter got stuck but it wasn't anything a bit of WD40 couldn't solve. In the evening went to a carol service of UoE. This one was better than the one from last week. More singing and a lot busier. It was in the same place as a ceilidh a couple of weeks ago. So a great hall which was full. So full of people that some stood during the whole service.

Sorry the days are getting shorter and so are these messages :)

Cheesethief

Again the title needs some explanation but to do I first need to tell you something about this week.As you know by what I wrote last week I went back home to celebrate my birthday. It was nice it is always good to see your family and friends again. On Saturday I went out and about to buy new trousers. I thought I can pay this with my Scottish bankaccount only to find that the pin machine said in English try swiping your card and in Dutch please push the card in the bottom of the device. Ah well then use the Dutch again. The rest of the day consisted of eating cake a lot of cake and meeting friends and family. Sunday. The idea was to go mountain biking only the weather didn't agree. It was raining the whole morning and it didn't seem to stop. Given that I was home for only three days I didn't feel like spending half a day on cleaning my bike. The afternoon was spend celebrating the birthday of one of my cousins. Which meant eating even more cake. Monday. Of course on Saturday you're forgetting to buy things so I had to go out and about again to buy some other stuff. Like sportsshoes, cheese (Dutch cheese) and a bag of those tiny biscuits that we can only buy from September to December. That was actually the whole Monday the rest of the time was spend relaxing and doing as little as possible. Tuesday. The day of leaving again. It is weird staying at home and knowing that you need to leave again in a couple of day. Anyway. I had a lunch appointment with my boss. So my parents dropped me off at the company and then after lunch my boss dropped me off at the airport. Everything went well. The suitcase wasn't too heavy so I had time to spare when I arrived at the gate :). Thankfully I didn't have to cook in the evening so when I got back dinner was almost served. After dinner went for a quick shower and to pick up my bike. Wednesday. Had to go to uni in the early morning for classes. In the afternoon I went to an inaugural lecture. Which was about geology and energy consumption. Really interesting. About how our energy sources changed over the years and to get to the hard to reach places where there's oil or gas. Like I said really interesting. Thursday. Finally the lab was finished early so I had plenty of time to get home do some cooking and go to dancing. Friday. When I thought about getting a piece of my cheese this morning I found that someone had stole a bit. So I asked my flatmates who it was and if they liked. Also kindly proposed that they replaced it with another piece. In the evening there was a launch event from the postgrad society. We had a good turn out and it was great fun to do. One of the questions I remembered was about what wasn't invented in Scotland: haggis, the Australian national anthem, piano keys or insuline. I was going for either piano keys or insuline. It turned out that it was haggis. Saturday. First went to the Farmer's market to buy some roe deer and some haggis discs. Together with a partridge pie it made a great lunch. The roe deer is for a bit later. In the afternoon went out and about to arrange stuff for the evening. In the end I forgot to post a parcel anyway that needs to wait till Monday then. In the evening went out with Jess and some other friends for birthday drinks. It was the birthday of me (last Monday) and Hannah's flatmate. So asked politely if I could make use of that fact. Sunday. Went to Gullane for a hike towards North Berwick. Nice views and a nice guide.
The cheesethief hasn't come forward but I suspect we have large two legged mice. At least I hope they enjoy the cheese.

A weekend @ home

So the dutch message was written yesterday in the bus to the airport. This message is written today at home. What a difference a day makes. Anyway the week so far.

Monday. The robot we made has stage fright, when it had to preform it didn't want to. So we couldn't get the marks for one of our final performances. Anyway tough luck then and trying to fix everything for the competition.

Tuesday. I was cooking again. My idea of making goulash. I had two issues. One I didn't have to correct pan for the dish so I grabbed the biggest cooking pan that we had to make it in. The other was that I had bought two different types of meat. One was veal, the other beef. The difference in meats meant that the taste was even better.

Wednesday. A bit in a hurry. The plan was to go to a play called the kite runner. We (me and a friend) both read the book and loved it. Given that the play started at Wednesday and there was a possibility of doing the matinee one with a generous discount. We thought of doing that one instead of the evening one. So rushing back from HW to the city to be in time for buying the tickets. After a quick shower we went to the the play. And what a play it was. It made me remember most of the book and the actors were great. After the play we walked to a nice Italian restaurant for some really good pasta.

Thursday. Just a normal Thursday nothing special happened this time.

Friday. The day of my flight. After lunch I rushed back to my apartment got wet on the way and delivered my bike to the bikeshop for save keeping. Ran back to my apartment for a quick shower and change and on to the bus. The funny thing was that my suitcase only weighted 10 kg this time. That happens when you have nothing to carry only a backpack and some change of clothes. The flight went ok and the trip home was coming to an end after 3.5 hours of travel.

A nice week.

Okay so I won't bore you with everything that happened this week but just the more interesting part. So the message will be shorter and will contain most of the weekend stuff where I've got more time I guess. Tuesday I was time for me to cook again. Also you might expect this message to appear next week as well. Me and Jess traded for a week because I'm flying back to Edinburgh the 18th and don't have time to buy stuff then. So next week will also be on me. This week it was Spaghetti Carbonara. Nice dish only that I put in a bit too much cream. Making the sauce a bit too creamy for my liking. That is just my opinion. Wednesday I had another videoconference with UoE. This time I was the only one at HW making it a nice but lonely conversation. Also after exactly one hour the connection was stopped even though we were still in the middle of our conversation. Great fun staring at a blank screen for a couple of seconds.

This brings us to Friday. Given that in the rest of the week nothing special happened. Okay so Friday I went with my cohorts to dinner. We plan to have dinner at least once a week just to talk some rubbish and relax a bit. Also to get to know each other better. So dinner it was and it is always nice not to cook once a week :). Afterwards I went to a friend for some drinks and watching a movie as I had promised.
Saturday. Got out of bed a bit too late then had to walk back because I forgot my PIN. So all in all a pretty interesting start of the day. Went to the market to buy some stuff and on the way back walked into to the barbers the have my hair shortened a bit. Not as short as back home given that it is a bit colder here. After that I had some food and went out again. Had to make an appointment for checking my bike. I was given a notice for a six week check up for my bike so why not make an appointment for next Saturday. I'm not here then so I won't need the bike. I'll bring it in on Friday and get it back on Tuesday. I guess it's a good deal. After that was arraigned went back into town to buy a towel and to rent a kilt. I guess it is a bit weird for a foreigner to rent such a thing because we are not used to it. Thankfully the shop was a bit more man friendly. It was better than the time I went out to buy some dancing shoes and found myself in a ballet shop. So a kilt rented I went back to make dinner and cake. In the evening went out with friends for some drinks. It was a bit chilly and of course all my warm stuff is miles away. So in the end I was happy to warm up inside again.
Sunday. Went for a hike with a friend. We followed the water of Leith for the best part. A really nice route to do and I would certainly do it again only this time with some other shoes. I made the wrong decision of not grabbing my running shoes but grabbing my normal shoes. To be short not a good idea but still a great walk.

The week of seconds and angry people

I'm not sure how I managed to do this again. I really don't know but let's start at the beginning.

Monday. Just classes so nothing special happend.

Tuesday. Mainly classes. On the way back some pedestrian was mumbling that the speed limit 6 mph (around 10 km/h) was. No way that I'm cycling 10 km/h. It would take me a full hour to go to HW. So I cycled further paying no attention what so ever to what the man said. I didn't had to cook this evening so it was nice and relaxing. Instead I had to book a restaurant for Friday. Given that it's Halloween then it will be busy in restaurants but I was lucky. When I got back I saw that Jess got an Arduino kit. So trying to learn her programming by connecting a LED and explaining what I was doing. Took me a while to figure everything out. Luckily I had a programme that showed me exactly what I wanted.

Wednesday. Classes in the morning. I promised to fix the brakes of a friend's bike. In return I would get dinner. Only I'd taken out some chicken on Tuesday. So no dinner for me apart from my own cooking of course. Only my dinner was finish quicker than I expected so I went to my friend's house to have a second dinner and to have some dessert. Af the dessert I finally got round to fixing the brakes and adjusting to ones from last time. Two of the brakepads weren't correctly aligned with the wheel so I had to redo them.

Thursday. Classes the whole day. When cycling towards HW some pedestrian didn't notice me and shouted at me that I had to slow down. Yep I will whenever there is a bridge, a bit I can't see clearly or someone walking but when no one is around I'll just speed up. A few meters later there were two groups of walkers standing at both sides of the path trying to slow down cyclists. One of them made some kicking gesture with a leg for which I wanted to slow down. So we cyclists need to pay more attention when cycling here. Just had time to dance in the evening which wasn't much because they had a general meeting. So we skipped out of the general meeting and went home.

Friday. One of the hottest days of the week. Because I had my jacket on I was slowly cycling towards HW. After lunch I dumped my jacket in my backpack and made two new personal records. One for cycling to home in 25 minutes and one for being late 15 minutes. I could have gone faster but that would mean not slowing down for bridges and pedestrians. After classes we had pizza because of the gateway event and talked a bit about how stuff was going. The only thing was that I also booked a restaurant for the evening so for the second time this week I had two dinners and for the third time this week I had two meals. I'm also counting the second lunch I had on Sunday. Great fun but I don't want to do this every time. It is rather filling.

Saturday. Finally some time to clean my room, do some laundry and bake some cake (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/693646/banana-and-pecan-loaf). The latter could do with some extra time in the oven but tasted really nice so will be repeated at some point. The rest of the time spend doing some homework and trying to figure out where the errors were in some homework. During my dinner I tried signing up for the Sallandtrail. A run that's held near my hometown. Great thing to do it only took me 21 minutes to sign up. In the evening I went over to a friend's place for watching a movie. Settled in the end for Blues Brothers still a great movie.

Sunday. First went to the other farmers market to nose around a bit. This one is in stockbridge. I think I prefer how this one is set up. Nice and small. Being able to walk in a circle instead of a straight line. It is however a bit more expensive. So ended up buying nothing and running for a bus again. Went with a friend back to the Pentlands to walk some hills. Nice weather but a bit winding. Saw some black grouse :). It was however a great walk and I definitely want to do some more exploring in the Pentlands but need my hiking boots first. Later on went to a pub for some food and meeting new people.

We aren't going home! At least not yet.

When writing this it is either Saturday or Sunday. Given that the message gets published on Sunday I would say: happy new week!!

Monday. I finally got some extra sleep. After the courses in the morning I had to edit my report for another course, which was due on Monday. The feedback I got on Friday was that my idea was to broad. So let me tell a bit about the idea I had. Last week the acoustic camera arrived and I thought it would be a good idea to put the thing to use and to try how it would work with some machine learning algorithms. As I said this was to broad and I have to concentrate on the machine learning instead of the use of the camera. Well I'm pretty stubborn so I'll figure out a way to use the camera for the same project not sure how but I'll figure it out.

Tuesday. A pretty standard day of cycling to uni having some courses and going back again. In the evening it was my time to cook so I made some chili with as special ingredients chocolate, cinnamon and peanut butter. The latter added some nice twist to the dish. I thought about going to sleep early but ended up going to sleep pretty late. One of my housemates locked herself out and texted me to notify me about that.

Wednesday. Now it gets more interesting. Normal classes in the morning but around lunch time we had a video conference with UoE. This because we didn't want to cycle back and forth between two unis. In my case it would mean that it cycled twice between home and uni. So this was pretty interesting to see and do. We could control the camera on their end and they could control ours. So time to play :). Later in the afternoon was my real reason why I didn't want to cycle back and forth. I was going to an inaugural lecture by a professor who does something with squirrels. Given that one of my friends is one of his PhDs it was a bit difficult to mis this if you know what I mean. I new a bit about the subject the friend explained it very well to me but the professor clarified some additional things and was able to show the results of some of my friend's models.

Thursday. One lab got cancelled so that meant going home earlier than normal. Which is nice when you have to cook and allow yourself more time to do this. That's why I heated up the chili from Tuesday :). After which I still had to run to dancing because I found myself in an animated conversation with Jess. For the first time in two weeks I was in time for the start of Ceilidh class.

Friday. Asked Jess if she wanted to go out in the evening. We ended up having dinner in some pizza place nice pizzas though but still not the real deal. After this we went to a pub called Brauhaus. Nice small pub with a lot of international beers. My own rule is when in doubt go for the Belgian beers. And they were pretty nice.

Saturday. Time for another hike. This time the Pentlands, a really nice hilly forest near HW. I first went by a close friend for some lovely soup. Made me think of a dutch dish called snert. Then we literally had to sprint to the busstop. Where we saw the bus just leave. Talking about annoying. Fortunately we were still in time for the hike. The next bus came literally 10 minutes later. The hike was really nice. Saw some great bits of the Pentlands and it made me want to go back. After the hike my friend asked me if I wanted some cake. The cake made me realize that I have a lot to learn when it comes to baking. Rushed home around six because we were supposed to meet some people at seven. Had a quick shower and shave and went out again for dinner and drinks.

Sunday. Need to do a lot of homework. So in the morning I did a large part of it. Given that at least half of it was already finish but just needed finalizing. I thought that it would be a good idea of me going to UoE to try my code. It was a really short visit; the building was still closed. So went back home to work some more and in the afternoon went to a close friend for lunch. Only I forgot that it was for lunch so I made some myself when I got fed up with coding. (I'll probably be better of with baking stuff :) ). Walking towards her place I thought I might only stay for an hour. Just have a quick chat carve some pumpkins and go back again. This single hour lasted for 5 hours and involved eating pumpkin soup, trying to help with making marmelade and of course carving the pumpkins. Ahh and now I'm forgetting the cake. To my close friend I can only say thanks for the great time, cake, pumpkin soup and I'll make it up to you at some point. Okay so now I need to make dinner, try and eat some and make soup myself otherwise my veggies will go off. Afterwards I'll probably get back to homework again.

Cake, cake, my kingdom for cake.

Okay a bit later than normal. Somehow time has caught up to me and it is pretty relentless. I simply had to less time to write this week. Another annoying part at this point also my mind doesn't help me. Thankfully there's always a dutch blog that helps a lot. Let's start...

Monday, free pizza. Yep I'm Dutch so this day was marked in my agenda. A couple of weeks ago we (as in all the flats) got an e-mail saying that there would be free pizza on a Monday. This is always a great excuse to go out of your flat and to meet new people. Thankfully I wasn't the only one who thought this. I found another Dutchie who was clearly lost here. After we talked for a bit I discovered that he was from a town very near mine. Talking about a small world.

Okay so a this point my dutch blog is acting a bit funny; so the next part comes from my mind.

Tuesday. Two weeks ago I got an offer to present myself to the rest of the lab I'm semi-working in. I'm still placed in two different uni's only I'm more in one of the two for some obvious reason. So today was the day that the presentation had to happen. Thankfully all went really well.
Wednesday. This week is also the week that a company comes to the lab to install an acoustic camera. This is basically a small camera with a lot of microphones around it. They wanted to explain to us how to setup the microphone and how to use the software. Great fun to do because I'll be one of the people using the thing so great fun.
Thursday. The second day of this training. More like half a day of training. The afternoon was of course filled with courses and the evening with dancing. When I got back I quickly prepared some things for the next day because I had to bake a cake for the Freshers' weekend.
Friday. Normally this would be a nice long sleep but like I said I had to make a cake. So got up pretty early made my cake, in my still sleepy mind I used the wrong baking tray. This meant that my cake was flatter than it supposed to be. Still it tasted really well. After my presentation in the afternoon I rushed back home. I had exactly an hour and 10 min to get home, shower, change, pack my bag, cut the cake and run out again. At least that would be in the perfect world. In the end it took me a little over half an hour to get home. Leaving me with 20 min to shower, etc. I was almost ready when the doorbell (Uhm my phone) rang. A friend offered  to pick me up and walked together to the bus. This meant rushing even more. First running to the door. You can't leave a person waiting outside. Grabbed my bag, the cake and ran out again. The start of Freshers' weekend. After a drive of 2 hours we arrived at the hostel. Unpacking and collecting all the cakes. I haven't seen this much cake in my life and to think that we ate most of it during the weekend. After a quick-ish dinner the fun started. Dancing till midnight and then go back to the hostel for some music and cake. Somewhere between 3 and 4 my mind found it time to go to sleep. Normally this won't be a problem but someone decided that it would be a good idea of getting up around 8 again. After breakfast another day filled with dances started. Two workshops before lunch, one of which was country (if I remember it correctly) the other was step. After lunch another workshop this time the highland sworddance. Looked amazing and was also pretty difficult. This was the last workshop for the day after this it was time for games. One of the assignments was to make 5 pictures of faces in places. Great fun to do. When this was finished it was time for dinner. Haggis! Yum!! And with some red fruit and apple crumble for dessert. Can it get even better. Of course it can have some cake :). A quick change of clothes for the ball.  Which meant again dance till midnight after this there was some weird game which involved chairs and people running around. Round 2 am I decided it was nice to walk back to the hostel and to have some cake. Some were already playing music after listening to this my mind told me that it was sleeping time again. The next morning was even worse. We had to get up much earlier. In the end there was still time for another workshop and some nice dances. Round 12 it was time to head home again and find a bed to sleep in. The latter didn't happen before 9 but it was definitely really good after a weekend of dances and sleep deprivation. Thankfully I'm forgetting the water that came from the sky :).

Slippery when wet

Given this title I've got some explaining to do. I like to run and especially off-road. Given that I'm living in Edinburgh which has a big hill called Arthur's seat (misspelled it I think) I can run up a hill :). My running shoes are apparently not suited for running up a rocky hill that's slippery when wet. Then again running (more like walking) up hill wasn't that bad. If I would fall I would fall up hill and not down. But running down hill is more challenging when your shoes lack grip meaning that is was slipping and sliding the whole way down. Then it's all of a sudden less fun to run around. This actually happend to my today (Sunday). Luckily for me it was already the end of my run and the second time I was up on Arthur's seat within one run :). Don't get me wrong it was still a great run and a bit more challenging this way. On the way back I was thinking about how quickly the week had gone by and about the interesting stuff I could write about. To be honest it was a pretty boring week. Okay so now for the interesting bit. On Tuesday I cooked Minestrone soup for Jess and me. It was a bit different from the normal or standard way in the sense that I found some Habanero sauce (really nice and spicy) and added that to the soup. So it was now a soup which had some nice spiciness to it. The advantage of cooking for two is that you can cook a bit more try some different stuff and put some more effort into it. On Wednesday I went out for dinner again. This time it was Portugese. I'm guessing the people of the restaurant though those students need to eat more because the portions we got were really big. And when I say really big I mean really big (also really good though). The starters looked more like mains and the mains looked more like dinner for two days. Again it was really good food and a really lovely place. The only thing was that my body found it a bit to salty and I had to go and get some water during the night. After a rubbish night there was a long day ahead of me on Thursday. It started around 9 and ended around 6 pm at two unis. The starting time is normal the ending time gets normal now. This is because of a lab that started this week and ends at the end of the semester. So now I need to skip one dancing class and can only dance for 3 hours instead of four. The most annoying thing is that I need to skip the most difficult and also the nicest class. Any way I'll just start doing that next semester then. So on Friday I had to got to the JobCentre for my national insurance number. On of the questions was if I ever lived in the UK. Nope not officially. How long was my previous visit. Euhmm 3 months. Okay so now we need to know your previous address. Yeah that was over a year ago. I could drive or walk there but definitely don't know the actual address anymore. Okay so I'll just write down that your dementia has started and your fit to work :). That was a new experience still they are nicer than back home and less bureaucratic. Anyway the rest of the day went as normal traveling between unis and relaxing a lot in the evening. Saturday consisted of doing more homework. Thankfully Jess dragged me away to a movie in the evening.  And I guess I told you about Sunday because apart from the running bit described above and writing this there was more homework involved. Onto a new week :).

Ceilidh and wet

Okay so the weeks are getting back to normal with classes and cycling between unis. This is the reason why I'm only updating this blog once a week and I won't be boring you with those things. Apart from this there are still some interesting things happing in the week. So on Monday my flatmate had invited me to go to her part of the UoE to meet some people and go for some drinks. It is always great fun meeting new people. On Tuesday she (the same flatmate) promised to make some Indian curry. She claims to be very good at this; I can now confirm this. It was a really good curry. This all takes us to Wednesday in no time :). So Wednesday the informatics Ceilidh. I myself never imagined that the people here were that crazy about Ceilidhs but they really are. This is the second time for me now and I'm getting better at it every time. I thought it would be fun to invite a friend. She (this friend) is a much better danser than I am this means that I could learn some things whilst dancing. (No Hannah that wasn't the only reason it was maybe a little side reason, very tiny). All in all a great evening which was really tiering. This I noticed the next day when I had to cycle to HW. I was glad that there was some random person cycling in front of me so that I could relax a bit and didn't caught too much wind. Then again the whole process of dancing started all over again in the evening. So when I cycled to HW on Friday my legs were definitely arguing with me and yet again I was glad that some random person was cycling in front of me. Although this time the person looked rather weird over his shoulder every now and then just like he wanted to say you can overtake me if you want to. But I really didn't want to because he kept the wind and some of the drizzle away from me. This drizzle shifted to proper rain when I wanted to go back. Given that up to now my cycling gear consisted of shirt, shorts and rain jacket. The last proved to be really handy when cycling back. My legs, socks, shoes, shorts and undies where soaking wet when I arrived at my apartment. So I need to by some more waterproofs and some waterproof cycling shoes.

Saturday morning the first thing I did was go to a cycle stuff shop and bought some waterproof longs even then it was still raining and my wet shoes didn't completely agree with me going from A to B through the rain again. Ahh well I had to do it anyway. On my way back quickly went over the farmers' market to buy some veggies and then relaxing could begin. In the case the relaxing was doing homework and trying to understand some equations. In the evening went to are bar filled with mathematicians. I had to go back a some reasonable time because there was a hike planned for Sunday and given that the bus would take an hour to get there then you might want to get up a bit earlier than normal.

Sunday the day of the hike. The plan was to get a bus to Gullane and walk back to Port Seton. This time we got a message from the organizer saying that he was an hour late. These buses go only once an hour which ment that he had missed the bus. Luckily for us we had a local with us. So first went to her parents place to wait for the organizer to arrive. When we were at her parents place her mum told me that it would be foul weather on Monday luckily I don't have to cycle to HW then :).  All in all it was a really nice walk especially the first bit which was amazing to see. The last bit was a bit closer to the road which ment that it was nosier but still with some great views. In the end we got a (cheaper) bus back to the city. Even after walk 8 miles I wasn't really that tired.

A busy week

There are weeks in which one has to run from day to day to get things done. This was one of those weeks.

Monday. The official opening of the Edinburgh robotics centre. I met some interesting people on of which was a lawyer who was specialized in start-up or spin-out companies. Great guy to talk to. The other was the owner of a spin-out that had more or less the same interests as I do. Which is great from a personal point of view. Apart from this one of the talks springs to mind. It was from one of the researchers for a big american company. The whole talk was more or less about how great that company was at doing things. Other companies or researchers weren't interesting. Given that this person was and I believe still is an academic I think this isn't the best way of presenting this especially at an opening event. Ah well that's just my 2 pence. The rest of the day consisted of more talks and more food. Which is nice especially when you get hungry at 11 in the morning because breakfast was at 8.30 :).

Tuesday. Got up way too early. It was the first time I cycled to HW and didn't know how long it would take me. Thankfully I had a map (which was well hidden in my backpack), again thankfully I didn't need it. The day at HW consisted of running around between class, mentor and student services to get enrolled. Somewhere between this I and a couple of friends got an e-mail from a mutual friend saying that she had one ticket for a musical left because a girl couldn't go. I replied within seconds saying I would love to go and got the ticket of course. After all of this I went home to get some cooking done and went out to meet a friend from last year's Taekwondo. Two guys going out for drinks ah well I'll save the rest for you to fill in. I will neither confirm or deny anything.

Wednesday. Another day of cycling to HW. There are a million reasons why this is better than taking the bus. One of them is you can sleep longer and still get in on time. Again classes and free time in between. After class went back home to relax a bit and go first for dinner and then to the musical. The name was Calamity Jane and it was great fun to see. Something nice and different.

Thursday. Another day for classes this time at both unis so after one class cycle to the other uni relax a bit have lunch and attend class. Surprise surprise I had to cycle back to work with fellow students on our robot. And I had to leave early to go to dancing. After 4 hours of dancing my feet had started ar war with my shoes where both sides were pretty keen on hurting each other. So after the four hours and the pub my feet were pretty happy of getting away from my shoes and I was pretty happy to sleep.

Friday. After a week of getting up early this should be the day that I could sleep in. However getting a text at 7.30 in the morning doesn't help. So I was wide awake and at eight thought I might as well get ready and go to uni. Perhaps one of the most relaxed days of the week. Apart from being a lab help I didn't have any classes and in the afternoon I just had to cycle back to UoE for working on the robot. We decided to change the whole design of the thing and to rebuild everything into a more sturdy frame. Given that my flatmate left for Jersey and left me some chicken I couldn't stay long. I had to go back and cook chicken with broccoli. So cooking the chicken was easy only finding the broccoli was harder. Apparently it got feet and walked away itself so I had to lead it to the trash. Ok chicken with leftovers and no broccoli. In the evening a professor had kindly invited us to go to a talk he gave about robotics. The talk was intended for normal people (it sounds weird saying this) but it was nice to attend.

Saturday. Finally got some time to relax. I first intended to go to UoE but didn't go in the end. Went to buy some dancing shoes first. Given that dancing is apparently still a female sport I found myself in a ballet shop hoping to buy male dancing shoes between the tutu's. Great experience but the next time I'll find them somewhere else :). I found out that my shoes are a bit to small now and that I'm in between two sizes. On my way back bought some veggies on the farmers market (no broccoli this time) and some chicken to replace the one from Friday. The rest of the day I spend working and relaxing just to recover from this week (I do sound old now :)). In the evening we (me and a couple of friends) first tried to go to brewdog, but it was way to busy then ended up in some random pub near home. I coulnd't help myself and had to order a pint of Hoegaarden still one of the best Belgium white beers.

Sunday. First slept in for a bit woke around half 8. Then had to go to the Sains for some milk and food for tonight. When I got back it was around ten and I agreed to meet a friend around 11. So I thought to have enough time to write some homework and browse around a bit. When I finished it was a quarter to 11 and I had to pack my bag. So did that in a real hurry just to finish up and ran out the door. When I walked into her street she just walked out of her house and this time I was surprised to see her. Didn't expect that to happen. Ah well then just walk out and go to the busstop together. We got to Roslin (yeah again Roslin) around twelve and that was the time the hike would start. Luckily we were in the same bus as the guide so we just had to follow him :). The idea was to walk from Roslin to Dalkeith only we found leaving Roslin to be more troublesome than expected. We first went round in a circle finding ourselves at the place we started and then the walk really started. It was a really nice walk with some great views and a guide saying that he hasn't been to some places before. Not very thoughtful of him at all. Anyway in the end we got to Dalkeith found a pub and had some dinner. So the stuff I bought this morning is still in the fridge but come on a deal with says two main courses for 10 pounds is hard to resist.

Hopefully the next couple of weeks will be more boring for you to read :-).

Second week, Uni, Dancing, Bike and Transport.

Is was a nice week filled with new experience. Since you all have read about what happend on Sunday I'll start on Monday. (And skip the politics) Spoiler alert: one of the two sides has lost (that's the last I'll say about politics). Ahh yes and I can't find where I first named Jess but anyway this is a link to her blog http://dustydandelion.blogspot.co.uk/

Monday. The start of a brand new week and also the start of college. The first day starts early. 8 am who decided classes should start at 9. Anyway living close to UoE has its advantages as will become clear on Tuesday. First class was exciting. We have to build a robot. It will be a simple one that can race around picking and avoiding various things. After class we had to go to the lab to pickup or robotkit and given that I am a member of the Monday class could start right away on building it. Then again after a while I had to leave I wanted to pickup my first student-card of this year (actually my second still got a dutch one :)) and want to arrange for a student travel card as well. The latter will only be for a week because if everything goes to plan I'm getting a bike on Sunday so I could cycle to HW every time and save a lot of time. After getting my bus card I had to travel to HW anyway (hence getting a bus card). To say the least this trip made me realize the importance of a bike. Came to HW missing my mentor so I couldn't meet with him. Ah well had another meeting anyway so do that first then. Nope the second person I wanted to meet was in a meeting herself. Okay make the most of my time and get some explanation on a machine learning technique called deep neural networks (if I'm correct). I will post some more about this on a third blog when the time comes. After the explanation I was a bit late for my second meeting so I had to run around the building to try and find her. This meeting was for being a lab help. Or to put it differently to see if being a lab help fits into my schedule. From now on I'm a lab help for a course called Praxis. It's about creating documents and reviewing them. Great fun to do. After this I could return home for some cooking or to make an attempt to cook. The veggies weren't quite ready yet only my stomach didn't agree with the readiness of the veggies.

Tuesday. At some stage I'm thinking lectures might have thought we don't care where the students are coming from but we start when we want to. So this time it was getting out of bed earlier than before. At 7 am. Got into HW too early but well with the time schedule of yesterday I'm not complaining about the speed of the bus. Just my stupidity of getting it too early. This course is somewhat related to the stuff I had a couple of years ago only this time there is a lot more mathematics involved. Which for me is great because it explains a bit of the background of the stuff that is happening. This was the biggest annoyance I had with the courses in the Netherlands. After the course I had to run to a meeting and arriving there 15 min late. Ah well I got to see all of my colleagues from last year so that was great. By now it was nearing 12 so lunch time. Apart from dinner lunch might be one of the most important time of a day for me and luckily I was at HW so that meant a better lunch than at UoE. I can make a small comparison between the sandwiches but haven't tried all the food places at UoE. So after lunch getting a bus back to UoE to work on the robot again. We are making some great progress getting a base with wheels connected. But yeah that was actually it for Tuesday.

Wednesday same old story for getting up. Thankfully it was now one hour course one off one course. Actually that was the plan but at the start of the second course I found out that it wasn't held. Ah well lets go for lunch :). After lunch I travelled back to do some laundry. The days are going much quicker now.

Thursday. Finally got some more time to sleep since my first course is held at UoE and not at HW today. When I saw the first couple of slides I thought I could have had more sleep and skipped the lecture. Ah well. After the lecture it was straight to HW for another course (different than that of Wednesday).  I must say I like the thinking of this lecturer. He literally said I'm not a morning person so I'm not giving the lectures on Friday. Great that solves one problem. After this and lunch went back home to prepare my self for dancing. Yes I'm dancing and like it. Different that last year when I did some Cuban style dancing I'm now going for the Scottish style. Part of this is Highland style and that is hard to follow but great to watch. So I need to learn Highland style. And if anyone is wondering no I don't have a kilt (yet). Given that I was dancing from 7 to 10 it was a long day and my bed definitely looked nice when I entered my room.

Friday. Set my alarm for 9 am and woke up 7 minutes before. Great finally got some extra sleep. Today is lab help day. Actually it was great fun to do. Learnt somethings myself as well. Of course after the course it was already time for lunch and in most cases at HW I can drag some people with me to lunch which makes it always better. After lunch I had to travel back to UoE for working on the robot. We finally got the base together and now just need to programme to work. To make student life even harder I had to go out for drinks and dinner with some people of my group and some other random people. Which is a very hard life. Anyways that was basically Friday in a nutshell.

Saturday. Now you think after having some sleep deprivation I could sleep longer today. Only my mind didn't want to. So around 8 am I was wide awake. Ah well went with Jess to the Farmers' market in the morning to buy some veggies and fish for tonight. Have some veggies that I need to finish anyway. But same as last week now chocolate stall at the market there is something fishy about this. Had to buy some shoelaces because mine were deciding to split either in three laces or in four although to four would have taken a week longer. Saturday afternoon there was a beer tasting in the park from the home-brew society. Great way to meet new people and a good excuse to drink beer. (What would the whisky society be like :)). Tonight going out to BrewDogs again made a plan on Friday with two colleagues to go of which (if I'm correct) neither of them have ever been there and because Jess knows how to get there she will be my guide for the evening. And I was correct about neither of the two having been there. Only one had to cancel at the last moment which is truly a shame. Anyway after a couple of lovely beers we went home again for some shut eye.

Sunday. Sleeping in a bit finally. So I said to David lets go for a run today. Which ment that I would go later as I normally would but apparently it isn't a big problem here there are always people around no matter what time you go. After the run and a shower I had to go into town again to book a restaurant and to make some pictures. The last couple of days (as in Saturday afternoon and Sunday) we had lovely weather so a great time to take pictures. I'm still not satisfied about the pictures but there will be more good days. When I got back I thought lets sit down for a while and do nothing. Only I got a text to pickup my bike. Being Dutch and being a big kid in general I just had to do it right away. So instead of allowing my feet to rest for a bit I went out again to get the bike. Let them fit my own flat pedals which are to my opinion a lot better than the ones they fitted as a standard. Apart from the pedals I had to get a helmet and a lock. Now I finally got a private way of getting from A to B (or from UoE to HW) and it will even wait for me.  After getting the bike and putting it away safely we (as in Jess and me) went on the hunt for some chocolate and made a nice donation to a very good shop. Thankfully they gave us something in return as well. Now I can rest my feet for a bit and tonight I'll go out for dinner to some Italian place.

Our yellow-ish blue friend

Ok I'm living in a student-flat. Nice place to stay almost nothing wrong with it but we are missing somethings. Like for instance plates, pots and pans. Having bought a couple of days ago one (and not more than one) plate and using plastic cutlery we (as in my roommate Jess and also a little bit me as well) found it a good idea to make a donation to a Swedish giant. But before I start with that I need to tell some more thing otherwise this be a similar post as on my Dutch blog (yes I do have a Dutch blog). So Friday night went out for some drinks; first to brew dogs to try some of their amazing beers and then to some other pub of which I happen to forgot the name. But yeah that was Friday night. As many of the people from Edinburgh and also some of my Dutch friends know: every Saturday there is a Farmers' market somewhere near the castle. Great place to buy some fruits and veggies (and lets not forget the chocolate which unfortunately wasn't there). After the Farmers' market we went to hire a car and found that half of the city was closed because there was an orange march for the no voters. Ok now I need to explain two things first the car. We have to get a lot of random stuff so we thought (again in more or less the same manner as before) it would be easier to rent a car. Now for the second. Apparently Scotland wants to separate from the UK and there are some votes going of for both sides. As I have heard many people saying that the Yes campaign was better organized this orange march thing was pretty amazing to see. Anyway renting a car. This time we learned the hard way that it is better to rent a car in advance and not on the spot. We saved some money by saying that I was the designated driver (because I'm older) and not Jess who has a lot more experience with driving on the wrong side of the road (it stays interesting). After we got to our yellow monster we first went off to Rosslyn Chapel. A bit of site-seeing when you have a car for a day is always a good idea. This was the third time that I went but I still discover new things and am amazed by the architecture. But yeah given that your neck isn't build for looking up at ceilings for a long time we found that after a while it was a good idea to get the yellow monster to our big yellow and blue friend. At this big friend we went to buy some starterkits to get enough of everything for a very good price. Anyway again we had the car for a full day so I made Jess drive the long way back to Edinburgh instead of the much shorter route. Like I said some site-seeing is great.

So that was Saturday and a bit of Friday and given that it is now Monday what did I do on Sunday? Yes what did I do. Okay I am fan of outdoor sports (apart from Taekwondo which isn't held outdoors) and Sunday morning it was great weather to go for a run. So went to challenge myself with running up Arthur's seat. Made it half way before I had to stop but it was great fun running down again and after 13k I thought it was enough for the day so stopped right at the place that I started at. I had an invite of a friend I met last year to eat at his place and had some amazing fish there really simple but it had a great taste and some great tomato ketchup which (I'm ashamed to say) I forgot to take it back with me. Today I had classes which I haven't had for a long time. Given that I'm doing a PhD it's not expected that you follow classes only my PhD requires me to do a masters first. So classes it is ah well you're never to old to learn and it is sometimes great fun. Ah yes I was talking about the veggies earlier on when I was cooking them I looked at the brown paper bag they came in and was amazed that they came in a bag which had some Dutch writing on it. Who would expect that in Scotland.

Okay the yellow monster was a Fiat 500L and the big yellow blue friend was as everyone would expect Sainsbury's (nah kidding Ikea of course). And yes some parts are a bit exaggerated; decisions are always made on an equal level maybe not always but definitely in this case and I can't complain because I had a very good chauffeur for a day :) (thanks for that).

And we're back

So the last message was from a couple of days ago and a lot has happend. The actual distance between the two messages is about a 1000 km. Given that Scotland is big but not that big it means that the two have been written in two different places. So my intention with this blog is to keep people up to date with what I'm doing but also to state the things that I find remarkable. This is fully my own opinion and uninfluenced by (almost) no-one because on can never say that the opinion is influenced by no-one :).

So let's start. My first, or actually if you count it correctly my third, impression of Edinburgh. It stays a bit of a grey city. Lots of tall dark building but the niceness of the city is mainly made by its people. I heard that the Scots are a lot like the Dutch they are good bankers. Anyhow they are nice people. I've moved to Edinburgh now a couple of days ago to do my PhD in robotics. This PhD takes place at both the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt. So I will be juggling between the two universities at least in the first year and maybe also in the three years to come. I guess it will be a lot of fun but time will tell. Otherwise we'll make it a lot of fun. The Scots are just like the English driving on the wrong side of the road. We (Europeans) are driving on the right side of the road. So during the last couple of days I had to remind my self of looking to both sides of the road before I would crossing it. Ah well this get's normal at some point I guess.

One of the prejudices that many of the people I know have about Scotland is that it rains there all the time. Which thankfully isn't true. Since I arrived on Tuesday I haven't seen any rain (touch wood). It has been sunny most of the days which makes Edinburgh a nice and warm city. Like I discovered last time Edinburgh has hills and they are quite steep at some points. Especially when you have to walk up them with a heavy suitcase. It's great fun when you've finally conquered the hill and get to the descent. Apart from this I've spend the last couple of days running around arranging most of the stuff that I want to arrange. This means that I tried to skip the Royal Mile and Princess street to find most of the stuff in the streets that are away from the tourist trap. It saves a bit of money. Although the bars in or near the center are actually great. For example BrewDogs which is a small pub that makes its own beer. Yum. They had one (which they were out of otherwise I would try it) made with Scottish chilies. Which are apparently pretty hot.

About

Having a couple of non-Dutch friends, it seems to be a good idea to start an English blog. This blog will be about my experiences in Edinburgh and in the rest of Scotland. The things that I think are remarkable and fun. The blog will hopefully describe my life in a fun way just like I experience most of life.

BEWARE: some message of this blog might not take place in Scotland but in other parts of the world. The author of this blog cannot in any way be held accountable for these messages and for the reader's desire to travel to these parts.