zondag 28 september 2014

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 :-).

zondag 21 september 2014

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.

maandag 15 september 2014

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).

zaterdag 13 september 2014

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.

vrijdag 5 september 2014

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.