AmiGeorg: Wow, AM I busy

(San Francisco from the twin peaks)

Ok, sorry for the slow start of the blog. Today a homework was due and I had to read a lot for this lecture in the afternoon... so now I feel FREEEE! For a short time presume ;-)

A great lot of things happened. First of all I got a bike:

I really like cycling around here - everybody in fact likes it! Bikes everywhere... I'm quite integrated as far as that is concerned, well, I even kissed the floor already. Today someone stepped in my way after a feint in the other direction... touched him with my handlebar and my bike went wild. Took soome off of the resell price for my notebook (though it's still working) and the front wheel - but you can see that. I didn't hit anything in particular! But it's already been replaced, I'm up and running again! :-)

The most important stuff otherwise: I have got a great room mate, he's into design and parties. The first one happened yesterday evening when a friend of his was celebrating the end of the PhD-calls exams. That's exams in which students for the PhD programs get selected... huh!

(Meyer library again)

But I had to complete a homework assignment for Multi Agent Systems, one of my courses. Currently I'm doing MAS, the d.school bootcamp and Phenomenological Foundations of Cognition, Language, and Computation ;-) and I'm hopping in on other stuff. The bootcamp is the real reason why I'm here, the class about innovation, design and teamwork. MAS is weird artificial intelligence computer science and Phenomeno... is a seminar (lots of reading, essay every week). Lets see if and what grades I can get out of them!

(Memorial church from behind)

I initially visited some more classes, but particularly the design classes have a heavy project workload and fall all on the same afternoons. Furthermore my chinese aspirations I had to dump - would have to have done a lot more last weekend to catch up with the class -- and I was practically all weekend in San Francisco or working on a project which I took with me from Germany.

All in all I still had a tough time getting things done. Yesterday night I completed the homework at 5 in the morning - but I did nearly everything! I met once with a guy taking the class with me and we checked everything through and we got along. I wasn't as far as him, but he encouraged me to go on. Maybe with a little bit more routine...

(German newspapers in one of the enormous bibs)

The thing is that it's not only the parties - it's also the wonderful reception I am getting here that is taking my time. In fact I am now already in contact with two faculties: the design research team and the d.school team. Both are having regular outings and meetings, for example today I went with the d.school team out to lunch in Palo Alto, yesterday evening was the weekly meeting of the design research team. That's great and I would rather go to more of those meetings and do less classes.

Ah, in case you're wondering what I did for my design class:

(Georg making an instant ramen experience)

Last but not least: What does this picture reveal:

HAHA :-)) Georg is learning snowboarding! Why? Because he didn't yet learn to do cool posing with the board - it's in the dirt.
Two weekends ago I went with some Germans to Lake Tahoe for two days of skiing/snowboarding. Wonderful nature and a great areal: