¡LOCKDOWN!

To pass to the doctoral phase of the BMS program I have to take an oral qualifying exam, and generally it should be at the end of this my third semester. Thus I have pencilled in the date of Friday 13 March (very lucky) in the hope that I can also squeeze in a trip home to Melbourne before class starts again in mid April.

The exam is meant to last 90 minutes and cover three topics with three examiners. In my case they will be Geometry (Springborn), Commutative Algebra (Schmitt) and Polytopes (Ziegler). Following venerable traditions from my undergraduate years I have declared a period of 'lockdown' until the exam. This means I will not go out much and try to study as much as possible, and only things related to the exam. The last two things are normally the ones I have most trouble with. I'm a terrible procrastinator, and even when I do sit down to do maths, for some stupid reason I often find the least relevant things the most interesting to think about. I'll probably also start sporting a lockdown beard to save on shaving time and might alter my sleeping pattern to rise early and study in the morning.

Another part of my lockdown program is to do regular exercise. Since Nu and I joined the TU gym we have been going quite often, and even now that the gym is closed for two weeks over christmas, we're still working out a bit at home (with Nu's beloved Tae Bo videos). I think this is helpful for my concentration in general. For Nu it has produced quite a radical change. Before she was quite lethargic a lot of the time and often slept during the day. It certainly didn't seem that she had the energy for lots of exercise. Funnily enough she now seems to be filled with energy and genuinely enjoys the workouts.

Alle Schönste Semester: Status Report

The alle schönste semester has so far been a partial success. Addressing each of the points in the original post:

• I have unfortunately been mainly doing homework sheets and not getting much extra maths work done. However since I volunteered to present something in the Polytopes class this is forcing me to do a bit of reading.
• We did join the gym and it's been fun so far. I forgot how nice it was to do some exercise occasionally.
• I still haven't made Laksa again, but don't despair, it's coming.
• Neither of us have done as much guitar playing/painting as we should.
• We are hosting couchsurfers, and so far it's been lots of fun and not too much of a burden on our time.
• We did go to one of the ancient history museums (in fact the one with the famous bust of Nefertiti, or "that woman from the cover of my year 7 history book"). We plan to try to see more museums, maybe on Thursday nights when I'm told there's free entry.
• Nu enjoyed her SKB Deutsch Kurs, but I'm as hopeless as ever.
• I got my army coat, and it's fairly warm but quite baggy.
  

It is now about 2 months until Nu leaves and I can see we are going to be super busy for the rest of the time. She has several philosophy essays to write and I will be busy trying to get organised for my qualifying exam which I must plan for the not too distant future. If we are lucky we'll squeeze in one more little trip to Dresden or Prague over the christmas break.

After Nu leaves I will have to do something about my accomdation - either get a flatmate to share the apartment or move somewhere else. In any case it will be a bit of a hassle and I'm not looking forward to it.

Somewhere down the line I want to go home to Australia for a break too. I hope I can squeeze this in to the winter break (mid-Feb to mid-April), but with the exam as well this could be hard.