Whoa. Just saw, that I am blogging for a year and a week today. Missed the aniversary... No cake for you then. Thanks to all of you who still read that crap :-)

It seems to work. You may now find photos I have taken on http://www.flickr.com/photos/perreira/.

Thistle in stones

Thistle in stones
Originally uploaded by perreira.

Just trying if flickr.com blog posting works...

It's about time I should come back to Erlangen. Browsing through my last couple of posts today seems my mind has been completely messed up by Hamburg and DESY, I have been completely brain fucked. After two nights of good sleep at a place I think of as home and meeting with most of my friends I am somewhat clearer thinking now. Most of the thoughts I had over the last couple of months (and sometimes shared with you) show signs of madness creeping in. Most thoughts right now seem like complete bullshit.

Might be also something due to blogging. Most of the thoughts I have and had all my life where complete bullshit, they just weren't documented. But I should come back to Erlangen anyway. Well, it's only a bit more than a month I have to spend in Hamburg, so we'll see...

It's always the same questions for somebody socially incompetent and insecure like me... As always, thinking too much leads to too much theories. I should just settle for one someday. So, here's the theories:

1. I behaved like an asshole and should say sorry.
2. She is just generally annoyed by me.
3. She is just generally annoyed.
4. She is much more socially incompetent and insecure than me.
5. She is annoyed because I said too much.
6. She is annoyed because I said too less.
7. It's all in my head.

Most probably true: number 7. Or maybe 1. I just don't know. Anyway, in case you feel like commenting, please do so :-) For the weekend, I will stop thinking now and go and read a book. Much better, as you know what's happening, and if you don't, you can read it again.

It's cold in Geneva.

You must read this...

Studying fees have been declared legal by constitutional court in Germany. Students are now preparing an uprise. The Freiwilliger Zusammenschluss von Studierendinnenschaftinnen (Voluntary Union of Students Unions or something) is preparing barricades, already casting bullets. Some secretly chosen physics students try to steel fission material from their labs, maybe some 80 grams of highly enriched uranium (which didn't find a buyer last week because of him getting arrested) will find a new happy owner now.

Secret Students societies are very secretely planning to overthrow the illuminati world government and try to erect a marxist-leninist-trotskist-liberal-communist-free-love-for-all-and-most-for-me government. Stay tuned for news and join your local students union to become an elite member of the new rulers yourself!

Random Pictures is back...

Arrogance. If you ask what annoys me most these days, it's arrogance. The arrogance of the big city, big houses showing the superiority of their owners, people being more fashionable, more hip than everybody else. The arrogance of people at work, PostDocs being wiseasses, patronizing PhD students. And finally, my own arrogance. Being together with incompetent, wiseassy, arrogant Physicists all day (with a few notable exceptions...) is turning me into one of them. It starts scaring people off whom I do not want to be scared off. I might be in a state where rehabilitation is possible, but it for sure will take time... Be patient with me.

Just got this error message: "Warning: wrong member access operator"

Does this translate as "You wanker!"?

I am sitting six floors below ground, next to me are two crates full of noise making stuff, I am staring at a computer screen all day, I have to do at least five different things at the same time (taking data, analysing data, program, ...), random people keep on popping in and ask questions which need some thinking, my boss is holding a meeting just next to me.

Wouldn't you also like it if your boss asks you why you are not getting anything done...

Well... It finally happened. I am DESYfied. Works doesn't suck that much anymore. I think I have to shoot myself now...

The last week actually was OK-ish. The meeting today was not a complete pain in the arse. I am close to not hating work anymore. Really time to shoot myself. But it also may be knowing that it will only be two more months...

Finally, thanks to insult-o-matic, also my communist friends can understand this blog. The proletariat is enchanted with this great achievement of the peoples front.

I have always thought that I can respect a "no" and live with it. This time, it's getting hard. Really hard. It makes it even worse that I sometimes overinterpret stuff... This "No" has not been outspoken, but it is pretty obvious, although I sometimes want to believe it isn't. I nearly feel sorry for her to have to cope with an idiot like me...

Back from Holidays. From a writers perspective this would have been my day:

After having a frugal breakfast of portuguese sweets (Ovos Moles), I went
to work at the worlds largest working machine, situated in one of Germany's
most vivant cities. Descending in to the pit where the experiment is located I
passed by some of the worlds most brilliant particle physicists, some russians
sitting in a dark lab, working secretly on world domination plans, and a fat
cat. I play an important role in an experiment set out to discover world's
building blocks, what drives them, uncovering the hidden structures of the
universe, mapping out terra incognita in particle physics, removing the white
spots in the image we have of our universe. After work I will have a couple of
drinks with some interesting people, philosophing about humanity and society.


This is what it looks like from a PhD Students perspective:

After finding something edible in the fridge (which had to go anyway,
because soon it will be full of salmonellas) I went to work in a loud, noisy
cave situated in a city I never see at daylight. Descending into this cave,
which has dried air, I pass by some of the weirdest morons on planet earth,
some strange russians cleaning their computer's harddrive with vodka, and a
fat cat. I have to do a lot of stuff like plumbing, kicking electronics and so
on in an experiment which is going to fail, which won't discover anything
interesting, which is so badly organised that you just want to bang your head
on the next wall for some decades. After work I will get drunk with some of my
more normal colleagues, whining about how work sucks and about girls
constantly ignoring us - strangely enough most of us have the same story: boy
fancies girl, girl goes out sometimes with boy, boy wants to be more than
friends, girl says piss off (well, sometimes girl chooses different words,
sometimes girl does not say anything which confuses the hell out of boy...). I
am drifting off...

Actually, if it wouldn't be a blatant lie, I would like to believe the first
way of putting it...

I hate my browser. It just ate my post...