Paul Georges . Alterego Construction

It’s a beautiful day here in Linköping Sweden. This last week’s weather has been quite drab and rainy but we finally got some sunlight today. These last two days have been quite lively. I began classes yesterday at 8h00 but students have to be seated for 8h15 (Swedish tradition thing, class is called for a certain hour but only begins 15 minutes later, complicated stuff). Now, for all of you that know me personally, you would more than likely agree that I’m very slow in the morning. As a matter of fact, I tend to be pretty slow all the time… especially when a shower is involved (best part of the day). So I was up at 6h30 in the morning in order to have breakfast: the classic corn flakes and peanut-buttered toast.

By the way, peanut butter costs a fortune here in Europe. Everyone that sees my jar in my cupboard seems obliged to point and laugh at me… supposedly Europeans think that peanut butter is peasant’s food. It’s a delicacy people, DELICACY! It ain’t for nothing that my PB is one of the most costly items on my grocery store receipts.

Yeah, so waking up yesterday wasn’t an easy task… especially after the BBQ we had the night before. Pictures can be found on my MSN spaces (thanks to Chewbie for the camera).

Another note: Europeans are scared of ground meat and are too preoccupied with presentation to make hamburger patties themselves. You know who you are!

I’ve got to stop steering off the subject. Class was great; Design Patterns. The professor is young and dynamic unlike the majority of the profs back home in Québec City. On top of that, he’s quite funny and tends to make stupid jokes to lighten up the crowd.

I can now confirm that computer nerds are the same everywhere. They smell kinda funky, they don’t look too good and seem to have very low self esteem except when it comes to talking about their field of study which is most probably the least interesting of all programs taught at university. Tronche power! Argh what am I doing in computer science… I mean I’m a bit nerdy but at least I can talk about something other than Slashdot’s hottest news! Sigh…

Yesterday I went to Systembolaget (see Sweden 101) with Loic and Dave. Loic stocked up on beer, hard stuff and wine (to have with his baguette of course) and I grabbed a few Danish and Swedish beers to taste. Conclusion: 2 out of 3 kinds were pretty gross. Our trip to the liquor store was not for anything, oh no, we had to prepare for the first Kravall of the year… Munchen Hoben! Basically, a Kravall is a huge 5000 person party with beer, cider, live music and traditional food. We were invited to a pre-party where we learned a couple of Swedish drinking games which are indentical to a bunch of drinking games that I’ve played before. Still very enjoyable. After the pre-party the crowd headed to the main site of Munchen Hoben which was happening right on campus. The night was a great success; pictures can be found on my MSN spaces page.

So no partying for me for a little while. Instead, tonight I’m going back to the cathedral in downtown Linköping to catch some Bach (I believe so) Mozart. Piano and violin if I’m not mistaken. Half our corridor should be there so I’m pretty psyched; that’s only four of us but it should be quite fun.

Other than that I had class again this morning which went well. I had to correct my class registration because a few errors occurred in the system and I was missing a one course on my student portal page. All is well that ends well! It’s almost 17h00 so I have to head back to school! More updates to come!