25th October 2005 - Day 22

This morning, I attend my first lecture here in Karlsruhe, Projektierung von Chemieanlagen. The professor was some old man who was quite friendly. The class was made up of around 30 students, of which, almost 90% are Auslander.

The professor asked whether we would like the lecture to be conducted in German or English.

Guess what the class said.

They replied, "auf deutsch."

Which probably means that Ill have one more set of lecture notes to translate every week.

I met Nan (the multi-linguist from Switzerland) on my way to the Mensa. We talked about the living standards here, in Switzerland, and in Singapore. He thinks that this place is not as good as his country. On the other hand, I thought I quite liked it here in Karlsruhe.

I found out how long their "National Service" is.

"15 weeks."

"..."

He also found the diary products here below standard. Of course. What else do you expect from a country which gives you one of the best chocolates in the world? To me, milk is just milk is just milk. I really can't tell the subtle difference. Come on. I still can tell chocolate milk from strawberry milk.

To our surprise, we registered to take the same course.

To my surprise, the course was in English. Never have I been so happy to attend a lecture in English! Oh well, the happiness was short-lived and soon I was yawning and trying not to fall asleep.

I wasn't able to register for my language course here because there were lots of people waiting and I had to attend lectures. Maybe I shall try to find out where else they offer Deutschkurs. Or just register for the phonetic lessons to improve my pronunciation.

When I came back, I realised that Sebastian and Eric (floormates) are celebrating their birthday. It's nice of them to ask me to join them.

After the cake, they took out a bottle of liquor with a Birne inside. We each had a shot of the liqour. It was pretty strong. Then Simon suggested that they take out the Birne and eat it. The problem is, the Birne is inside the bottle. The gang of 6 (including me) tried to break the bottle using various methods, without creating too much of a mess.

In the end, we tied twine to the bottom of the bottle and poured liquid fuel. Then we burnt the twine. The glass bottle just cracked after a while and the Birne was taken out.

It tasted funny. It was firm, even though it was soaked for so long in the liquor. But it's definitely a good cure for a blocked nose.

Later, they decided to try making Sangria for the coming Halloween Party. It was pretty fun seeing them mix all the wine and fruits into a container. It tasted quite good as well. I really shouldn't have drunk so much. Now I'm a bit betrunken.

Today, I learnt about the Büffeltheorie.

"Buffaloes are herd creatures. They like to run in herds. Besides the usual stomping that you see, they are really united. The faster and stronger buffaloes will run slower to accomodate the slowest and weakest buffalo, so that they maintain the herd integrity.

So how do we make the herd run faster? Just get rid of the slowest buffalo.

The same goes for the brain. Your brain cells work about as fast as the slowest brain cell. To make it work faster, you drink some alcohol in the morning to kick start your day. Why? Because the alcohol will naturally kill off the weakest brain cell!"

Courtesy of Simon.

So, time to start the translation work.