Ugh, getting up after not such a good night’s sleep. My nose has started to run again and I was waking up every hour or so and needing to blow my nose. Stupid nose.

Anyway, first drama (which gets better) is that my ‘local’ address is listed as in New Zealand, so the stickers that go on my university ID (registration, bus pass) could be potentially mailed back to Dad in NZ. Not good. So my first port of call is the ID centre to check if they’ve been sent out. They tell me that they’re being held at an office in Schmitz and I should just check back later. No problem.

So off I go to class – Cryptography. This was sadly not as good a choice as I had first anticipated. While the notation varied slightly, I probably knew 90% of the course material already from my Network Security course from last year, and the Algebra and Cryptography course I did in ’04. There would have been some interesting stuff on Complexity Theory towards the end of the course, but I didn’t travel half way around the world to do stuff I already pretty much knew. So, I knew I needed to switch to one of my other options.

After that I went to the Wednesday Lunch hosted by FIUTS, which is a really good organisation designed around bring international students together and having a lot of really positive experiences. At the lunch I met a couple of guys from Singapore, Raymond and Simon, who were very cool, chatty kinds of guys. I’ll hopefully catch up with them at another one of the lunches. As well as the free lunch (sandwiches and biscuits) there were a few notices about the upcoming FIUTS trips and thanks to the sponsor of today’s lunch.

After this I went and checked to see which courses I would be able to switch to quickly before running off to my first Computer Graphics lecture. It was a good lecture, and I’m really looking forward to the course. While it will go over some stuff I know (basics of OpenGL), it also will be using in a Windows development environment as well as with different toolkits and a lot more practical, interesting focus. Since I haven’t been doing a lot of software programming (and in particular graphics programming) for about a year now, it should be pretty beneficial. If you managed to read through that without glazing your eyes, your Geek Quotient just went up 10 points.

After class I then tried to check in with the CSE office (and in particular my Graduate Adviser). No go, but I did get the office numbers of a couple of lecturers: the one who’s taking the Ubiquitous Computing course, which I was unable to go to the first one of on Tueday; and the lecturer of Hot Topics in Data Management Systems, which I’m looking at doing instead of Cryptography. Next drama – all the course material for Ubiquitous Computing is only available from the course homepage which you need CSE login access for…which they have yet to give me. Anyway, after establishing that I head off to see Magdalena Balazinska, the Data Management lecturer. Very cool chick, very enthusiastic about her subject and was great to talk to about some potential research options as well. Only problem with doing research in this area (while interesting) is that I don’t know all of my options just yet, and I’d need to start as soon as possible, basically – the view would be to present the paper I would write at a conference in July, in Turkey. Yeesh. I’ll have to give it a bit of thought.

After having such a good discussion with Magda, I went back to my computer and switched over to her course from Cryptography. I did a bit of email and chatted to Anastasia on the phone for a bit, then I headed towards Schmitz to get my stickers. Here goes.

When I got to the office specified, they first tried to send me back to the ID centre which had sent me to them in the first place. They then sent me to an office around the corner on the same floor to enquire about it. When I got there they had no idea, then after a lot of fluffing about and discussion, one guy finally remembers that they had noticed that it was going to New Zealand, and promptly sent it back to the ID centre in the middle of the day. Naturally. So they ring the ID centre to make sure (yes, they do have them… now) and then I motor back over the road and up to the ID centre next to By George. I manage to get there about 15 minutes before they’re due to close up, and the guy at the desk hands me my envelope with my stickers and general information in it. I now have the official registered sticker as well as my bus pass, which lets me ride the bus for free! Well, it’s $41 each quarter, but for unlimited bus-rides that’s pretty damn good.

After that I went back to the HUB to do a bit of email and work. I also managed to catch Dace online and had a bit of a chat with him. Hi Dace! I checked in with Greg to see where he was at, then got myself a drink and went to catch the bus. This time I managed to get off of the bus at the right stop and actually made it back in fairly short order. Greg and I had dinner and a chat, then I had a shower and went to bed. I did a bit of email writing (amazing what kind of progress you make to this when you can’t receive new ones) and then watched some anime to relax before I drifted off. I would sleep a bit better tonight, although still not exactly brilliant. I guess it’s just being in someone else’s bed, y’know?