Life and stuff

I’ve been kind of busy as of late. So this is just a list of things going on.
I had the follow up with my surgeon a few weeks ago. She was very pleased. And I had my second appointment at CHX for my next referral. I suspect the wait on getting an appointment may stretch into years, but we’ll see.
Paula’s father died, after a long illness. I went with her to the funeral, which was in a Saxon church in a picturesque village in Sussex. It was a bit dramatic.
I went with her also, in what seemed like the last day of summer, to the beach in Brighton. It’s been so long since I’ve been swimming that I found the elastic in my trunks has died of old age. (I’ll fix them in my copious free time). I applied sunblock and then lay shirtless in the sun, then went swimming in the channel. It was lovely.
Fossbox put on an openday, for software freedom day. We got a grant for a training suite, so we got some laptops and then put ubuntu on all of them and set them up to demo stuff. People ca e and we got good feedback.
I got a job as an hourly paid lecturer at Anglia Ruskin uinversity in Cambridge. I’m teaching a course on electronica. It is eating a lot of time. The target is 10 hours prep time per week, but I went way over that for last week, which was the first class.
Then, the day after my teaching debut, I got on a plane and went to Berlin for the SuperCollider symposium. First use of my new passport. OMG, the privilege! I breeze through border checks. Nobody looks askance. It’s amazing.
I brought my bicycle with me. Every morning, I chanted to myslef “bike on the RIGHT” but I still went the wrong way once. Cycling in Berlin is way better than London. Not just because of the wise cycle lanes and large numbers of segregated cycle paths, but because cars are actually looking out. There are bikes everywhere in Berlin. It’s great. Rent is still cheap. The arts scene is still thriving. I still am thinking about moving there.
At one of the concerts in the symposium, a familiar looking woman sat down next to me. It was Thea, Ellen’s friend who moved from Berkeley to Berlin last April! We met up later. She has an artist visa, which is apparently easy to get. She told me people only need to work part time and can spend the rest of their time composing.
I also saw Jörg, who is building mad-scientist – like devices in his amazing studio. He introduced me to his friend, who was also at the symposium. In Berlin, there are weekly sc users group meetings, which is amazing.
The concerts were mostly pretty good. The installations were incredible. There was a club night, where the sc-using DJs got to do their thing. I left at 3am. It went until 5. I think it was the loudest thing I have ever been to in my life. The subwoofers were making my nipples hurt.
Between my bike, my laptop and the book I’m plowing through, my bags were pretty heavy. The first day was a challenge, but I seem to have regained my strength. I kept telling people, “I can lift things!”
Some acquaintences failed to recognise me. This gives me mixed feelings. Very mixed. I know I’ve changed since I was in The Hague, thank goodness. But it’s weird when somebody doesn’t know who I am at all.
The sc symposium is always fantastic. Next time, I am going to present something. I have a research idea.
My composing time has been somewhat eaten by everything else, but I have energy and ideas and will get caught up shortly.