December is here

December is here and the sun is shining. I got back from my midterm exam (after a short stop at my girlfriend's). I don't know how it went but hopefully well.

Anyhow, December is as I mentioned earlier here and it feels surreal. One year has passed since Dalia's wedding (congratulations again!) and Francisco turned 21 yesterday (congratulations again). Grande!

I have less and less scheduled lectures and seminars, but I still have a lot of work to do. Papers in particular. I find it inspiring despite the heavy workload.

Tonight we are arranging the Nordic Stammtisch, meaning that the Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and the Dutch exchange students are preparing food at the student pub. The Dutch exchange student joined us because of.... I can't remember why, but nevertheless, it will be nice to have her with us.

I am planning to wear my Sweden jersey, I mean who could guess that I represent Sweden? Sara will borrow my other Sweden jersey. It's extremely amusing that we both represent Sweden while none of us are native Swedes. I guess we are great representatives of the new Sweden. People here refer to me as either "Roger" or "Zlatan"...


Nevertheless, I am extremely proud to be a representative of Sverige. I am looking forward to enjoy a cold one tonight, celebrating my A paper from last week.

Thank you for reading.

Gonads

I am taking a course called "Global Accounting down here in Linz, and we are playing a business strategy game online in the course in groups. Our group/company name was named "Gonads" (meaning "balls" in American slang). Another group had named itself “Fuck” or “Fuckers”. One of their groupmembers obviously logged on to their corporate lobby and changed the company name when he was drunk. I am still laughing when I think about this story. Anyhow, our American professor forwarded this e-mail to us:

"XXX,

Please advise Team "F" that they need to change their company name immediately.  In addition, I would recommend that they apologize to you, their classmates, and the administrators of the X game for their use of the offensive word in a professional class setting.  Failure to do so immediately, will result in my recommendation for a failing grade for this exercise, removal from the simulation, and if they are X University undergraduate students a recommendation for disciplinary action.

I also recommend that Team "G" change its name.  It is both unprofessional and inappropriate.  Thank you."

Then we received this directly from our professor:

“Team F and Team G Members.

Unless these company names are changed immediately, I will withdraw you from the course.

You should also apologize to Dr. X.”

The funny thing is that this came to their attention because we did well in the last round of the game. We finished 37 on the global top 100 highscore list after the first round, and the game is obviously played by thousand of students around the world. Hilarious, nevertheless!

This day has been long and it is unfortunately not over yet. I have a deadline, a short test and 90 pages to read due tomorrow. The best part is that I have classes from 8.30 to 17.00. Our teacher just handed us 90 pages to read a couple of hours ago and I have absolutely no chance of finishing that shit in time. I had to cancel a “Stammtisch” party tonight, where the English-speaking students brought food from their native countries. The Americans made peanutbutter-jelly sandwiches alongside cheeseburgers, and I really wanted to go there and have a taste, but as I mentioned the other day, 24 hours a day is not enough for me, I need at least ten more hours!

We are almost there, November is one of the most boring months of the year. I hate it and I remember how anxious I was about it last year. I had an exam on the first or second in microeconomic theory, and I still feel bad when I see the book cover. I recently found it in my girlfriend’s shelf, she has taken that course too. Maybe that’s the reason why we are together now, we are both deeply traumatized by that course.
Jokes aside, the course was interesting but the teacher was mediocre.

So, I have to get back to work. It doesn’t matter that it’s almost 22.00 hrs.