Harvesting

From the "NOUSE: University of York's Student Newspaper"

"The University of York will be hit by a one-day strike on Thursday as bosses clash with all thee unions on campus over wages."

I was triggered to this by the cancellation of a seminar talk I was scheduled to give today: the reason for cancelling was not to appear a strike-breaker. On my way to the university this morning I actually saw a small group of real picketers, I think for the first time in my life, standing a bit dispiritedly (I thought) at one of the entrances to Heslington West (the old campus). However, being hit by a strike is obviously not in the same category as being hit by lightning, since that was also the last I noticed of it the entire day. I can only hope that this has been a constructive move in clash resolution, otherwise we might be hit even harder.

Waiting for lunch to be served

Since I had no seminar talk to give, I could spend my time making slow but steady progress at a complete formalisation of the graphs and rules as implemented in my pet tool GROOVE. Yes, we would like to pretend that we work out everything in mathematics first, and then implement it based on that formal model; but in practice it often works the other way around, you implement feature after cool feature and then (if you have a sabbatical, and if you are not on strike) try to work out formally what it is that you implemented. Don't tell anyone!

I had a solitary early lunch at the glass house, the student-run hangout cum restaurant in Heslington East (the new campus). For the second time I tried the "curry of the day", which was quite palatable.

This evening (at the time I am writing this) is actually the second day of the "illuminating York" festival, which looks to be worth a visit. However, I realised after publishing my previous post that, if Hallowe'en is the eve of All Saint's Day, then that is actually tonight and not yesterday night. Since I am not in the mood for wild scenes, which no doubt will far surpass any ordinary Saturday night, I will skip this opportunity and look at the lights tomorrow. Actually I've set myself the much more mundane task of washing my clothes, so that I don't have to waste hours of precious game time on Saturday. The dryer should be finished in a quarter of an hour. Who knows, I might even get the spirit (though that is rather something for Pentecost - also a harvest festival originally) and do some ironing.

Howard's Hallowe'en

Hallow's Eve, or the evening before All Saints' Day, is another example of a (Christian) festivity where the evening before the event has become at least as important as the day itself. (It took me many years to realise that St. Nicholas' day is actually the 6th of December.) The tradition of lanterns, spooky disguises and horror stories is said to have descended from much older (pagan) Celtic rites, possibly involving a celebration of the harvest.

As I have announced in several previous posts, I had planned to visit Castle Howard at this occasion, to enjoy the "Hallowe'en Spectacular" and take advantage of the occasion to see it at its full glory rather than mistaking the gatehouse for the castle. I convinced Adolfo and his girlfriend Inma to join me. Unfortunately, other group members who might have been interested had arranged alternative ways to celebrate the harvest.

Adolfo, Inma and the rented car

Since the bicycle was out of the question as a mode of transport, this involved renting a car and driving there. The logistics were a bit complicated since in order to get to the rental company the bicycle was still the best option, after which I faced the dual parking problem of getting rid of my bike somewhere and parking the car in the vicinity of the university, who do everything in their power to prevent that sort of thing. No matter, at 16:00 we joined the busy traffic leaving York in a northerly direction (driving on the wrong side of the road all the time) and after a smooth trip arrived at the castle right at the beginning of the event.

The real Castle Howard; film location of
Brideshead Revisited, though probably lighted differently

With hindsight, our timing was a bit of a mistake. It did allow us to see the castle in what remained of the daylight, but the delightful-sounding programme actually did not have enough to offer to pass the time until the main event, a horse-riding show, was to take place at 19:30. It was not very cold but it was very windy, and occasionally somewhat rainy. The castle itself was closed to visitors at this time, but they had dressed up the extensive grounds with lots of pumpkins, lighted up the statues and fountain in creative ways, there were some stalls with attractions aimed at the level of five-to-ten-year-olds, there was a contest of some very creatively home-carved pumpkins, there were jugglers and firebreathers, lots of appropriately dressed-up visitors, and there was a hamburger stand. The latter managed to keep us in line for 45 minutes, by which time the wind had won out over the temperature and succeeded in cooling us down thoroughly.

The horse-riding show was nicely done. (No pictures I'm afraid, way becond my phone's capabilities.) I would probably not have used the word "spectacular" myself, but with the backdrop of the castle it made for a memorable 45 minutes. They had dressed it up in a story about a royal wedding gone wrong: zombies and a minotaur (sic) played a major role, there was sword-fighting as well as some bouts of more modern martial arts, all weaved together by a rather good storyteller. The horse-riding itself was actually excellent; I personally have some interesting experiences trying to stay in the saddle of a galloping horse, doing so upside town, backwards, jumping off and on, or running beside the horse are not things that would occur to me as worth contemplating.

Of course, as such things go, afterwards we all thought it had been a worthwhile experience. We found our way back to York in good time (despite the fact that it took me several tries to find the right setting for the car's headlights, which earned us some modern-day light signals on the highway) and only took one wrong turn, thanks to which we ended up on the touristic route through the old town rather than the somewhat shorter and more convenient one straight to the university. Even the bike was where I left it. Back in the studio my body decided that it was still on Euopean summer time and quickly pulled the curtains on me.

Our daily bread

The English sure know how to market pumpernickel!
Clearly the English girl just totally fell in love with the
German guy because she so admires his pumpernickel.

Dutch people, when going abroad, are infamous for taking sacks of potatoes, kilos of drop, bags of coffee and complete Gouda cheeses with them, because obviously the foreign supermarkets cannot be trusted to sell the familiar brands, and anyway they rob you blind over there. In fact, Elise and I are not entirely innocent of this tendency: when we lived in Germany, we would always stock up on bread and cheese whenever we visited the Netherlands.

For the period of my sabbatical I was resolved to make do with whatever I could find in the local shops, and since the local shop I have frequented, Morrisons, should rather be called a megamarket, I can't complain about the available choice. For my daily bread I have settled on granary baps (which do not only taste quite good but also enriched my vocabulary) covered with the most mature Cheddar I have been able to find. However, when I discovered in the much smaller university supermarket a package of pumpernickel (known to me rather as roggebrood or rye bread), I couldn't resist; since then I have started my days with a houtsnip just like home. The word literally means woodcock; if you think that makes no sense for pumpernickel on cheese on bread, I can't blame you, it makes no sense in Dutch either. But I can recomment it to each and everyone, even with Cheddar!

It even got to the point where I was determined to bring a package of roggebrood from home, if only because it will not be eaten and just moulder away in my absence. However, unfortunately I forgot, so moulder it will. Thus, for my shopping this morning I asked for pumpernickel at Morrisons; who pictures my surprise when I was told they didn't have it, as there was no call for it. How can this be? What do the English have with their pea soup? (Don't answer that.)

For you edification I will end with another of Kees Stip's dierdichten, the full text of which I fortunately found on the all-knowing Internet:


Een houtsnip sprak: ik kan nog snappen
dat alle obers ginnegappen
als ik mijn homoniem bestel.
Maar onwellevend is het wel
om luidkeels tot de kok te kwelen:
'een halve houtsnip voor een hele!'
(Kees Stip / Trijntje Fop)

Gone with the wind

The flight: on schedule until it wasn't

Travelling days are never very productive, but rarely as unproductive as Monday 28 October, the day on which I had planned to trafel back (or is it forth?) to York, but also the day in which autumn had decided that it was high time to show its supremacy.

After panicky warnings by the news services (Severest storm in 25 years! Don't go into the woods tonight! Leave your bike at home, and stay there yourself as well if you value your life!) and worries by all around me, I decided to take an hour extra for the train, meaning that a smooth trip would have dropped me at the airport three hours before departure instead of the one I know to be sufficient. This meant that in theory I still had well over two hours of net work time at home, but what with packing, saying goodbye and checking the news about the weather every ten minutes, not much remained of that.

Elise dropped me off at the station, and the train appeared exactly on time, so all started out well. The KLM had kindly sent me a mail that flights might be delayed, and a link to an app that would allow me to check the status of my own flight; but that stubbornly went on saying "on schedule", which in combination with the fact that it listed some earlier flights to Manchester as cancelled (without which I would have started wondering whether the information was being kept up-to-date) looked reassuring.

Unfortunately the prophesied chaos was not long in emerging. The train was slowing down more and more, with weaker and weaker excuses being offered by the announcers: at first we were "behind a slow train", then on the stretch from Apeldoorn to Amersfoort we were hampered by "slippery rails", which given that we had to surmount all of the 50 (or is it 100?) meters elevation of the Veluwe bulge meant we were fortunate not to be asked to get out and help push. Downhill we made better speed, but before we reached Amersfoort it we learned that the train would get no further than Hilversum. No counsel was offered as to how to proceed to Schiphol; I decided to try and go via Utrecht, which by the Dutch Railways app was still listing that as a possible connection.

The situation at the stations, both in Amersfoort and in Utrecht, was quite amusing if you were in the right state of mind - which, given that I thought to have ample time, I still was. The announcers did not for ten seconds stop giving off messages that one or the other train was delayed, sometimes "for an unknown duration", or would not arrive at all. After some point they stopped mentioning individual trains and abstracted by advising the public to stop trying to travel by train at all - which is quite hilarious considering that those assembled were there for that purpose and no other. They were essentially saying "please go home and don't bother us".

In Amersfoort they tried to ameliorate the situation by commiserating and offering all those poor travellers (who were actually taking it rather stoically, after all you had to have been living under a rock not to know that there was a good chance of something like this happening) free coffee or tea, which was a nice gesture. When trying to take advantage of this, however, I found out that espresso is not coffee.

Utrecht only showed one train going in a westerly direction at all, and that only to the small town of Breukelen, and by then also the railways app had become a lot less optimistic about open routes to Schiphol. Time to turn to the fallback solution of taking a taxi; the remaining distance was less than 40 kilometers after all. I convinced a cab driver to turn the meter off and bring me there for an even 100 Euro, which sounded high to me but when he left his meter on after all, ostensibly to be within regulations in the event he would be stopped, it turned out I had indeed saved about 20 Euro this way.

Schiphol appeared to be rather unshaken, in fact when I got there the worst of the storm was over in that part of the Netherlands (not that I had seen much of it myself at all) and from there on it was business pretty much as usual. I was in good time, and though the flight did incur a little delay in the end, it was well within the bounds of the ordinary.

In Manchester I went to visit Joes and Nicole as planned. I believe I saw them last when we were still living in Germany and they in the Netherlands - which makes it somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago. (We were ever so much younger then...) I had a very pleasant dinner and evening going over the experiences of Dutchmen living in England (you have to learn to say sorry all the time, and a helmet for bicyclists is no sinecure), the ups and downs in applying for adoption under the English system, the failure of either politicial parties or voting (opinions differed) as a system to uphold democracy. We ended with a game of Roborally, an oldie which I actually never got around to playing before: nice party game, which I imagine gets better when the party is bigger.

Roborally: avoid the pits

A taxi brought me to the Manchester Piccadilly, a train brought me to York, and after waiting in vain for the last bus for 20 minutes, I got another taxi to bring me to the university. University Road is closed due to scheduled roadworks, possibly that's why the bus didn't go but no reason to fail to notify travellers. In any case, I think 4 taxis on one day is a record for me. I was certainly very glad (and tired) to be home.

SPIEL

Typical setup of a games fair stand; times 100

Why would anyone go to a games fair, who is not professionally involved in the design, production, selling or buying of games? Pure and simple, because most of the activity at the fair is the playing of games - optionally, but in practice only occasionally, followed by the buying of the game just played.

This means that way over half the space in the three gigantic halls of the biggest games fair in the world are given over to small, 4-person tables in which a game is already laid out, and brightly dressed volunteers stand at the ready to explain for the umpteenth term the turns, interactions, cards plays, point counts and other intricacies of this and that game, in English, Dutch, French, Spanish or any other language that happens to be in the intersection of the strangers who meet at that table.

Live role playing attributes

So it was that we drove through a spell of very autumnly weather (gusty, rainy) for an hour and a half, and after finding a parking spot fairly soon by dint of moving into a residential area opposite the actual fair were at the gates practically the moment they were supposed to open. I say supposed to because the number of people inside strongly suggested that a lot of the attendants and stand owners had not taken the shift to winter time into account.

In contrast to last years, the fair was concentrated in the three biggest halls, rather than being spread out in about six or so smaller ones. I wonder what this says about the attendance, which was reported to be around 150000 the past two years (one hundred and fifty thousand; that is, not distinct visitors but "turnstile attendance" - a lot of visitors go for more than 1 day and then are counted for the number of days they attend).

Carcassonne championship, with the aid of a chess clock

Apart from playing and selling games, there are other events that keep things very lively. Like many of such events, this one is paired up with a comics fair, and there is quite a collection of role-playing attributes on sale - books for the miniature kind, swords, mantles, harnesses for the live kind. This in turn draws those who take part in such games, and they come dressed the part, so there are a lot of knights, monks, wizards, elves and the like among those present. There is also a section for children (not very large) and then various awards and championships. I more or less by accident bumped into the Carcassonne World Championship - not the game I would have imagined to be sufficiently balanced to be a consistently good player at. Well, maybe it isn't, but I'm sure it is good fun to take part, wouldn't mind to have a go myself.

Hollywood: I just produced two Oscar-worthy movies

Of course Willem-Jan and I played a number of games, I think five. Not all of them equally interesting: I don't know how a game as bad as The Witches came to be published and even promoted. But Flash Point (which reminded me a lot of Pandemic, not only because both are cooperative games with a comparable theme but also because I think the graphical design is somehow very similar) and Kingdom Builder are definitely worthwhile, and Concordia was not half bad.

While Willem-Jan stopped at a stand to buy some Magic cards, I looked around if I could find Marrakech, the game with the felt pieces for rugs that I had played and liked in York. Turns out there are at least four games with approximately that title, and took me too long to figure out the right spelling so I gave up on that.

We had planned to leave at 17:00 so as to be in good time for dinner, but we had too much fun so we stayed until closing time, 18:00. It being winter time now, that meant it was completely dark, and still wet, not the most pleasant circumstances to negotiate the traffic-jammed streets of ugly Essen. Fortunately it got dryer as we got further north, and Elise's kipkersentaart was delicious as ever, making everything all right again. The weather for tomorrow does not look so good though: a severe storm has been predicted, I'll have to wait and see what happens to my travel schedule. The plan is to visit +Joes Staal, son of an old friend of my father, who lives in Manchester with hise wife Nicole.

Safe for the next six years

Martijn Hoogesteger,
proud and brave chaiman of Inter-Actief

Late Arend was in full swing last night. In fact he got a bit out of control and sort of turned into early Arend, causing the real early Arend to be very late this morning.

It all started with the interview of the Examination Board by the Computer Science visitation committee on Friday morning. In fact they were at it for two whole days, grilling different groups of people (students, teachers, management, alumni, the programme board, the examination board) in an attempt to find any skeletons in the closet, any sign that we might be going the Inholland route - the polytechnic that caused quite a scandal a few years ago when it turned out they had been handing out diplomas based on very flimsy achievements. I have often wondered what role their examination board has played in that.

There were some nerves about our interview, mainly because the test run, two weeks ago, had not gone off very well. However, it turned out that all worries were unjustified, we had our act pretty much together; and the same can be said about the others. The visi(ta)tors found nothing objectionable, and in a closing statement at the end of the day even had some nice words to say about certain aspects of the curriculum - foremost the final Bachelor project which we organise in the form of a scientific conference. So, it looks as though our accreditation will go through without a hitch.

In between I conferred with Waheed Ahmad en Jaco van de Pol about my efforts to define the SDF3-to-Uppaal model transformation in Epsilon, which was the case study I have carried out in York. It's finished and working well, and although there are still aspects that can be polished further, this has certainly given me some ideas about things I might look into in the coming months.

After the closing statement it was time to celebrate. Especially Rom Langerak, the dean of studies for Computer Science, was very relieved to have it over with, and successfully too: it turns out there had been some last-minute hassles with missing documents and demands for more facts and figures which had him up for the entire Thursday night. So after a few drinks accompanied by a game of Catan in the social corner of the Formal Methods and Tools group I looked up Rom who was having more than a few drinks at Inter-Actief, the student association for Computer Science. This was I decision which I am still regretting with all my body at the moment of writing, because I misjudged my carrying capacity to a degree that has not happened for the last 10 or 15 years. It did not help that I had not had a proper dinner, of course. The students were happy enough to supply me with beer, and though I avoided the green stuff (said to be a harmless colouring fluid) I am still recovering. Which is why, my dear readers, I am for once deviating from the daily rhythm of these posts.

Round and round

Spot the Eagle

If I would have to name one thing that really works better here in Twente than in York, it is the social dynamics of the research group. With hindsight I was lucky the first week to be invited to Ken Johnson's goodbye dinner: that is the only occasion so far where there has been any activity organised by and for members of York's Enterprise Systems group. This is in sharp contrast with the Formal Methods and Tools group at Twente, where there is a weekly Friday afternoon drink to start with, and regular other activities organised throughout the year - film nights, bowling, end-of-the-month dinners, and tonight the season's first ice skating event. I enjoy this sort of thing a lot, try to join whenever possible and have helped organise several of these happenings.

Where York boasts a horse racecourse, Twente has an full-sized (400m) indoor skating rink less than a kilometer from the university. (I will to a full comparison of the two locations one of these days: there are surprising similarities and amusing differences, this being one of the latter.) You can rent skates there, of various types, but the facility is really meant for speed skating so hockey or dance skates are not recommended. It really doesn't matter how good or bad you are: there are always plenty of absolute beginners, and if you stay on the outside then you can hold on to the air cushions and you are not in anyone's way. The inside is the fast track, where only those who fancy themselves good skaters dare to go. For one thing, you have to be wearing a head-to-toe shiny suit, preferably with some sponsor messages. For another, you have to be able and willing to pretty much stick your nose into the butt of the person in front of you, all while travelling at a speed of some 30 km/hour.

There were some six or seven PhD students tonight, including our newest group member Saeed Darabi with his wife; however, they were just there on inspection and could not be convinced to try and go onto the ice. (They promised to do so next time.) It is probably unnecessary to mention that we firmly stayed on the outside. Since I have to be fresh for the inquisition tomorrow, I did not stay long and avoided the karaoke that was planned afterwards. It was nice to regain my balance on the skates a bit, and also nice to be able to say goodbye to Florian Arnold, who has decided not to continue hs PhD and who will have left by the time my sabbatical is over.

Intermission

An uneventful day. I was in the curious position of having to decide what to take home, for a stay of 6 days. What clothes did I leave there, will they last me long enough? Toiletries: usually on the way home you pack everything you have; the biggest concern is not to forget the shampoo again. Now it's rather a matter of taking as little as possible, so I can't forget to take it with me again next week. Do I have a space comb at home?

Once underway, you are in the hands of those you trust to transport you according to their own timetable. It is well known that they do not always perform as promised, so you build in leeway all over the place. The air companies want you there a ridiculously long time before departure, that's not to be taken seriously (especially after having checked in online and travelling with hand luggage only), but neither British nor Dutch railways have a fabulous reputation for punctuality. Have enough leaves fallen to stop the trains? Are the raindrops perhaps of a size to expose a hitherto unsuspected defect?

After not running this morning (I had a moment of self-conflict, then I realised with relief that this would only create more smelly washing that would be lying around for almost a week) and not going to the university (a brief shock when I thought I might have left the laptop charger there) I actually got a fair amount of work done before taking the bus, the train, the plane and another train. That's where I am right now: if all goes as planned Elise will pick me up in Hengelo. The trains were well-behaved on the whole, delays not worse than usual. Right now an announcer in a wonderfully thick Surinam accent is telling us that we are arriving 5 minutes late in Apeldoorn.

Going back

Beautiful York: Pedestrian bridge
over the Foss, just where it joins the Ouse

I am a bit piqued that no one picked up on that word I used in the title of my post a couple of days ago, hebdomaversary. Since you are not interested, I will tell you: I constructed it myself, in analogy to anniversary; it means the turning of the week (rather than the year). Turns out it's not entirely original: a Google search revealed 8 hits (10 by now) - but still, not bad for an amateur I think.

I have indeed been here for two weeks (and a bit by now), and it is time to go back, temporarily. At this point I am probably expected to say that I look forward to seeing my family again, but though that is not untrue, it is not my dominant feeling. I an just getting started here, have far from exhausted the things I want to do and see, and this six day interruption (including travel days) feels like an unwelcome break.

Why am I going back then? For precisely one reason: the visitation of the Computer Science curriculum, by a national committee representing the authorities that decide upon the accreditation of our programme. This is a big deal: without accreditation, no more Computer Science in Twente. My part in it, on the other hand, is small: I will appear in my role as chairman of the Examination board, for exactly 45 minutes on Friday mornong. At the time I was planning my flight, it was not yet clear whether this would be on Thursday or Friday, hence the flight on Wednesday; and of course, once back I do want to spend the weekend at home, plus the connection on Sunday is not so good, hence the flight back on Monday.

Beautiful York: Cityscreen terrace, hanging out over the Ouse

As a bonus, this weekend happens to coincide with Spiel, the world's largest games fair, which takes place in Essen, about 90 minutes drive from Hengelo. (In case you have ever notied and wondered, this is why you can find Essen instead of much larger cities on many game boards that represent a map of Europe or the World: examples that come to mind are Ticket to Ride (Europe edition) and Pandora.) Maybe I can convince Willem-Jan or Floris to go there with me on Saturday or Sunday - although, come to think of it, Floris is playing in a Magic tournament, in Antwerp I believe. I'll hardly be seeing him at all. I might, on the other hand, meet some people from Beyond Monopoly! whom I heard discussing this last Saturday.

Another bonus is that I can sleep in a proper bed for some nights, rather than on this horrible thin and uneven mattress.

Beautiful York: Walmgate Stray,
between the university and the town

I will be back in York time for two typical English occasions: Halloween on 30 October, which I plan to experience at Castle Howard with some other people from the group, and Guy Fawkes Day on 5 November, which is when the English do their fireworking rather than on New Year's eve. Plenty to look forward to!

Time is of the essence

From time to time I feel distinctly schizophrenic. This occurs especially in the evening hours, when I start debating with myself on whether I should go to sleep or not. Even if the day has been long and tiring, you can feel quite chipper at some point during the evening, and that is definitely quality time. This is where the Arend of the night gets in conflict with the Arend of the morning - the next morning, that is. Which one of them has the right to this one body? It is mutually exclusive: whenever the late Arend wins out, the early Arend will suffer; but if the early Arend is to have his way, the late Arend has to stop in the middle of a movie, game, book, whatever it is that he is enjoying so thoroughly.

I have read more than once that as you get older, you need less and less sleep. That is not my experience at all, at least after the age of 20 or so. I do not function well on substantially less than 7 hours per night. Only last week there was an article in the paper about newly discovered physical evidence that the brain cleans itself of toxics more efficiently asleep than awake, and we all know that that is certainly what it feels like.

It is an uneven battle, this constant conflict, since the late Arend is effectively in control. So it was yesterday also, when he very stupidly decided to finish the John Grisham novel I picked up at the airport on my way here. Doubly stupid because it was ultimately as empty and meaningless as all of Grisham's books except for a few of the first ones - A Time to Kill is maybe his best, or The Firm. No way this justifies staying awake until 2:00.

As a result I felt slow and sluggish today. I had promised to give a presentation in the Enterprise Systems' group seminar this afternoon, and though that went reasonably well, with the necessary preparation and the aftermath (completely drained, as usual) almost the whole day went up in smoke. This time, dear early Arend, you will have your way.

Everyone is beautiful at the ballet

Brave Spartacus, up in the air

There is something laughable about Romans prancing around, hop-skipping as they celebrate their martial victory. But there is also something grand in this art form, this extreme celebration of the human body, in which every single tableau is an attempt by the choreographer to outdo Michelangelo.

In a cinema theater packed to the last seat, I watched a live broadcast performance of Spartacus from the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, according to the announcer simultaneously with 929 other cinemas in the world. It was magnificent; no other word will do. Staging, lighting, and obviously the dancing: breath-taking. I had taken a box of popcorn with me because that's one of the privileges of the cinema, but I didn't dare put anything into my mouth, and to tell the truth, for long stretches was completely engrossed in the performance anyway. But there's only so many jumps and pointes I can take before falling back to that state of mind where I once more see Romans prancing around, and am reminded of Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

There were two long intermissions (I think there must be a physical necessity to this, the dancers have to recuperate) during which backstage scenes were shown and an announcer said some appropriate words in Russian, French and English. Ignoring the announcer and concentrating on the background you could see the cast sitting, standing, exercising, going through parts of their routines. This was a most enjoyable complement to the actual show. At one point Spartacus was doing a quiet 15 pushups almost off-camera, by way of warming up. A suspicious mind might think that he knew the camera was there, but it was impressive nonetheless.

About the actual show I do now know what to think, not having any basis for comparison. It was several times said by the announcer to be a very "masculine" ballet, and there were certainly a lot of bare muscles in evidence, and other body parts covered only by a thin layer of cloth. The female outfits were demure in contrast. I cannot say from my own experience how (a)typical this may be. The music by Khachaturian was forgettable I thought, it's not like opera in that sense, though it is in a lot of other ways. Maybe that's unfair though, and simply due to my ignorance of the composer, of which I know only the sabre dance and a single abtruse phrase from a Dutch cabaret song, De Hoezepoes: "Ik sta op Chatsjatoerjan met enkel een ceintuurtje an. Op Brahms' sextet lig ik in bed - 't is duidelijk meer sex dan tet." (I'll leave it to Google Translate to make sense of that in English.)

So, that's my attempt to try and be a ballet critic. I am very glad to have gained the experience, but give me musical or even opera any time of the day.

Sunday runday

I stand corrected! A sampler embroidered by my grandmother the better part of a century ago, dug up by my mother as evidence, undeniably shows that in the Netherlands, too, Monday and not Wednesday was the traditional day for washing.

The full list reads:

• Monday - Washing
• Tuesday - Ironing
• Wednesday - Mending
• Thursday - Market
• Friday - Scrubbing
• Saturday - Baking
• Sunday - Resting

Since my grandmother was a vicar's wife, I assign this a lot of authority. (Well, she might not have been married when she embroidered this.) On the other hand, the all-knowing internet does not confirm the Dutch version of this list, with the exception of Monday and Tuesday.

In English, on the other hand, I have found (from Little House in the Big Woods): "Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday,
Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday", which comes very close indeed, except for Thursday's churning, which might have been outdated even in my grandmother's day. We must conclude that there is some international cultural heritage here.

I have vague memories of seeing this sampler hanging on the wall, though I do not now remember whether this was at my grandparents' place or at my parents'. I also vaguely recall wondering even then why all days had associated verbs except Thursday, which has to make do with a noun. This is certainly something that struck me once more seeing it again. It's amusing to speculate how long my grandmother tried to find a good verb to cover the meaning of "going to the market". "Shopping" conveys the wrong image, and "marketing" is not a word in Dutch - never mind that the English word has a different meaning altogether. Having discovered the link with the (probably older) English verse, we can now hypothesise that the market was a stopgap replacement for churning. (Would this make a nice MSc project in some remote corner of literary sciences?)

I could go on about this sampler, for instance pointing out how utterly traditional it is, and then jumping to the current uproar in the Netherlands because a large Dutch toy shop chain has brought out an ad folder in which the idea that household chores are an exclusively female department is very much confirmed. Monday is for washing, indeed. But who would be interested in that sort of humdrum stuff?

Let's rather go to the modern interpretation of the Sunday rest. About 6000 Yorkers took this to mean that they had to run for some 42 kilometers, preferably in four hours or under. I started a bit of running of my own at about 8:30: it turned out that this time slot, usually reserved for the Secret Society (runners and dog owners, remember), was invaded by groups of people converging to a spot directly bordering the university. It was not hard to add two and two, so after a jog up and down the Ouse I joined the crowds at what indeed was the start of the first-ever Old York Marathon. Not as popular yet as the New York one, still the turnout was quite good, aided a bit by the weather which was mostly sunny.

The assembled runners were collectively helped through a warm-up by a trainer looking suspiciously like one of my spinning instructors. At a certain moment, mere minutes before the start, a handful of much darker "elite runners" (in the words of the announcer) suddenly appeared in the front row: these were the Kenyans without whom no self-respecting marathon can exist - if they can't get Ethiopians, of course.

The start was at 9:30, which meant the fastest runner could be expected to arrive well before 12:00. I decided to drop the idea of a bike tour, and instead went to spectate at the finish for a bit. The Kenyans did what was expected of them and ended first, though I think there were one or two breaks in their hegemony. Other runners came in in a variety of styles: some completely focussed, others spurred on by the crowd, some still looking reasonably fresh, one threatening to stumble at every single step (he was put on a stretcher the moment he crossed the finish line). I went home after seeing the three-hour mark pass by (one women making it at exectly 2:59:59, which I'm sure made here very happy) to write a bit of blog and then - which is now - leave for the Bolshoi Ballet.

Second hebdomaversary

Wednesday wash day, the Dutch saying goes. When I looked this up right now I found that, funnily enough, in England Monday is wash day. It doesn't even alliterate!

However that may be, I have decided that for me, Saturday shall be wash day. Since I wanted to be off to Beyond Monopoly! as early as I could (this is one of their Saturday game days) I gathered my stuff in several bags (still have to get a usable container) and found that, at this hour, I had 8 washer/dryer combinations at my disposal. Everything easily fit into one machine (they are huge), and the programme gave me 30 minutes, in which most of the rest of the weekly once-over was finished. Drying: another 45 minutes, time for shopping. And so, after barely two hours, with my conscience and my appartment both as clean as I could get them, it was off to the Bar Convent.

This wonderfully thought-out schedule didn't work out quite as planned, unfortunately: either the load was too big or the setting was wrong, but what came out of the dryer may have been dryer but was most definitely not dry. Nothing for it but to drape the damn damp things over the available spaces in my room and then go off to the Bar Convent.

It was somewhat over 12:00 when I got there, and things were already in full swing. About 40 to 50 people I reckon were playing some 8 different games or so. I felt right at home again. I was lucky enough to also find some of them waiting for enough players to arrive and start a game, so we soon got going with Mission: Red Planet which had us off to 19th century Mars to fight over mining resources. Amazingly advanced, those Victorians were!

When you see these game-players gathering together, you might feel that you want to get out of there quite quickly. They are mostly the nicest people, but not all of them are what you would consider well-adapted to let's call it everyday society. This is more true of this York games club than what I've seen in Twente - although, come to think of it, Fanaat also has its share of these lost souls. It's not for nothing that the authoritive web site on board games is called boardgamegeek.com...

So, in fact I was mining for ice and other treasures in the company of some true Martians. Is it to be wondered that I ended up last?

With a girl of about 10 and a boy of 7 or 8 and their dad, I played one round of Small World (which I will forevermore associate with Floris under observation in the hospital, that might actually be the last time I played it before this) and two rounds of Scotland Yard, a game which I first played 30 years ago or so and didn't know was still around. Well, I say "dad": when I asked the girl (whose name to my shame I forgot to ask) if she liked games, she said yes, ever since George moved in who had a lot of boardgames, she had also been playing them. That took me aback briefly. I am unfamiliar and thus uncomfortable with these more complex family situations.

Next Cartagena (pronounced Cartahena, folks!) of which my parent played two sets to shreds, so I was on familiar grounds for a change. The last three were new to me:

• Paris Connection: a railroad game (another one!) set in France. Everyone buys shares in six companies that are simultaneously expanding their networks. Sounds like Union Pacific when described this way, but a very different game. Simple rules, nice board, a lot of counting involved.
• Die Säulen von Venedig: building on pillars (Säulen) in Venice. A fun game, not too complex and with a very nice board. To be recommended! My phone ran out of power, I don't have a picture unfortunately.
• Marrakech: laying out rugs in a bazaar and trying to get the bazaar CEO to walk on them. Utterly original, with the rugs executed as colourful pieces of felt; I never saw the like. Simple, fast, fun. Another recommendation. I promised Sebastiaan of the Dondersteen to keep him posted if I found anything interesting; I think the last two qualify.

There was still some time to kill before we absolutely had to leave at 21:00; to my surprise someone came up with Love Letter. That makes four games which I played before! I think I know not more than one out of ten in the club's collection.

The Bar Convent is an odd place, they have meetings there, a restaurant, but also hotel rooms I think. This synopsis would perfectly fit any modern hotel, but it has a very different feel. There are strict rules against bringing your own lunch, which I was warned about already, but that gave me a nice excuse to get something warm from the restaurant. All in all, another very enjoyable day.

Tomorrow will see York's first-ever marathon. The weather promises to be nice again for most of the day, with some sunshine. I think I will go out to watch the race. Should be compatible with another bike tour; except that I have to be back earlier than last week: in a moment of madness I booked a ticket for a live broadcast of the Bolshoi Ballet performing Spartacus, once more at the Cityscreen. I'm a bit scared of this, since it will last for over 3 hours. I can only hope there is a break somewhere in there, unlike in regular English movies... must be, this is coming live from a theatre show in Moscow!

Beer containers

Spot the Eagle

Having a sixpack is not quite the same as having a beer belly. You might think that, with one being out of reach at my age, I might as well go for the other: but no, as one astute reader of this blog already noticed, I am in denial and desperately reaching.

All this had the effect that I couldn't straighten my arms this morning without a serious effort and disregard of aching muscles. So much so, in fact, that I seriously considered cancelling today's episode of the Body Pump madness.

Before I could do so, however, I had to get to work. There are essentially two routes from my appartment buiding, on the old Heslington West campus, to the Computer Science department, on the new Heslington East campus. It's less than 10 minutes by bike from one to the other, a nice distance during which to wake up properly; a bit shorter than what I have to cover in Twente, in fact. However, very much unlike what I am used to is the traffic. Especially between 8:00 and 9:00 all of Yorkshire is trying to get into York and vice versa, and they all want to use the two roads I have at my disposal. It's so bad that you sometimes have to wait for minutes to even cross the street. Fortunately one of the available routes consists of left turns only, sparing me any street-crossing, so that's the one I'm converging towards. (It might also be slightly shorter.)

This contrasts sharply with the scene greeting me when I enter the office. There is sort of a front-office (protected from the evil outside world by a beeping door) which seats 8 PhD students, with less space per person than our MSc students have; behind those are proper offices for the permanent staff: Louis, Dimitris, Radu and Richard, each with another beeping door all of their own. I do not think I have yet seen more than 4 PhDs there at any given time, and I must say I can't blame them: the working conditions are far from ideal, and where we in Twente are discouraging working from home, the circumstances here justify another attitude.


I am privileged to have the use of Richard's proper office, and this instead is very quiet. There I am, hard away at this activity we call research: staring at the screen most of the time, picking up a piece of paper now and again (I am a firm disbeliever in the paperless office), and going outside only for a cup of coffee or a bathroom visit. Since it turns out the group has no collective lunch tradition, I've started preparing sandwiches in the apartment and bringing them with me. From time to time the light switches itself off, maybe there is a sensor with timer and my typing away at the keyboard doesn't register as movement.

All of which is enough explanation, I think, of why at the end of the day I decided to brave my aching arms and pump once more. As I had hoped, rather than making things worse this actually loosened me up.

For the evening I had planned another trip to the cinema, preceded by dinner there. This York Cityscreen is actually a restaurant-cum-bar-cum-cinema, not unlike Fellini's in Enschede. From the outside it is a very glass affair hanging out over the Ooze, pardon, Ouse. We actually visited this place when I was here with Elise in May this year. I couldn't have imagined then that I would be frequenting it just half a year later.

Dinner was Portobello mushroom, with, yes, a beer; the movie was Le Week-End. Judging from the information I can find, this is not even planned to be released in the Netherlands, which is really a pity. It is a beautiful, sharply observant and intermittently funny movie, about an elderly couple who just about have had it with one another, but wake up to this fact only during their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris. Jim Broadbent plays the part of the husband, which was a little bit too much like his role in Cloud Atlas to put that completely out of my mind.

After that, it was too late and I was too tired to write up all of the above straight away; which, my dear readers, is why you are updated a day late. Of course, it is flattering that you noticed ;-)

Sunny days

I think I've been really lucky with the weather so far. There have been some showers, yesterday afternoon was dreadful with strong winds and showery rain, but today was again a lovely day full of sunshine. Back home, last weekend, the amount of rain usually reserved for one month was used up in a single day, while I was happily exploring the Howardian Hills. So much for the horrible climate that Yorkshire is supposed to be suffering from. (Yes, based on a sample of two weeks - I do not need anyone to point out the significance, lack thereof, of my observation.)

Enjoy it while it lasts, is my motto these days anyway. Today I once more enjoyed the luxury of being able to work on a single topic all day long (a comparison between GROOVE and SPIN based on a distributed consensus protocol, with +Giorgio Delzanno and +Riccardo Traverso), then I enjoyed a chat with +Dimitris Kolovos who gave me some ideas on how to solve the SDF3 to Uppaal transformation in Epsilon, then spinning. (Didn't enjoy my pizza afterwards, it was awful; moving on...) Yesterday I tried out Body Pump, in which the aim turns out to be to exhaust every individual muscle in your body, so that afterwards you are only fit to lie flat on the floor. I literally couldn't lift my arms any more. I even overslept this morning, which is a rare event (maybe unconnected). So there's nothing for it but to enjoy it again tomorrow...

Next Monday I have promised to give a presentation in the Enterprise Systems group seminar. That will give me the opportunity to meet more people: the group is divided over three different places separated by at least one floor and in one case a building. Now it's just a matter of deciding what I want to present :-/

Beep!

Don't we just love it when a machine goes beep? It signals that something happened, something was achieved: a payment was made, a door was opened, an entry was accepted; in some cases, we just got a little poorer. The world audibly moved for us, a little bit.

We carry the means to make things go beep around in our pockets, in fairly large numbers too. Some work by magnetic strips, some by bar or QRcodes, some by RF (Radio Frequency) tags. The last ones are the fanciest, because they control the beep at a distance (albeit a small one), for instance from within your wallet, though this works only as long as you just have one of them - two RF tags will typically interfere.

I counted nine new beep controllers that I acquired just for my stay in York. (Well, I cheated a little bit: one is a very old-fashioned mechanical key for a bicycle lock: in that case the beep is a click.) The credit card format is favourite, of course, but the Sport Village has a wristband - quite handy! (Pun intended.) All this does make for a fat wallet, certainly considering that the English coins arent't particularly small. Of course you can try leaving some of these cards at home, but you do this knowing that there will be a moment when you want the particular beep that only this card controls, and then you will have forgotten to take it with you.

The University of York certainly also love their beeps. To get into Richard's office I have to pass nine distinct doors: the first two open themselves for everyone, then there is a sequence of five fire doors which should be closed at all times (this being England), the fifth requiring a card (beep!) after 18:00, and finally two doors that beep at all times. I feel utterly safe when I have finally arrived.

Talking about my bike: the topic is probably starting to be boring, but I do want to report that today Halfords redeemed themselves. I went this morning to report the lack of a first gear, as well as a very small give in the left crank, and they not only repaired this on the spot, but also changed the pedals for a set of better ones when it turned out that they were the cause of the problem I thought was in the crank. Well done!

No more thrashing

Graph transformation-produced art: the Sierpinski fractal

This was the first day in a long, long time when I was able (and allowed myself) to work on one single topic for almost the entire day. Professoring is an amazingly diverse job; this is nice in itself, but the downside is that there are so many different tasks to carry out that the human equivalent of thrashing kicks in. This is a term from the field of operating systems, describing a state where a computer is only busy switching from one job to the next, swapping memory and other resources in and out, and not getting any actual work done. For humans (or for me at any rate), this is aggravated by stress induced by the realisation that no actual work is getting done: a very vicious vicious circle.

I think it is also one of the things that deteriorates with age: the ability to switch context quickly. At least I seem to recall I was better at this than I am now. But then, my memory is not wat it was ;-)

In any case, today I revived a project that had been abandoned along the way in the past year: a complete formal description of the graphs and rules as implemented in GROOVE, my pet graph transformationn tool. I work in a research group called Formal Methods and Tools: I like both parts of that name, but they seldom overlap. That is, we build tools to support formal methods, but we seldom or never use formal methods to support the tool building. This is especially strange when you realise that we do preach the gospel about how formal methods should be used for the purpose of constructing. It's a matter of eating your own dog food. Well, today I at least sniffed.

Framing this serene working day was the business of living abroad. Coming home (after another spinning session) I finally found one of the restaurants on campus - there are supposed to be three, but they are really hidden inside rather severe-looking departmental buildings, I found this one, The Courtyard, only by asking for directions several times. It was quite crowded when I got there: England was busy beating Poland in a football WC qualification match. I will go there for dinner some other time - maybe tomorrow. It's a bar as well as a restaurant (or maybe it's primarily a bar), so it might make a good escape for lonely nights, next of course to the warm and friendly Tam O'Shanter.

Dinner instead was Mulligatawni soup, something I had never heard of but tasted surprisingly good (better than dog food). With that, playing online Scrabble under various other names, and filling in my blog readers on today's eventualities, this day, too, has passed.

After one week: routine

The Hub, home of the Ensterprise Systems group

After an exhilerating but also rather tiring Sunday, it was back to work. Amazingly, already after this short while it starts to feel like routine.

I'm sure we all know this from experience: when you start at something new, be it holiday, a new job, a new hobby, the first days leave a much stronger impression and seem to last much longer (especially in hindsight) than later on. Part of the brain is switched off as soon as habits are formed. I would love to know how to counteract this; but on the other hand, habits are themselves important, if you want to get into flow then distractions must be avoided.

Work habits do appear to be different in the Enterprise Systems research group from what I'm used to: I had the entire floor to myself for most of the morning. I wonder if this is typical of Mondays: last week I was never the first to arrive. Or is it because the cat is away? That doesn't sound too likely as an explanation, the rest of the group are hardly mice.

Cox's Orange Pippin: they taste as good as they look

So, dear readers: nothing much to report. I left in time to get some shopping done before dinner - yes, another pizza: I appreciate all your concern about my eating habits (there's that word again) but it's hardly as if daily cooking your own food is the universal standard. And there's always fruit: to my great joy, I found Cox apples in the supermarket, a kind that can hardly be found in the Netherlands any more but which is my personal favourite.

I will end today's post with a question for you: why are Cox apples called Cox Orange?

The Howardian Hills

A bicycle map in conjunction with a backpack are as good as an intention, so entirely in the spirit of yesterday's philosophy I felt obliged to take a cycle tour today. For which the weather has to be at least moderately good: fortunately, the BBC said it would be dry and even intermittently sunny after 14:00, and the rain radar confirmed that this might be so, so that left about four hours of daylight to explore the surroundings of York.

I have consulted my new University colleagues about which destinations I should not miss out on, and one of those mentioned was Castle Howard, some 15 miles to the north (as the Nazgul flies). That seemed like a nice distance to try my bike out on, so the only remaining problem was to plan a route. Having seen how navigable the footpaths are around York, it seemed like a good bet to take those as a basis and take it from there. To start with, the river Foss, which flows south into York, was shown by the map to have a footpath along its bank for a long way in the right direction.

One of the most curious signs I can
remember ever seeing

This turned out to be an interesting exercise. The footpath was unsuitable for biking in almost every possible way: at times it was 30 cm wide and directly at the edge of the water; at other times it was overgrown with nettles (walking those parts would be no joke either) and at others muddy and slippery in the extreme (same remark). It all came out fine, but I certainly can't claim to have a shiny new bike any more!

I baulked at the first stile and took to the road instead. Unfortunately, where the English countryside is literally riddled with public footpaths, as a result of the right-of-way legislation, the same is definitely not true for bike paths. Indeed outside a circle of say 5 miles radius around York, bicyclists are so rare that they appear to form a Secret Society all by themselves, with waves and friendly helloes whenever they meet. I am not quite a member yet, as I do not possess the necessary uniform consisting of a helmet and luminescent pink jacket, but I was enthousiastically greeted all the same.

The roads were disappointingly boring and rather full of speeding cars until I got a little further north and hills started heaving up the country. These were the Howardian Hills, the home of Castle Howard. All of a sudden I was reminded strongly of my spinning lessons, the more so because I noticed only now that my front gear won't go into first. Halfords, you have something to answer for! I actually had to get off at one point, coincidentally being passed right at that moment by another cyclist who shouted an encouraging "yes, this one's a brute isn't it?" before disappearing uphill. Given the time of day, I started wondering if it was wise to try and reach the castle itself, since I still had to find my way back - preferably along a different route.

Entrance to Castle Howard

Well, fortunately there were no more brutes awaiting me, so I took heart and did go on towards my planned destination. Castle Howard is not a medieval castle but an early 18th century residence, not unlike the Twickel in Twente, although that is actually older for a change. There are extensive castle grounds, including a farm of which the produce is sold within the castle. The building itself did not seem all that large, I had expected something grander.

To reward myself I had the largest ice cream in memory before I set out again. On the way back I kept more to the east, where the landscape was much more interesting. Since I now also had the wind at my back, all in all I enjoyed the ride home a good deal more. The only problem was that the light began to fail, and indeed it was fully dark when I was back at about 19:00 o'clock, having covered about 50 miles in total. The little light on my bike is only suited for making me visible to other traffic, not to illuminate the way, so I was glad to be back. To console my faithful bike, which has never before in its short life been so far from home and which cannot really be blamed for lacking a first gear, I did take the trouble to wash the worst of the mud off.

Howardian-produced "chutneys and relishes"

It was only after an hour or so of recuperation that I started wondering about this castle, which had so emphatically been recommended as a worthwhile destination and is located in such impressive surroundings: it really didn't seem all that grand a building. Well, to cut short to a realisation which was rather slow coming to me: I will have to go there again if I want to see the real castle, because what I saw was just a gatehouse...

They are advertising a Halloween celebration at the castle. I think I will take that opportunity to have another try - but probably not by bike!

Blue Jasmine

After running and cleaning, I had no programme for the day. However, there are still a few handy items I want to buy: things like a nail cutter, towel hooks, a bicycle map, a backpack that can hold my sports clothes. So in the afternoon I went to town (by way of the race track, see previous post) to see if I could learn to find my way there.

What I had not counted on was the crowds. Of course York attracts tourists - I have been one myself, in fact probably born-and-bred Yorkers would still regard me as one; but the streets were simply packed, to a degree where even a bike was pretty useless. A secondary effect is that the shops are themselves pretty useless, for someone not interested in touristy stuff. After crisscrossing several times I had only obtained two of the items I had come for, the map and the backpack, and I decided that was enough.

In the evening a melancholy feeling took hold of me, very different from the mood of the morning. I had decided to go and see another movie, in another cinema too, in fact I had decided in favour of Sunshine on Leith, the musical movie I mentioned in a previous post; but when looking up the programme I saw that the newest Woody Allan movie had come out, Blue Jasmine, with Galadriel (aka Cate Blanchett) in the lead, and the reviews convinced me that that had to take priority. An added bonus was that the cinema I had selected, City Screen Picturehouse, was showing this at 18:00, after which I thought I could still take a look around in town.

Well, Blue Jasmine is a great movie, but (as you might guess from the title) not one to lift clouds of melancholy: quite the opposite. Furthermore, when coming out of the cinema at 20:00 I discovered that, it being exactly one week after I had arrived, the same type of crowd that I had encountered in the train to York were now ruling the city. That did not fit my mood at all, so I took my bike and rode away into the night, back to the university.

But no, sitting alone in my room did not feel like a very attractive idea either. Maybe there would be some life on campus? I walked around for a bit, but it seems there is no Vestingbar equivalent here. So it was back to town, but staying away from the centre this time I found a local pub named after a Scottisch poem, which promised a "warm and friendly welcome": just the ticket!

Sitting below a screen showing a darts game, reading the latest Terry Pratchett and having a couple of pints did a lot to restore me (except that Strongbow tastes quite nasty, have to stay away from that in the future). When suddenly a live singer started performing Fleetwood Mac's "Seven Wonders" (which is of course the game I ended with last night) at exactly the moment I read that Miss Serendipity was undertaking a journey to York, I knew that I had come to the right place.