Finished at the Angleterre

me: "i wish we had radio stations in the us that played the 'singin' in the rain' soundtrack"
moshe: "yes, maybe we should just quit research and make our own radio station. forget wireless communication........gene kelly."

if you have ever seen a movie with a soviet prison (like goldeneye!), you would have a pretty accurate representation of what this university looks like in the dark. apparently, it is dark about 18 hours a day in this part of the world. it was still pitch black when we arrived at the school at 0815 GMT+03, and practically all of the lights were out on campus. i instinctively began searching around for a siberian computer programmer and a tank so that i could bust out. for those that are not down with the double O, there is a pretty awesome tank chase through the streets of St. Petersburg in 'Goldeneye.' it was one the first thoughts that popped to mind when i entered the city two days ago.

so, we got everything setup and were rolling by 0900 GMT+03. it turns out there are 25 students in the technical english program. they are all EEs and 5 of them were girls! that's probably more than all of the girls in Drexel's college of engineering combined.........and they were better looking too. i should really take a minute to apologize for continually talking about how much more attractive foreign girls are, but it's just weird to go from seeing no hot girls ever to seeing them in an electrical engineering course. a welcomed change i assure you, even if it is to be short-lived. anywho, Moshe did a presentation on the eye-triple-E and then did a lecture/activity on barcodes. it took him about two and a half hours. i started my talk (on acoustic signal processing) and lectured for about an hour before we went to lunch.

lunch was a little awkward at first.....as me and Moshe both went and sat at different tables with the students (they were the point we came after all). so, i was just chilin' with some russians, eatin' some food, shootin' the breeze, you know. i highly enjoyed it. they were very nice and genuine people, much more so than americans at any rate. we were just talking about random crap - school, music, general life stuff. there was a little bit of a language barrier as they weren't really fluent, but they could speak some and generally understood what i was saying. when i declined tea after the meal (i hate all forms of tea and coffee, in case you didn't know. but, the russians seem to drink it at just about every meal), the one girl at my table commented that i would probably rather a beer.......

.....AM I REALLY THAT TRANSPARENT?.........

.......this is a question that i've been asking jules for months now. and, i believe the answer is undeniably - yes. apparently, i wear exactly what i thinking on my face. even people half way around the world that i met this morning can read me like a large print book. son of a bitch. eh, it was true though. i could've gone for a beer.........

after lunch, i lectured for another hour and a half and did some examples of audio effects with ableton. in total, i was speaking for about two and a half hours, which is definitely the longest presentation i've ever done. in fact, until now, the longest had been about a hour and a half. this is actually a problem though. cause i wrote this presentation a little bit on monday but mostly on tuesday. that means that i can whip up a huge presentation at what was basically the last minute (before we left to make the commute anyways) and still pull off a pretty good talk with no practice that is two and a half hours long! damnit. see all this does is raise my confidence. now, i'm never going to have motivation to do work ahead of time ever again.

the presentation went pretty smoothly overall. they asked a couple questions at points but it seemed like they understood most of it, which is awesome because it is a involved topic if you have no former knowledge of it. the only roadblocks were discrete time and finding the least common multiple. apparently, they had never learned either of these, just a difference in curriculum i suppose. it wasn't a huge deal as i was able to throw together some quick examples to help them through it. all-in-all, i was mostly satisfied with my job. and, the students seemed to like both of the lectures. several of them commented on it afterwards.

so that was pretty much today, spent almost entirely at the university. now, it is time to really enjoy the vacation since our work is over. tomorrow, we're going to the hermitage, which is one of the premiere museums in the world. i can't say i'm a huge museum fan, but if it's one of the best in the world, i suppose i can cope.

on a side note, the same girl was working at the front desk of the hotel yesterday afternoon, last night (around 2300 GMT+03 the last time i was down there), this morning at 0800 GMT+03, and tonight around 2200 GMT+03 and smiling the whole time this leads me to two possible conclusions. A.) she is the most dedicated worker in the entire world, or B.) she's a robot. i'm leaning towards the latter. but, we'll see. if she is still working tomorrow morning when i go down and still smiling, that definitively proves that she is a robot. there is no one in the world that would be smiling if they have to work double shifts for the entire weekend.

stats:

time:
25.11.2007
St. Petersburg - 0115 GMT+03
Frankfurt - 2315 GMT+01
Philadelphia - 1715 GMT-05

start time - 1430 GMT-05 21.11.2007
time elapsed - 75h 00m

# of hours spent sleeping - 11h (out of 48h)
# of hours spent playing ds - 12h (jules and dan -> i beat the elite four....HAZAA)
# of hot girls i've seen - i'm discontinuing this count. it's infeasible, because i can't realistically count that high.

Current Song:
"singin' in the rain" - gene kelly (singin' in the rain soundtrack)
it was on in the taxi on the ride over. russian radio is so awesome. kiss kiss, a-ha, and singin' in the rain, how can i loss? i can't.

points - the world:
a foreigner labeling me as an alcoholic = 1

points - ryan:
last minute presentations and people who pull them off = 1

score:
the world - 5
ryan - 5