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That's what yesterday felt like.
I'd been invited to give a talk on philosophy of math during an evening of mathematics to be held at a Cold War-era bunker in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam; given that it takes ~2 hours to get from Amsterdam back to Tilburg, my talk was scheduled first, at 21:00. When I told Joel that I'd need him to pick Gwen up from daycare as I'd probably be on the road to Amsterdam by then, his comment was "why not go early and spend the afternoon there?" His thought was that it would be much nicer to hang out at a cafe or something for the afternoon than it would be sitting in my office, and I decided he was right. Then I saw an announcement that a friend of mine was going to be at the ILLC giving a three-day tutorial on logics for multi-agent systems, and the first tutorial was going to be Friday afternoon at 15:00, I decided instead that I'd hop on the train after dropping Gwen off at daycare and I'd get in to Amsterdam in time to go to the tutorial. The plan worked brilliantly -- I got in and seated just a few minutes before 15:00, and all was going smoothly -- until just after the last person walked into the room, the fire alarm went off, and we all had to evacuate. Half an hour later when we were allowed back in the building, the entire wing where the lecture hall we were in was locked and they weren't letting anyone back in; so we ended up heading up to the ILLC's little seminar room (designed for about 8 people), and crammed all 20 of us in there. It made for a very cosy tutorial.
Afterwards I headed to Mineer Nilsson for supper, where, since it was still relatively early in the evening, I had no guilt about sitting there lingering over my food (thin slices of suckling pig served with salad and some little deep fried crunchy things, and bread with cheese, chopped tomato, and mushroom tapenade), my beer ('t IJ's IJbock), and then a hot chocolate. After that, I headed over to the Arendsnest and had another beer before making my way to the Vondelpark and trying to find the bunker (which wasn't too difficult). I had a lot of fun giving my talk, and I think the audience enjoyed it too. I stayed for the second one, and was pleased that I remember enough about group theory to be able to follow a lecture on it in Dutch, and then headed home about 22:15 and got home around 00:30, not too bad. The agreement I'd made with Joel was that he'd go to bed early and then he'd be the one to take care of Gwen when she woke up. That sort of happened. She slept straight through until 7:05 (I didn't have to get up and replace her pacifier once! Amazing considering that she's still got a cold and so is somewhat congested), after which she squawked happily in bed for 10-15 minutes before Joel got up. About an hour later he came in and said he couldn't do it any longer, and I got up. Three hours later, he's still in bed sleeping. I do look forward to when Gwen sleeps longer and more regularly at night, so that I can stop resenting him so much for the fact that he's allowed to sleep late, and I never am. Anyway. I did get ~8 hours with only one interruption, so I'm not doing too badly. And Gwen's been napping now for almost 1.75 hours.
I really enjoyed my afternoon. Amsterdam is such a different city from Tilburg. The trams are so full of people who are so happy to be there. It's such a busy city, without being crowded, and it makes it very easy to be alone there. In Tilburg, being alone makes me feel isolated; I never got the feeling in Amsterdam. It occurred to me that this is the first time that I've moved and then was still in a position to get back to the city I used to live in on a regular basis. It was strange taking the tram from Science Park to Mineer Nilsson, passing the stop I'd normally get off to head home, or to take the tram from Leidseplein to the metro and get off again a few stops before I would if I were going home. Heh. "Going home" -- it's been more than a year but it still feels like home. I really miss Amsterdam. I would be really, really happy if we could end up there again. We've talked about it, occasionally, and now that I've lived away for a year, I'm more certain. If a permanent position ever comes up at the ILLC that I'd be eligible for, I'm going to apply. I also found, during the tutorial, how much I miss being surrounded by logicians. Tilburg is a good institute, but it just doesn't have the sheer number of people. I'll admit, one thing I'm worried about the Heidelberg position is that I will be the only logician -- not just in the Asia-Europe Institute, but I think in the entire university. There might be one in the mathematics department, I'm not sure. But that's not much. However, I've done a lot of my work in isolation, so this won't be that much different (I keep telling myself), and I'll have a good strong group of people around me for the historical stuff, which is more than I've had either in Amsterdam or Tilburg. I'm still looking forward to working, and living, in Heidelberg very much, and have hopes that this might also turn out to be a situation that we could see ourselves living in permanently, but, gosh, I really do love Amsterdam, and miss living there a lot. Oh, we had some rough years in there -- two people doing their Ph.D.s, especially one who is as much of a perfectionist as Joel, is not always smooth and easy -- but we survived the worst and that was only for about a year. Overall, we were really happy there.
Gwen's awake, must stop blathering.
I'd been invited to give a talk on philosophy of math during an evening of mathematics to be held at a Cold War-era bunker in the Vondelpark in Amsterdam; given that it takes ~2 hours to get from Amsterdam back to Tilburg, my talk was scheduled first, at 21:00. When I told Joel that I'd need him to pick Gwen up from daycare as I'd probably be on the road to Amsterdam by then, his comment was "why not go early and spend the afternoon there?" His thought was that it would be much nicer to hang out at a cafe or something for the afternoon than it would be sitting in my office, and I decided he was right. Then I saw an announcement that a friend of mine was going to be at the ILLC giving a three-day tutorial on logics for multi-agent systems, and the first tutorial was going to be Friday afternoon at 15:00, I decided instead that I'd hop on the train after dropping Gwen off at daycare and I'd get in to Amsterdam in time to go to the tutorial. The plan worked brilliantly -- I got in and seated just a few minutes before 15:00, and all was going smoothly -- until just after the last person walked into the room, the fire alarm went off, and we all had to evacuate. Half an hour later when we were allowed back in the building, the entire wing where the lecture hall we were in was locked and they weren't letting anyone back in; so we ended up heading up to the ILLC's little seminar room (designed for about 8 people), and crammed all 20 of us in there. It made for a very cosy tutorial.
Afterwards I headed to Mineer Nilsson for supper, where, since it was still relatively early in the evening, I had no guilt about sitting there lingering over my food (thin slices of suckling pig served with salad and some little deep fried crunchy things, and bread with cheese, chopped tomato, and mushroom tapenade), my beer ('t IJ's IJbock), and then a hot chocolate. After that, I headed over to the Arendsnest and had another beer before making my way to the Vondelpark and trying to find the bunker (which wasn't too difficult). I had a lot of fun giving my talk, and I think the audience enjoyed it too. I stayed for the second one, and was pleased that I remember enough about group theory to be able to follow a lecture on it in Dutch, and then headed home about 22:15 and got home around 00:30, not too bad. The agreement I'd made with Joel was that he'd go to bed early and then he'd be the one to take care of Gwen when she woke up. That sort of happened. She slept straight through until 7:05 (I didn't have to get up and replace her pacifier once! Amazing considering that she's still got a cold and so is somewhat congested), after which she squawked happily in bed for 10-15 minutes before Joel got up. About an hour later he came in and said he couldn't do it any longer, and I got up. Three hours later, he's still in bed sleeping. I do look forward to when Gwen sleeps longer and more regularly at night, so that I can stop resenting him so much for the fact that he's allowed to sleep late, and I never am. Anyway. I did get ~8 hours with only one interruption, so I'm not doing too badly. And Gwen's been napping now for almost 1.75 hours.
I really enjoyed my afternoon. Amsterdam is such a different city from Tilburg. The trams are so full of people who are so happy to be there. It's such a busy city, without being crowded, and it makes it very easy to be alone there. In Tilburg, being alone makes me feel isolated; I never got the feeling in Amsterdam. It occurred to me that this is the first time that I've moved and then was still in a position to get back to the city I used to live in on a regular basis. It was strange taking the tram from Science Park to Mineer Nilsson, passing the stop I'd normally get off to head home, or to take the tram from Leidseplein to the metro and get off again a few stops before I would if I were going home. Heh. "Going home" -- it's been more than a year but it still feels like home. I really miss Amsterdam. I would be really, really happy if we could end up there again. We've talked about it, occasionally, and now that I've lived away for a year, I'm more certain. If a permanent position ever comes up at the ILLC that I'd be eligible for, I'm going to apply. I also found, during the tutorial, how much I miss being surrounded by logicians. Tilburg is a good institute, but it just doesn't have the sheer number of people. I'll admit, one thing I'm worried about the Heidelberg position is that I will be the only logician -- not just in the Asia-Europe Institute, but I think in the entire university. There might be one in the mathematics department, I'm not sure. But that's not much. However, I've done a lot of my work in isolation, so this won't be that much different (I keep telling myself), and I'll have a good strong group of people around me for the historical stuff, which is more than I've had either in Amsterdam or Tilburg. I'm still looking forward to working, and living, in Heidelberg very much, and have hopes that this might also turn out to be a situation that we could see ourselves living in permanently, but, gosh, I really do love Amsterdam, and miss living there a lot. Oh, we had some rough years in there -- two people doing their Ph.D.s, especially one who is as much of a perfectionist as Joel, is not always smooth and easy -- but we survived the worst and that was only for about a year. Overall, we were really happy there.
Gwen's awake, must stop blathering.
