Here's to the Night, Tomorrow's going to come to soon

A little reference to the Eve 6 song right there...

So i've been neglecting the blog. There are so many things I should have written about in the days leading up to my departure. For instance my final weekend here which consisted of a good night with all my Kollegium friends on Friday, a traditional Danish Christmas party with the football team on Saturday and Ice Skating in the center on Sunday.

And I never did post about my work...but i'll do that when i get home.

So today is rushed. The only reason i'm even writing this, is because i'm waiting for a CD to burn on the computer so I can have a copy of the work i've done. As usual, i've left everything to the last minute...

So here's the plan, stan. I leave here in 5hrs, take a train/bus to Aarhus. Hop a plane and go to London. Sleep over in the wonderful Stansted airport, get up the next morning and board a plane to Iceland. There I will meet Nori and we will pick up our rental car and tour Iceland for 4 days. Hopefully seeing the waterfalls and geysers and the Northern Lights. Then Tues I hop back on a plane to London, spend 24hrs in London with Sergi and then hop on a plane to Calgary.Then I jump on one more plane and be back in E-town at 5pm Wednesday!

So I also want to post about just how awesome all my friends are here...but I don't want to rush it in two minutes. So I will post later, but needless to say I had just a really great night for my last night here. You guys are rock, I'm going to miss you all!

And the CD has just popped out, gotta run!

Logan

Coming Home to Murder City

I was all ready today, to come in and write a nice happy post about all the good times being had in our Kollegium kitchen, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Today I logged onto my Google New Canada, and look what I read.

Weekend sees five stabbings in Edmonton

and

Edmonton's murder rate rooted in demographics: experts

which states that

Their deaths came the week after Statistics Canada released a study showing Edmonton had the highest murder rate among major Canadian cities.

The Alberta capital, with 4.29 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005, surpassed Winnipeg's rate of 3.72.

And after this weekend, Edmonton is on pace to break last year's record of 44 victims.

Unbelievable! I don't know...i'm not even sure what to write. It's disgusting really. Really makes me look forward to coming home. "Hey everyone, I'm moving back home to the murder capital of Canada."

And the majority of the stabbings are happening outside of the bars, and the majority are stabbings. We could say that the problem is Whyte Ave, and it's large concentration of bars in a small area, leads to a higher probability of problems occurring. But I don't think so.

Here in Aalborg we have Jomfru Ana Gade, effectively known as 'the street.' 26 bars, packed along a pedestrian street that is maybe 4m wide by 5om long. And every weekend it is packed, literally like sardines with people in the bars and partying on the streets (no open alcohol laws). And I haven't once seen or heard of any major problems (granted I can't read the news....but you would think word would travel if something did happen).

No the problem is the society. Starting with our embarrassing justice system, Teen Gets four Years for Rolston Murder. Three out of the four 'teens' who bludgeoned another kid to death get two year conditional sentences to be served in the community??? Big punishment! That ought a put the fear into people who are thinking of murdering someone.

And lastly, in my little tirade, what happened to a the fist fight. Now I'm not condoning violence, but tempers rise (especially with alcohol it seems) but in the old days this would lead to a fist fight. Somebody would go home a little bruised and battered, but the conflict was settled and everyone moved on...alive! But now days, a conflict isn't settled until someone is dead. And it seems a fight doesn't end until someone ends it with a knife.

Bahh, I'm disgusted. That's all I am going to write.

What to write about.....

So as most of you know... my 'chillin like a villain' time in Europe is quickly coming to an end. And I'm at a loss of what I should write on here.

14 days from today I leave my home (yes, I call it my home) here in Aalborg. Then I've got one more excursion with five days in Iceland with Nori. Then Dec 6th I board the plane for home...well Calgary and then find a way back to Edmonton from Calgary on the evening of the 6th.

There are lots of topics that have been running through my head, but I can't seem to find the will to actually write them. Things I would 'like' to post about in the next couple weeks.
- An overview of my work here. What did I actually do. 'Hopefully' complete with pretty pictures and maybe a movie or two...if I can ever get a working simulation
- Leaving my friends here
- Hi-lights of my 6 month adventure abroad
- My future plans...I guess I need to actually have some plans before I can do that one ;-)

Yeah...maybe some other stuff.. we'll see. I think right now I'm just in a funk. Work is just plain tiring. I want to get my model working before I leave, but for the past week I've been running simulation after simulation with the end result either being ERROR TERMINATION or my model explodes. I'm getting very frustrated sitting in front of this computer ALL DAY. Couple that with the fact that there is no more football, so I have nothing to burn all this energy I accumulate sitting in a desk (people who know me, know that me, going without sports for an extended period of time is a bad thing).

And of course, as much I try not to think about leaving here, it's in the back of my mind and it's sad. Lastly, I think I've seen the sun for all of a couple hours over the last couple weeks. It is forever cloudy here :-(

Thats it....oh look another ERROR TERMINATION.....what a surprise.

The Arrival of Christmas Beer

So November the 3rd, 8:59pm. What is that? Well that is the exact time that the breweries here in Denmark release the famed Christmas Beer.

There are three major parties in Denmark. The Aalborg festival in the spring, New Years and....the release of the Christmas Beer.

So of course I had to go downtown and see what all the big fuss is about. Well it was actually pretty cool. The whole street was decorated, Christmas trees everywhere with ornaments and decorations. Some of the bars even brought in snow (from where I don't know). A lot of the people had on green and red Santa hats along with flashing red led lights all over the place.

And of course it was packed, the whole street, with people. Everyone having a good ol time. I gotta admit, it seemed a little strange to me, to see such a big party over the release of a type of beer. But I guess it's more tradition than anything.

Oh and as for the beer....in my opinion it's nothing special. A little bit sweeter then a regular beer, but overall not the greatest taste.

I tried in vain to download these funny commercials Tuborg has on their website about the Christmas beer, but they are embedded inside of a shockwave object so I couldn't retrieve them, or find them on YouTube. But you should navigate here. They have a funny little intro, then you can click Film and Downloads and then Film. They have three short little videos, two of them shows you a fun little Christmas Beer dance you can do with your friends :-D

In other news, football is now done. We lost our playoff game on the weekend and are now out. We were missing some key players for the game, but overall we were simply outplayed by a better team. But we had a great run, and I had the most fun I've had playing football in a long time. The team played so well together and moved the ball and worked hard all the time. It was great to be a part of.

Well that's all for now. Yay for the weekend!

Logan

Weather and Halloween

Ahhhh Halloween, how much fun you are! So it's no secret, I have lots of fun at Halloween. Costumes rock, maybe it's the 12 year old that is still largely a part of me. So I was feeling a little disappointed, because they do not celebrate Halloween much here in Denmark, just the little kids. No chance to dress up this year????

But luckily on last Thursday I was informed of a Halloween party at one of the other Kollegiums. Of course that didn't give me much time to prepare a costume, actually no time. But being the creative guy that I am, I put the following costume together in 35 mins, using some socks, string, and pieces of my wooded coat hanger I promptly broke.

Guess who I am? If you guessed Wolverine, you get a GOLD STAR! So either way that was fun, I got to dress up, life is good!

I was going to write and complain about the weather. You see, Denmark has been kind to me. All I heard about coming here was how much it rained. But surprisingly, August, September and the first half of October were...pretty good!! Well that changed because it has rained pretty much solid for the last two weeks. It sucked! RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN! I guess Denmark wouldn't let me get away without experiencing it.

That is until yesterday....because I woke up to SNOW!!!! That's right, SNOW! Now unfortunately it was no, wake up in Edmonton with a 0.3m of snow (down with the British units), but it was big fat snowflakes nonetheless! Of course they melted as soon as they touched down due to the +2 degree weather. But it was cool to see the white stuff again. I hear Edmonton has quite a bit already....

Well thats it. Today the sun is back. Oh how I missed thee.

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It's called 'rain'.
- Michael McClary

Wii Trailer

Had to post it!