It's been almost a week since I last posted something to this blog (I post updates to my Research log daily - it's been lots of Read Slashdot and Debian's Best Friend is hilarious. and I never realised how good the Quannum collective are and far too little Cured cancer today).

I am now living alone after my flatmate for the past month finally upped and left me, only taking off with some of my underwear as keepsakes. He's off to Boston to do a post-doc at that other university. The fear of running into Matt Damon screaming How do you like them apples? is enough to keep me away from Boston for the moment, although it would be good to catch up with Mihir once he arrives there. After my flatmate left, I managed to blow up the kitchen within a few hours (Don't ask), although I did manage to make a fantastic peanut stir-fry for my efforts. The rice almost worked, but the exploding kitchen threw the cooking times off. I'm still finding glass in the apartment.

I spent a large part of Saturday walking between three supermarkets deciding which supermarkets were best for saving money over a long period of time. If I had been bothered to do a budget analysis, I would have realised that I could just go for a cheapish supermarket such as the Aldi-like Lidl supermarket. Instead I walked between them trying to remember prices for goods. Due to both the amount of time I spent walking around the supermarkets, and my decidedly bad grasp of the German language, I had to perfect the "I know what I'm doing" intent gaze, to try and fool people into not realising that I did not in fact know what I was doing. One of the things on my list of things to buy is toilet paper, and it's quite a decision to make because, analogous with the hamburger pattie inflation theory, the toilet paper ply inflation was fully in evidence. Arrayed in front of me on the shelves were the dazzling choices of single to quadruple ply toilet paper. I was going for the cheapest toilet paper possible, but I had to carry it home. I settled on the three-ply, giving the impression that I am not decadent, but I am a man who values the finer things in life. It probably doesn't help that it was in a Lidl bag.

My ADSL is ordered, and I'm going with FreeNet, who offered a whole bunch of free things along with no installation fees. When it actually gets installed is anyone's guess. John (No linkage, sorry!) is in Taiwan now, and he quite smartly got his ADSL installed so that it was working when he arrived. Not that he's got long to use it, as he might be heading down to this part of the planet (Stuttgart) by the end of the week. I may have my first visitor here!