Friday was a recovering day and Saturday I went into Leuven to buy gifts. I got a fairly big haul, as well as finding an alternative/goth store at which I bought some stuff (and later returned to to buy my trenchcoat). Sunday was Farah’s (Maurice and Lieve’s grandaughter) 2nd birthday, hosted at their house. I helped out a little with the preparation and stayed for cake, but left with Rietje (their daughter) and Staf (her partner) to look for chestnuts in the nearby woods. We were lucky enough to stumble upon a large amount of them, off a little used path.

I can’t really remember the start of the week, but on Thursday we went out drinking again. I also picked up my ticket to Amsterdam that night (before the drinking). At one of the bars we came across the most capitalist American douchebag I have ever met. He was so obsessed with money, it was amazing. I finished the night with more beer (Guinness) and whiskey. But I wasn’t too terrible in the morning. Friday night had me going out to a Frituur takeaway shop with Laura, Chip (her husband), David (their son) and Robbie for the most delicious fries (prior to going to the Fries museum) I’d ever had. Lathered with beef sauce and with some chicken drumsticks on the side. The only downside was their son wasn’t too happy about the night.

Saturday was Amsterdam! I got up pretty early to catch a train there, which took 3 hours but wasn’t too bad as I had my DS and book. The Facebook photos explain most of it, but starting from the train station I went into the northern part of the Red-Light District, which was mostly weed shops, cafes and sex shops of sorts. I needed to get some cash for a gift from there, but the nearest machine was far off, where I decided to check out the Sex Museum. It was quite fun to look at, and much more interesting than art museums. I returned to the district to grab a Bud Bomb for my good friend Hayden and set off on a somewhat guided tour path. During my trip, many prostitutes attempted to gesture me over from their windowed rooms. It’s quite an eye-opener here. I then went into the Erotic Museum, had lunch and then to the Hemp Museum. I then decided to try some myself so went to a local coffeeshop with a rude as fuck bartender and grabbed a hash brownie. Following this, I wandered about the city centre (not in a daze, I might add), eventually coming across the Torture Museum. After this I decided to queue for the popular Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, which was quite entertaining. And finally I also went to the Amsterdam Dungeon, which was fun, but I don’t actually remember the actor/scenes specifically. Maybe the hash did kick in, maybe I was too tired. In any case, I enjoyed myself. Hmm, I can’t remember what I had for dinner (excluding the additional has brownie and marijuana cake with hot chocolate). Perhaps that was my dinner? After this, I grabbed the train back home, arriving too tired to determine whether I was stoned or exhausted.

Sunday was recovery, and the next week was quite busy. Tuesday night I had some more fries from the Frituur (with beef and mayo) where coincidentally I met up with Robbie and Martijn. I joined Robbie for his Go Club activites until 9, at which time I headed off to Guy’s place for some more games. We played Saboteur a few more times, and the dice game Peruga then I taught them Presidents and Arseholes. Wednesday night I played poker with Kurt, Tom, Robbie, and Floop and came out with a 2.60Euro profit. Computer Scientists are difficult players (hence why Floop the banker was out first). Thursday was another night out with Robbie, Guy and Martijn where we spent most of it at a single bar (the one that had the American guy). I drank my fair share of Duvel’s that night. Another very tasty beer. After Guy and Martijn left Robbie and I went to the punk bar from earlier weeks and were drinking (+ a little moshing) there for another few hours. A good night, overall, but I was left with a stiff neck in the morning. Damn unstretched moshing…

Saturday I went to Bruges for some sightseeing and chocolate purchasing. I also found the mugs I was looking for. While there, I went to the fries museum, which had a frituur downstairs that had extremely tasty fries. They were perfectly crunchy and the mayo (I’ve grown accustomed to their customs) was lovely and creamy. I must learn to cook our chips like that. After this, I felt like Bruges wasn’t touristy enough (I didn’t have a tourist map, but meh) and decided to look at some of Brussels while I still had time.

Brussels was definitely touristy enough, with impressive sights close enough to always for me to always see something else. The buildings in Brussels were all very impressive, and there was a statue/sculpture on damn near every block. The churches there were also very impressive, close to rivalling the Duomo perhaps. Oh, and most of the art/sculptures and such was totally of the ‘get your tits out’ sort. But done tastefully, of course.

Today I’m just packing up my stuff. I hope customs doesn’t give me hassles with the gifts and chocolates I’m taking back. Luckily for me, it’s Daylight Savings over here, so I can get up an hour later to get to my flight. Tomorrow I set out! About 53 hours before I’m on NZ soil!

The Sunday I wrote the last Belgium related entry, I did end up going back into Leuven to finish up my sightseeing. I took the scenic route, which allowed me to get a better look at the countryside of Belgium, which was mostly crops. What cattle there is in Belgium is apparently concentrated to the Western part.

So, the first thing I saw when coming back into Leuven (from the north part) was the Stella Artois brewery. Many Belgians don’t seem very proud of this beer. From a distance, I could also see the large spire of the Sint-Geertruikerk from afar. Using this as my guide, I arrived and took some photos around the area. The church was really the only thing of interest on the red-dashed path. Not much else was particularly fancy.

I left the same way, out the north of Leuven, and headed back for dinner. The days rolled by, mostly of office stuff. There was Robby’s PhD Defence on Tuesday, and I also tried out the Aikido that night. Although it was clearly Aikido, it was different. This style appeared to be much more forceful than the one I train in. For instance, the uke is constantly applying force, which makes things much easier, but they are consequently tensed and breakable. And, in order to counter attack, the nage is supposed to briefly apply force. Perhaps I have misread what I was to do there, but it was nonetheless different. Some concepts made good sense though. The concept of straight lines was prevalent here, where when an opponent is grabbing, you can control them by making a singular forearm between yourself and the opponent. This seems to be a difference, in that Taekido seems more circular in its techniques.

Anyway, after Aikido I went down to Amedee, mainly because I was thirsty, but I figured Robby would be celebrating there. I ended up staying for quite a few drinks, as some of Robby’s friends were eager to buy me drinks. A highlight that Dal might like is that I played chess against a master player and got beat in 4 moves. I wasn’t paying much attention to it, clearly.

On Thursday night I went out with some of the office colleagues for trying out the local Leuven nightlife (Thursday is the day to drink, like in NZ). We started at Amedee, downing a couple of beers while playing some games. After this, Laura left and we went to a couple of other bars, mostly of the metal/alternative theme. Honestly, I can’t remember the details, but I ended up drinking 3 whiskeys and several beers over the course of 3-4 bars. This left me rather pissed, and I drunkenly weaved my way home on the bike at about 2/2:30am. Didn’t fall off once! I had the right state of mind to turn my lights on, but if the coppers had caught me, I would’ve got a hefty fine.

Friday started with a mother of a hangover, one of the worst I’ve had in a while. Perhaps it was the beer+whiskey combo, perhaps it was the fact I hadn’t heavily drunk in a while. Whatever the case, I was in no state to go to the office, so I lay in bed most of the day.

I didn’t go anywhere that weekend either, not due to sickness, just because I hadn’t planned to go anywhere. The weekend was fairly normal. I spent half of Sunday shaking, then picking up, the walnuts of the walnut tree. Joost left for his work on Sunday too, leaving the house with one less person.

Tuesday, there was a leaving dinner for a guy called Jan, who I hadn’t met, but a night out sounded better than cooking (Lieve was busy that night and Maurice was also going). We went to a Mexican restaurant (where the menu was in Dutch…). The meal was tasty enough (Fajita Texana and a Hoegaarden beer) but probably a little costly (about 16 Euros). Or maybe not. I dunno.

Nothing much happened on Wednesday, and tonight I’ll be eating out at a student restaurant because Lieve and Maurice are going to a performance their daughter is in. I’m pretty sure that sums up the past 1.5 weeks. Life is starting to become routine, which I guess is better than uncertainty in a foreign country.

The weekdays were all fairly quiet. I spent most of he time sitting in front of a computer, either coding, thinking, or messing around on the internet. Kurt was out of the office for Thursday and Friday, so I couldn’t chat to him about stuff. There was another defence on Wednesday evening, which I watched. The topic of the research was odd, as it was application research, rather than regular research. But, it was important (saving intensive care patients). At the reception, I hung around with the office guys drinking wine ’til late-ish.

I spent most of Friday trying to sort out paperwork regarding my stay here. In the morning I cycled into Leuven to the international office only to be told that I needed to fill out a LONG form online. And I apparently need some particular documents with me. Which is a pain. I also managed to get a proper laptop (not a Mac) that day too. Although Windows’ notorious networking capabilities stopped me from setting up the printer connection.

That night, I was invited to join Robby at a pub. Guy and his girlfriend also showed up and we spent the night playing the many board games present in the pub. Apparently, games (board and card) are quite popular in Belgium. Played Backgammon (a close win for me after three games), Go (I won with a reduced board size, but I still don’t quite know what I’m doing), and Carcassonne (a unique game). During this, I was able to try three beers. The first, I can’t remember the name of, but it was a Trappist beer (brewed in a monastery). EDIT: It was Westmalle (pronounced ‘Westmullah’).It was perhaps the best beer I have ever tried, so I must return and find the name of it, or ask Robby. The second was Orval, which was ok. And the third was a red beer, apparently a “woman’s beer,” due to its sweet taste. It did almost taste like a wine, but it was nice.

On Saturday, I returned to Leuven again to be touristy. Lieve told me that I could obtain tourist maps with routes around Leuven for seeing the sights. I got one of these and set out along the red path to see the sights. The photos will be up on Facebook when I can upload them, and they should provide a reasonable enough explanation of the history. One thing I could not take photos of was the artwork within the newly opened museum. For 10 Euros I was hoping it was worth the cost, but most of the stuff inside wasn’t really my taste. Just paintings and sculptures, mainly of Jesus and Mary.

After finishing the red path, I grabbed a McD’s burger for comparison. the meal price seemed quite costly ($14NZD for a combo) and I was lucky I had the (almost) right amount of coins. I had a slight hiccup with my cards, neither of which were accepted (accepted almost everywhere my foot!) so I had to pay in what cash I had left, which was 5c short. Luckily I was let off and could have my meal. The McD’s itself was fairly average. the burger wasn’t spectacular and the fries tasted like fries. But that’s McDs for ya’.

I then set out on the green path. One of the most interesting sights I saw was something I didn’t get a photo of, and if I did, it wouldn’t have been good enough anyway. There was a homeless guy walking around, rambling and making excited gestures to phantoms only he could see. It was awesome. The green path was less interesting than the red, but I think that was the idea. I realised now that there was more red path for me to see. Perhaps I’ll do it today.

After returning to the centre square I did two things: Have a Stella Artois at a Belgian metal bar. Well I thought it was metal, but it just seemed to be alternative, judging by the music they put out (Pop? Rap? Enter Sandman?). But the waitress looked metal and the bar name was Mephist’O. And two: have a Belgian waffle. I had caught the scent of a stall earlier and the waffle was delicious! I don’t know why Guy played them down. I guess Belgians are simply used to them. At this point, my legs were exhausted and it was getting late anyway so I headed back.

Like last Saturday (and every other Saturday, I imagine), the night’s dinner was sweet bread with hot chocolate, followed by cards (a game similar to 500) and cake. I was not so lucky in the cards and lost, but we (Joost and I) did have the lead early on.

It took a little bit of negotiating to find the bus I needed, but I was able to get to it before it left for another hour. The bus trip itself was quite long, and allowed me to see the interesting countryside of Belgium. The whole country is made up of interconnected villages, where every house is brick, two-storey and lacking windows at particular sides. The roads are often cobbled and quite narrow. The whole place seems very ancient, where even the fences are made of stone.

It seems that driving requires a lot of courtesy and giving way, while the coming cars drive along the narrow roads, only made narrower by the cars parked along the sides. Also, there are a lot fo cyclists. And, unlike NZ, cyclists are actually treated with respect and as vehicles on the road. And, in most places, there are dedicated cycling lanes.

When I arrived at my stop, I only circled the block once before finding the house. Maurice and Lieve’s house was like other houses; quite big and brick, but they are currently renovating it to make it look more modern inside. The house itself was 250 years old, and it was their pet project to renovate it and adapt it to their needs. My room was at the top of the (steep) stairs, where the ceiling sloped with the roof. Still, the room was comfortable enough, and would have been quite good for using my laptop, had it been working. Their son, Joost, was also at home for 2 weeks or so. He was a pretty sharp guy, and spoke English well.

There were a few rules about the house that I found a little odd, such as wearing slippers inside. I couldn’t even go barefoot. Luckily, they had some slippers that were almost my size, but I’ll probably buy some more at some point. Another one, which made sense, but was a bit nit-picky, was drying down the shower when I was done with it.

And the meals are quite interesting indeed. My first dinner consisted of bread with hot chocolate. The bread was fancy in that it had special ingredients and it was home-baked. In fact, so far, the bread has been in every meal, bar one.

On Sunday, we had a special lunch with Lieve’s family, and it actually had some meat in it! The lunch was big enough to keep us full til past dinner, so we went without it.

Monday, my first day at Uni, started at 7:30am (early, but I’ll have to get used to it) which consisted of a breakfast of more bread. Then, i was given a bicycle to use to get there. I realised now that it had been years since I had ridden a bicycle, but I was able to pick it back up. Like riding a bike! The route was fairly long (20-25mins) and consisted of going over a large hill. The slope wasn’t particularly tough, but it was a long uphill ride, both ways.

Maurice showed me my office (a desk within a communal office, like many of the rooms here) and I settled in. At the time Laura was the only person there, so I chatted to her for a bit until Kurt arrived. He hadn’t yet managed to sort out my workplace properly, so we attended to some tasks regarding that, but were unable to secure a proper computer. Laura lent me her Mac (grrr), so I had something resembling a computer to work with. Up ’til lunch, I spent my time working and chatting with the group. Then, at about 1pm, we all left to watch a PhD Defence.

The Defence looked to be a very nerve-wracking affair, much like a grading test. You know you’re going to pass, but it doesn’t help in calming the nerves anyway. After the defence, there were some drinks and light nibbles. I stood around drinking, and listening to others talk of their tales (the ones who spoke in English anyway). After this, I went back to the Uni to continue my work. Finally, at 6pm, Maurice and I left for home again.

The dinner this time around was a bit fancier than bread. Steamed Salmon (big chunks of it, too), with mashed potatoes and veges. After dinner, they had a walnut tree that still held it’s nuts, so I volunteered to climb it and shake ‘em out.

I tried again that night to revive my laptop, but I don’t think it has any chance of coming back. A pity too, as I had only recently bought a new hard drive for it (which was still usable).

I didn’t really do too much today. Sure, there was the conference with some interesting talks. The first invited talk was an agent-based aiding of human teams. This talk had a naval bias to it and was mildly interesting. The next invited talk was from a Neu Yawka talking about Intelligent Social Network Modeling. The problem with modeling social networks is that they are stored linguistically, while computers represent things in logic and maths. His talk was focused on fuzzy mathematical and functional operators for bridging that gap. When it came to the questions though, he became a bit of a dick.

Another coffee break, then the first set of sessions. I spent a bit too much time talking to Bettina and co. during the break and arrived too late to absorb the content of the first talk of the session. The following talk seemed to be describing an optimisation algorithm which I may be able to try out. Many optimisation algorithms could be swapped for the cross-entropy approach in my work.

The rest of the day was fairly mundane. I had planned to go to two sessions in the last slot because the first finished early, but I decided against it. After taking the tram back to my hotel’s general area, I went to an internet cafe and took care of any pressing matters (like downloading Scribblenauts for DS) and uploading photos. I then spent the remainder of the day relaxing in the hotel (with a brief dinner at the pizza place).

I got to the Uni early enough. The 2-day ticket I had made everything easier. The first talk was on ‘Data Mining for Malicious Code Detection and Security Applications.’ While the talk topic itself didn’t appeal to me, the speaker was animated enough about her topic that is made it interesting. The basic jist of the talk was based on locating virsuses by decomposing the byte code into assembly and running data mining techniques on the hybrid of the two.

Another coffee break, then it was my turn to talk. The talk went smoothly enough, with relatively few hiccups. I got a few questions at the end, which is better than none, and I was able to answer them well enough. Following my talk were 2 other presentations and 2 short talks. The first was ‘Measuring Inconsistency in DL-Lite Ontologies.’ The work was rather mundane, but it highlighted something else. I elected not to use the \pause command in my slides, and for good reason. This presenter was constantly returning to the keyboard to press next. The second talk was ‘Towards Bridging the Web and Semantic Web.’ This talk looked at mining context from search engines and using them to allow users to refine their search. The next short talk was looking at splitting bulging leaf categories in the CiteSeerX database of papers. And the following short talk I can’t even recall.

Another lunch break, during which I actually talked to a few people, then it was time for the Web Science panel. I’m glad I wasn’t down there, as I might have frozen up or stumbled across my words. Gabriella, who covered for me, did a good job of her segment of the panel, so nothing was lost. As for the panel itself, everyone kind of waffled about the subject, as no-one seemed to know exactly what Web Science was. Still, it managed to provoke some discussion. Bettina seemed happy with it when we talked later that night.

Following this was a very cool and interesting talk on swarm robotics by Marco Dorigo. The biological phenomenon swarm robotics is based on is ant behaviour, where although each entity is singular, they accomplish tasks as groups using pheromones. The set up of the experiment is fairly simple, in that the robots are given an intelligence set up from a genetically (algorithm) evolved neural network to accomplish simple tasks such as moving in the direction of minimal traction, or attaching themselves to red-coloured objects. The videos he showed were very cool (robots are always cool) and sparked my interest in the subject.

Coffee break again (I’m getting very caffeinated here) then another session. I arrived a little late and missed the first talk – a military funded UAV surveillance algorithm, but it seemed somewhat interesting. The next one was horribly designed and wasn’t particularly good. The following one was quite interesting. It was modelling crowd behaviour using agent-based algorithms. This was another military-funded research project, but it looked like a lot of fun. An individuals behaviour was based on 3 assumption: An individual’s behaviour will largely remain the same; when in a social group, an agent’s behaviour changes; amotions can affect behaviour. Agents navigated via goals and separate behaviours (tourist, local, friends, etc).

The following presentation was another shoddily designed one, and the content seemed largely vacuous and unbelievable. Essentially, the presenter was talking about how human should be able to interact with a robot. There didn’t seem to be a particular focus. I was beginning to believe the work was largely theoretical and propositional, but he showed an actual video of some guy talking to a robot. Still, I think it was rigged or biased.

The following talk was based on multi-agent cooperation. The key point was that if a single agent takes control, and centralises the Dec-POMDP, the results are much better. Finally, the last presentation wasn’t really my cup of tea, so I largely ignored it.

After that was all over, I took the trams and metro to Castello Sforzesco and the surronding park to take photos and such. The park was quite nice and there were a lot of joggers and bikers moving about. Also, Italy showed itslef as a country of romance as you couldn’t walk 100m without seeing a couple making out.

When it was time to enter the castle, I went on in and was taken on a tour by one of the guides. The castle itself had a fairly rich history, where it was originally a fortress that was captured and utilised by various invaders. The photos I took inside weren’t great because we weren’t allowed to use the flash.

Then the dinner started off, which was initially just a bunch of people standing around drinking wine (I discovered spritzer) and chewing appetisers. After a while, there was a brief award ceremony, during which I received the Best WI Student Paper award (Yay!). I wasn’t exactly surprised, because Gabriella had spoken to me earlier to ensure I was present. Still, pretty awesome.

After this, we sat at our tables and drank wine, interspersed with various courses. Although the courses were small, they were all quite tasty, making it a good dinner. Finishing at 11pm, I left for the hotel, feeling a little drunk.

The day started out well enough, I suppose. Apart from the pouring rain. I was still wary of the public transport system, so I opted to walk to the University. It was, after all, just a single road. But, I managed to overshoot my conference venue by two long blocks, and arrived at what I thought was my conference. There was a large group of people gathered, so I figured it was the place. Although, after some time, I realised the atmosphere was too non-English speaking and checked the conference location. Should’ve done this earlier… Turns out my conference was in another building not too far from here. I got myself sorted and made my way in.

The conference started with a brief introduction, then a talk on ‘Search Computing.’ The idea of this is utilising search engines in a more intelligent manner. For example, searching for “Find an ethical restaurant close to Milano” is a query that probably won’t immediately succeed. By breaking down the query and searching for the answer in multiple web search engines, an answer can be found much easier. The talk was heavily ‘work-in-progress,’ so it was mostly theories and ideas.

Then, we had a coffee (toilet for me) break and started the first sessions. The first session was talking about an automatic language translation agent. The agent is given news stories from different languages and, using machine learning techniques, is able to automatically find a translation mapping. Of course, this assumes the papers are running the same stories. I can’t remember the next talk, ‘Learning in a Fixed or Evolving Network of Agents.’ ‘Adaptive Fuzzy Function Approximation for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning’ detailed a function approximation approach, which could probably be used in single agent RL too. The state-action space is covered by prototypes in a Kanerva coding scheme. These prototypes can be dynmically added and removed, but the performance gain is still low from this. By representing the prototype functions in a ‘fuzzy,’ continuous manner, the performance increases. Also, each prototype can have a different level of variance in its approximation, so that all areas of the state space are covered by at elast one prototype and different state-action values have a different level of effect on the prototypes. The last talk of the session was ‘Ontology-Based Learning for Negotiation’. Several talks seemed to be looking at this ‘negotiation’ business, which seemed odd. By negotiation, this talk meant haggling for an item price or something. Apart from the RL talk, most of them were quite boring. Perhaps my talk will be the same to others?

At this point we had lunch (fairly tid-bitty) during which I quickly answered the Web Science questions I was given. I also realised now that the Web Science panel was one of the main events.

I arrived late for the next feature talk, but it was kind of boring anyway. Just about creating an agent for trade strategies. The following talk was on brain informatics and web intelligence. I had thought this might be quite interesting, but it wasn’t particularly. Basically, the guy did something to match neurons electronically. The speaker wasn’t particularly good. He had trouble with his English (can anyone in this country speak it?!) and his slides were very unstructured.

Aniother coffee break followed, but I opted to go be a tourist for a bit longer, as the next few sessions held little in appeal for me. I was a little more adventurous with my public transport problem and actually managed to find a shop which sold tickets. I grabbed a tram back to the hotel and offloaded my laptop. In the process, I checked an email which stated that Bettina (Web Sciences lady) needed to urgently see me.

So, I was back on the tram back to the University. All I could do when I got there was leave a message saying I’ll be at the cocktails night. So, I left again and grabbed a tram then train back into Duomo. The first time I was in Duomo, I didn’t do on the roof of the cathedral. So, I got a ticket and headed up. It was just as awe-inspiring up here as on the ground. After this, I basically slummed around – checking out shops until it was time to go to the cocktails bar, which was next to the Uni.

After a bit of waiting we were let in fr some free food and wine. I chatted to one, maybe two, people before setting out to find Bettina. When I found her, we had a bit of a chat and it became immediately apparent that I wasn’t really the person to be on the panel. I think she thought I was more passionate about it. We worked out that someone will replace me, but she wasn’t very happy about the whole ordeal. Fair enough, as I had been very apathetic towards this panel, and she was very excited about it. I felt very bad about misleading her and although she was forgiving, my mood was not lifted.

I headed home in a depressed sort of mood, which is weird for me. I think the city and the loneliness was beginning to take its toll on me. I’m getting sick of the Italian language, the angry streets, the sore feet caused by lack of carpet anywhere, the confusing public transport system, and so on. I hope Belgium is better…

What didn’t make my tired, depressed mood better was the fact that the laptop speakers had developed a crackle, so I couldn’t even properly listen to music.

At around 11:30ish, I left for the centre of Milan. While I probably should’ve taken a tram, I just walked to the Metro station. the problem is that I still don’t know where to get tickets. The hotel receptionist said go to bars, but that doesn’t seem right. Sure, there’re bars all over the place (they’re more like cafes, but I imagine bar can mean more than one thing in another language).

Anyway, navigating the subway wasn’t so bad this time, and it wasn’t long before I arrived in Duomo – the centre of Milan. I was immediately greeted with a sight of the Milan Cathedral, which is a sight to see. It would be so much cooler if that place was some sort of sacrificial church, but oh well. I have photos up on Facebook, but some are of crappy quality. The outside ones were blurred because I was juggling an umbrella and the camera and the inside ones were blurred because I put the camera on Manual to turn off flash. I now realise that I can do it another way and leave it on auto. Ah well. If you want decent pictures, go to Wikipedia or something.

The inside of the church itself was pretty awesome. Though it was the centre of religion, I still held appreciation for its architecture. I realise now that I could have gone to the roof of the cathedral (for a small fee). If I have free time, I guess I’ll go and do that.

Because I didn’t take my map, I had to guess where the other tourist attractions were. I wandered about for an hour or so, and didn’t really find anything particularly interesting. I hadn’t quite recovered from my flight, so I was feeling a bit light-headed and headed back to the hotel again.

I had planned to try and find a bar that does ‘aperitivo’ (happy hour in which you buy a drink and get a free buffet), but I couldn’t find a place that could sufficiently cater to my needs. On my way down the street, I came across a supermarket and decided to grab some stuff. The beers here are very cheap (although I have yet to taste it); cheaper than Double Brown! And they sell them in singles, which probably explains the lack of a binge drinking culture like in NZ. And Pepsi comes in 2L bottles, although it isn’t much cheaper than in NZ.

I decided to head back and try out a pizza takeout place. Luckily, there was a friendly guy in there who spoke English fairly well. And he liked metal. When I say that, I mean he likes the old stuff: Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Led Zepp, Metallica. So not an extreme metalhead, but probably as metal as someone in Italy would get without being prosecuted by the church. I had a bit of a chat to him while having my meal (some pizza with veges). I figured they would be, but the pizzas over here are drastically different from NZ. The toppings are very sparse, and they only have a small number of toppings. But they’re a fair bit bigger. Hmm, I probably should’ve taken a photo. Ah well, next time.

Anyway, the guy offered a free coffee as I left, so I figure he was a nice guy. Many of the Italians here seem to be not quite so nice. Sure the ones I asked for directions were nice, but the ones walking about all seem to have scowls on their face. Perhaps it’s just how they look.

During my transit in, I got a glimpse of the city and surrounding country. I thought the place would be quite nice looking, but I was mistaken. The countryside was fairly average (it’s got nothing on NZ!) and the city was actually kinda filthy. The roads were dilapidated (well, they looked very worn) and there was graffiti all over the place. Like South Auckland on steroids.

I arrived in Central Station (or something like that) and it was here that the true nightmare began. The amount of English signs around was pitiful and I had no idea what I was doing. I spent a good 2 hours trying to work out how to get a bus ticket out of there. I had attempted to get a Taxi during this time, pointing where I wanted to go on the map, but the Italian driver had no idea. I was not happy, I was tired, and I was stressed out.

Eventually I figured out that I had to take a Metro train (well two actually) to get remotely close to my destination. This place was a maze in itself, but I eventually got to my stop – Precotto. This was quite far from my hotel, but the closest Metro stop to my hotel (to my reckoning). Having had enough of the public transportation system, I decided to consult a map and walk to the hotel. The streets of this city were really dodgy looking, although there wasn’t anyone around to give me trouble.

At the end of my first road, I decided to hail a guy walking his dog to ask for directions. Like most others in this damn city (I wasn’t exactly happy with how I had been treated here) he barely spoke English, but he was friendly enough and seemed to understand my meaning. We had a fairly extensive, but broken, conversation of him giving me directions (mostly in Italian) towards my hotel. I thanked him and took off.

A short while later, I was half lost (I managed to find the Uni!) so I asked an old couple for further directions. I was mostly on the right track (I was getting closer, anyway) and they reorientated myself. I thanked them and set off.

Finally I got to Via Cipriani and found the hotel. I was quite dead. But I got to my room, sorted my shit and collapsed on the bed. See my Facebook photo for how crappy I was after the whole ordeal.

Well, Day 1 was fairly crappy, but then again, I wasn’t expecting it to be awesome. Tomorrow, I think I’ll skip the conference workshops (they’re not essential) and have a relaxed day. I’ll attempt to wrestle the public transport system again and get to the centre of the city and be touristy.

When I woke up, I tried to watch ‘The Hangover’ but I simply couldn’t. It looked to be a pretty shit movie in the first few minutes of watching. All of the characters were dicks. And they used ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ as music. That’s enough to say a movie is shit.

So I moved onto ‘Angels And Demons.’ The book was pretty awesome, but the movie, like most book-adapted movies, didn’t quite measure up. Although some guy who I initially thought was Dexter was in it, which gave it +awesome points.

At this point my laptop died, so I can’t quite recall every detail from here on, but I’ll attempt to.

I think there wasn’t much time left in the flight after this, so we were landing at LA. The feeling of a plane landing is not pleasant for a post-hangover sufferer. The amount of gas I had brewing in my butt was astonishing. But I was nice and only released it when I went to the lavatory.

The whole transit process in LA was fairly easy, if boring. We basically got out of the plane, waited in line, went down stairs, waited in a longer line, had our details noted down, waited in line, then hung out in the docking lounge. There were refreshments here (chips and drink), which I was sure to munch on. I exposed my fellow travellers to my foot stench (which wasn’t terrible) while I waited, while reading and playing DS. We didn’t have to wait too long before we were back on the plane again.

The flight was practically the same as the last, although it was a bit more packed. I had people sitting next to me now, so I couldn’t stretch out to sleep. Most of my flight was spent watching movies. I managed to stumble across Death Note, the movie, so I watched that. It basically takes the first 6-10 episodes of the anime and puts them in movie form. There were some slight changes, but it was pretty good in the end.

The next one I watched was Rock n Rolla, a Guy Ritchie movie. This was pretty good, and pretty funny. Not much else to say…

At this point I attempted to get some sleep, or at least a nap. I managed to get into a relaxed sort of state, but I don’t know if I truly slept/napped. For the last part of the flight, I watched X-Men: Origins. For all the critics, it wasn’t so bad. I didn’t quite get to finish it, but I figure Wolverine got shot in the head and lost all his memories.

Heathrow’s customs process was fairly streamlined as well. We disembarked the plane, and took a long route to the security counter. Waited in line in front of some smelly impatient guy who smelt like he’d been marinating in crap all flight, then had to get my stuff scanned. They were quite strict on what was being scanned, as i had to take my belt and shoes off. After that, I was in the terminal and basically figured out my gate and time.

I had some hours to kill, so I headed towards some pay-as-you-go internet stations I saw earlier. As I was drawing near, a British guy hailed me over to his computer. He figured I looked like someone knowledgable about computers and I ended up helping him sort his Facebook out. For helping him out, he gave me 3 pounds for me to use at my station (1 pound for 10 minutes). I sorted out my emails, Facebook and other stuff before heading to an electronics store to grab a plug converter. Following this, I had a munch at some Italian cafe (with a double espresso). By the way, I was feeling really dizzy and exhaustable at this point when standing still, so the coffee and panini was a welcome relief. Both were quite tasty.

I used this time to sort out a basic schedule of the conference and headed off to my Gate when the time came. I had a slight issue when I broke the carry strap on my bag (6kgs isn’t tossed around as easily as a regular bag). I managed to fix this up with a quick bit of thinking and waited at my Gate lounge, reading.

The Lufthansa flight was probably the most comfortable flight I had. Although the plane was small, there weren’t many passengers and the seating was fairly well spread. I had a window seat which allowed me to peer out the window during the flight. Seeing the clouds in close proximity is quite a sight.

The flight was short and quiet and we touched down in Malpensa in no time. Then the nightmare began… DUN DUN DUN!