If a week passes and no one notices, does it make a sound?

So rather than continuosly apologize about missing a week, I'd rather be honest and say that it will most likely happen again (maybe even become the norm). It makes it easier on me, although I don't remember as much when I let too weeks pass by. So for now I will still try and write every week, but we'll see.

By the way, there are new pics, so check them out.

Anywhere, where to start? The past two weeks have been like a vacation. As I said, Noemie visited me in Aachen for two and a half days. "Doing this and that" included seeing the town, going to sites, eating, relazing and visiting Bonn and Cologne. I took a boat ride along the Rhine River from Bonn to Cologne, which was nice. No castles along the way but relaxing.

Then on Monday, Noemie missed the train and also discovered how annoying the German-to-France by trian experience can be. She left (sniff sniff) and then I pretended to work. Actually, I got a lot done before I met Sylvain and his girlfriend Carole in Cologne. They came back with me to Aachen and then we did a lot of the same stuff I did with Noemie (which is cool, you see something different each time). We traveled to Maastricht and had a real good time there. Then, after a really relaxing and also engaging week (we talked a lot about all sorts of things), they sadly left.

I again tried to get some work done. This proved to be difficult as I had become so lazy from not working and the weather here has gotten "hot" and humid. Hot now means like 85 for me; Europe is more temperate than the eastern US (cooler in summer and warmer in winter).

Oh, and like I said, I met an Iranian guy along the way. So all in all a good week. This weekend I think I will maybe travel to the point where Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands meet with a Venezuelan, Greek and Syrian. Two very nice things about Aachen: (1) It is close to many different cool places that I can easily travel to and see in a day, and (2) I have met so many people from so many different places, especially ones that I never thought of. Plus, the work is good and the life-style is starting to rebalance me (I think).

Recently, I've remembered that it's sometimes alright to cut corners and not take things (work but everything in general so seriously). I think MIT and my own personality have led to me, for a couple years now, to have too high expectations. I've been pushing myself a little too hard, in everything I do, whether that be work, traveling, meeting people, German, this blog. Lately, I've been taking a little more chill and remembered that it's fun.

By the way, if you haven't already you must download Google Earth at earth.google.com and some patches for it at www.googleearthhacks.com. It's amazing, I won't bother explaning it cause there's too many things to say about it. But trust me, it's worth checking out. Just play with it (hint: you can zoom in really close within the US and some places in the world).

Finally, again look at the pics. In case you are curious about other things I've learned from my recent international exposure: My Iranian friend is a power engineer and was hired to work on the Iranian nuclear power development. However, he decided to pass it down and leave the country since (1) he can, (2) if he worked on nuclear power they wouldn't ever let him leave and most importantly, (3) he has assured me that they will build a bomb. Totally different topic: Because of my complete ignorance about the Kyoto Treaty and enviormental things, I did a little research on global warming. The National Academy of Science, on the request of the White House, took a look at the current (2001) scientific knowledge about global warming http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/climateuncertainties.html. What they said was four things: (1) gases that are known to trap heat and raise the temp of the atmosphere (greenhouse gases) are higher than they have been for the past 400,000 years and that is directly due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, (2) scientists confidently believe that this has resulted in a 0.7 to 1.5 deg F raise in the global average temperature over the past 100 years, (3) the most conservative estimate (read: least like chicken little) predicts that after the next 100 years, the global average temp will rise by another 2.5 deg F (ya it will accelerate), and (4) there are many theores but no one really knows what consequences this will have on the Earth or how severe they will be.

I purposely used the words in bold to show what is known and uncertain by scientists. So basically, they know that we are causing the temp of the earth to rise, slowly of course for anyone's individual lifetime. But they don't know at all what that will do to us, if anything. Should the US sign the Kyoto Treaty, that's up to you. But I thought the info might be interesting. If your interested in reading some of the stuff, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Remember pics!