If my mother could see what I'm eating now, she would be very proud. No, not that I've become a good cook (I think this is what happens to most of my friends, you know, living alone and having to learn to cook, etc. But not me, I'm hopeless. I do cook sometimes: pasta, salmon, tumis kangkung. But everyone can do that, cooking pasta is no rocket science). It's just the fact that now I can eat vegetables.

Back in Malta I could find halal chicken nuggets in the supermarkets (might be unhealthy but they were tasty so who cares), we often ate in a halal Indian restaurant, and I had a Muslim friend who was kind enough to invite us for dinner every now and then. I could continue my habit of avoiding green things on my plate. Here, however, I don't have such luxury. There are several halal meat shops around the city centre, but, having reached a certain level of laziness, I decided it was too much of hassle to go shopping for main supplies in Albert Heijn and go for halal meat in a different shop. So I tried vegetables.

Now I can't even imagine how I managed to spend more than 20 years of my life without vegetables. Here is my favorite snack now: broccoli with hummus. I get this from my friend. Basically you can cook or not cook the broccoli. Some people think raw vegetables are healthier, but I prefer raw because it's tastier, and most importantly, easier ^^.

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.

- Henri Poincaré

Too often I hear people say, "I don't see when I will need to apply this stuff in real life" when they're studying something they don't like. Poincaré was right, I think: it doesn't matter.

Except when you're studying syntax from minimalist approach, which is neither beautiful nor useful. In that case, it does matter -_-

I still regret the amount of time and energy I spent on that course.

Lama ga ngeblog, yang rindu tunjuk tangan. Sekedar update saja sambil menunggu isya:

• Ujian kelar. Sepertinya yang tadi siang itu adalah the last exam of my life. Sekarang tinggal ngerjain proyek Semantic Web. Kuliahnya sendiri cukup santai, namun jadi ga santai gara-gara saya salah milih partner proyek. Tapi sudahlah, ga baik ngomongin orang.
• Weekend lalu saya mengalami cobaan yang cukup berat, yaitu... internet mati karena kabel LAN bermasalah. Buhuhu, menderita sekali rasanya. Sekarang sudah beli kabel yang baru, sepanjang 30 m. Jadi saya tidak perlu meninggalkan tempat tidur lagi.
• Saya sedang tergila-gila dengan seri A Song of Ice and Fire. Setelah terjebak dengan buku fantasi ga mutu (uhuk, Inheritance) and beberapa buku nonfiksi yang ternyata terlalu berat buat saya, senang rasanya bisa kembali terlarut dalam bacaan.
• Sesungguhnya saya sudah muak dengan winter. Udara dingin hanya salah satu dari beberapa hal yang menyesakkan. Belum lagi langit kelabu. Malam yang terlalu panjang. Tanaman mati. Pengen pulang, uhuhu.
• Susana hati belakangan ini sungguh busuk. Mungkin pengaruh cuaca. Mungkin pengaruh partner proyek yang menyebalkan.

Sudah itu saja. Lagi bt memang. Baiknya baca A Clash of King sahadja.

Christmas presents from my landlady: a box of cookies and... a glass of garden! This is such a great idea, I should try to make one someday.

Being away from those I love is tiring at times, but how can I be sad when I'm surrounded by such nice people? Merry Christmas everybody!

So this is the first day of winter holiday and all of my friends had gone home and I was walking alone in the rain in the city center full of people shopping for Christmas and I desperately needed something to cheer me up. Don't ask me why I came home with a bouquet of flowers.

Arranging flowers was definitely not as easy as I thought, but they don't look too bad, do they? And most importantly, they do cheer me up. This is what my working desk looks like:


Ok, since we now have flowers and candles (you have no idea how many candles my landlady put in this apartment), perhaps it's time to do a deeper thinking about life (tsah).

I would say that 2011 has been a remarkable year. Started with January (of course), where my days were dominated with unproductive project meetings, exams, and reading Logicomix, which made me fall in love with Semantics. Then February came with more meetings, fight and tears over Machine Translation project. I remember on March I didn't really like turning into 23. But I've been 23 for almost 10 months now and it has been wonderful.

April marked the month of the unforgettable Eurotrip: passport incident, tulips, Venetian masks, reunion and separation. In May I became restless. My brother's wedding only made me feel even more homesick than ever. Flew to France for LCT annual meeting, met with a lot of people and found that it was quite fun.

Then came the long-awaited June. I didn't really care about my exams, I just wanted to get them done and go home. Leaving Malta and the people I became friends with saddened me a lot, but no feeling could compare to reuniting with your family and old friends (yes, and boyfriend). The feeling faded too soon, though, as July and August crept slowly and I came into a bitter realization that the place no longer felt like home.

September, I was back in Europe. How can I describe this month? Those were the loneliest days of my life. It was an awfully cold summer and I felt so miserable living alone with no one to talk to. Fortunately, things changed a lot when October arrived. I fell in love with this city, the way people bike without caring about the rain, the way every blue sky was something to be thankful for. Also in this month, I gathered the courage to meet with one of the men who changed my career, and he became my thesis supervisor. The leaves were changing colors and I went to beautiful Norway. Life was perfect.

The turning point of November was when the Semantic Web project started. Suddenly, life wasn't as perfect :D But it's still okay, though. Now I'm here on one of December's nights with my flowers and candles. Christmas is coming and with all this spirit of togetherness, I miss everyone. I wanted to tell you, but there are so many things that I miss. Countless little details that lead me to contemplations, despondency and the hope that everybody is all right.

This year I set up a goal of reading 50 books on Goodreads Reading Challenge. I thought 50 was a decent number; only 4-5 books per month. What I didn't take into account is the fact that in order to put a book on the list, you have to specify the date you finished reading it. Here's another fact: I read a lot of books, most of which are rereads or left unfinished. Of course, I can change the goal into a more reasonable number, but then I thought: hey I can do this.

And seeing from the progress today, indeed I can do it. But having a deadline for finishing a book, my friend, wasn't fun. Goodreads gave me this annoying message whenever I spent too much time not facing a book:
At your current pace, you are 1 book (2%) behind.
If anything, I hate being behind target.

Before this afternoon, I only had one more book to finish to complete the challenge. Kurt Gödel's biography Logical Dilemmas looked like a good choice for the 50th book. But then there's this chapter about Georg Cantor's work and I thought: screw this transfinite numbers, I'll read The Baby Sitters Club.

So, that's it. The book that completes my reading challenge is titled Stacey and the Cheerleaders. Oh well.

I don't think I will be doing reading challenge again next year; even if I do, maybe for only 20 books or so. The university library has more books than I could ever read in my entire life and I will be busy checking out those on math history and logic. Some might take ages and loan renewals to finish, some might be returned unfinished. Either way, I want to spend as much time as I like when reading a book.