Here's a blog post that diverges from my usual ho-hum, and will hopefully appeal to my non-technical readers.
Do you have a certain episode in your memory that is always triggered when you hear a particular song? Was the significance of that moment so intense, and did the song fit so perfectly with that instance, that the two will be forever paired in your mind? If you do, I certainly hope that the memory was a good one.
Mine certainly was, and the song was "Let's Spend the Night Together" by The Rolling Stones.
Although the name of the song might allude to some incredible one-night romance, that's not exactly the case. The reason that this song is so strongly imprinted in my memory, is because it floods me with the same feeling I got when I became a dad for the first time. Indeed, the moment was the night after my son Jules was born.
We were at saint Mary's hospital in Montreal, and all of us (Erin, Bo, Nora, Jules! and myself) all had an extremely long night with the labour, and subsequent early morning delivery (especially Erin!). After taking a few hours to absorb the initial wow-ness of the new life we brought into the world, we were completely exhausted, and slumbered through a large portion of the day and evening. As often is the case with hospitals, they required us to spend an extra night in observation to ensure that both Erin & Jules were in good enough health to be released the following day. Jules, like any newly born baby, spent most of his time sleeping, until later on that night.
It must have been around midnight or so when he woke up and was crying something terrible. Erin and I checked him out, and, yes, he needed his first diaper to be changed. On one hand, Erin had never before changed a diaper - ever! And on the other hand, I hadn't changed one in about 10 years (I had some previous babysitting experience). Needless to say, we were both a little nervous.
So we disposed of Julien's dirty work, and carried him gently over to the wash basin and gave him a quick rinse with some warm water, all the while singing something - anything! It was actually the first song that popped into my head. I had been on a Stones kick for a good week before that. So Erin and I were both singing this Rolling Stones song to n-hour old Jules. The words go something like "let's spend the night to-ge-ther, now I need you more than e-ver, " and those were probably all the lyrics I could remember at the time, but it didn't matter.
After some initial clumsiness, we securely fastened the new couche on to Jules, and curled up on the same hospital bed - something that is typically frowned upon - but we just did what came naturally. Jules, Erin and I fell back asleep, in comfort, a few moments later.
Today I was putting in some overtime studying for my next exams - Optical and High Speed Communication. This song, along with the thoughts and memories that it evoked, was motivating me to study hard the whole day, because I know what's waiting for me when I'm done.
Dad is coming home soon.
Showing posts with label Julien. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julien. Show all posts
20100327
20090328
This Weekend
Today was the first day that I was able to see Jules since I left Montreal for Kiel, 2 weeks ago - it seems like an eternity already. Erin, Jules, & I were able to use Skype to have a video converstation. He's getting bigger every day! Kids are so great... particularly Jules :) I can't wait until meine kleine Familie is here in May. I think that I won't be able to put Jules down for a whole day. I'm practising keeping my weekends free and packed with fun things, so that when Erin & Jules are here we can own the weekends and do nothing but fun stuff !!
I know that it might seem like little, but my aim is to only work 4 or 5 hours per evening, and do all of my studying during the day - that's about 1/2 to 3/4 of my full-time work schedule. Also, I'm sure that the university lecture schedule will have an afternoon or morning open at least once a week too, which I aim to spend with Jules.
I just changed the background photo on my Desktop to a big smiley picture of Jules too - I'm hooked - I miss my little dude!
In spite of my obvious bias, I really do think I have the cutest little dude in the whole world, wouldn't you agree?
Today, part of my fun-weekend was having a hay-day at the Markt in Exerzierplatz. I believe that stands are set up every Saturday and there are all sorts of bio-food stands (fruits/veges, bread), and some slightly more expensive places ou on peut acheter du fromage. There are, of course, lots of places to get seafood as well. Today, I picked up some rauchte Mackerel a slightly older, harder (Italian?) Gouda called Leonardo, and a sheep's cheese (which will always remind me of Quebec). I also bought some Kürbiskern-brotchen (pumpkin-seed bread) and some Chianti. We bought loads of bio-veges for dinner tomorrow, and I also scored some very kräftig bio / fair-trade Kaffee from Tanzania, which might even overtake Ethiopia or Mexico as my favourite! On the way back, we were walking through a bit of an artsy area, where there are lots of shops and an exhibit or two. There is a very chill cafe/lounge called Sternstunde very close to Schrevenpark, which I'm sure will be a target to go with Erin & Jules after playing in the park all day, this summer.
I know that it might seem like little, but my aim is to only work 4 or 5 hours per evening, and do all of my studying during the day - that's about 1/2 to 3/4 of my full-time work schedule. Also, I'm sure that the university lecture schedule will have an afternoon or morning open at least once a week too, which I aim to spend with Jules.
I just changed the background photo on my Desktop to a big smiley picture of Jules too - I'm hooked - I miss my little dude!
In spite of my obvious bias, I really do think I have the cutest little dude in the whole world, wouldn't you agree?
Today, part of my fun-weekend was having a hay-day at the Markt in Exerzierplatz. I believe that stands are set up every Saturday and there are all sorts of bio-food stands (fruits/veges, bread), and some slightly more expensive places ou on peut acheter du fromage. There are, of course, lots of places to get seafood as well. Today, I picked up some rauchte Mackerel a slightly older, harder (Italian?) Gouda called Leonardo, and a sheep's cheese (which will always remind me of Quebec). I also bought some Kürbiskern-brotchen (pumpkin-seed bread) and some Chianti. We bought loads of bio-veges for dinner tomorrow, and I also scored some very kräftig bio / fair-trade Kaffee from Tanzania, which might even overtake Ethiopia or Mexico as my favourite! On the way back, we were walking through a bit of an artsy area, where there are lots of shops and an exhibit or two. There is a very chill cafe/lounge called Sternstunde very close to Schrevenpark, which I'm sure will be a target to go with Erin & Jules after playing in the park all day, this summer.
20090211
Google Genealogy?
I guess because I became a dad about a 9 months ago, I'm experiencing an even larger curiosity of the origins of my forefathers. So today I created the beginnings of Julien's Family Tree, but spun a different approach on it. I used Google Maps.
If you create a Google account, you can actually have a 'My Maps' section on Google Maps. On Julien's Family Tree, each person is represented by a placemark where that person 'grew up', and each line represents a parent / child relationship. Every placemark has a comment associated with it, in which the birth date (and possibly death date) of each ancestor appears, along with comments about the life of that person. Google Maps also lets the user put links to Wikipedia info, photos, et cetera.
What would be really cool, would be if some clever web developer were to integrate the Google Map API, some AJAXy glue code, and a database.
Having directed line segments joining parent and child would be useful. You could graphically see the journey that your ancestors made throughout their life, with fairly accurate historical info one click away at the Wikipedia. Maybe it would be possible to have a dynamic application built to scan the Wikipedia and narrate based on a combination of historical info and per-person tidbits.
I love hearing the stories that my grandparents tell me to this day - they're full of thrills and drama. Every grandparent should have a book or movie created about their lives, in my opinion. I'm really glad that Julien met his great-grandparents. I sometimes wish that we lived around the block, so that we could hang out every day after work ;-)
20080812
Julien's First Cinema Experience
Last night was a momentus occasion - Julien had his first excursion to a movie theatre. In fact, this one was a drive-in movie theatre! The two films playing were 'The Dark Knight', which is the latest of the Batman series a la Bale and the main feature of the evening, and 'Journey To the Centre of the Earth', which is a poor rendition of a film based on the classic Jules Verne novel of the same name.
For those of you who I may not know in person, my son, Julien, was named after Jules Verne because as a young boy, he was always my favourite author. I remember reading 'Mysterious Island', 'A Journey to the Centre of the Earth', '10 000 Leagues Under the Sea', 'From the Earth to the Moon', and many others before even being presented with the idea of reading for academic purposes in the fourth or fifth grade. Only a few summers ago, I was surprised to find that 'Michael Strogoff' was not the boring novel that I judged it to be as a young boy (based on its cover art alone), but I think now it's actually one of Verne's best novels.
Back to the point at hand, Jules Verne is the so-called namesake of my son Julien, and I thought that it would be a fantastic opportunity to concretize his first film experience with a film based on one of the more famous novels of his namesake.
Jules (mine) actually paid attention to the film for a good 15 minutes before Erin gave him his pre-bedtime snack and laid him down to sleep in the back seat. Unfortunately, the 15 minutes that Julien saw of the film could not have been worse than any other 15 minutes of the film - it was atrocious!! Brenden Frasier, being the only actor of any fame, set a very poor precedent. I would say that the best actor in the entire film was the young nordic girl, whose name escapes me right now.
In any event, it was a 3D movie - which I find incomprehensibly cool - but the drive-in operators didn't give away 3D glasses (arg!), so now I'll most likely buy the film at some point, just so that one day Julien (well... and me too) can buy a pair of 3D glasses and reminisce. I would at least hope that Jules is inspired one day to read some of the classics that I enjoyed when I was a boy.
The latest Batman film, on the other hand, was awesome!
During the evening, the thought occurred to me that drive-in movie theatres are a relic from the past. I wonder if they will even exist any longer when Julien is my age. Even when my father was my age, they were still a relic of the past, having been around since the 50's, when everything began revolving around the automobile. It will make for a fun story to tell him in 10 years.
Anyway, I should get back to work ;-)
For those of you who I may not know in person, my son, Julien, was named after Jules Verne because as a young boy, he was always my favourite author. I remember reading 'Mysterious Island', 'A Journey to the Centre of the Earth', '10 000 Leagues Under the Sea', 'From the Earth to the Moon', and many others before even being presented with the idea of reading for academic purposes in the fourth or fifth grade. Only a few summers ago, I was surprised to find that 'Michael Strogoff' was not the boring novel that I judged it to be as a young boy (based on its cover art alone), but I think now it's actually one of Verne's best novels.
Back to the point at hand, Jules Verne is the so-called namesake of my son Julien, and I thought that it would be a fantastic opportunity to concretize his first film experience with a film based on one of the more famous novels of his namesake.
Jules (mine) actually paid attention to the film for a good 15 minutes before Erin gave him his pre-bedtime snack and laid him down to sleep in the back seat. Unfortunately, the 15 minutes that Julien saw of the film could not have been worse than any other 15 minutes of the film - it was atrocious!! Brenden Frasier, being the only actor of any fame, set a very poor precedent. I would say that the best actor in the entire film was the young nordic girl, whose name escapes me right now.
In any event, it was a 3D movie - which I find incomprehensibly cool - but the drive-in operators didn't give away 3D glasses (arg!), so now I'll most likely buy the film at some point, just so that one day Julien (well... and me too) can buy a pair of 3D glasses and reminisce. I would at least hope that Jules is inspired one day to read some of the classics that I enjoyed when I was a boy.
The latest Batman film, on the other hand, was awesome!
During the evening, the thought occurred to me that drive-in movie theatres are a relic from the past. I wonder if they will even exist any longer when Julien is my age. Even when my father was my age, they were still a relic of the past, having been around since the 50's, when everything began revolving around the automobile. It will make for a fun story to tell him in 10 years.
Anyway, I should get back to work ;-)
20080523
A Baby New World
We have a new baby boy!After a long night of bowling (hoping that would inspire Julien to pop out naturally) with my dad, Wendy, Nora and myself, Erin was called in to have labour induced at about 9:30 PM on Monday the 19th. Erin & I went for a little walk in the park (she was actually biking) to give each other pep-talks - are we ready for this? - and then Bo drove us all over to St. Mary's.
Erin was put on a hormone drip intravenously, which was increased by 6 μg every 1/2 hour. She wasn't feeling any contractions for about 5 hours and was only 1 cm dialated. We were up all night just keeping each other company (Bo, Nora, Erin & I) by playing games, telling stories, etc. Actually, we were only allowed to have 3 people in the room in total, but the nursing staff was very nice and let us all be there. Another nurse came in and boosted our hopes saying that she was 1 1/2 cm dilated. To tell you the truth, we were a little worried that Erin was going to need a caesarian section performed because she was at the maximum drip for a while and there were no signs of progress. Every time they examined Erin, they noticed that Julien's head was really far down, and that he was ready, but Erin had still not started to dilate. Actually 3 or 4 examinations had gone by with exactly the same results.
Then, Erin started getting contractions - she thought it was just indigestion at first, but then they became more and more intense. We all started helping Erin with Le Mas breathing patterns. A doctor came in to puncture Erin's membrane (i.e. water) and as she was lying down so that they could put an internal sensor on Julien to get his heart beat.
After that, contractions became more frequent and increasingly painful. Erin was lying down for them and she was in so much pain. We were all massaging her and practicing the breating. The nurses kept asking her to stop pushing, but she wasn't pushing at all -
I think it must have been the hormones that were causing the contractions to be so intense that they were just pushing the baby along all by themselves. Erin started to lose coherence because the pain was so intense, and then I said - "Erin, breath like your mom - just watch how your mom is breathing, and do it like mom does ok?" Bo jumped right in and was like the breathing coach. She sat Erin up, and told her when to hold it, when to inhale, and when to exhale. They had such a strong connection. After sitting up, and holding her breath for a second or two like Bo, Erin said that the contractions started coming under control after about 20 minutes.
Between about 5:30 AM and 9:00 AM she went about 2cm every hour, which is twice as fast as normal! She went from 2 cm dilated to 10 within about 2 hours - it was unbelievable! Bo was helping Erin keep the contractions under control while Nora and I were massaging Erin's back and legs. Nora & I waited outside while Erin received her epidural. The anesthesiologist had to really tell me to get out of the room because I wasn't fully prepared to leave Erin there, but she saw that Bo was helping Erin's breathing, and Erin asked if it was ok for her mom to stay there. So Bo got a mask on and helped Erin while she had the epidural.
After that, it literally took 5 pushes and about 20 minutes - things moved so quickly! Nora graciously stayed in the waiting room because they would only let Bo & I be there for the delivery. We were standing right there helping Erin along as she pushed, and then... well ... I don't think there are any words to describe the euphoria that we were all experiencing and even if there were I doubt that I could do it justice. I will never forget as long as I live.
Julien Michael Jacob Friedt was born on Tuesday, May 20th at 10:48 AM. He
weighed 8 lbs and 5 ounces at birth. He's totally healthy and scored a solid 9.9 on whatever test it is that they use. Labour lasted about 8 hours.
We got to hold him and talk to him immediately. I cut the cord. He was so real - it was so hard to believe what I just experienced happened - but at the same time, it was like we knew eachother all along. He recognized immediately when I started playing with his feet, just like when he was in his mom.
My dad came to visit right afterwards and they got to say hello to little Julien. Then we were moved to a bed in another wing for the next 48 hours. I was a little detached from the world because we weren't allowed to use cellular phones in the hospital, and they don't have public internet access anywhere inside. I only really left the hospital once or twice to get some food and necessities.
Bo & Nora were really helpful for those 48 hours while Erin & the baby were under supervision. Me? I was having the time of my life playing with my new little boy. He's so alert and inquisitive and incredibly well behaved... oh and he's just CRAZY cute!! hahaha...
When we were finally dischared to go home, stepping out of the hospital with my son was like stepping into a wholly different world.
It's been really nice being back home. We've had a few visitors already and lots of support from family and friends with phone calls, SMS, or even e-mails.
Soon we'll have lots of pics posted on facebook or picassa.
20080513
Julien Updates
Yesterday, Erin, Bo, Julien & myself had a nice long day at various doctor's offices. First thing in the morning we went to Dr. Shine's office and he said that Erin still isn't dilating, so we booked an appointment to have Julien induced next Monday. Then we went to the women's pavilion at St. Mary's and waited around for a while to get a stress test done on Julien & Erin. The test checks the baby's heart rate, movement and Erin's contractions. The baby showed textbook-perfect patterns for his heart rate, so we know that he's doing well and he's healthy and comfortable. On the other hand, Erin still hasn't had any contractions that she's noticed. So since Julien is already 4 days late, and it's bad if the baby is any more than 2 weeks late, and we can only book induction mondays or wednesdays, we thought it was probably safer than not to book it for next monday. I'll have more updates later on.
Today for lunch Erin & I are going to pick up some peppermint & tarragon for the planters on our balcony. So far, we have basil, greek oregano, spearmint, savory, and rosemary. On the weekend we also picked up a set of chairs and table for the front balcony and a couple of reclining / folding chairs for the back balcony (or for taking into the park).I'll put up some photos eventually of the front balcony with a view of the park & our little hanging garden at some point.
Cheers!
20080511
Some Thoughts About Becoming a Dad
Well, I thought I should probably write a post about the new life that Erin & I are about to introduce into the universe. We're now about 3 days past Julien's original estimated debut of May 8th and it feels a little weird that we're no longer counting down the days.
It's a bit of a thrill to tell you the truth - I almost feel nervous about meeting this new little guy who will soon have an endless stream of wonders projected onto his senses. I almost feel nervous, but I think we've already started to get to know each other over the last few months by means of morse-code belly communications at times when Erin is not yet worken up. He would stretch out his legs when he felt the morning sun warming everything up and then I would send him an impulse in reply through Erin and on the bottom of his foot.
I'm looking forward to the stories I'll tell him - all about the people, places, and things around us and the stuff that we all have inside. All of the forces, real, invisible, and imaginary that exist in this place we all live and how the world changes in response to those forces. I hope he will love to hear about the things that we have yet to understand.
Sometimes I'm anxious, but right now I'm pretty relaxed about the whole thing almost as if I had all of the patience in the world. I'll keep posting when labor starts and give updates periodically.
20080317
Back in Montréal ! Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Wow, what a wild month this last one has been!
I guess my last post was just 2 weeks before when I started studying day and night for my DSP and Signals exams. Before then I was working a bunch on my most recent project for work, which has resulted in 2 main articles so far. Those are Gentoo for the TS72xx Single Board Computer (Full Distro), and Gentoo for the TS72xx (Old Toolchain). The first of the two links contains information on how to put the ARM EABI kernel and userland on your TS72xx board, for a 25 time speedup in floating point processing. The second link contains information on how to create a 'compatibility' toolchain for building software that is compatible with the existing programs and libraries on the board as it is shipped.
After I finish one small project for my company, I would like to write up some information on replacing glibc with uClibc, for added space savings.
Anyway, I just finished writing my two exams! I passed them both, although not by any means with outstanding grades. I suppose that has to do with several things: having less time to study than my classmates, having an actual engineering job (not some job as a lab assistant), moving from Germany to Canada the same week that the exams were being written, and just organizing things. So, needless to say, it has been a bit stressful.
In any event, I'm very happy to be back in Montréal! Erin and I have a new apartment too, with an excellent location right across the street from Parc LaFontaine. It's beautiful! Also, I can't begin to express how nice it is to see the sun again on a daily basis - Kiel gets nothing but cloud and rain in the winter. The snow is also a very welcome sight. I know that most of you in the area are pretty sick of snow, but believe me, if you had nothing but rain all winter, you would beg to have the piles of snow back, and you would be happy about it too!
Erin & I just came from the radiology department at St. Mary's hospital here in Montréal, and we got the 2nd round of ultrasounds for Julien. It was quite funny actually, I asked them if I could put the images on my USB memory stick instead of a CD and they said that was fine if I could figure it out (they have some custom made software which is a bit confusing). So I did it and showed them how to do it and they gave us the images free of charge! I'll put them up on something like Picassa soon enough.
Happy St. Patty's Day by the way! Dr. Shine, our obstetrician, is also from Ireland and I think that today he was pretty happy when we said happy St. Patrick's day to him too!
I also just figured out a problem I was having with linux-2.4.26 and glibc-2.3.2 trying to get the aforementioned compatibility toolchain working. The problem was quite simple - __NR_waitpid, which is a syscall constant, was being defined in the ARM/linux headers, but the function is actually unimplemented for the ARM and is replaced by wait4.
The effects of this bug were, for instance
The problem was easy to fix by simply removing the definition in include/asm-arm/unistd.h for __NR_waitpid. (see Gentoo bug 213690). It's not defined in the 2.6 kernel headers either, and I think it was probably put there by accident.
I guess my last post was just 2 weeks before when I started studying day and night for my DSP and Signals exams. Before then I was working a bunch on my most recent project for work, which has resulted in 2 main articles so far. Those are Gentoo for the TS72xx Single Board Computer (Full Distro), and Gentoo for the TS72xx (Old Toolchain). The first of the two links contains information on how to put the ARM EABI kernel and userland on your TS72xx board, for a 25 time speedup in floating point processing. The second link contains information on how to create a 'compatibility' toolchain for building software that is compatible with the existing programs and libraries on the board as it is shipped.
After I finish one small project for my company, I would like to write up some information on replacing glibc with uClibc, for added space savings.
Anyway, I just finished writing my two exams! I passed them both, although not by any means with outstanding grades. I suppose that has to do with several things: having less time to study than my classmates, having an actual engineering job (not some job as a lab assistant), moving from Germany to Canada the same week that the exams were being written, and just organizing things. So, needless to say, it has been a bit stressful.
In any event, I'm very happy to be back in Montréal! Erin and I have a new apartment too, with an excellent location right across the street from Parc LaFontaine. It's beautiful! Also, I can't begin to express how nice it is to see the sun again on a daily basis - Kiel gets nothing but cloud and rain in the winter. The snow is also a very welcome sight. I know that most of you in the area are pretty sick of snow, but believe me, if you had nothing but rain all winter, you would beg to have the piles of snow back, and you would be happy about it too!
Erin & I just came from the radiology department at St. Mary's hospital here in Montréal, and we got the 2nd round of ultrasounds for Julien. It was quite funny actually, I asked them if I could put the images on my USB memory stick instead of a CD and they said that was fine if I could figure it out (they have some custom made software which is a bit confusing). So I did it and showed them how to do it and they gave us the images free of charge! I'll put them up on something like Picassa soon enough.
Happy St. Patty's Day by the way! Dr. Shine, our obstetrician, is also from Ireland and I think that today he was pretty happy when we said happy St. Patrick's day to him too!
I also just figured out a problem I was having with linux-2.4.26 and glibc-2.3.2 trying to get the aforementioned compatibility toolchain working. The problem was quite simple - __NR_waitpid, which is a syscall constant, was being defined in the ARM/linux headers, but the function is actually unimplemented for the ARM and is replaced by wait4.
The effects of this bug were, for instance
- Bash saying "wait_for(
): Function not implemented - waitpid and popen not working, returning errno 83 (ENOSYS/Function not implemented)
The problem was easy to fix by simply removing the definition in include/asm-arm/unistd.h for __NR_waitpid. (see Gentoo bug 213690). It's not defined in the 2.6 kernel headers either, and I think it was probably put there by accident.
20080218
Heading Home
Woo-hoo!
Today I booked my flight back to Canada on the 14th of March, from Hamburg to Montréal. Can you tell that I have a huge smile on my face as I write this? Hehehe..
In the next month, I'll be writing my exams in Advanced Signals & Systems, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, and then I'm organizing to write my exam in Digital Communications at McGill via some awesome department that will proctor exams for external universities ;-) I've never even heard of that before.
But hey, if it means that I don't miss out on an exam and I get to be in my new apartment with my lady friend and Julien, then that's entirely wicked in my opinion!
Oh yes, and by the way, version 2.0 will be named Julien Jacob Friedt - although I'm not 100% sure of the spelling of all of it - Erin and I both agree that Julien should be with an 'e', but I sort of feel like using a 'k' in Jakob just because that's how they would spell it over here.
By the way, if anyone feels like buying a few baby clothes, these ones are definitely on the wish list:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/5ace/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/59cc/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/6c71/
and my personal favorite
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/9b11/
Sigh, comic relief ;-)
I spoke to Sammy D.J. just yesterday, and He and Emily are also expecting a newcomer in July - Ethan Donald. Dwayne Williams also has one (or two) little ones already, and countless numbers of others must be married at this point - jeez, I'm starting to sound like a 30 year old! AAAAGGHH!!
It seems as if it were yesterday that we were wearing hospital pants and hardhats and getting completely $h17-faced in the 4th floor of Pitman Hall. I know, I'm a bit of a sentimental, but hey - what a wild time; the nights without sleep studying for exams, practically living in the basement of the building formerly known as T... sometimes I can't even believe that I'm here in Germany now doing my master's. I'm meeting so many people from all over the world - I hope I stay good friends with all of them, just because having friends in other countries just makes the best excuse to travel ;-)
Speaking of travel, the feeling that I will be 'going home' to Montréal hasn't even really sunk in yet. What I mean, is that it seems like I've been renting rooms for literally the last decade of my life! Moving from city to city, province to province, country, continent, etc. Now Erin & I are pretty much starting out together in a beautiful plateau apartement à côté du Parc LaFontaine. I can't wait! The next year of my life is going to be full of the most amazing experiences.
Well, I'd better get back to work / studying
Hasta Luego
Today I booked my flight back to Canada on the 14th of March, from Hamburg to Montréal. Can you tell that I have a huge smile on my face as I write this? Hehehe..
In the next month, I'll be writing my exams in Advanced Signals & Systems, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, and then I'm organizing to write my exam in Digital Communications at McGill via some awesome department that will proctor exams for external universities ;-) I've never even heard of that before.
But hey, if it means that I don't miss out on an exam and I get to be in my new apartment with my lady friend and Julien, then that's entirely wicked in my opinion!
Oh yes, and by the way, version 2.0 will be named Julien Jacob Friedt - although I'm not 100% sure of the spelling of all of it - Erin and I both agree that Julien should be with an 'e', but I sort of feel like using a 'k' in Jakob just because that's how they would spell it over here.
By the way, if anyone feels like buying a few baby clothes, these ones are definitely on the wish list:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/5ace/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/59cc/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/6c71/
and my personal favorite
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/kids/9b11/
Sigh, comic relief ;-)
I spoke to Sammy D.J. just yesterday, and He and Emily are also expecting a newcomer in July - Ethan Donald. Dwayne Williams also has one (or two) little ones already, and countless numbers of others must be married at this point - jeez, I'm starting to sound like a 30 year old! AAAAGGHH!!
It seems as if it were yesterday that we were wearing hospital pants and hardhats and getting completely $h17-faced in the 4th floor of Pitman Hall. I know, I'm a bit of a sentimental, but hey - what a wild time; the nights without sleep studying for exams, practically living in the basement of the building formerly known as T... sometimes I can't even believe that I'm here in Germany now doing my master's. I'm meeting so many people from all over the world - I hope I stay good friends with all of them, just because having friends in other countries just makes the best excuse to travel ;-)
Speaking of travel, the feeling that I will be 'going home' to Montréal hasn't even really sunk in yet. What I mean, is that it seems like I've been renting rooms for literally the last decade of my life! Moving from city to city, province to province, country, continent, etc. Now Erin & I are pretty much starting out together in a beautiful plateau apartement à côté du Parc LaFontaine. I can't wait! The next year of my life is going to be full of the most amazing experiences.
Well, I'd better get back to work / studying
Hasta Luego
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