Now

I’m now in the wind-down period of my first full term at the political science program. At the same time the Christmas season is keeping me fully wounded up. I’ve become very comfortable at SEDU, and have met some great people there.

I’m looking forward to spending time in Oslo over Christmas and New-years relaxing. It has become a sort of personal retreat for me in some sense. Hopefully I also get some non-academic reading in, perhaps some Russian literature.

I’m travelling to Berlin in a few days once again. Writing about traveling to Berlin all the time, combined with Oslo, makes me feel like I’m living some sort of jet-setter life-style — something that could hardly be further from the truth. I guess it’s a natural consequence of being the only family member still in Stockholm. That’s something I could hardly have imagined would be the case two years ago.

I have now begun my full-time studies at SEDU, and am so far enjoying it immensely. The first course in IR is a bit superfluous since I have already grappled with the subject last spring, but it nevertheless serves as a good introduction to get into the swing of things.

Living alone in the apartment has been going surprisingly well so far. I have quickly acclimated to the silence, and it is nice that the kitchen is kept reasonably clean at all times. Not having to walk the dog is both a blessing and a curse, it allows me more freedom when it comes to social events, but it was also practically useful for clearing one’s head throughout the day (and I miss her of course).

As a consequence I have also been listening to significantly less music, but irregardless I have discovered a new appreciation for Italian opera, especially for the greats of Puccini and Verdi.

I have begun playing another game of Diplomacy — this time as France. It has been far too long since I last played, and I can feel this really scratching the itch.

I just returned from a month-long stay in the PRC and am polishing up some texts on it that I wrote while I was there. I studied Chinese¹ intensively and have managed to get almost to a HSK 2 level already. I want to continue since I find it a very interesting language and I want to be able to read Emacs China (and classic Chinese literature too I guess, but that’s less important).

The server had almost a full month of downtime since it decided to crash as soon as I got on the plane, and I had practically no way of fixing it while I was away. These sorts of extended downtimes are quite unacceptable to me, and I am risking them every time I am away from home. Therefore I have decided to move the blog from my own hardware to netlify.

I really liked the idea of hosting on my own hardware, but it just isn’t possible when my home internet is as unreliable as it is. I will still be running personal services from the server however.

After getting home I went down almost immediately to the house down in Scania, where I will be staying for most of the summer. My mother is moving to Berlin in late August, and so I’ll be helping her move as well. Looking forward to starting my studies in political science this fall at SEDU. I had somewhat of an early start during my “gap year” and so it will probably work out well.