home about photos phd v1.0

My first day at Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology, or Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (KTH for short). I got a little lost this morning as I tried to take the back way onto campus that Anders had pointed out the other day. Unfortunately the campus is not well signed, very not a map to be seen. When I became lost I stopped and asked two young girls for directions. Annahita and Belen were exchange students from Barcelona. Very bubbly and friendly, we got on well, and agreed to catch up later in the week.

When I arrived I quickly dumped my stuff in my assigned office, and headed for the the usual introductory protocol. After that I wasn't back in my office long before I was to present my first seminar there. It went relatively well, brief and smooth, an hour including question time. I spoke about my core work, the music-emotion rule system, which was similar to KTH's Director Musices. Only two hours before my flight left Brisbane I was still hacking code to have a workable demo to show. While decent, the work has matured immensely in the weeks since then, so that's a little disappointing.

When I got back to my room I immediately went in search of the washing machines. I had survived the last 1.5 weeks hand-washing my clothes in the hotel bathroom handbasin. Having booked my Finland leg quite late, and being stuck in hotels, the average price for a single shirt washing was 20€ ($32 AUD); which meant washing my 20 or so items was out of the question. One bad thing about Scandinavia which you won't find in the guide books, is the total lack of public laundromats.

It turned out that you had to book the building machines days in advance, and the only free slot today was midnight. It wasn't all bad though, as I passed the hours chatting with a pretty French girl. We continued to chat on MSN throughout the week, and agreed to catch up later on.

KTH University