I'm writing this blog post right now on a grayish afternoon in my "new" office in the Willersbau. My PhD brother is also in the room. And I have a bit of time left until I meet with a friend to talk math. I'm not quite sure what I aim to accomplish with this blog and website in general. My friends and people I respect sometimes started them during their PhD or even before that. But I thought, why not write something up, get it out there, the old fashioned way without social media. What happened so far? Not much to be honest, at least on the work side. The only teaching I have done has been the one I have been doing for years at the start of every semester. The main administrative tasks have been the ones I need to do to convince the university that I am actually a PhD student and scientific staff here. The math I have been doing has broadly boiled down to the math I have been doing in my masters thesis. Only now my advisor and (now) boss is more involved and active with it, since we are trying to build a paper out of it. I have been of course been doing way more math than before, and I still very much enjoy it. So I guess while not interesting, it is not bad. Now on the personal side? Different story entirely. Where to begin... - I met the platonic ideal of a guy who tries so hard to be the most progressive at the table, that he circles around be pretty reactionary. It felt like what a twitter user would think a tumblr user is like. - A friend and me might have prevented a femicide? We can't be sure of course, but we (to be fair mainly he) definitely stopped domestic violence. That's something, isn't it. - I met an incredible woman during a great karaoke evening. The first (and probably last) time in my life woman in the span of 1 hour yelled at me that she loved my spongebob reference, body-checked me, meowed at me, sang with me, showed me her bird, and told me I could bring my girlfriend to our wedding. We (intentionally from my side) did not exchange contact, but I hope to meet her sometime in the future again and she even told me at what events that might be. - I have attended on of my last (as a student member) faculty board meeting of my "career", which incidentally also became one of the most interesting. - My girlfriend has been sick, so we haven't been together all that much. I would've liked to write more about us, but we really haven't seen each other that much since I started. - I have accepted that I have developed an interest in fashion (thanks Vaush) and intend to spent my first paycheck on a few, but very high quality, articles. I might do blog posts on them. I am still debating that. - And lastly, maybe most importantly, I have been reminded that I, despite all the personal progress I have achieved, am still heavily traumatized. I will probably need some sort of therapy for that whole schlep, but hey, where to get that in any sensible time frame? Let's see how that story goes. I am definitely more positive with that topic than I have been in the last two years. - Bunch of other stuff probably which I am leaving our for brevity. Overall, very interesting and not at all interesting first two weeks. Let's see where this ride goes. ~16.10.2025