Lots of everything going on, due to various circumstances I wasn’t able to post in the last week, so the amount of what should be written is rather large. Part of the reason was that I was sick last weekend, so instead of going for the announced cottage trip and having fun, I spent it lying in bed, not-really-able to think or write consistently. After that, I no longer had a computer available, so posting was rather out of question. And now you know.
Anyway, back to the stuff, in random order:
Bought myself a pair of bike lights, to be able to bike at night and not get fines from the local police. Turned out they didn’t work. Gone back to the big store I got it from (Bilka), and they have special section split out reserved just for the customer service. You just get a number in line, wait till it’s your turn, and settle your matters quickly and painlessly. Now, I can’t really compare it to Poland, because I don’t think I ever had to complain about a faulty product, but what I like here is the acceptance of the fact that shit happens, and someone just has to handle it, and its better for the business to do the dirty work, instead of relaying it to the customer. That’s still far too uncommon in Poland, sadly. My belief in the fact it’s a system, not an isolated occurence is strengthened by me having to cancel the cottage trip (due to the abovementioned sickness) just the next day, and it went even smoother than before — I just needed to make one call, I was instantly proposed to get my money back whenever I’m good enough to visit the office. Really a zero fuss system (even though in the end the lights stopped woring after few days, and I spent more on them I’d pay for at local “everything home and workshop” store for proper lights, but the customer service is still nice).
OTOH, I must say that things here are seriously fucked up. Honestly. For example, I missed one lecture because the timetable isn’t up for it yet (thanks to busted electronic everything system, which generated hellish delays all over the place), and I couldn’t login to “blackboard” system on Tuesday (again, busted system), and that was the only place where I could learn that first lecture is on Wednesday. So I learned that, on Wednesday after coming back from school.
Further, you’d expect that all these “e-learn” gizmos we’re supposed to use, SingleSignOn system (from Oracle, no less), account automatically created for every student would mean that I’m able to use the labs computers right from the start. Well, no. Instead I need to register with every institute separately, and of course, each has its own naming policy, acceptable passwords policy, policy on whether I’m regarded to be guest or full time student (which projects on my account’s name), hell, I even need to get Windows and Unix accounts separately in one institute! (But, not in another). Oh, and Unix in form of Solaris 8 is just a joy to use (even with Gnome 2.8 installed), becaus that fucking thing has no support for XKB. Which means no hope for Polish keyboard. Which means no school paper writing. Which means angry me, grrr. Fortunately, both institutes also have Linux labs, which is a lot nicer. Even though it’s Mandrake (or Mandriva now), which in turns means every menu and settings fucked up to infinity. D’oh.
Oh, and another lecture I missed because it overlapped with another class (from the same institute, nothing fancy like classes from different institutes), and, I think I found the Denmark’s single civil officer unable to speak even a word in English. But I wonder why she was placed in Folkeregister (National Register), which by definition deals with assigning CPR (sort of Danish social security evidence) numbers to the foreigners. And everything here is so damn expensive. Coffee is 12kr at the very least (I mean, coffee at the human-run place. Vending machines strangely enough have 4 kr for coffee, strangely because they have ∞ kr for everything else). And the books I’m supposed to buy will easily amount to several thousand kr. Booo :(