By the time I had finally finished my last post and started working on my mission report of the 3rd week the 4th had already insidiously passed as well. Thus you can read the united summary about both weeks here:
Let's catch up with the story where we abandoned it. Last Wednesday we had the second exercise on the hacking subject (i. e. Offensive technologies). We had so set up a fierce exploit kit on a server running on a virtual machine and then we had to hideously attack another very vulnerable virtual machine with it. As we Hungarians are mostly from the glorious field of mathematics we spent our Tuesday night solely with listening to Sanyi with great interest who was explaining to us what this assignment actually ment and what we were supposed to do with it. In spite of this on Wednesday morning I was sitting there like:
Well I didn't give up without a fight. In fact I tried everything that I could think of. And - after trying to infect my very own machine multiple times - eventually (with a little help from the lab assistants) I managed to finish the exercise in time. I had never felt this much joy... I couldn't believe it. They congratulated me and I just left - still wondering about what the heck happened in there.
So I officially didn't get kicked out of the course. Obviously I was very delighted about this for a while - but then I was told what I would have to do in the rest of the semester. And since then I haven't been able to sleep very well... Anyways this is seriously the most interesting subject for me so far and I'm learning a lot here. So it is really worth fighting for.
We also have a subject called Economics and Management. It has a really misleading name since the prof isn't exactly teaching these two - at least not in a regular way. We are rather concerned with Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and we do this in a very innovatively interactive form. We have 'battles' on every Monday in which a previously randomly chosen pair of teams debate in a fictive environment. For example last week we had a team fighting for Steve Jobs and one for Bill Gates in a dystopic future where the question was who to choose to be the technological leader of the world? Jobs resurrected, (actually he never died in the story - he was just hibernated and waiting for the moment when his genius is needed again,) and at the same time (Italians have a word for this: 'contemporaneamente'. This is my new favorite word.) Gates returned to the head of Microsoft.
There are some roles divided between the students of the course; making notes, taking photos or videos, managing the website, checking the attendance of the other students, etc. You could apply for one of these roles with a motivation letter. I applied for one too and got the job. My role is called 'critical mind'. Be careful! I always call it 'criminal mind' by mistake too. The task of the critical mind is to help one of the battling teams by revealing their week points before and sometimes during the battle. In other words: I'm getting paid for trolling a team constantly. Muhohahhahaaa :D (Evil laugh.) By the way I'm being paid with marks - once I'll take trouble over explaining the Italian grading system, you will understand this. One thing I didn't expect though is that because of this role I have to spend an extra 3-4 hours hanging around the university. Not as if it matters... Not at all, don't mention it...
So I officially didn't get kicked out of the course. Obviously I was very delighted about this for a while - but then I was told what I would have to do in the rest of the semester. And since then I haven't been able to sleep very well... Anyways this is seriously the most interesting subject for me so far and I'm learning a lot here. So it is really worth fighting for.
We also have a subject called Economics and Management. It has a really misleading name since the prof isn't exactly teaching these two - at least not in a regular way. We are rather concerned with Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and we do this in a very innovatively interactive form. We have 'battles' on every Monday in which a previously randomly chosen pair of teams debate in a fictive environment. For example last week we had a team fighting for Steve Jobs and one for Bill Gates in a dystopic future where the question was who to choose to be the technological leader of the world? Jobs resurrected, (actually he never died in the story - he was just hibernated and waiting for the moment when his genius is needed again,) and at the same time (Italians have a word for this: 'contemporaneamente'. This is my new favorite word.) Gates returned to the head of Microsoft.
There are some roles divided between the students of the course; making notes, taking photos or videos, managing the website, checking the attendance of the other students, etc. You could apply for one of these roles with a motivation letter. I applied for one too and got the job. My role is called 'critical mind'. Be careful! I always call it 'criminal mind' by mistake too. The task of the critical mind is to help one of the battling teams by revealing their week points before and sometimes during the battle. In other words: I'm getting paid for trolling a team constantly. Muhohahhahaaa :D (Evil laugh.) By the way I'm being paid with marks - once I'll take trouble over explaining the Italian grading system, you will understand this. One thing I didn't expect though is that because of this role I have to spend an extra 3-4 hours hanging around the university. Not as if it matters... Not at all, don't mention it...
The Algebraic Cryptography lessons, which were cancelled on the first two weeks have finally started too. In these lessons the professor simply presses 'play' on his laptop and we watch a video about him giving the very same lecture 3 years ago. Well, for me the convenient part of this is that I can watch the same video in the comfort of my home too - so no classes on Thursday. Yay!
On the top of that I have already learned the material that we had here back in BUTE so it's really uplifting experience to watch the other - non-mathematician - students' panic reactions to the knotty mathematical formalism.
As for the rest of the courses nothing really mind-bending happened. To be more precise what happened is exactly what you would expect.
Our other news:
I'm going to absolutely neglect integrity and the order of the events, and I'm simply going to tell you how I spend my time here.
Well, first of all I'm attending all of my classes - except for the previously mentioned crypto. Guys, I tell you, this is a very strange feeling! You've seen my schedule, fortunately my classes don't usually start very early - which fills me with delight. Nevertheless this activity together with the necessary travelling takes quite a lot of time.
In my free time that I have left after studying - which usually means the middle of the night - I talk a lot with a certain young girl on Skype. Speaking of which: If anyone reads this, who can conjure some internet in the room 134 of the Kármán Tódor Dormitory in Budapest, please don't hesitate! Because it is very frustrating that most of my night is acoustically filled with the words 'you froze down' and 'you are back'. Of course I talk with others from home too, but not so much compared to the chatting time with Lili. Very little indeed.
I also spend a considerable amount of time with watching movies (and occasionally series too). I mostly watch them with the Csipet Team (untranslatable to English, sorry) in a movie room that you can book for an evening. Of course I also watch them with Lili and even alone too.
It isn't rare either that I and my own brother fight heroically at each others side on the diverse battlefields of the Counter-Strike universe.
A few days ago the weather got an idea and decided to change to the Siberian type of cold. That'd be ok this far, however the Opera Universitaria (the operator of the dorm) doesn't turn the heating on before the end of October on principle. They have even refused to give me an extra lousy blanket - or you can rather call it a rug if you prefer. (For further information about the Italian way of making up a bed please refer to a previous post.) Anyways now I'm keenly hunting for a proper blanket.
I could finally put my new hiking boots to the test. Ben, Réka and I rambled from Sardagna up to the point shown below with.
And oh boy! I tell you: these boots are amazing! (The boots were also been already introduced in a previous post.) By the way we took a lot of photos during this trip, too. But this time I'm not going to wait untill I get them from the others, because it took ages last time. I'll reveal them to you as soon as I get my hands on them I promise. Don't worry!
Last week Sanyi finally received his squash racket so now we play almost every day. He is getting really pro extremely fast. He has already beaten me once so I'll have to pull up those particular socks of mine. (This phrase looks very interesting in English.)
In SanBa (=SanBartolameo. You get it, right?) you can also play volleyball in a quite small room in the Yellow Gym. As we are really into this, we are already the respected members of the Facebook group of the local volley guys.
Last week Sanyi finally received his squash racket so now we play almost every day. He is getting really pro extremely fast. He has already beaten me once so I'll have to pull up those particular socks of mine. (This phrase looks very interesting in English.)
In SanBa (=SanBartolameo. You get it, right?) you can also play volleyball in a quite small room in the Yellow Gym. As we are really into this, we are already the respected members of the Facebook group of the local volley guys.
Today I've been washing my clothes and cleaning my room all day because the room check will be tomorrow. I wouldn't even recognize my room now. Wow.
Well, that's all folks. Thank you for your kind attention, this was Balu, you can hear from me again sometime next week.
