My beloved girlfriend turned my birthday (March 14) into a most wonderful experience. We also had dinner in a place called “Pharaonentempel” which resembles an ancient egyptian temple both from the inside and outside. The exquisite meals were truly delicious!

Two days later I had a very inspiring conversation with one of my friends from the “good old Amiga times”. The day after, ironically just when I thought that life was good, I encountered some heart problems and thus became painfully aware of my still present fear of death. Fortunately it turned out to be quite harmless, but I should have my heart checked by a specialist nonetheless.

On Saturday (March 18) I celebrated with my friends in the “Sägewerk”. Some of them even came down all the way from Vienna! My brother wrote me a wonderful poem. I actually got far too many gifts but gladly accepted all of them. :-)

The following week passed quickly, and was dominated by my efforts to establish a more “systematic approach” towards my tasks, issues and future development. I will give a more detailed description later!

Last weekend my girlfriend and I watched “The Constant Gardener” together, which we both enjoyed very much. I shall write a short review soon. The movie also made me think a lot, even more and harder than usual. During this week I had some interesting insights at night which are difficult to explain right now, along with more heart troubles even in my dreams. Is that a reminder to focus on the essential things? I am sure I should take it that way.

We did it again! Last Friday, in round 8/11 of the Stadtliga Graz, the mighty Schachgesellschaft defeated the team of Styria Graz with 4,5:3,5 points (their first defeat of this season). I contributed to this glorious result with a victory. Thus we are steadily becoming the most feared team of the league: young, strong, and fearless!

Otherwise my studies keep me very busy. I visit many lectures in this semester, including an “Introduction into String Theory“. We, a group of students and two university professors, are trying to introduce ourselves to this weird state-of-the-art branch of theoretical physics, following a book from Barton Zwiebach. It encourages me to refresh my dusty knowledge about many other important subjects (analytical mechanics, quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, …).

Programming in MatLab for “Computer Simulations” is fun, too. Although I have already completed most of the required examples two years ago, it’s good to get back into it. If I had ten lives, in one of them I might have become a programmer (writer, musician, monk, chess master, …). But in this life, I shall now rise to the challenge of physics!

Thanks to Mario’s inspiration and my brother’s help, my first and only blog is now online. Soon it shall be prospering with various writings, images and links. May it entertain or even inspire you!

Dearest reader, your feedback is always welcome – please tell me what you think! :-)