i made my first international wire transfer to a numbered bank account in europe today. i felt like i was doing something illegal or something. isn't that what huge drug lords and kidnappers do with their money?

well, i was just depositing the fee for my conference trip to finland.

120 euros? how much is that? i have no idea. i hope that when i get there people are still using normal currancy so i can improve my coin collection without only getting euros.

i put a little note on the ICPS Finland bulletin board for people to bring coins from home, some people have agreed to do so. i guess that's good. i'll finally get that 1/2 escudo coin from portugal that i couldn't find when i was there.

tonight was the nuclear engineering banquet, which i couldn't go to because molvig sent someone over to my room to help me get these simulation codes working. right at 5:30, when it was supposed to start. so alla (the russian woman who's been coding all this stuff for molvig) came over and we got everything working, and had a nice chat about russia and travel on the trans-siberian railroad.

(incidentally, that is a trip i would like to take sometime. train across asia to china, fly out of beijing. if there's any russian speakers out there, let's go. i speak chinese. a bit.)

anyway, alla left and i ran downstairs to the banquet (conveniently, the best banquet hall on campus is in my building). i had missed all of the food, and came in just in time to hear all the speeches which i had no interest in at all. molvig was there... he looked like he probably wasn't hungry.