Martin Geisler Online

I’m sitting here at Aalborghus Net Party, ANP in short. I’ve only had about 4 hours of sleep this night :-)

A lot of computergames have been played — currently, people are battling it out in CounterStrike. We also have a very nice projector hooked up to a dvdplayer. If you take a look at this page, you’ll see your playlist, complete with estimated start-times, comments etc. (The link is in Danish)

Yesterday we had a beautiful partial lunar eclipse here in Denmark. For several hours the Moon went red, as Earth’s shadow swept across it. My dad took some photos of it, but we’ll have to wait until they are developed, to see whether or not they’re any good.

The Moon was red, because the Earth’s atmosphere bend that color more that the rest of the spectrum. I believe, that it’s the same effect that makes the sky blue.

Now there’s only little over 10 minutes left of the old year — soon our calendars will read 2001. Here in Aalborg, Denmark, the sky is beginning to be filled with fireworks. I have an excellent view over the city from my room, so it’s sure to be a magnificent display at 12 o’clock!

I hope you have had a good year, and wish all the best for you in the year to come. Happy New Year!

It’s finally Christmas Eve.

Here in Denmark we usually spend the day preparing for the big Christmas-meal tonight. We’ll have a goose tonight, although it’s also common to eat duck og roast pork. We’ll eat both plain and caramelled potatoes to the goose. I’m looking forward to it :-)

After we’ve eaten, we’ll do the dishes (the boring part :-) and then dance around the Christmas tree, while we sing some Christmas hymns. After that we’ll open our presents. I know that you first get the presents on Christmas Day (tomorrow) in England and the US, but here in Denmark we can’t wait that long :-)

Enjoy the holidays — I will for sure :-)

Today I went to be examined to see, if I was liable for military service. Since I’m 18, there is a possibility, that I have to spend between 3 and 9 months by doing military service. I really don’t want to, since I believe that I can find much more interesting ways to spend my time.

First we saw a couple of video-film that explained how the day would be. Then we did some tests, where one had to guess the remaining number in a sequence with four numbers. The first one was easy: 1 3 5 7 ?, but they got really though at the end: 50122 5112 422 43 ?.

Then I waited for a little over an hour, before a doctor could look at me. I was reasonably healthy, so I was approved for military service, assuming that I didn’t draw a number that was too high in the lottery that came next.

Because there are too many young people in my year, not everyone has to spend time in the military. If you draw a number between 1 and 15,000, then you are certain that you’ll be called upon, a number between 15,001 and 24,000 means that you might have to spend some time there, and a number between 24,001 and 36,000 means that you’re free.

So, since I draw number 18,660, I don’t know what I’ll be doing after the summer. I could make a deal, meaning that I give up my chance that 18,660 is a free-number and get to choose where I want to go. Then I’ll be certain that they don’t put me somewhere that I don’t like.

It’s really anoying that I didn’t draw a number that clearly defined whether or not I had to do military service. This way, I have to gamble, and that is not something that I like particularly :-)