TUM | Dominik Mayer – Products, Asia, Productivity

According to Tongji it’s no problem to stay longer as long as TUM agrees. So the question is: Do I really want to stay longer? I don’t know. Fortunately I don’t have to decide right away.

I asked my coordinator in Germany and she said I could stay longer. Let’s hope that I’ll get another admission from Tongji. If everything works out I would fly to Munich, write my exams and come back to Shanghai.

The student ID in Munich has an RFID with which I can pay in the cafeterias. The Tongji one too. If I want to recharge my card in Munich I go to one of several machines, put the money in the slot, hold the card against the sensor and wait.

If I want to recharge the card in Shanghai I need to get a form, fill it in, wait and pay at the counter:

I really like it here. Why don’t we have a campus like that in Munich?

A Tongji representative wrote me an email telling me that she had found out I wanted to study at their university this spring semester. She wanted to know if I still intend to do it. In this case I should mail them the attached forms. There were no forms, and I already applied in December. The documents which I hope contain the admission haven’t arrived yet. How long can it take a letter to get from Munich to Freising?

The TUM International Office called before. They got my Chinese documents. The admission? Why didn’t I get it myself? And how can it be delivered in only three days including the weekend? I better wait and book the flight tomorrow.

One month after I sent in the form, I finally got the money for the Vista license. 30 Euro. Not as much as you have to spend if you want to buy it but who wants to get Windows? I wouldn’t use it if I’d get it for free. And I could get it for free as our university offers a legal version on the MANIAC server.

One of my professors recorded his lecture last year and instead of driving to Munich I watch these videos. One of them didn’t end with the professor leaving the room, it went on.

There were some wind players, slides with space shuttles and the solar system and then Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Wolfgang A. Herrmann, president of Technische Universität München appeared and started to talk about Prof. Bulirsch. I know that our president likes to call the university, because of its abbreviation TUM, Top University of Munich but I haven’t known that joke yet:

Und dann schließlich zurückberufen, als Ordinarius für Höhere Mathematik an die Technische Hoschschule München die damals gerade schon Technische Universität München hieß und jeder weiß mittlerweile was diese drei Buchstaben bedeuten. Von hinten rein gelesen bedeuten sie, lesen sie sich wie Mut und Mut, denke ich, für die Zukunft, können wir auch haben.

And then finally called back as full professor of higher mathematics to the Technische Hochschule München which was already called Technische Universität München at that time and by now everyone knows what these three letters mean. Read from behind they mean, they read like courage [Mut is German for courage] and courage, I think, is what we can also have for the future.