ThePanda

If you live online long enough, there are a few things you learn, and once you have started living online, you start learning a lot more. Something that you learn initially when you start living online is that you should not use profanities while commenting on stuff people have written, it really doesn’t help your cause, and well I am generally not a proponent of using profanities, so well at least for me it’s pretty unpleasant. Things that you actually learn when you start living online, well for one you shouldn’t stop posting to your blog. I know it happens every now and then, it happened for me, but it really isn’t pleasant, you’re constantly reminded of the fact that you haven’t posted, and some people feel it’s a sin. Well it probably is, but we aren’t gonna discuss religion as it applies to blogs on this particular blog, but well you generally should post (I am so sure that this is gonna come back and haunt me at a later date).

So yes, this blog entry should convince you that I am still alive, that I have homework every now and then, that I help people when I don’t have homework, and that taking 5 courses when the standard and expected course load is 4 is not exactly a good idea. Umm well I am actually not sure about the last point, ya sure I have a bunch of homework, I am supposed to think about what post-war Iraq’s constitution should look like, what kind of elections they should have (yes there are different kind of elections, in India and the United States they follow something called the First Past the Post or Simple Majority, while most European countries, outside of the United Kingdom follow proportional representation), about who would want to kill Alexander’s father (Philip of Macedonia, in case some wise-ass was wondering about this), how people would benefit from his death, and whether Alexander was sane (hey people call him insane because he threatened to annihilate a few thousand people when his favorite horse was stolen, now they should have thought about that before they stole his favorite horse), and I have been doing a bunch of math homework throughout the day, though that’s done with. Math would by far be my favorite subject at the moment with Computer Science coming in a distant second, and with political science somewhere in there (umm it actually is more IR than PS, but it’s a part of the PS department, and I also have a Classics course, and yes I am sane), and I don’t think physics features anywhere on that list, makes me wonder about my concentration, well at least I have a year to decide on that.

I finally walked down to the Social Security office earlier today, finally took the big leap, about two weeks after I actually became eligible, and now I have a little letter which should allow me to find work while my number’s being generated. It takes them two weeks to generate a social security number, but it takes the bank a day to generate credit card numbers, makes you wonder about what kind of fiendishly hard algorithm they use (umm I am actually pretty sure they just generate numbers serially, but I could be wrong about this). I must say a lot of agencies in the US seem to specialize in generating fiendishly hard strings of apparently random characters. Take the DMVs for instance, state agencies which hand out car number plates, an important task, undertaken by the Department of Transport back home. Now most people would think that car numbers should make sense, they should code some sort of information, or at least give some indication as to how they’re generated, well not the DMVs, they create random strings of characters, and you can go through a list of thousands upon thousands of car number plates, without actually coming up with a valid pattern. Admittedly this should reduce fraud, and it should make it a lot harder to drive around with a yet to be allocated number (that’s pretty common in Delhi) but there ought to be simpler ways to do that, this method sounds far too complex….

Oh yes coming back to math, well I am in a math course which is rather weirdly entitled “Honors Calculus”, which involves as much geometry as calculus, and is taught by a professor who’s probably more involved with the course than any of my teachers in the past ever have been. The professor memorized the names of 72 people before the first day of class, he and his wife stood through opening convocation congratulating people as they walked through the gates (a very Brownish thing), he comments on homework within a day, and you can have amazing discussion on his comments. While that has its negative side, it’s usually a lot of fun, and it motivates you to work a lot harder than you otherwise would be. It also comes up in social interactions, so when two people from this particular course meet up, interaction go something like, “Hi, have you started on the homework yet..”, “Hmm don’t you think question is a bit weird”, “Oh have you tried imagining what the function looks like”, “Oh yes….....”, an amazingly long geeky conversation as one of my non-hons calc friends puts it. It is fun, and well we’re college, you have geeky conversations with friends, at night, while sitting in a lounge, and hearing two people go about baking cookies. Conversations such as why the evolutionary process did not generate wheels, or why Moulin Rouge is a brilliant movie, or how farsi is related to other languages, or how to tell someone they’re beautiful in 50 languages.

Oh well I don’t feel like burdening you poor readers with any more reading, I have plenty of my own…..

Ze Panda

Whoa, a 100 fires on a river, umm well I didn’t actually see a 100 bonfires but nevertheless soooo many pretty fires on a river, actual chandeliers with lighted candles outdoor, brilliant music, what else can I say, whoa for Waterfire. That was one pretty exhibit, and I would have actually regretted missing out on this. I would rate this equal if not better than the native American music I heard at Baltimore. Oh well I agree with Brown’s view-book, I live in a historic part of one pretty city.

Oh and don’t let the tranquility fool you, there was lot of firewater, albeit expensive, French/Napa Valley firewater doing the rounds, oh and there were gondolas (no this is not Venice).

Ze Panda

Code is beautiful, anyone who doubts that fact has obviously not seen enough code, and should probably go and look through the 100000 or so lines of code which form the Linux kernel, and weep. The linux kernel on a whole does not have beautiful code, it’s too big to actually possess too much internal beauty (huge chunks of code can be beautiful, it just needs to be a little different), small chunks of code however often posses beauty.

So they have an art exhibition at the Watson Institute for International Studies (that’s quite a mouthful), an exhibition highlighting the beauty of code. Umm well actually it’s not supposed to highlight the beauty of code, and hardly any actual code is displayed, displaying code or displaying the beauty that is code would render us stereotypically geek, and since Brown’s already stereotypically left-leaning liberal, I doubt they’d want to narrow it down any further (like for example to left-leaning liberal geeks). But well it’s an art/computer exhibition, rather ubiquitously labeled “I Love You [rev.eng]” and is running alongside a symposium named “The Power and Pathology of Networks” (that is so intellectually loaded a name, you’d think they’d be deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or something in their). And well it’s on the beauty and the destructive capabilities of (hold your breath) computer viruses (gasp), and it’s actually quite fun. Given it is awfully small, and isn’t all that I expected (I have been waiting for this exhibition for the past week or so, and I tried convincing people to walk down there yesterday night at 8 PM, given it didn’t work and I had to go today morning, but well it was worth a try) and it doesn’t have a fraction of the things it should (c’mon a video of someone reading out the code for the I Love You virus is cool, but not half as cool as actually seeing the virus itself), nevertheless it is fun. It isn’t crowded, so you can’t really experience lines, and it isn’t the most social place on campus, but it has a bunch of people, both old and young, who get to use a joystick and watch their favourite viruses spread across the world and their fave country in accelerated time, whee fun. You also get to try and create your own viruses, sadly not see the effect of those, but at least create your own viruses.

I am also going for something named WaterFire (as opposed to firewater, which I am not going for anytime soon) at 7 PM tonight (might explain why I am not in my room if someone tries to call), which is a rather elegant bunch of 100 bonfires on the three (yes three) river’s which pass through Providence. Now I love water, and I like (not love) fire, and most people around here seem to love firewater so seeing Waterfire should be fun. Besides I am going down there with a bunch of friends, and they’re supposed to have some good classical music so it can’t be all bad.

Ze Panda

Classes start tomorrow, so this is probably a good time to make an entry (hmm is it, well it seems like one so whatever). Observations from the week gone by….

Always carry a flashlight, no matter what anyone says, no country is immune to power cuts. Not carrying a flashlight can be majorly annoying, and it isn’t exactly fun. Chemists don’t always stock flashlights, they do in some countries, but mostly they don’t. Oh and yes I have been loosing power on and off, something about a construction going on outside and well we have had two temporary repairs, hopefully everything should be back to normal tomorrow.

Try and carry a sleeping bag, you can probably get by without one, but sleeping bags unlike sheets and blankets can be used as comfortable pillows during midnight organ concerts. You probably don’t want to carry your own pillows into a room which in all probability is going to serve as your classics classroom for the next semester. People walk in rooms, pillows tend to get dirty, sleeping bags can kindda avoid both. Also always attend midnight organ concerts, they aren’t scary (that’s some sort of an urban legend perpetrated by Cartoon Network and the creators of Adams Family), they are fun, and they have nice effects to them. If you’re especially intelligent, like a friend of mine is, you’ll get the organ player to give you a tour of the entire thing, supposedly fun.

Plays can be fun, commenting on plays can be even more fun, the praise that you receive for your comments are not always fun. And by praise I mean praise, it is weird to have a car pull up in front of you at 8 in the morning, on a deserted street, have a 7’ guy who can obviously crush you into an extremely tiny ball of meat get out of the aforementioned car and have aforementioned guy tell you that your comment was cool. It is even weirder to meet a dozen people at a dance and discuss racial profiling, while trying to meld into the surroundings and eat good food. However do comment on plays, it is fun (oh and the play I am talking about did have a comment section).

If you do not like introducing yourself to people, have a friend do it for you, or better still follow a friend around and whenever they make a friend barge in. It works and it’s an effective way to find out about people without actually putting yourself through any awkwardness.

Gummy bears are hard pieces of jelly, if you are in a gummy bear finding contest, the jelly probably wouldn’t have lumps, the lump is probably a gummy bear. If you do happen to think of it as a lump in the jelly, don’t forget to mention it and crib about it, it may not get you a prize, but lotsa people find that funny, and you will probably find out more about a few people.

Find a group of people you can hang out with, it’s a lot easier than walking around empty streets, trying to find someone to talk to.

Always pick free stuff, it is often useful and umm free stuff’s good. So if someone’s offering you a tiny bottle of perfume you don’t really want, don’t refuse, just take it and keep it, someone might want it or something. Bartering stuff works, but giving i away for free is probably better, you get a friend, and when you need something they have but do not necessarily need you do get that stuff for free.

Do not cringe if your window looks out onto a garbage dump, often times it is funny to peer out of the window, and it provides a nice source of entertainment when you’re tired of reading stuff.

If you wake up at six, while everyone else wakes up at 8 or later, it is probably a good idea to shower and stick to your room, empty deserted streets are not always fun places to be. It is however OK to walk down to the nearest ATM, it’s not crowded and you can do whatever you want.

Banks in general are sources of evil, all bank employees however are not evil. Make sure the bank you sign up with has at least one good employee.

Oh well that’s about all I can think off. Oh and the title of this thing is something I borrowed from a compulsory class meeting I attended a few days ago, it was kindda fun, and it was probably the first time I have heard someone mention Sydney Brener’s name in a lecture for people my age. Hmm I liked the evolutionary geneticist who did that lecture (it was preceded by a lecture by someone who studied the history of South Africa), he was kind of funny, and well he was funny.

Ze Panda

This has been one long hiatus from blogs (neh I haven’t read too many over the past week and a half), and even though loads of people have told me about it, I really haven’t been able to find time to do this. I had originally planned to do a little thing on DC and then talk about this place, but seeing that I have been here for the past two days, I think I am just going to combine everything in one entry.

The flight, hmm well what should I say about that, I survived. As one of my better travelled friends put it, “You are made out of sterner stuff than I thought.” Can’t be that bad you say, well it is. For my flight from India, I was stuck in a really small aisle seat with the seat ahead of me resting on my knees, because the guy sitting there wanted to umm sleep. I know there have been all these reports about deep vein thrombosis, the so-called Economy Class Disease, however I am surprised no one has actually reported broken bones or stuff. For some reason on night flights you really have to scrunch yourself in, and that’s no fun. The flight from Frankfut was better, mostly because I got the front aisle seat, and that had lots of space (yay!!). The 22 hours I spent traveling were not the greatest 22 hours of my life, but well they got me here.

DC’s fun, for the first two day, after that it’s a little boring. No matter what anyone tells you, you can not spend more than two days at the national mall, the museums are big, but they tend to be crowded with lots of little children, and it’s hard to spend too much time in there. People will tell you about the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History, preach about it as if it’s sacrosanct, well Hirshhorn Museum of Sculpture beats both of those hands down, as do the Slacker and Freer Galleries (they are different but not all that different, and well the buildings are connected). Natural history and Air and Space are probably good with when you see the IMAX movie and stuff, but that’s expensive, and umm crowded. DC however has one of the best public transport networks I have ever seen, Providence and Delhi have ugly public transport networks by comparison. Providence however is small, so you could get by walking, though it makes it a problem to go to Warwick and places outside of Providence itself, someone however is gonna teach me something about the damn bus and trolly system that powers this city’s public transport. The tax structure is actually funny, more so because they don’t add taxes to the prices they list, and each state has different levels of taxes, so if you happen to be in Maryland (as I was) it’s actually cheaper to go off to VIrginia and buy stuff, and well Pentagon City (which is in Virginia and has a metro station all to itself) is good (umm excellent, since the only things I bought were from this place), and hellishly cheaper than Union Station or Twinbrook which are the only two shopping places outside of PC that I could access by metro.

Providence, Providence, hmm well it’s been hellishly busy and often times boring, something about this orientation thing is weird, it’s like going through an extended school assembly interspersed with moments of fun. It is also hellishly hot and humid, it’s probably as humid as Delhi, except for the fact that you have ceiling fans and ACs in Delhi. The college, since people have been asking me about this, is far too horizontal as compared to vertical, which is nice right now, since walking is fun, but I think it’s going to be crazy once it’s winter. Problem is most of my classes are probably not centered around one building, and that’s really crazy. The professors however are nice, as are most of the people in my classes, the ones I have met that is, could be a result of taking courses which are regarded über geek. I really can’t wait for classes to start. Anyways I have to rush now, will write more soon.

Ze Panda