ThePanda

I am not sure I should be writing this, sure a lot has happened in the past three or so days since I last checked in, but a lot its yet to happen, and I know a lot has been happening back home. Exun 2k4 just got over for instance, and I kind of miss not being there, being a participant and then a judge have probably been some of the most fun things I have ever done, and while I have done a lot of fun things over this weekend, I kindda miss the entire Exun euphoria, I guess you can’t ever have too much fun, Halloween and Exun together would have been one helluva combination, sadly it’s a combination that can never be, too many factors separate them as entities. Maybe some day in the future, maybe someday these two events belonging to two completely different countries, events separated by 2 oceans, a few seas, and at least 3 continents (or one super-continent if you consider Eurasia and Africa to together form one huge land mass, and hence one huge continent), would come together and be one übber happy event. Wishful thinking however should remain in the realm of wishful thoughts…

Starting off from where I left off the other day, we did carve pumpkins, carving pumpkins is entirely fun, and should be done more often . Well a few of us did stuff before carving pumpkins, and I am happy to say most of the stuff I did before carving pumpkins was happy stuff, stuff that I enjoy doing. It seems as if someone’s changed the probability curve for this weekend, somehow one too many happy things seem to be happening at one go, the probability of such an event is usually low. So yes back to my carving and pre-carving adventures, umm this is kindda hard, well for one, I have finally been to a supermarket in Providence. See two of my friend’s parents carried about 10 pumpkins to Providence, and 10 pumpkins would have been enough, if we hadn’t signed on about 20 people, and one thing led to another and a few of my friends decided to go down to this supermarket downtown and buy a few more pumpkins and carving kits. Since this supermarket trip was to be undertaken right after my CS class, and since the people going were in my CS class, I kindda joined in, and voila I ended up at a supermarket, which sadly didn’t have many pumpkins (one huge, and two small pumpkins were all they had), but on the other hand they did have quite a few things for Halloween, confectionary and carving kits for one. Going to a supermarket is usually not fun, but this was kindda fun, weird . Back from the supermarket, it was time to get Math 35 work out of the way, it’s always essential to get Math 35 work out of the way, besides Math 35 work is usually fun (umm it’s been more of busy-work than actual interesting stuff for the past week or so, hopefully that should change this week). We started carving pumpkins at 10, and we went on for a good while, it was dirty work, dirty work though not often fun, sometimes is a whole lot of fun. I did make a lot of beginners mistakes, which is probably why my pumpkin (it’s grinning down at me as I write this), has two lids held together by a paper clip, but it was fun work. Now one of the sad parts of being in a dorm, is that you’re not allowed to have candles, the fact that each candle actually entails a $100 fine pretty much ensures that no one wants to keep candles in their rooms, you however are allowed to light candles outside, as long as someone’s always nearby to keep watch (or candle-sit I guess ). Somewhere down the lines we decided we needed candles, and when you need candles, but can’t keep them in your room, pretty much buy candles once your pumpkins are outside. Thanks to Store 24 (which is actually open only between 7 AM and 2 AM, the concept of 24 hour stores has sadly escaped Thayer Street), we had candles, we had scented candles, including one which smelt of maple and was lighted inside one of my friend’s (a proud Canadian to be sure) pumpkins, which of course had a maple leaf carved onto it… About half an hour, two singings of O Canada (in English and French), and many gleeful moments later we packed up, stashed our candles in a “secret” hiding place (so that they could be brought out tonight), and went home with our pumpkins… Pumpkin carving’s fun, I shall miss halloween tomorrow…

Friday, well stuff happened on Friday, and I went to a hockey (the ice kind) game. The advantages of being a student include being able to attend home games for free, and hockey’s unusually fun. Brown tied the game against Harvard, which isn’t as good as a win, but well will have to do. Seeing people crash into boards and the like is not that much fun, and I am happy that players cannot have true fights in college hockey, the idea of seeing two people go at each other with hockey sticks is not my idea of fun…

Yesterday I went to a Halloween party dressed up as a Silicon Valley person on a fishing trip, well actually I went with random stuff, things like my blazer, a tie and a formal shirt, stuff I probably wouldn’t wear any place all year (umm except for the Fall Ball next Friday, maybe, attendance is yet to be determined). Oh well having a fishing hat, and random wires helps, the fact that the party was okish doesn’t. Seeing other people in costume was fun, I guess. Oh and I also watched my first movie ever since coming here, Team America, it’s funny, though weird. It’s also one of the stupidest movies I have seen in a long long time.

The time mysteriously and suddenly changed today, everything (my phone included) went back an hour, and I was so not prepared for this change in time, I have had a creepy time all day (guess the fact that it’s halloween only adds to the effect), and every time I see a clock I have to compare times with my watch. People either forget about daylight saving, or change your clocks uniformly, unsynchronized clocks scare me, since I am either always running late, or running early, and I don’t like running late, so please people change time. People back home, the time has changed, I may not be around at the usual time, if you don’t see me on MSN and you usually see me online around that time, blame it on Daylight Saving, and be happy about not having daylight saving. I guess it gets OK after a few days, but right now it’s downright scary, and I am so sure I am going to end up in Physics class at 7:20 tomorrow, or that the physics class would actually be held at 7:20 tomorrow, ugh people warned me about jetlag, and that didn’t affect me, changing timezones while standing still does…

I should go do some more work before the Midnight Organ Concert, the second one this year, and considering I loved the last one, there’s no way I am going to miss this… Organs, midnight and halloween seem to go together, now if only time changes weren’t an integral part of this melee.

Ze Panda

P.S.: http://www.zefrank.com/dtoy_vs_byokal/ is a helluva fun toy, and it was suggested by a friend… Go play

I don’t blog in the middle of the week, it’s not something I can really afford to do, blogging involves a net expenditure of time, time is one of those commodities I don’t have too much of. On the other hand a lot of the stupid work I have is more busy-work than actually stimulating work (see I already went through the mid-week math problems, which are amazingly simple, and don’t get my weekend problem-set until the end of the day, I can afford to call all work busy work), and well I somehow manage to have no work on most Thursdays, umm well I am actually not sure whether I have any work as of now, work’s an undefined quantity… But well yes, this has been one crazy week (so far), and it promises to be crazier still (I guess it helps with the World Series, Halloween, the fact that this is almost mid-semester, my birthday, the presidential elections), and it would be hard to record all that I have seen and observed in one post…

So let’s begin with the obvious (well it was on a Monday), my birthday… Monday was one hell of a confusing day, well OK it was my birthday, but I also had this 8:30 AM physics class that I don’t really enjoy. I got to show a pre-frosh around, a pre-frosh from Maine, who for some strange reason (causality works in strange ways), had been told that he should attend my physics class… The physics class was usual (talk to me for other definitions of usual, comments on this point shall go unanswered, and will in all probability be sent to the deep dark reaches of the vast universe), and I don’t think the pre-frosh walked away any happier than he came in. And then everyone disappeared, which is kindda weird, I guess one of the implication of having internet access 24×7 is this extreme dependance on AIM, and seeing almost everyone disappear is kind of weird, someone or the other is always on AIM, but people literally disappeared that day… I had inklings about secret birthday plans, but I could not have believed disappearance was a dastardly part of the plan (umm it actually wasn’t, people got busy, Monday was a busy day for everyone, umm including me), and it seemed kindda weird, but on the other hand I had to come up with a final list of five course I wanted to pre-register for (I can still shop around for a week in Spring, but pre-reging is important). Eventually the day progresses, I have a productive meeting with my advisor, we finally talk about how most of the CS and Physics course seem unchallenging, I get a weird paper on planar graphs that I am supposed to read and get back to him on, and I am supposed to eventually discuss my plans for the summer, whee fun… And then the earth shook, well figuratively at least, people reappeared, and table slips wishing me happy b’day appeared on tables, ice cream cakes with cones for candles (we unfortunately aren’t allowed to have candles) were conjured by some, amazing gifts, including a construction paper panda, chocolate, works of Escher and a pandaish reconstruction of Badgers were given out (well there were intermediate steps, like leaving the V-Dub and walking over to Andrews, guess what, that doesn’t count )... And all of that celebration made me think about stuff (kindda weird isn’t it, good things make you think, bad things make you think, average things, umm average things don’t exist), considering the fact that I am in college, miles away from home, the fact that all of those people are away from home, the fact that a month and a half ago we probably didn’t even imagine any of us existed, and considering that all of us have stuff we should be doing, we still manage to take the time out to celebrate people’s birthday, make them feel nice about that, we still help people out when they’re sick, we still stick together and make sure that no one can infringe upon our right to be, we still help each other in a myriad of small ways, as friends, as family (?), I don’t know… I’ve always had friends who’ve helped me, always had people who’ve gone that extra step for me, and I love the fact that I have people like that, but the definition of an extra step has somehow changed… Back home going an extra-step meant being around so that I could talk to people, helping me with all those little problems which crop up, problems in math, problems in school, problems finding books, other stuff, it never really went this far, because we always had multiple levels of a social support structure, and within the last month and a half those have been stripped away, you have friends and you have friends, and that’s your support structure at all levels. It’s kindda strange and it’s not so strange, I don’t know, one huge sleepover is how one of my friends described the entire thing about being in a dorm, I am inclined to agree… (Before I get flake from friends back home, lemme just put it this way, we get unlimited amounts of ice cream, we get a lot of stuff, however celebrating someone’s birthday when you have a well defined party or something similar, is way simpler than celebrating it when you’re beginning what is going to be an eventful and probably hard, week, and you’re stuck with food you usually eat, food which as I mentioned previously has a sense of continuity…)

Tuesday, well nothing significant on Tuesday, umm nothing significantly significant at least, except for the Study Break at night, where our faculty fellow had brought in a bunch of pumpkins and paints, and people sat on the floor painting pumpkins (no I didn’t paint a pumpkin, reasons are still to be determined), was fun watching, seemed kindda weird though… Yesterday we had a total lunar eclipse, I did see it (it was brownish red in case any one was wondering about the color), and that was good. We also had this unique thing called the lambda lecture, which involved figuring out the Church numbers and other parts of it, and discussions on Turring, ooh yeah Turring is good. And then (I was hanging around with people in Andrews), I ended up going for the Andrews study break, and had a jolly good time talking to their faculty fellow. For one he’s a Brit, and he kindda knows how the American festivities at this part of the year, don’t correspond to festivities anywhere else in the world, and he went on to repeat stories of Thanksgivings gone by. He’s a funny guy, and the first thing he notices is that I speak British english, rather than American English, gee whiz, I didn’t even know someone could figure that out.

Oh and the Red Sox won for the first time in 83 years, wonder what happens today…

We carve pumpkins tonight

Ze Panda

Statistically speaking, a significant portion of Providence’s population is students. Skewed as it may sound, there are too many colleges which call Providence home, and most colleges have students who call college as opposed to Providence their “home away from home”. Don’t get me wrong, Providence is a brilliant city, well at least the east side of Providence is brilliant, it’s just that it’s too expensive as a city, and you need a car to go to “cheaper” stores, umm well you could use RIPTA busses, but that would be more of an adventure than a trip to the nearest Target/Staples/Walmart/beach/... Actually I am not sure there is a Walmart around, but well that should suffice. Providence however does have some form of a nascent tourism industry, there’s WaterFire through the summer (the last one’s tonight ), then there’s move-in day at Brown and RISD when you have horde’s of parents, and there’s parents weekend/homecoming/stomp Cornell’s football team day/celebrate Red Sox victory day/... Currently there are probably as many parents and siblings, as students at Brown, and it’s somewhat strange. For one you get to see parents in the dining halls, why would you take your parents to the dining halls, when you get to eat the same food every day. Parents, Thayer and restaurants (cheap or otherwise) go together, but well I guess it’s a good way to spend the two guest credits they give us at the beginning of each term (I guess, could be year though).

I kind-of hated the first two days of move-in, because everything was parent centric, and it was kind of hard to keep yourself entertained. Walk anywhere near Faunce Arch and you were sure to be marauded by a huge group of parents wanting to know weird stuff about you and about Brown, it wasn’t too much fun. Parent’s weekend surprisingly is fun, for one people have settled in (you’d hope), and they have friends and social networks, parents stay within those “undeclared” but stringent social groups, and you get to meet only a few people’s parents, and that’s generally a good thing. Besides most people, with or without parents, always end up going to restaurants, and that in general is a good thing. Good food, or bad food, it’s different from the food, the V-Dub or the Ratty serve, umm OK the V-Dub and the Ratty vary their menu every meal, but somehow food at the V-Dub and the Ratty has sense of continuity to it, it’s almost as if no matter what you eat at either of these places, it’s somehow related to whatever you ate earlier.

So yes someone did take me out for dinner Friday night, amazingly enough to an Indian place on Thayer. It is Indian to the extent that most of the staff is Indian or at least South Asian, the paintings and statues all have Ganesh in them, and the serving dishes are similar to the ones you would encounter at some of the Government run restaurants inside jungles. The food however is not Indian, well it’s not American either, so it’s some sort of a fusion thing, but it’s not Indian food. For instance this friend of mine from Virginia was insistent that we all have samosas (amazing, the term ‘samosa’ is included in the OS X spell checker’s word list), because she had had them before (somewhere else, back in Virginia) and they tasted really nice. I would say they looked like samosas (though no samosa I have ever had in Delhi has been folded quite the same way, most people line up the crease or whatever at the center of the samosa, not the edge, well this is kindda hard to explain) and they umm didn’t really taste nice. It was as if someone had taken plain mashed potatoes, put them in a samosas shell, and tried to pass that off as a “authentic” samosa. I could go on to give an entire list of what made that food unauthentic, but it suffices to say, it was not bad food, however it wasn’t Indian food either (as my friend’s mother pointed out, it wasn’t American food either, so I guess we could call it fusion). It was a welcome change from the Ratty and the V-Dub however, so yeah for that ......

Being an international has its obvious advantages at time, and well being “stolen” for dinner is usually fun. One of my other friends wanted me to have dinner with his parents, and the fact that someone else had “stolen” me for the night led to a trip to Sekonk on Saturday morning. Sekonk is the closest I have been to the store lined cities in Maryland, all it has are huge stores, which is usually a good thing, though I couldn’t really come up with too many things I’d want from Target, Best Buy, Circuit City or Staples, and finally ended up going into Staples, and finally buying myself a pair of scissors (yay I can finally snipe through stuff without resorting to borrowing scissors from my roommate/other people in the hall/other people in the vicinity), binders, and ball pen refills, fun…

When someone with a name as interesting as Artemis invites you to a reception, you should generally go, attend, you may find interesting people. The fact that the invitation was on an embossed Brown University invite, with an enclosed RSVP card, was obviously meant for “both” parents and students (logically parent:student ratios should be around 2:1, but experience dictates it’s actually closer to 5:1), had deterred me from actually going. Good thing I met a few friends who insisted that I should, it really was quite nice, and though I had none of the wine nor the food, the place in general was interesting, and really pretty, with 32 flags (countries represented in the class of ‘08) strewn all around, lots of flags always look pretty… Artemis Jukawoski, the Chancellor Emeritus, didn’t give a long speech, he was a poised speaker, and he spoke for about 3 minutes, you have to love speakers like him. I got to meet and talk to my Math 35 TA, got a few questions clarified, finally met Sergei Kruschev (note Sergei, not Nikita, Nikita is long dead), discovered that Sergei Kruschev was originally a physicist, though now he confines himself to teaching Russian history through and after the cold war. A few days ago, one of my friends mentioned how her geology professor (he’s a really popular professor, and he spends a lot of his time helping NASA work on their planetary exploration missions) had returned from Russia, the night before, and how he was regaling them with stories about drinking vodka with old retired cosmonauts, being accosted by pro-communist demonstrators in Red Square and kalashnikov’s. THere were pre-froshs and their parents attending that particular class, and the parents didn’t exactly like this particular class, and my friend was pretty sure that they were not going to spend 40k and send their kids to Brown. Back then I had randomly commented on how a professor’s supposed to profess, and anything anyone tells you is knowledge. Turns out I wasn’t all that off, here you have a physicist, who spent some time teaching physics in the past, regaling people with his story, and doing it well enough to be a professor in International Relations. I wish more people appreciated the fact that everything you learnt was knowledge, knowledge probably applicable at a later date.

Oh and the Red Sox made it to the World Series, that’s been a big thing around here, though I haven’t heard much since their first World Series victory, probably because it isn’t against the Yankees, and because most people haven’t woken up yet… Oh well Red Sox victories equal more fun in my classics class, go Sox….

Ze Panda

“The World is 10 Years Old”, or so claimed a 1999 Merrill Lynch advertisement, the world unfortunately is also very interconnected, and being interconnected it tends to eat time. Or as Einstein put it, time’s relative, and I am on the wrong relativistic track, time dilation seems to be the order of the day. I am in the midst of a take home mid-term (really cannot talk about it for the next 12 hours or so), I have another take home midterm, parent’s weekend and my birthday coming up in the near future, and I really don’t have time for too much. Or maybe I am doing too much, at least if one of my more “enlightened” friends is to be believed, it’s a result of having my fingers in too many pies, oh well more pies add more variety, and it’s generally fun.

I bought shoes yesterday, I know that is in no way connected to what I said before, or what I will later, but it’s the only thing I can actually show people. My lectures, trips, and games are after all momentary, my shoes have some semblance of permanence, you’d probably see me wearing this particular pair through winter, or maybe when I am visiting Delhi. Delhi looms in the distant future, and while I know a lot of people are going to want to kill me for this, I am not “extremely” happy about going back to Delhi for the winter-break, I kind of like it here, and I have more work to do than I have had in years, and frankly it’s a lot more fun than some of the busy work I had back when I was home. It also looks a lot more beautiful than home, but rest assured I am coming to Delhi in December.

Last to last Tuesday (yes, it’s been that late), I got to see some of the innards of Sky Captain, a movie supposed to be releasing soon, a movie which has this nice old tinge (added quite intentionally) which makes it look like a movie out of another era, and a movie worked on by Scott Anderson. Hmm which gets us to who Scott Anderson is, for one Scott Anderson is not John Tukey, but he is an interesting guy. He’s the guy who makes pigs talk, and airfields fly, and he had this lecture at Brown on how computer science is affecting the movie business. He told us a bunch of things which some of us already knew, and showed us a bunch of cool video clips, including one which probably explained why actors are paid that much. Working in a completely blue environment, with no inkling of a location, and acting as if you’re on a gigantic mechanical ship cannot be the simplest thing on the face of the Earth. He gave an interesting talk, I’d tell more about if I could actually find a way to express what I remember, and I unfortunately cannot do that. Well anyways the next day we had this other guy named Tony DeRose come in to talk about how math works in the animation industry. I must Anderson’s presentation looses a lot of its charms after you see DeRose’s presentation, well at least it does for me, because umm DeRose works for Pixar, Pixar produces animated films, and I generally tend to like animations (that’s a causal relation as specified by my political science professor), besides his talk focused a lot more on both the CS and Math parts of how animation works, and included some amount of physics, so that brought his talk right into the intersection of where my interests lie (at present). He primarily talked about how Pixar makes 3D graphics which do not appear pixelated even at high magnifications, and no he did not talk about fractals, or filters. He spoke about how topology and smooth manifolds could be applied to animation, and while I do not presently understand, even to a small extent, the math that goes into producing these structures, it seemed like a lot of fun, and it sounded pretty good.

I also made it to Boston last weekend, and while we ended up spending most of our time in the Museum of Fine Art, and Harvard Square, it was a lot of fun. It also made me appreciate the fact that I was at Brown and not Harvard or MIT, because I am not sure I would have fit into either of those colleges, and it’s not because of the workload or anything else. For one I think most Brown first-years are pulling as much of a course load as people at MIT or Harvard, it’s just that we get to choose our courses a lot more than they do, and that usually means ending up in courses we are actually interested in, and people are generally not all that unhappy about courses. However courses was not my reason for appreciating my being at Brown, simply put Boston was a strange city, it’s too big, and that in my opinion is a problem. Providence is a tiny city, it’s intimate, and because of the six colleges which call this place home, you can go to almost any place and still be within a college campus. At least as far as East Providence (East Providence is supposed to be one of the richest parts of town) in general, and College Hill in particular are concerned, you are always within Brown or RISD’s campus, and because of the amount of cooperation these places seemingly have, you can seamlessly walk from one campus to another, feeling extremely safe, and not competing with anyone. Harvard Square on the other hand is huge, and it probably has more restaurants than a lot of other places in or around Boston, at least that’s the impression I got from all the people who lived in Boston. Now Thayer has good restaurants, and it has a lot of restaurants, however I have never seen it as crowded as Harvard Square was, and I have never seen a reason why Brown should lock any of the gates (other than the Van Wickle gates) leading into the Main Green. Harvard which has a green, almost exactly like Brown’s (umm well OK we don’t have too many residence halls around the Main Green, Harvard does), locks most of its gates, which is creepy, considering it has a part of town all to itself, and it’s a “liberal” institution. I know none of my arguments make any sense, but when I was there those things somehow seemed out of place and I felt I should mention them. So if you have a chance and you’re going to be an undergraduate (a lot of these things are undergrad specific, grad students have a different way of life) come to Brown, forget Harvard (umm I know I would have said that differently if I was at Harvard, but guess what I am not).

Hmm other things have happened, midterms, Eliza, Taboo, Cranium and other such stuff, which have been a very important part of my week, but well I can’t bring myself to describe those right now…..

Ze Panda

There’s a book entitled “All Roads Lead to Delhi”, and while I know all of the contents are written by Ruskin Bond, I wouldn’t go so far as to say the book itself is written by Ruskin Bond. No disrespect to Ruskin Bond, who in my opinion is a very good writer, but the last time I came across this particular book, it seemed to be more of an anthology of his works than an actual book, but well I could be wrong about this. It however is an awfully cool title, and it sounds nice, except for the fact that Delhi is not really all that interesting a place, umm well OK I lived there for far too long, I am saturated with stuff that is Delhi. Roads leading out of Delhi were the kind I liked, roads leading out of Delhi are a good idea, unfortunately there’s an awful paucity of such roads, and such roads are in general overcrowded and ugly. Now currently I am in my room (need to mention that, I could have been in a lounge or something) in a place named Rhode Island (umm before some wise-ass reminds me about this, Rhode Island was originally named The Rhode Islands and Providence Plantations, so the state itself is not an island), awfully close to the bay (umm actually it is the Atlantic Ocean, however the East Coast is awfully uneven and most places you have rocky bays, I learnt this while I was in DC, so you’re gonna have to thank a third-grade geography book for this information), and in my opinion roads should lead to the bay. Bays are beautiful, water bodies in general are beautiful, water bodies with yachts and sail-boats on them are absolutely perfect, and umm horrendous, because you always wish you had one of those (Brown actually has a sailing club, which I would love to join, except for the fact that all the “sailing slots” conflict with my classes), but well it’s beautiful in general, kindda like seeing a Ferrari on the road.

Now a few days ago, a friend took me up to the 13^th floor of the SciLi (not a place I’d normally go to, that’s where they keep books on Technology & Military Sciences), so that we could observe the sights of Providence, and quite a sight it is, it’s absolutely brilliant, and you can also see the Atlantic at the end of Thayer Street. Now Thayer Street is this street with a lot of shops and restaurants (umm not sure I should call all of them restaurants, but whatever, eating places outnumber non-eating places 2 to 1), which lies right next to my dorm (I usually tell people my dorm’s on the intersection of Thayer and Meeting, it actually isn’t, since you have the Meeting Street Café before EmWool), and the Science Library (the Science Library’s a good half mile away from my dorm, but it’s down Thayer) and it is not supposed to take you anywhere near the bay, argh. Well not content to believe what everyone else told me, I walked down Thayer today (umm I and a small pack of Lindt chocolates, shhh) as far as I could go, hoping that I could run into the ocean…..... and I couldn’t reach the ocean. Well Thayer goes on for a while, passes by some really beautiful houses, some of which were built in 1890 and at least one of which was built before 1850, and then ends up in front of a house. You have a perpendicular road at the end of Thayer, and you can walk down to a street parallel to Thayer which does go on for a while, and then you have a parking lot… I CAN’T WALK DOWN TO THE BAY BECAUSE PEOPLE NEED PARKING LOTS… This is so sad. I have been at Brown for a month already, the last time I was anywhere near the Atlantic was on the 6^th when they took us to Bristol, where you have an Anthropology Museum owned by Brown. And the museum overlooks the Atlantic, they even own a part of the shore (ummmmm beach, umm well yes beach), but that’s it. Argh…

Now I could take a bus ride to Newport, they have a harbor there, and umm vacation houses (useful if you know any Kennedys, Rockefellers or someone), and that’s where people go sailing. It’s supposed to be a beautiful place, but I am not sure I should go there alone, now if only I could convince a few people to come along. Oh well whatever I am going to go to Newport, real soon, then Boston, and eventually New York City, though probably not in that order, I don’t know, let us hope…..

Finally achievements of the week, not too many to speak of, but I have a Social Security Number now (no further discussions about my SSN, I definitely don’t want to be a victim of ID theft), I have a printer now, umm make that a photocopier, printer, and scanner, and I have a long weekend coming up next week, woo hoo.

Ze Panda

P.S. No pandas were hurt in the creation of this blog entry. No pandas were forced to love the ocean, strange as it sounds pandas ended up loving the ocean by themselves.
P.P.S. No dolphins were hurt in the creation of this entry, in fact the last time the creator saw a dolphin was well over 4 weeks ago at Baltimore, a beautiful 12 year old dolphin named Chesapeake.
P.P.P.S While the creator tried his best to not hurt any computers in the creation of this particular entry, it is possible that tiny pieces of plastic in a particular PowerBook’s keyboard suffered because of repeated taps on the keys.
P.P.P.P.S I have seen a Ferrari on the road, I have also seen a Ferrari parked next to a hotel. My comparisions are not theoretical.