ThePanda

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or so says Johnny Walker. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which I read in the duration of my journey of a thousand miles, says that life is like prime numbers, it is what is left when all patterns are removed (well not exactly but I paraphrased it to mean the same thing, so that applies, go to hell)... Anyways every friday the BDH runs something it titles Diamonds and Coal (go figure), and well I am gonna do one of those here, since umm I am lazy, whatever…

A coal to people who stretch their seats back in economy class and refuse to return them to an upright position even when meals are being served, or when requested to do so. When traveling consider your own comfort and a little of everyones you greedy pigs…

A diamond to being in a school which while not being pretentious is related to pretentious schools. Also a diamond to all the people from Harvard, Brown and other underrepresented college who kept me occupied for a good part of my 8 hours at Frankfurt. Whatever I may have said about Harvard, some of the people there are fun and umm some of those nice people love Harvard, hence it has redeeming value…

A ton of coal to Harvard for telling its students that they concentrate in subjects because they’re special, and other such stuff. We at Brown concentrate as opposed to major, we have been doing it before you people at Harvard, and it’s something you copied much like the New Curriculum, stop telling your people you are special because you copied those…

A diamond to the two Slovenians and one Kazakh who found me, and to the ticketing agent who seated us next to each other, and the sweatshirts which helped us identify each other. EDK (using math nomenclature) as I told you before I left, people with Brown Sweatshirts are protected by Jedis…

A few tons of coal (even though it makes it worse) to Delhi for being as dusty as it is now, argh…

A few tons of coal to all those people who were slow in responding to the boarding call for my second flight and thus directly responsible for a delay in take-off and hence landing.

A Diamond to the people who have called and tried to entertain me. A half gram of coal to the people who created an awkward social situation for me today…

A diamond to the wellness box on Lufthansa flights, the snacks and the box are both good :).

A diamond to the Thayer St. candy store, your truffles are much appreciated.

A half-baked diamond (as in something which is still coalish) to being at home, I still wanna go back soon, and I don’t really like it all that much, thanks for all the efforts people have been making though (as in thank you for the effort, it helps :))...

Coal to the person who cut power a few minutes ago, I hate you for that, now give me back my power…

Coal to all those people who do not remember me and feel there’s a difference in my weight, darn you all…

A diamond to all those people from Brown who’ve been coming online on AIM, yay…

A cubic-zirconium to Statement of Interests, you take too much thought…

A diamond to the fiction special issue of the New Yorker, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Burden of Flowers, all fabulous reads which kept me occupied at Boston…

A diamond to the commuter rail link between Providence and Boston, it passes through some rather beautiful places and is generally good…

A diamond to the people who make Providence such a beautiful city…

Coal to Chopsticks which has gone down, or at least was down today…

A diamond to the Lufthansa pilot who announced we were flying over Bangor, Maine, it’s funny after all the I will swim to Maine jokes
Edit

Coal to having no christmas decorations in Delhi. While I know we didn’t ever have that many decorations, a certain amount of decoration was always visible, not seeing those today is weird, and unfortunate…

Merry Christmas everyone, it’s a long night, and a long 3 weeks ahead, I’ll be back at Brown soon…

Ze Panda

Douglas Adams once said that towels are the most important thing for a traveller. Well actually towels in an intrinsic way form a lead into the entire hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and it sort of makes sense, towels are important. So well I have a towel and a few books in my bag, and a magazine, and books I wanna read back home (believe me plane rides this long are awfully boring), and stuff, and I am headed home, or to a vacation spot, which it is is yet to be determined. Chatting online with one of my friends from Pennsylvania, one of those guys who’s room I’d walk into ever so often, and the guy I used to go exploring with, we came to a point where I asked him about how being back home was (he left a few days ago, the first person to depart), and he made a point about how it no longer felt like home, rather like a vacation, and then gave me some logic about it, and I was inclined to believe that. For one this is winter break, not winter in general, so home is a place I am visiting for a vacation, kind of confusing, but well we shalth see, see we shalth.

Oh so yes, it’s snowing outside (not a blizzard as some kind souls would have me believe), and it looks beautiful, the same as it did on the day when it first snowed, and I guess this is a see of, the beauty of snow in Providence on what is my last full day at Providence for a month. This has been one helluva week, though somewhere near the day-before-the-day-before yesterday night at 10 PM we hit peak, and it’s a downhill course from here, as increasingly more people head home. We had Sparkling Apple Cider in Dixie cups, and we mock believed that it was champagne we were having (hey it comes in champagne like bottles, is not alcoholic and doesn’t have grapes, we can believe stuff), and then we all made lil speeches about what this semester had been like (umm mostly we were there celebrating a friends birthday), and then we just sat there listening to songs, lamenting going away and other such stuff. It’s been a sweet semester, meeting people who are fun to hang around, and are generally really good at what they do, oh well I fly home tomorrow…

Ze Panda

MSN is back on, the LiveJournals that were in hibernation are slowly coming back to life, and I have spent time having a fun discussion about Pandas destroying bamboo forests when they are irritated (does not make sense unless taken in context, but I don’t wanna mention the context, so tell you what, find me on IM or in a week back home, or right now, and I might just explain this), and stuff like that. I am done, and people are getting done, and it’s glorious for it would seem a pressure release valve has been released. The fact that grades will be out soon (too soon, some of mine are pouring out right now), doesn’t seem to bother too many people, hell it doesn’t bother me even (if some of my friends read this they would bring big guns and cannons and shoot me down, or maybe shoot down the blog, or send me over to a bamboo forest or something), and it’s kind of nice. People are happier, they are moving around, and leaving, going back home. I have already had two friends leave, they live close enough that they’re driving back, and I am sure the guy who left today would be home in a few hours, planning christmas. On the other hand almost everyone I know is worried about boredom, after all we’re going to be away from this cauldron of activity for like 5 weeks (umm a lil less than 4 in my case, so well somewhere between 3 and 5 weeks), and well even for those who celebrate christmas and new year, the holiday season ends a week into the holidays, and well then weird stuff happens. People have actually worked out IM schedules, so that is kind of nice, wheeee… Home, umm home is a 16 hour flight with an 8 hour stop over away, and is also way warmer than this place.

It was -4 C the day befpre, at one point of time anyways, and a friend and I were discussing stuff over IM, and somewhere down there I realized that -4 is not bad, it doesn’t feel that bad if you are bundled up, and well it’s like walking in a refrigerator, and I feel that’s cool, walking around inside a refrigerator. So as of a few hours minutes ago, I officially do not have anything else to do, I am done with 5 subjects, unless something goes exceptionally wrong, I should end up with 5 credits, 2 more than I need for good standing, and 1 more than I need to have completed an expected average course load for this semester, and the highest number of credits I can earn for this semester. I am 1/8th into getting one of those pieces of parchment, which have stuff written in latin, and big seals and signatures, not a pretty thought because this 8th went rather fast, and didn’t really make that much of a dent…

So a lot of people are ending their exams right around now, and aren’t going home for a while (the weekend, umm makes sense if you live in far off places, semi-far off places either ways, Chicago and California come to mind), and what do people who’ve finished their exams and not had to go back home, well they celebrate to an extent, umm OK they go back to not being stressed out and doing weird stuff. So yesterday I walked down with these two people to the mall, and then spent about an hour and a half in the science fiction section of Borders, realizing it has been months since I have read too many books solely for pleasure, and not constantly being searching for quotes and memorable lines that could be used elsewhere, fun. And they had CDs, and manga, it was amazing, oh as were the rest of our wanderings, far from normal, but done specifically because exams were over. And then there are all these little things people are doing, meeting up, spending as much time as possible in close proximity, because they aren’t seeing each other for the next 4 weeks, and they’ve gotten used to being near each other. Last night one of my friends IMed this guy who had left for Pennsylvania already, asking him to join us at the Ivy Room (which didn’t work out, and we ended up at the Gate again, they really need to work on the Ivy Room, going vegetarian is perfectly OK, having a dirty blender in which people are supposed to make themselves smoothies, and then pay for is not), and it wasn’t even done as a practical joke, she forgot that he had gone back, and that’s kind of strange.

Hmm I realize this is a disjoint entry, but that’s mostly because I have been working on this off and on for a day and a half, and well I have had stuff to do in between, and I have forgotten where this was supposed to go, but well who cares, all that matters is where it goes now. So let us, important stuff accomplished on this day, umm well it’s a really fine day, with beautifullll weather even though it snowed yesterday night (I was asleep, and umm there was no snow accumulation, hence no snow ball fights), well I now have a ticket on the commuter rail, valid for 6 months (more or less, it’s a 180 days according to the rear of the ticket) hence, which shall be used on Tuesday to get me to Boston (hmm I find it strange that tickets on Bonanza are valid for a year after purchase, but MBTA tickets are not, well MBTA’s cheaper, by a bit, however my reasons for going MBTA were not financial, a dollar doesn’t really matter that much, I kind of wanna figure out every mode of transport into and out of Providence, so that I have an easier time finding my way back from Boston, I after all have to come back to Brown, from an airport, and while it will still be late afternoon when I land, I find it easier to navigate transportation modes in Providence, where the train station is a cool looking building, not too far from the bus station, than Boston, where even though the train and bus station are both connected, funky things happen, and you have to figure out ways to do things), and umm I have been to the mall, the libraries, lunch and breakfast, that in my opinion is doing pretty cool. Last class of the semester meets tomorrow, when we sit down and discuss where we did and did not go wrong in the math exam, I really don’t think this exam gave too much which can be discussed, however there was this part where I did actually come across something which sounded interesting, and led to new stuff, so it’s not completely bad, but there’s only so much you can do…

People start heading back home tomorrow, they’ll leave slowly and soon I’ll be joining the last people leaving for the winter, we’ll be gone, and Providence would be a ghost town again, or parts of Providence will be ghostish anyways, and it’ll be a month before it finally comes back to life. Providence was fun, I’ll miss not being here for a month…

Ze Panda

The coolest conversation ever, umm OK I am in the middle of a math final, so this might not sound as cool as it should… Friend to me: I am at the ratty… Hmm I know there are power outlets somewhere around here, but I can’t find them. Me: Oh they’re in the caves towards the main dining area. Friend: I am on the other side. Me: There’re caves on both sides (thinking to myself, even though the other is called the Fortress of Solitude). And then suddenly it strikes me, perhaps 11 people would know what I am referring to inside the Ratty when I talk of the Fortress of Solitude, or the Bat Cave, most people would recognize what the caves are, but they really aren’t what people outside of Brown would take them to be. This is funny, I am at a place where the dining place I have to walk down to each weekend is called the Ratty, and I have had people make jokes about that (not had any your college’s a color jokes yet, though I know someone who’s had that), and here I am talking about caves in there. How many people can claim to sit in a cave and eat brunch and dinner, huh… How many people can ubiquitously tell people about which college they go to, while talking about a color :). Oh and I get back to MSN later this week, but well I don’t see why anyone should be too excited about it, because umm well I am going to be in Delhi in a littttttlllllle more than a week, so why chat when you can talk..

Everyone’s a casualty to this week, people who have spent days and nights at the Rock and the SciLi (the libraries), people who have spent days and night studying, people like me who have seen the glorious sun (and believe me if you live in Rhode Island you learn that sun is to be appreciated, for it makes days brighter and happier) at 1 PM even though they’ve been up since 6 or 7 AM, people who’ve spent a day at the Ratty studying because it’s less distracting and there’s the promise of infinite food (and infinite forks, spoons and knives, if you feel nothing can be infinite you obviously do not live in my world, in the world of observer created reality, I decide what is true, and hence there are an infinite number of spoons, forks and knives at the Ratty, umm this is an inside joke between me and a set of friends I often end up eating with), and other such, it’s been a sad week, next week is so much better, and worse… After a brief class on Saturday (no I don’t usually have classes on Saturday, this is covered under the terms of extenuating circumstances, go think) I will not have another class with my math professor for something like a semester, and then hopefully I’ll finally have him again as a professor (differential geometry), and that’s not a happy though, not having him for a semester is a sad thing. When I initially went into this class I was told that he tends to have what my advisor termed as “groupies”, people who hang around his classes, well having been in his class for a semester I can believe that, and I can see why, he’s a darn good teacher, and a really nice person. I met him before I met my advisor, before it was confirmed that I was taking his math class, before anything happened, and despite all the uncertainty which surrounded the brief meeting that day (I was standing inside Kassar house, the math department, waiting for a friend, when this person walks by me, and I suddenly realize that looks like the professor in the picture, and I tell him hello, and confirm my suspicions, it really was one of those random moments), he actually managed to remember my name, first and last, and he’s worked awfully hard at pronouncing my first name, and he’s a cool teacher, and he congratulated me when I walked through the gate, even though he’d known me through all of one small conversation and half a class, he’s a good professor, and I shall miss not being in his class, but there’s differential geometry to look forward to. And then there’s my classics professor who probably will not be seen again for a long time, not only because I am not exactly planning on taking too many classics classes, but also because he’s a visiting additional professor, and will hence probably disappear somewhere at the end of this semester, he’s a sworn republican (hush, there’re such things as sworn republicans at Brown, but no one knows about them), and he has somewhat of a strange (in my opinion) world view, but he’s been generally a very nice professor, open to questions and debates, and we have had the weirdest debates in his classes. Well it was actually a seminar, and it was restricted to 20 people (something like 18 showed up), and well that helped with the discussions, but no more classics. On the other hand I can look forward to seeing my physics professor next semester, who’s supposed to be one of the more interesting physics professors at Brown (and the guy who sometimes shows up in class wearing shiny (?) pants), and to finally being in a class where Solzenithsyn is used as a course book (that term has all the wrong connotation, I am not even sure I have had a proper textbook for anything save physics), and doing rings and groups and other such fun things I used to read about last year while still at home. Hmm the current plan seems to be somewhat weird, since I know fall will be strange, there’s a CS course I need to take, a CS course I want to, and hence will take (hey I changed courses for Spring so I could do that next fall), a math course that I obviously need to be in, and other such, making it somewhat of a messy semester, argh, decisions, decisions, decisions…

The culminating night of Secret Santa is just a few hours away, it’s early for some of us have exams, notably I have an exam, and I don’t know how to rate this one, I never know how to rate an exam, because I always get it wrong. Secret Santa however is a fun thing to do, giving gifts is wayyy more fun than receiving gifts, it’s fun to see people get puzzled about your gifts, fun to see them scratching their heads as they try to figure out who that gift could have come from, getting generic gifts on the other hand makes it hard to figure out who is giving you all your gifts. I know it’s someone who knows my choices in chocolate, the pack of Lindt Dark Chocolate Swiss Thins, could obviously have not been a lucky pick. On the other hand, knowing every chocolate seller on Thayer (and a candy store, well seriously there are like only three stores which sell chocolates, and they’re all convenience stores, so I have to visit them every now and then), I know Lindt Truffles are sold on Thayer, but thins are slightly harder to get, you can probably get them at the Lindt store at the mall, expensive store (they sell mostly in bulk), though cheaper than Gadiva, which is like an exclusive chocletier (I am surprised that isn’t actually a word, but well that is what they call themselves), the last time I saw one at Union Station it was deserted and hilariously expensive, umm no wonder they sell their chocolate in their own shops and they sell them in single pieces. The candy store on Thayer however is excellent, it’s new, has brilliant chocolate (tried with a bunch of people), and is on Thayer :).

So in the past week I have gone from hearing funny songs, to hearing songs which have words like “My backpack has jets”, “Video killed the radio star”, “It’s demanding to defeat those evil machines”, I have decided that visualizing mathematical functions is actually useful (no small achievement, I had a hard time figuring out why anyone would want to plot a function, since I usually got no information from function plots), though I still try doing it manually rather than using the computer, it’s actually a good idea to do it both ways, and I finally have an answer for each of the “what did you get from this course” questions, umm well for most questions. I am still deciding what I got out of my Physics course, except for a bunch of people who were impressed by the fact that I didn’t find it impossibly hard, I am really unsure of what I got, it’s a hard course, I guess, I’ve been working on a bunch of derivations, even though no one asks any derivations, and the fact that we’re not allowed calculators in the exam (yes we’re not, it’s a good idea in my opinion), there’s a limited amount of mathematical complexity, so as long as you can understand the physics of it, it’s pretty OK to solve. But then again my visa has physics as a potential concentration, and it’ll be weird if I don’t do physics, for one they assure you the strictest background and security checks are carried out on potential physics concentrators, and some people have actually laughed at the fact that my visa so clearly mentions physics, and that now I am no longer sure about physics. Hmm have another 3 semester’s before anyone can force me to decide, 3 semester’s doesn’t seem too far away, it was 4 semesters not so long ago, argh…

Oh by the way, there’s supposedly an interesting question concerning Air France cups, and umm if they still are the same kind as the ones I saw, they have a certain peculiarity that you will not observe on other cups. So if anyone’s flying Air France (KLM-Air France now??) look out for the “famous” Air France cups, and notice the difference :).

Everything before this line was written yesterday, everything after was written today. Does that matter, well yes, I have gone through my Physics final (don’t even know how that went, will find out soon enough, now won’t we), and umm I am almost done with math, done being used in the loosest sense of the word, my classics papers have been dispatched as tiny bits, so hopefully they’ll be acknowledged soon enough, and that will be one of those classes I have taken and finished, and well as of today it’s a week and a day to my flight home, hmm interesting thoughts. Oh and I now have a stuffed panda, the culminating gift of Secret Santa, and that sounds like a nice thing to have… Umm OK it’s more of a panda shaped bean filled pillow, but it’s nice.

Ze Panda
Off to find backpacks with jets…

Ghosts from the past have come haunting again and I don’t think that is fun. It has been too many days since anything went wrong, and I am in a happy place with fun people and interesting things, and yet when I go to bed at night what comes back is all that went wrong. I am no longer sure I have any activities outside of class and that is bad, I started out as a member of so many things, and I have been dropping them one by one, and minor rejections or any minor thing still sets the dreams and the nightmares off. It has been two years since things started going wrong, and it has been a year since they started going right once again, I don’t ask for that year back, because I don’t want it, but remembering all that happened then is not something I want, and no matter how hard I try to forget, the slightest pressure would bring those back. I sit amongst people thinking how carefree they are, how much like I was back in school, and yet I am no longer that way, I didn’t care about grades once, which is what made this place perfect for me, and yet I flip through physics midterm papers, looking at other scores, identifying anyone who has scored higher, despite having a “Very Impressive” stamped on my paper, he doesn’t usually give comments, I know I have to be in the top 2 or 3 to get a comment like that, and yet I flip through the papers looking for a sign, looking for someone who has done something weird, forgetting that I had something more than a 100 a month ago, that there’s a physics exam coming up in less than a week, that I attended a fun lecture 40 minutes ago, that I am in a hallway which can only be described as creepy, on the fifth floor of the Physics and Engineering building, and that it’s 8:30 PM on a dark, rainy night, when I really shouldn’t be there, but am because that’s the only way I would be able to contain my fears, and even then when I finally get to bed it all comes back, the things which went wrong, the months of anguish, the sad thoughts, thoughts about how I could have been here a year earlier, conversations in the past, decisions about stuff, all those letters, all those essays, all that time spent in a school I am not even sure I could enter again, all those sleepless nights spent moving around the web searching for a glimmer of hope, or at least a way out, and that’s all that comes at night. It doesn’t always happen, but it did last night, and it does every time I fear something is about to go wrong, and things hardly ever go wrong, and I should know there is nothing I should be complaining about, people have been through far worse than me… The friend who went back to Israel so that he could avoid being drafted, even though he loved it here, and it seemed like a logical fallacy to go back (he did escape, and he’s back, which is a good thing, seeing how important a friend he is), faced worse than I have in a while, and yet he’s joyous and happy and I am the one scared by stuff. There’s stuff I joined that I actually wanted to do, the MUN, the Math DUG, I did want to give the Putnam, and I did want to be a part of the Brown Space Club, even knowing as I did, that I could never fly the vomit comet for lack of necessary qualifications (in short a passport or a green card which said the United States of America instead of the Republic of India/ ?????? ??????? text it carries on its front cover), and yet I haven’t. The next person has probably done more than I have, and I promised myself I will do stuff once I was here, and I have nothing I can blame not doing stuff on, no lack of time or anything else, just a general fear which pulls me back, a fear which makes me not want to apply for most competitive thing because I fear failing, and cringing and repeatedly thinking about it when I do apply and fail… The only thing I have done to alleviate this situation even by a little is discuss fun stuff with my Math professor, CS professor, and my academic advisor (CS Prof next semester, fun isn’t it), and yet I am not sure that even remotely qualifies as being from anywhere outside of class, since most of those discussions have revolved around stuff I have either done in class or being bored by in class or whatever. Darn I haven’t even attended too many of those cool CS lectures, or spent too much time simply peering out of any floor of the SciLi and observing the beauty that lies outside, or going around photographing the sights of Providence, I did not notice that the sky at Providence was blue when not covered with clouds, a deep dark blue I last saw in Andaman, I haven’t done things I should have done, and I have had the time, it wasn’t about the time or the lack of it, sure I have been busy but my fears have held me back more than my work has and that is scary, which is not entirely a good thing, since if realizing that scary things are holding me back, scares me more, and thus pulls me back even further, then obviously there’s something very very wrong with the entire loop.

And to top it all I have to write stupid paper, with somewhat stupid sources. The CDC says that Alexander the Great could not have malaria because the “characteristic fever curve of Plasmodium Falciparum is missing”, what’s that supposed to mean, the damn royal journals are recorded at 1 day intervals, they tell you whether he did or did not have fever, and how badly he was affected by it, where the hell does the fever curve come in, because I don’t see how someone could extrapolate a non-trustworthy journal into a curve. The journals take up all of 3 pages in both accounts, cover a week or two week long period, and are not detailed. They take time out to tell you about Alexander’s playing dice, sacrificing to the Gods, and hearing Nearchus’s tales of exploration, not about his body temperature and such. Now I don’t understand the biology, but I do to an extent understand the math and I refuse to believe that the CDC has somehow managed to construct a fever curve or garner information which lets them figure such stuff out, from accounts given by Plutarch and Arrian, not first hand accounts since both were born long after Alexander himself was dead, but second hand or in some cases third hand accounts, which really aren’t all that detailed (I have read the accounts, I own the goddamn books), and on the basis of that figured that Alexander could never ever ever have died of malaria. Oh and the CDC also mentions in the same line, that in modern day Mesopotamia Plasmodium vivax is much more common, than the other one. Argh not only do I not understand the damn biology they mention, I am supposed to simplify it for my classics class, and the math which I kind of do understand makes no sense in my opinion, arghhhhhh…

Lunch is such a good time of the day, even when the food itself sucks, as it did today, you can always run into people who’re funny and who make you happy. Besides a bunch of people made a deal that no matter what happens during Reading Week, which is beginning to look more like writing week, I really haven’t done too much reading, writing yes, quite a bit of, I have written code I cannot discuss, papers I do not wish to discuss, position statements as the Russian Federation in response to Chechnyan demands, will be writing solutions for a Math take home post-tomorrow, hmm the only thing I haven’t written in the past few days is a thank you note to any of the generous people who parted with part of their billions so that I could come to Brown, hmm I am sure someone will be contacting me about that soon enough, or maybe they reserve those for the start of the year, though I’d be surprised if they do, because I get to sign a loan agreement each semester (we will hunt you down, and destroy your credit rating, and again hunt you down if you do not pay us back this money that you take. Oh and we can also lock you in the basement of the Rock, or leave you perpetually in the absolute quiet room, or whatever), and other such stuff, we will not worry too much about it, worry a small amount, but with established limits for worrying, and that helps. Hmm at least the class of 2009 does not have to worry about loans anymore, good for ‘em.

So seemingly IBM, which practically owns somewhere near 60% of the computer innovations made in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, and a company which is supposedly really rich, and owns one too many patents, had an urge for a few billion dollars (and something like $600 million in cash), and umm sold off its personal computing division. There are rumors in the air about IBM joining Apple, and forming one big Blue Apple, and that would make sense, since they pretty much manufacture the chips inside the G5, however there is a bit of irony in this all. Back before everything went haywire, you had two kinds of computers, you either had the IBM PCs and compatibles, or the Apple Macintosh, and for a long while those things were called exactly that. Like back when I had a 486, people would specifically state it was an IBM PC compatible, the PC XT arguably forever associated Intel based personal computing devices with IBM, even though the chips were being manufactured by Intel, and it wasn’t until something like 1996 when I actually heard people call these machines Wintels, and even today not too many people call x86s, either IA32s or Wintels, or anything like that, you have Macintoshes, and the IBM compatibles/Pentiums. So now that Big Blue is essentially Macintosh (umm OK for the next 5 years, the company they sold that division off to can use the Think and IBM trademarks), and Macintosh is essentially Big Blue, are people going to change nomenclature, is IBM Compatible going to imply macintoshes, will we have a new name for all the many clones of IA32 systems that exist, umm say Dell-Compatibles or Compaq-Compatibles, no wait Compaq is associated with Alphas, that wouldn’t work, how about simply calling them IA32s, I am sure Intel would like that, but then what do you do when you go to a multi-dealer establishment, go something like, umm I want an IA32 computer, with >blah< >blah< >blah<, nyet, that won’t work, I would feel like a geeky dork saying that, and I am the person who was called a super-nerd by the funny person from Sun in my CS class, no not quite, I doubt they want to do that, sales would plumment, oh wait everyone already calls them Pentiums, ya that would work, it’s popular, but what happens once Intel’s done with Pentium 4’s, do they go on to Pentium 5 or produce a new name, I’d say more rivers in Europe need chips named after them, sticking to Pentium and Itanium simply isn’t fair, there’s the Danube for one, and then there’s Volga, and then how can one forget the Thames and the Cien…

Hmm in the past days I have written (nearly) two twenty page papers, finished a take home final, kind of studied for a sit-down final, am waiting to receive another, got back a midterm (for the same thing I have a sit down final for), finished about 12 course evaluation reports, probably more, since I think it’s about three per class, and hence 15 in all, had donuts in two of my classes, given a presentation with 5 people I didn’t really know before like a week or so ago, bought two gifts for my Secret Santa target, tried to guess who my Secret Santa is, been to a lecture by Naom Chomsky, who spoke a lot of ambiguous sentences according to a friend versed in the art and science of linguistics, decided on at least two of my classes for Fall 2005 (umm Ok one was decided before I came here, the other was decided because my current math prof. is taking the differential geometry class next semester, woo hoo), set up a meeting with academic advisor to discuss the summer (who just thought today was Thursday, shows you I am not the only one who confuses days and dates), and well oh ya heard Messiah, heard funny christmas songs from the dozen or more a cappella groups on campus, found an album which has the words “It is hard to defeat those evil machines”, and “It’ll be tragic if those evil robots win”, and umm discovered that the CS Departments online Finger client is eternally down, or has been since I have been here, and I have to SSH in to get valuable finger info (useful, you can figure out whether someone’s read your mail or not for one), and umm nothing else…

Ze Panda
back to defeating or at least defending something…
PS: Part of this helped me finish my second twenty page paper, part of it was written because yesterday night was weird, blogs work…

So I really shouldn’t be typing this, not with the rest of the 60 pages of typing I have to finish by the end of this week, but then as one of my friend’s so elegantly put it, it’s simpler to type 20 pages about why you cannot type a 20 page paper than to type out the actual 20 page paper, such is life, sad as it may be. I have had one hell of a stressful week, and seemingly I am not alone, for the first time ever hardly anyone had completed the mid-week math homework, the grid was mostly blank, and it looked somewhat sad, people complained, heaved and hoed, but there simply was too much work. The BDH mentioned something about how every 4-6 years we have an exceptionally short fall semester due to the scheduling thingamajig Brown uses to create semesters, and this was one of them. Argh why do I have to being my four years at Brown by walking into the shortest possible semester, darned scheduling thingamajig. So yes my twenty pages on Alexander’s inebriation are going on quite well, I have gotten myself into this writing trot thing, 2 minutes of procrastination per page written, which actually is a pretty big waste of time, but I cannot write that big a paper without some amount of procrastination in between, since the procrastination is like the icing on the cake, it’s what drives me to write one whole page. Argh all those fools back in school who told everyone that anything not science was easy, not true, it’s easier to complete things for subjects which are even mildly sciency because there’s a defined end, sadly there are no defined ends for the humanities and that puts you in a bit of a quandary, for no matter how much you do none of it is enough. Hmm on the other hand considering most of my sources are out of PubMed Entrez makes me wonder whether that actually qualifies as a humanities paper or not, argh, all those pathologists (and boy oh boy my father’s one) working away at deciphering why Alexander the Great died, working away at figuring out whether he was a Type I or a Type II alcoholic, hmm boy oh boy. Some time ago I read one of these ancient cases reanalyzed things on Edgar Alan Poe and on how he might have died as a result of rabies rather than alcoholism as is commonly assumed, and I thought that was pretty cool, little was I to know back then that I’d end up using those, and that too many people in Greece spend too much time worrying about why Alexander the Great died, about the prevalence of malaria, about the prevalence of West Nile Encephalitis in Asia Minor at that point of times, and other such stuff. Boy I’d be lost if it wasn’t for all those entertaining dinner, and pre-dinner conversations which my parents and some of their friends used to end up having, like even some of the journals are stuff I have heard about, does the New England Journal of Medicine sound familiar to anyone…

So now just so I don’t forget, and just so no one asks me about this when I obviously don’t want to go digging in my drawer looking for my ticket under the file from the bank, and the stuff I got from the Bursar’s office yesterday (promissory note, have to sign one of those each semester, yech), I am flying back on the 21^st and reaching earrrrrrrlllllllllllyyyyyyy in the morning on the 23^rd (it’s practically the 22^nd), and then I am sleeping, and waking up, and I don’t know, but this better be a pretty darn good holiday otherwise I am finding myself other stuff to do next winter break, like go to Canada maybe, or Europe or something else. Oh yeah the reason for the dates, well seemingly in my obvious date/day confusion (I can’t associate the both of them for the life of me), not only have I managed to confuse most of my friends, but also my parents, and it’s important that they know the correct dates, and I am sure they’ll read this and mark it on a calendar or something, it’d be sad if they didn’t know, Delhi doesn’t seem all that inviting without people and a car, Providence is tiny, even Boston feels like too big a city after Providence, and Boston’s smaller and way less crowded than Delhi, Delhi’s a scary scary place when compared to Providence, and I have gotten used to this place, well OK not completely, the friendly biker gang I am still not used to, and all the weird car drivers surprise me at times, but it’s kind of nice, not smoky, not full of cars, walking around means running into many of the same people again and again, and even if you don’t know them there’s a certain constantness about it, and well walking around is a lot more pleasurable than walking around in Delhi usually is, and argh we shall see…

Now this is depressing, I am faced with the week from hell and there’s a 40% probability of snow on Monday, which basically means I cannot do anything with the snow on Monday. I wonder whether those chimps who used to plague stuff earlier are making a come back or something, it’s so darn hard to defeat those chimps and those evil machines, it’s not even funny. Like how can this be a coincidence, the last time it snowed here, I was engrossed with a Math midterm, this time I am engrossed with papers, a CS final, study period in general, being a moderately evil Russian, talking to people, figuring out all the answers to the universe, OK the last one is a long shot, it’s not happening, but nevertheless, oh and maybe run half a marathon or so (study break I guess), decide whether I wanna go to the tutor, tutee appreciation dinner (I already got all the appreciation I wanted, when this guy who I used to tutor came up to me in the mailroom and thanked me because he had a good grade in hi math class, now if only he would begin believing that he has more brains than he thinks he does), and do other stuff. At least when I get tired of typing out and doing all this shit tonight, I get to go and listen to Handle’s Messiah, it’s always a pleasure to listen to live performances of music. Oh and I figure out on Saturday what I am and am not TAing next semester, and I really wanna do one particular course, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for that… Ya so getting back to those evil, evil chimps and their conspiracy rays and stuff, this is kindda sad, it’s been like I almost defeated them or at least forgot about them and now they pop back up, damn chimps.

Oh and OCaml again, umm now after finally writing a project in OCaml, I’d say it’s a good language with a hideously under-defined syntax. As a few friends and I have been discussing of late, there probably are only three people in all of this world who know all of the OCaml syntax, and I have a feeling they’re all in France, drinking champagne and working for INRIA, which is a good thing in itself, but it would help if they actually documented some of the weird syntax they have. In the words of my professor, OCaml is a beautiful language, it’s my second most favorite language, however I would not have made the choices they made, for some of them are baaaddddd design choices. I am inclined to agree…

It is 12:51 AM, I started typing this out early in the morning today, and I should probably stop for now, no my paper’s not complete, but I am 17 pages into it, and I know exactly what the next three or four pages are going to be, so a few hours tomorrow morning should herald the end of that, and I shall go down from having 60 pages to 40 pages. I am already down to a mere 43 pages, just one more than the ultimate solution to the question of life the universe and everything in between, it’s not bad for a day, and tomorrow promises to be a glorious day with a finished paper, I can finally start on my CS final. Of course the paper’s not due for more than a week, and that helps, and I haven’t actually typed anything since like 6:30 when I finally got saturated and left. Typing from 7 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening, with an hour long break in between tends to do that, and I decided I don’t really need to be that stressed about work because I can do it, it’s not that hard. I also managed to end up at a unitarian church, where I heard Handle’s Messiah (no not the whole thing, christmas parts mostly), and the Brown orchestra had a pretty cool renderation of it, and then I ended up at Faunce, celebrating it’s 100th birthday, and then at a friend’s room watching something called Kung Faux, cool fun. Now must sleep, must wake early tomorrow, must eat work…

Ze Panda

PS: The title still holds, see me after a week about whether it was the week from hell or not
PPS: The reason I am not online on MSN at my usual hours nowadays is because I get work done that way, being online on MSN is more distracting than being online on AIM, don’t get AIM after reading this, please…
PPPS: Talk to you all, except for the Brown crowd who pull me out for lunch and dinner, and other such stuff, in a week…