ThePanda

I was not a member of the security detail at todays concert, though I did get a free ticket in. Well OK, technically I was never a part of the security detail for the show, only for pre-show while it was still out on the Main Green, and while we were needed, but seeing as it rained, and the location moved indoors, they let us leave, with tickets, bright orange/yellow t-shirts which scream “STAFF, SPRING WEEKEND ‘05” up front, and donuts, kind of nice, though I was looking forward to working for a bit, it feels kind of bad to take a ticket off of someone without doing any actual work. Hmm so yes, I did end up going to the show, there was an opening by Matt Nathanson who was really really good, and entertaining, and did this version of Prince’s Starfish and Coffee which pretty much involved everyone in the room singing, and was really really good, his version sounded better than Prince’s original, so ya he was great. Also at this point of time the concert was fairly empty, with people still in bed and stuff, and the volume was reasonable, so it sounded really really cool. He was followed by Howie Day, who I did not like, if only because he seemed to be using a lot of gizmos to modulate stuff, but doing little else in terms of music. Ya he was a single person act, but then so was Matt Nathanson. Finally we had Ben Folds come in, and some of their songs were really cool, but the entire concert was freakishly crowded by now, and it seemed kind of weird, and ya I decided I don’t like seeing so many people at one go, especially when there are flashy lights going around, but he ended with this attempt at conducting all 3000 or so people in their in a concert, and that was sort of funny, and fun to do :). I was asked about whether I was pleased to have been at this concert, and I am undecided, honestly this was my first rock concert, and I was happy to be in their for free, though I would have been as happy had I given my ticket to someone else, I am not sure I would do it too many times again, it is very loud, annoyingly so, and despite there being many people whom I like, it is mostly at event like this that I run into people I detest, I did at this concert too (long story, not worth repeating), and that makes this somewhat of a letdown. Plus well upwards of 5 hours at a place is a lot, and well there are so many people who want to go because they love the bands playing, I hardly know anything about most of the bands, and hence I wouldn’t want people who love them to miss out on what is for them an opportunity of a lifetime, but for me is a mere opportunity to entertain myself for a few hours.

Starfish and Coffee,
Maple Syrup and Jam,
Butterscotch Cloud, Tangerine,
and a side order of Ham
that verse is stuck in my head, it was what we were singing yesterday, but it’s been stuck in my head since, and the fact that we carried this bottle of maple syrup we bought over spring break to the ratty, and the fact that it was so good, does not help. Well OK the Ratty always has maple syrup, usually warm, unlike our really cold syrup, but it’s weird, it has a skin on the surface, and doesn’t taste as good as this one did. Hmm maple syrup is good, no wonder the Canadians use a maple leaf on their flag. In a few minutes I’ll be heading down to CS lab, to test out “dynamic programming”, and programming out the solution for the subset sum problem. It has been hilarious these past few days as we have gone over subset sums, the knapsack problem, and least common substring, cliched beginnings into DP, but will we have much more, I doubt it, and that is sad, I wanted to go through DP in a formal course, if only so I could see non-cliched uses of it, and while I have seen a few, I kind of want to see more, soon…

Four days to finding out whether I am a CS17/18 TA, I wish I found out sooner, I want to do this, and it seems so unlikely that I will, it would be so cool to be a TA for those courses, especially since I have been through them, especially since I know what I wanted someone to tell me, especially because they were both so boring, and yet so much fun in their own way, and especially because that is probably one of the few ways I get to know anyone from the class of 2009, and I really want to know some of them.

As expected I did not get the job where I was asked to sell myself, not as if it was unexpected… As expected not everything is flowing the way it is supposed to, I remember last night, as I stayed up for a while doing math, it was so nice, as if things were going better, and then today comes up, with its myriad of things, problems which I don’t want to deal with, and problems I want to, but don’t honestly have the time to deal with. Even though I have been doing well in both my math classes, I want to spend time on some of the things I have been doing of late, simply because after a semester chock full of this stuff, I feel as if I am floating through most of it, and I know nothing of what is actually going on, or perhaps know some of it, but not that much. Hmm I was just sent an e-mail putting me on the waitlist for BOLT, they promise that most if not all people from the waitlist get to go for the actual thing, they ask me to send them confirmations about whether I shall attend or not, they ask me to send them summer mailing addresses and phone numbers, how can I confirm something I am not sure about, how can I confirm something until I know how the TA situation stands, how can I give a summer mailing address when I have none, because I spend my summer in three distinct places, accessing three distinct mailboxes, how can I give them a summer contact number, since while my cellphone will be with me through Providence and Utah (God I hope Cingular has service in Salt Lake City, they are supposed to, but then Verizon and T-Mobile are supposed to have service in Providence), but then that is that, I am not switching my phone on once I am back home, because it is stupid to do that, so what exactly do they mean by summer contact information, I don’t have any…

I saw more Brown students stand in a queue today than I ever have, I have friends who spent upwards of 14 hours in queue, to get tickets to see Clinton speak at Meehan. Hmm I kind of would have gotten one, except I have classes from 8:30 to 1, and I can’t really skip those, plus I don’t really have the time, what with Gaudi and abstract algebra and everything else.

I am in a library typing a paper, people keep walking by, I want to do this in my room, but this one book I need cannot be checked out, restricted circulation argh. I don’t even know why I am doing this, I almost walked out five minutes ago fully intending to go to the registrar’s office and drop this course, tell the world this was one huge mistake, but then I stayed back, imagining that if I could write 4 pages of utter and complete bullshit, I probably could do it for about 7 more pages too. This is not going well, and takes me back to a conversation yesterday, where I said I try to not take courses I cannot get an A in for a grade, and had jokes about that. But seriously I am taking this course S/NC, and yet I am scared about how my paper is going, even though it probably makes absolutely no difference.

I went and sat through a long lecture given by John Nash, no wait that doesn’t classify itself as a lecture, I sat through a long reading of his paper, where he pretty much projected a copy of a dense academic paper using an OHP, and then read what was contained in their. It was overly crowded, but I honestly don’t think I got much out of it, sure he’s brilliant, but I didn’t want him reading through a paper, actually lecturing would have been awfully nice, besides the topic he was speaking on, which mostly concerned global monetary policy, and a possibility to bring in what he described as an “asymptotic” currency equivalent, and allow people to choose from multiple currency equivalents in a free market like system, sounded OK, but not knowing the evils of the international monetary system as it stands today, I hardly got the essence of why his was so much better, since a lot of it seemed to still suffer from evils which he seemed to have described. The fact that someone compared his monetary system, to the pleasure seeking nature of cocaine addicts, made it sound somewhat weird, oh well, whatever.

I realize this entry has become far too long, hence I must terminate it and begin another one…

Ze Panda

Another day, another blank sheet, another day of studying for Physics, and Math, another day of looking at fun problems sent by TLD, another day of wanting to do so many things, another day when few shall be remembered. Another day, or the first when my keyboards ‘M’ has issues with being itself, I finally know how Apple put keys on these keyboards, the fact that I wasn’t trying to find out, and that this has implications for my typing style, and keyboard, sadden me, oh well shall go to the Bookstore soon to see what can be done.

What is with normal modes, and vibrations, I can understand normal mode, even derive the results if needed to, but I am not sure I remember the stuff, and god my exam is at night… I am scared about this exam, more scared than I have been about most exams in the past year, I know most of the stuff, yes, but I don’t always know what is wanted, and ya it is confusing.

Why oh why do I keep turning to the computer, I have little more than 4 and a half hours before the exam rears it head, I should be studying, even if the books and the notes bore me, much has to be learnt, or nothing at all needs to be, but I am scared, and reading would help I guess, dinner would come sometime before that, and I will be lured away, lured away in search of food, lured away in hopes that the exam does not follow me in, but it will, oh yes it will. I remember last night, walking down by the river alone, seeing this lone person fish, feeling jealous about him fishing there, telling myself I could have been doing that if I didn’t have an exam today, an exam tomorrow, and countless pieces of work, but I was lying, when has any of that ever really stopped me from doing anything, it is true that no matter what I say, I will never truly cast from a bridge on a street in Providence, not only because Providence river is a weird place to fish, but also because no one ever said it was allowed, and while no one else may care, the very thought of doing that of which I am unsure scares me, besides why would I want to fish anyways, there’s little that it affords in terms of anything, and yet I felt jealous about the guy who stood there casting into the river. Another few hours, and I will be sitting in a building, for which Fischer paid a part of the money. I want to go out, go for a lecture given by someone I know from days gone by, a physicist who once e-mailed happy e-mails, but I can’t because I feel I should be studying and because I need to study for test tomorrow, and because I don’t know when his thing ends. This is scary, I am panicking about a test which is real simple, perhaps because people actually told me best of luck today morning, oh how long has it been since I have been wished about an exam in the morning from my parents, oh how long has it been since I have been truly weirded out by an exam. And when this is over, there is tomorrow, with its exam, with a faculty lunch that happened sooner than I expected.

We were being told about duel, and consumption (what is more commonly known as tuberculosis, but consumption, sounds so much cooler) by the man from the land of the kangaroos, or more precisely we were being told about Galois, and Abel and their untimely deaths, respectively by a duel and consumption. ADOOCH day brings lunches with faculty, not for pre-frosh but for us, ok well I admit it’s the Math DUG lunch so is pretty much weekly, and for students. I ended up sitting next to TFB, who will not be my advisor next semester because he’s not going to be at Brown through the Spring of ‘06, he will be teaching me 106 next semester, and he seemed pleased to hear of that. Gosh I know of hardly anyone who’s taking that course, and I have a feeling it will be a major drain on my time next semester, which is not to say 113, would be any less of a drain. So ya we were talking about things, including this guy who was telling me about Bombay’s harbor, and his experiences in India, and stuff. TFB asked me about how the schizophrenic mix of 54 and 153 were working out, and that was quite hilarious, I am not quite sure I want to consider Linear Algebra and abstract algebra schizophrenic, like it’s not that hard to keep them separated…

And then I rode a mechanical bull… It’s been an OK week, my abstract algebra exam went well, I have had two interviews, one of which was okish, the second involved being asked to sell myself (and this was today), and me going bah, I am good at this, I can do it, hence I should be hired, I don’t know how to sell myself when asked to, what in the world is it with people asking that question anyways. So ya after that I had CS class, which was interesting in that we were doing DP, and that has its fun elements, and no mechanical bulls were involved. So anyways, once I got out, I was heading towards a carnival with friends, and they had a mechanical bull, and I ended up going on it, which was somewhat fun, the fact that I semi hurt my leg while getting off the actual platform was not.

CS19 is dead, long live CS19. In a mail sent out minutes ago we were informed CS19 will not come into existence, this is something some of us had been expecting in the past week, and perhaps in someways it is better this way. It is spring weekend, things are crazy, less than 9 people showed up for LinAl today, and this in a class with 40 people. People deciding whether they should go home for the weekend, people telling people about the massive amount of alcohol and other stuff circulating around campus, e-mails about things, posters with the EMS number, requests to call EMS, parties, concerts and other things. I didn’t go to yesterdays concert, and I am not sure about tomorrows, the one yesterday was indoors, and while the one tomorrow is scheduled on the main green, there have been talks about moving it in, seeing as there’s a near 100% chance of rain tomorrow morning. I am sort of disappointed with my abilities to either intimidate potential employers, or of convincing many of them of not having any “salable” qualities, the latest being a rejection from the physics department, probably due to many weird things during the interview, hmph, I am supremely unemployable for most things.

Why do people make so many things a matter of honor, why is the word honor spoken with such ease, why does no one consider the fact that honor is deep, why do people not understand that a point or two off a project is not the same as a loss of honor, in a country where honor codes are prevalent, in a course where every exam I give carries a page requiring a signature to the effect that I have not cheated, where every payment I make carries my signature, where honor is what a lot of things are based on, why do people laugh when I am peeved by e-mails proclaiming I should reclaim my honor. Why do people not understand that honor has deeper meanings, why do people blame it on “cultural-differences”, because only a selected few cared about honor back home, and they were not important. Nothing in my “culture” or anything else has forced me to go through the entire honor thing, it is something I chose because I liked, honor is something I often feel people misunderstand, and I detest the person who wrote that mail to me, ‘coz while he is a TA, and he was rightfully offering me to make up points for an error I did not make, the use of the honor there was inappropriate. I have not discussed this with him, and have not done anything about it, except for sending a terse e-mail, telling him of my observations about the error, but I am going to run into him in lab on Sunday, and seeing as most people are anyways divided about me and CS, I am not sure what this would mean. People tell me I am freaking out about this issue, and I probably am, and when I wake up tomorrow I would probably forget all about this, but currently I am peeved by this, in ways I haven’t been in a while. There was a time in school when I was annoyed about how certain things were defined, about how somethings fell into categories they shouldn’t have fallen into, and this is probably the first time since being at Brown that I am so annoyed by something. What makes it weirder is that he’s a philosophy concentrator, and of all the concentrations in the world, if any should so rightfully understand the concept of honor, it should be him, oh sigh.

I picked JH as an advisor, JH who probably hasn’t been heard of before, is this professor who sat across from me during the lunch this week, and teaches the math crypto course (the crypto course I am not taking), at Brown, and works on number theory. From what I have heard he’s an interesting professor, and he’s in the math department but knows about stuff outside of it, he’s also the guy who made the comments about Bombay’s harbor, so kind of nice :P.

Anyways I am working as concert security sometime early tomorrow, and that might bring new and interesting experiences…

Ze Panda

The good house of Morpheus may be honorable, and may serve an important function, often surpassing most other function, and may have been serving this function for many millennia gone by, but I wish they didn’t wish to help me on Monday evenings. I have too much work (yes I know I am not yet writing 7 papers and things like that, but I am sleepy and I have work, and that is not good). My new, or rather current but old CS project, rather inaptly named Sparkzilla (since it induces no sparks of joy in me) is an attempt to create a browser or more precisely a parser and umm rudiments of Lynx, for a tiny subset of HTML. I should like this, or I would if I stopped feeling that it was a stupid attempt to get me to make something that is unrequired.

I have two exams next week, not an unusual situation, both of them are in the evening, I hate that, why would you have exams from 7-9 PM, why would you like to have exams at 7-9 PM, why do we need a 7 PM or a 9PM or anything in between. Oh and they changed my physics exam to the evening, because people didn’t want to take it in the morning, it makes absolutely no sense, except perhaps that we get more time (10 extra minutes) in the evening as opposed to the morning, is it worth it, hell no. Spring is bad for my work schedule, it is bright and sunny outside, and not so inside, so i go out, to “work”, but then of course I need a computer to work on, and I definitely cannot run all the X-forwarded stuff without an internet connection, and that has additional side effects, leading to a not nice situation. Staying in, makes you yearn for more of the outside, it is spring, this is when spring break should be, when it’s all warm and nice outside, except for of course when it is raining, and it is chilly.

Another weekend has come, I am not sure how I would categorize the week gone by, hmm let us see, I made cotton candy on a candy machine which kept throwing the stuff into the air, and this was fun because most people around ended up with cotton candy in their hair, and then promptly proceeded to watch a movie, which was comic hence did not dampen spirits, I spoke with my advisor and got courses approved, was asked for the n^th time what my concentration was, and still have no clue about that, it is hard, because umm a) I want to do at least one CS course a semester, b) I kind of want to do math as a concentration, I am not completely sure why, since I am not completely sure I am really really really good at this, and it is far shakier ground than CS, c) technically 8 courses of CS should allow me to get a CS AB, but I want an Sc.B. in at least one subject, and Brown requires me to stay here for five years to get an AB-Sc.B. combo, and d) there is at least one option which allows me to graduate with an Sc.M, and an Sc.B., in 4 years, and I could technically try doing that (gives me back my “lost” year), however I am not sure about how or whether I can pull that off in the math department (there definitely are like many people who have done more math before coming to Brown), I don’t know whether I want to pull it off in the CS department, I don’t know whether I want to pull it off elsewhere, and until recently when I was led to believe that the Sc.M. Sc.B. thing took 5 years, I was inclined to not do it, because while I love Brown, I also want to eventually move on and see other places, see Princeton maybe, though I am not sure how hard that will be, or if I can even pull it off, but I am not sure I want to stick around for an extra year, for an extra set of letters behind my name, or even get the extra set of letters without staying for a year, or maybe getting extra set of letters is useful, I don’t know, I am supposed to have until like my 5^th semester, and yet every other person wants to know what I am concentrating in, every interview I go to asks me what I am concentrating in, and in someway it makes sense, but well at the end of two semesters, I am equidistant from a CS, Math, and Physics concentration, and except for knowing I probably don’t want to do the last one, I don’t know which it is, argh.

So ya, somewhere in that rather long and weird conversation with my advisor I was asked why I would or would not consider doing CS, and he said he’d love to know, because the department is trying to get a hook on how to retain people and stuff, which is all good, except I honestly don’t know why I don’t want to do CS. Hmm well OK let us see, to most people who force me to answer this question (usually for weird reason, but then I know two people who are planning on taking over the CS department, and I guessed they were one of the first to ask), I usually tell them I want to go to grad school, and feel it’ll be simpler to shift from Math to CS than the other way round, that getting a math degree in someway forces me to work on a Masters and hopefully a Ph.D. since a math degree is lonely by itself, but no seriously why do I not, I am supposed to send my advisor an e-mail and I am not sure, and this sure is a confounding problem to be faced with on a Friday evening when I am not out because everyone who is not working was out before I realized, and in part because I really should be working. So yes about that, I don’t know what to actually state, I like the mathematical parts of CS, but that is a problem with an easy work around, I don’t want to do some of the lower level courses, well I don’t really need to, I don’t really have any reasons, I don’t know, and darn I need to write this e-mail, soon!

We did not play Myst this week, somewhat disappointing, seeing as I was really confused on Thursday, and playing Myst would probably have been fun. On Wednesday me and a friend walked down to Providence College to get tickets to this music concert which people wanted to attend, and having not had breakfast or lunch, and being slightly confused about my then not complete computer project, which was due at 9 PM, I was kind of worried about the entire thing, but regardless Providence College turned out to have a pretty campus, and was something far different from what I expected it to be (OK at this point I agree, I was remembering sights from Delhi, which are umm let’s just say not pleasant), and had a beautiful, though empty campus. At one point my friend began wondering about where the students were, so that was sort of amusing. Except for a somewhat scary chapel with black flags hanging down the sides, it seemed like a nice place, and hmm they seem to have a bigger common room than Brown, and one with more stuff too, hmm it’d be nice to have one of those around. So yes I came back from that, finished Sparkzilla, which was a minor annoyance, and that was that, it was fun.

Coca-Cola has gone on some sort of a “find new drinks to sell to people, so that they choke in disgust, hate drink, not buy it, so we can close it and make another one” spree, which has involved the creation of such things as Coke C2, and Sprite Remix. Now I am told by sources that some kinds of Spice Remixes are actually good, but the stuff contained inside the “Aruba Jam” Sprite Remix bottle I bought at Store 24 on a whim, was probably the worst drink I have had in a while. Now I cannot say it is the worst drink ever, because there are quite a few brands that I remember as being atrocious, but Sprite Remix is bad, it is ugly, and it should not be drunk, probably. But then again people drink Cherry Coke, and that seems to be bad too, hmm people are different.

Interesting note, but Google accessed from the CS department is minutely different from Google as viewed from my room, the one in the CS department gives a “Graduating, come work for us” link which it obviously doesn’t from my room, hmm simple enough, but interesting nevertheless, though I don’t see their rationale in restricting the link to the CS departments subnet, instead of all of Brown, they after all need people to work in marketing and finances too.

Perplexed!
Ze Panda

It is funny to start off an entry because of spam, but well a bit of spam in my Hotmail account (yup still have one of those, don’t check it often, just let it be around, so that I can catch up on spam and old forwards), something which said “Have you ever considered criminal justice”, got me laughing, hmm things gone by, law exams, funny things… Hmm I believe my finding that funny is an effect of having just returned from a weird History of Architecture class where the grad student who was guest lecturing kept insisting that cast iron is a product of umm taking mined iron and casting it, and wrought iron is slightly more purified version of the same. Hmm I agree wrought iron is slightly more purified version of cast iron, but well mines give people iron ore and not cast iron, and umm the most impure form of iron acquired is pig iron, so in actual practice cast iron is slightly more purified pig iron. It was sort of strange, and I had an intense urge to correct her, except for the fact that there were multiple professors in the room judging her lecture, so it probably was for something. I am intrigued by this, I am not pointing to this as a divide between humanities and sciences, rather as something I found hilarious, hmm people need to remember more things from high school :P.

Random e-mails, oh how random and not so random e-mails rule my life, e-mails have always been important, random e-mails however have never had nearly as much importance as they have had since I came to Brown. Kind of intriguing, but random e-mails hold enormous power in their hands, probably not as much as random AIM conversations, during one of which I am supposed to have gotten a friend to jump out of his chair, but no they are powerful, weirdly so. I am not sure where things lie right now, but an unexpected set of e-mails and replies seem to indicate I might be doing something fun, and not class related with a rather interesting professor I met, and it was somewhat unexpected. Hmm term time fun would be welcome, even if it means additional work, it anyways seems as if I am doing a lot of work, of which there’s only a small part that I am currently enjoying, it keeps varying, but having a source of entertaining work to turn to at some point in time should be awfully fun.

Something tells me I perhaps do not want to do a fifth course, something tells me I perhaps want to finish abstract algebra homework today, even if I have but gotten the questions today, something tells me rescheduling the 4:30 meeting I had today was perhaps not as good an idea as I believed it to be, something tells me I don’t know when we are playing Myst tomorrow, I don’t know whether CS19 would come into existence. The later are mostly moot points, the first one, hmm, I am bored of hearing people tell me that while I sound interesting, the fact that I have five courses perhaps leaves me with little time in which to pursue things outside, that I perhaps should consider waiting longer, that perhaps I should take it more slowly. There is nothing wrong with taking 5 classes, I have time left, or times when I am bored at the very least, and I don’t see why people chose to ignore that, sure I could do more work, but then couldn’t everyone. Hmm well nevertheless, I kind of want to do a 4 course semester, if only because I am not sure the 5 courses are doing me any good, and because umm it would be nice to count days in terms of things other than classes and labs to attend, but I am uncertain whether next semester would be one of those take 4 classes semester, I promised myself that my first semester would have four classes, that fell through, I have a feeling the next semester, my third, will end up with five more classes, hmm so I should have 30 tuition credits at the end of 6 semester, if I continue taking 5 classes that is, is that worth it, I am not completely sure. Hell I am sleepy, that is probably the only thing I am really sure of now, hmm well OK I am a little sure about what Gauss’s Lemma is, but then again Gauss had far too many of those, lemmas and theorems, don’t know which I am sure of…

Why are so many theorems named not after those who proved them, but random second fiddles who did play a role in popularizing it, but were definitely not the most important people. Take the Eisenstein Criterion, named after Ferdinand Eisenstein instead of Schönemann who was supposed to have proved it, there is but a footnote (umm bracketed comment anyways, my book does not seem to believe in the power of footnotes) saying that it was proved by Schöenmann, and is more properly known as the Eisenstein-Schöemann criterion. Now I can see Gauss said Eisenstein was at the epoch of mathematical brilliance, I can see that Eisenstein died young, and such things, but maybe Schöemann should still get credit where credit is due. Seeing as it deals with prime ideals and methods to figure out reducibility, as the abstract algebra professor mentioned a few classes ago, “a large part of our national security is based on the knowledge that things are not easily factorable”, so true for Americans, so true for anyone using a credit card to buy stuff online, so true for any country and every company which works on cryptography.

CS19 is probably coming into existence, which is a good thing, umm it has 8 projects, all the homeworks from 17/18, 4 exams and other things, or that is what the current 17/18 HTAs believe, that may not completely be a good thing, but maybe that is not what they meant after all, and the course is experimental so we don’t know where that is headed. In other news everyone I know seems to colossally hate Yente (that was the CS department match making project I wrote about a few weeks ago, it is named after the matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof or so I am told, have never watched Fiddler on the Roof, can not pay for tickets to Broadway version), and I am kind of concerned about this. Well see I can see people’s point about not really being introduced to any new stuff as such, but I am pretty sure that if we tried to implement theoretically new stuff some of it would fit in, not sure how, but come on matchmaking is something of a weird graph problems, relationships are links, breaking relationships is something in the nature of trying to find a better link, yes the fact that it is a discrete event simulation, and the time-stepped nature of the output essentially implies you have to go through every step of the simulation (or so I believe, could be wrong, though I don’t think anyone did it any other way), and well it was supposed to inspire “object-oriented design” and while I am not sure how much of that it did, it seemed pretty OK. So yes at the end of it did I learn much, umm probably not, but hell it was fun, I loved the other projects for their simplicity, this I loved for its complexity, I don’t think it is a hateable project, I am not sure any project is…

I wandered around Brown and the streets of Providence putting up posters for Spring Weekend, hmm completely worthless, because I am not really that intrigued by the concert, I hardly know any of the bands coming in, and well I will admit here, one of the main reasons I did it was because I want to watch one of the bands play come Spring Weekend and I don’t like the 15 buck entry charge. Well guess what, I think they get their 15 bucks worth when they make you go around putting up posters, staple guns are hard to figure out, and umm they are fun to use, but they tend to loose the loading spring or whatever that stupid thing at the back is called. I am meeting with TLD tomorrow, and that promises to be interesting, or so I hope, darn it would be really really cool if it was interesting. I have a semi-plan for next semester, it is time I get involved in more activities, even if they are with departments rather than student groups, I am going to attend Math-DUG meetings and wander around randomly trying to meet a few more math professors, most of them seem great, like 2/3 really great professor and 1 okish professor, though still better than a lot of people I used to complain about back home is great. I am also going to try and attend a few graphics group and a few more AI/Robotics group meeting at the CS department, learn more Matlab, and Maple, and Mathematica if I can get the damn thing to work, from home or outside Brown, and that hopefully will let me find enough interesting non-classish stuff and ya things I kind of want to find.

Anyways this has gotten much longer than I originally intended for it to be, and there are people annoyed about the length of my posts, and I am trying to write a piece of fiction, so whatever.

Ze Panda

PS At this point in time Blogger refused to work, so I went to sleep intending to post this tomorrow.

So I am back from New York City, and it has been quite a trip, I have stayed up later than I ever have in the United States, gone to a diner at what can be classified as both late night, and early morning (used to be early morning while I was back home), been to a Broadway show, walked along a street where more money changes hands than most countries can rightfully call theirs, and done way more things than I want to describe. But well I will not write one long paragraph after another describing things, what i will do instead is to present a set of observations, some made by me, some by others, on the things I have seen in the days gone by…

Being in a hot tub often leads to something very similar to inebriation, in fact I happen to know from close sources that people are often more easily inebriated when in a hot tub. A hot tub however is one of the coolest things to be in, is übber fun, and hence is something everyone needs to try out.

Times Square is probably one of the worst places to find yourself on a Friday night, it is far too bright, is far too crowded, and requires enormous amounts of elbowing. A friend described it as red light district meets Disneyland, I think it is something like a brighter, flashier version of old Delhi.

New York City is surprisingly expensive, and sometimes surprisingly cheap for things in there. It is probably one of the most expensive cities in terms of transportation and living, and I think a lot of us hated that fact, it however is also one of the few places I have been to where you can buy really really good food at cheapish (by most standards, including standards based in Delhi) rates, it however is not simple, you usually spend almost as much as you would anywhere else in America for food, you could spend a lot more if you eat at the übber expensive places frequented by all those people in New York City.

NYC much like any other city is one of those places where you get to see both the bad and the good sides of life, the übber rich people who could do whatever they please, and the really poor, and in that it is no different from every city in the world. It however is also one of those place which has areas exclusively restricted to the rich, areas which are not ambiguous about which tract of society live their.

I don’t like tall buildings, I am sorry but I simply do not like buildings which are that tall, they confound me, and I have to walk with my head perpetually upwards to see where I am, and they seem far too tall. Buildings should be moderately short, and while I can understand the intense desire of certain people to be at the top of the world I think it’d be pretty cool if some of them stayed somewhat lower.

The Met is far too big, aiming to explore all of it, or even all of its paintings is an extremely ambitious project which should not be undertaken by anyone who cannot walk for miles on end, and even then should not be a journey taken lightly, it will take you long, and there are many things which can be easily missed but should not be.

Central Park is interesting, in that there are things you really want to see, and things you would rather avoid, trust me on that one.

The Central Park Zoo, and its supposedly “gay” penguins are more expensive to visit than the Met, making it somewhat intriguing.

Museums with suggested entrances are really not free, unless you manage to walk in without feeling any guilt, for they have ticket counters and give buttons and stuff out, and umm ya you will pay, you most probably will.

The Met is not the Louvere, since it wasn’t made by exploiting one countries wealth, nor by royal prerogative, they however still have nice paintings, though they don’t have the Mona Lisa, or half the wealth in terms of paintings kept in Louvre. (This was borrowed from a discussion I had with people after we entered the Met)

NYC truly is one of those cities where street photography should be fun, and relatively safe seeing as no less than half a doze people at anytime have cameras on them, I am kind of sad I didn’t carry mine along, I was scared of rain, and stuff. After looking at a photography exhibition at the Met, and at List (Brown’s art building and gallery type thing), I am kind of missing doing any for so long, hmm it is spring there are all those people around, hmm, me not have time…

NYC is interesting but hard to write about, hence other observations shall now follow…

All those people talking about jet lag don’t know the first thing about it, shifting around 5 or 6 whole hours at a time is perfectly understandable, it is fun even, and you can sleep it off, shifting one hour back (as opposed to forward), and living through a 23 hour day without moving an inch, now that is bad, it is so much worse than any jet lag, hmph all those people trashing jet lag, give me jet lag any day…

Spring in New England is beautiful but unpredictable, it can be nice and sunny, toasty even, but then it will rain, and rain cats and dogs it will, and then it will be coolish, and okishly coolish, but well rain so much rain, pfft (hasn’t happened in a while, but is around the corner)...

There are weeks when I have too much work, and weeks when I have not much work, and then there are weeks like this when I don’t have too much work but am not sure, since surely I must have more work (well to be truthful I do, it’s just that I don’t want to do that part of work now), and I guess the last kind of week are my least favorite since I keep shifting between things none of which are too fun or exciting.

Baseball and all that its terminology is associated with is weird, the fact that I have got to hear a lot of baseball terminology is somewhat funny :P.

Hmm that’s all the current observations, or more like I am going to the Gate, and this damn window needs to go…

Ze Panda