Of Mechanical Bulls and Philosophy

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 .

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

Ze Panda