216 Days, 6 Countries, and a Whole Lot of Memories to Keep Forever. And Yet: It's Good to Be Back.

The first time I went to Europe was in August 2010. I stayed there for 216 days. And in those 216 days, this is how my time was partitioned geographically:

• 2 days in Prague, Czech Republic
• 3 days in Paris, France
• 4 days in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina
• 4 days in Istanbul, Turkey
• 9 days in London, England
• 73 days in Oxford, England
• 121 days in Budapest, Hungary

My collection of assorted currencies has grown significantly since a year ago, and my passport is decorated with stamps and stickers and visas and even a Hungarian residence permit. World traveler? Not exactly. But I'm definitely more of one now than I was nine months ago.

Anyway, I've been back in the States for over a month now, and I've been back at Stanford for five weeks. It's really good to be back---I had forgotten how beautiful it is here, how blue the sky is, how much I love it here. But what I also forgot was how busy Stanford life is. For some reason, there never seems to be enough time to do all the things I want to do here. It's really odd how it happens, and sometimes I think that time just passes more quickly here. For example: In Budapest, my friends and I would often cook for each other and then spend quite a while just chatting over dinner. Here, I just have enough time to duck in and out of the cafeteria for a quick meal. In Budapest, there were several weekends when I'd either do very little work or no work at all because I was traveling. Here, my weekends are frantic scramblings to get all of my work done, and I would very likely fail if I took a weekend off. In Oxford, I was quite comfortable (busy, but comfortable nevertheless) with three math classes, two math tutorials, attending the weekly representation theory seminar as well as the number theory seminar, a sociology class, and three orchestras. Here, I'm barely managing three math courses, an independent reading, an English course, violin lessons, and one orchestra. In Oxford, I felt like I had all the time in the world to just sit down and learn a lot of math. Here, I feel like I'm constantly running around and I have to squeeze in the time the learn. So question: Where does the time go???

Aside from academics, there are some odds and ends that seem to have carried over from my time abroad. I apparently picked up a slight British accent during my stay in Oxford, and for the first few weeks, my friends pointed out the change in my speech and people I met for the first time asked if I was from the UK. Also, it took me at least a couple of weeks to sort out my confusion about which way to look when crossing the street. So for a while, I would just whip my head back and forth until I was convinced that I wouldn't be greeted by a car's bumper the moment I stepped out into the street. There also seems to be some mild and almost subconscious confusion about the numbering of floors. I live on the third floor of a dorm right now, and I am almost always surprised that I only have to go up two flights of stairs to get up to my room. (In Hungary, and maybe also in Oxford, the floors are numbered as follows: ground floor, first floor, second floor, etc., so that the Hungarian first floor is the American second floor, and so forth.)

In other news, the box of books that I sent to myself from Oxford finally arrived. I shipped three; two home and one to Stanford. They looked like this when I sent them:

The box that arrive here looked like this:

That white sheet of paper is an apology from the San Francisco Bulk Mail Center. It says:

Dear Postal Customer: 

We sincerely regret the damage to your mail during handling in the Postal Service. 

We realize how important your mail is. You have every right to expect your mail to be delivered intact and in good condition. You can be assured that every effort is made to prevent damage. We are constantly striving to improve our processing methods to the extent that even a rare occurrence such as this one can be eliminated. 

Please except our apologies for this most unfortunate incident. 

Again, we regret any inconvenience caused and we look forward to providing you better service. 

Plant Manager
Bulk Mail Center

For me, it didn't really matter because all I shipped were books and paper, so nothing got damaged, but imagine the damage had it been filled with something less resilient to box beatings?! In any case, I'm tremendously pleased to have this box back. It was completely filled with mathy goodness, and now that I have it back, I can look through the hard copy originals of all my notes! (I scanned them before I shipped them so I'd have them on my computer, but I'm really not a fan of reading off a screen.) So all-in-all: YAY!

I guess this was a significantly less cohesive post than I would have wanted considering that this will likely be the last thing I ever write on this blog. But so it goes. I have a regular blog that I might go back to. Here's the link if you're interested.

Well, I guess this is the end of it. 216 days of European awesomeness. It was fantastic. But it's also good to be back. Home sweet home? Yeah, I think so.

Day 211: Back in Budapest, the Land of Paprika, Egg-Topped Pizzas, and Hummus Bar

I'm leaving the UK on Friday, and as a last trip before I depart Europe for the States, I decided to head back to Budapest for an extended weekend. I arrived Wednesday evening and am heading back to Oxford now. It was a bit of a funny feeling, being back in Budapest. Obviously there was none of the crazy culture shock that I experienced when I first arrived in Budapest seven months ago, but it didn't really feel like I had spent that much time away either (which I guess is true, since I left on Christmas eve, just shy of three months ago). In fact, it felt very much like I was returning home after going on a short vacation, as if I lived in Budapest and had gone to Oxford on holiday. Perhaps it's that the only experiences I've had returning to Budapest is after going to Sarajevo, Prague, or Istanbul for a few days as I did last term, and perhaps it's also that a few months really isn't that long. But nevertheless, it did feel a bit strange to go somewhere for a holiday and feel like I was heading "home."

When the plane landed in Budapest, I was surprised how relieved I was to hear Hungarian over the intercom. I didn't understand a word, but I guess I sort of missed hearing it. I also love the way the language sounds. At customs, I greeted them and thanked them in Hungarian, and felt slightly foolish for being a tourist who knows only a few words of the language. But oh well. As an exciting side note, there were several times during my trip when I greeted someone with a "Jo' napolt" ("Good afternoon") or "Jo' este't" ("Good evening") and they proceeded to fire off in rapid Hungarian. Though this was followed by me staring at them blank-faced and utterly lost, I was quite proud of my mastery of this (albeit tiny) subset of the Hungarian language.

Anyway. The evening of my arrival, my friend and I cooked dinner. Baked penne (with basil tomato sauce and loads of cheese) and paprika-infused garlic bread (we added the paprika to make our dinner a Hungarian experience :P). Picture of paprika-infused garlic bread:

On my first full day in Budapest, I went to classes with my friend (who I met through BSM and who is staying in Budapest for another semester). It was quite a heavy day of lectures: Combinatorics, Functional Analysis, Analysis, and then Representation Theory, each of which was 2 hours long. Boy was it a lot of class! At Oxford, I only attended two maths lectures, each of which met twice a week for an hour a piece, and so in that first day in Budapest, I had the same amount of class that I usually have in two full weeks! Even so, it was still a good day, and I got to talk to a couple professors I had last term and I also got to see some high school friends who happen to be in BSM this term. This last part is pretty crazy---one of my high school classmates, a guy I met at a summer math program I did at Stanford, and a couple guys I met through a scholarship program my last year of high school are there now! It's pretty incredible how you run into people you met years ago in the most unexpected places.

That evening, we went to Pizza Boy for dinner. It was fantastic. I love Hungarian pizza. In particular, I love Pizza Boy. They have this "Mix Pizza" option where you can choose what you have on your pizza, and so I got: chicken ham, pepperoni, parmesan cheese, onions, and two eggs. You might think it strange to put eggs on a pizza, but I assure you that it is the most brilliant pizza idea I have ever encountered. If you ever have the opportunity to try an egg-topped pizza, I urge you to try it. And if you're ever in Budapest and want pizza, at Pizza Boy, you definitely won't go wrong. In a final pitch for Pizza Boy, here is a picture of the delicious pizza that I got:

And my friend's delicious one (the Sicilian):

Over the next couple of days, my friend and I walked around the city (and in particular, along the Danube!), and spent a lot of time relaxing and being generally lazy in his apartment. On Friday, we paid a visit to Hummus Bar, the place we used to go with all of our friends before heading to the opera house for an evening out. It felt nostalgic to go back with only a small subset of the group that used to go.

Hummus salad!

Later that day, we baked cookies (that came out mostly like a cake) with m&m's and dark chocolate chunks:

And ate them with Dobos Torta ice cream, which was absurdly sweet, but quite good in small amounts. (Dobos Torta is this chocolate-and-cream cake thing that is distinguishable from other cakes because of it's carmelised sugar top. The ice cream was flavoured like the cake part and then they sprinkled small chunks of the carmelised stuff on top of the ice cream.)

We watched Inglourious Basterds, which is quite an interesting movie. And on Saturday, we lazed around and watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was brilliantly relaxing and stress-free, and after an extremely busy term at Oxford, I quite welcomed the holiday. (The weekend wasn't math-free, and I don't think I would wish it to be. Some mornings, I would wake up and get a couple hours of work done, and I did a bit of reading during some lectures too...) Everything felt so natural and normal and it was quite hard to believe, come Sunday morning, that I was actually leaving, and that this time, I wouldn't be back in a long while.

And that brings me to now. Almost. Today, for the first time in my life, I missed my flight. I was in line at customs and it was terribly slow-moving and by the time I cleared security, my plane was about to take off down the runway. Luckily, there was another flight to Heathrow later in the evening, and so I was put on that flight. I told the lady who helped me that my friend was waiting outside the airport and asked how I could get out, and she said she'd let me out and I had to "arrive" in Budapest, and so I did just that. At customs, the lady asked where I was coming from and I said, "Here. My flight was delayed. Well, actually, I missed my flight." She laughed. I didn't know whether my friend would still be waiting or not, but I crossed my fingers and whispered, "Please still be here, please still be here" under my breath (which must have looked strange to those around me), and as I rushed through the baggage claim and through the items-to-declare area, I thought of all the places I could check to try to catch him: upstairs by the departure stuff, out by the buses, etc. I was in a bit of a panic (leftover adrenaline from the whole missing-flight ordeal), but when I came out into the arrivals lobby, he was waiting there, and a fantastic wave of relief completely vanquished the panic. He said he waited just in case I missed my flight and I asked how he knew to wait for me at the arrivals, and he said he looked around to see where I could possibly come out, and went there. And so we had said goodbye not half an hour earlier, thinking that we wouldn't see each other for months, only to be reunited for a few hours. It was really nice. We left the airport and went to Coffee Heaven, and got these delicious fruit smoothies---our regular favourite mango one and a strawberry one---and chatted for several hours. It was really lovely, and all over again it felt like I was there to stay: how could it be that I was leaving if we were sitting here so naturally and normally, drinking smoothies at the franchise cafe we first encountered in Prague, chatting about things, relaxing and enjoying it all and taking our lovely time?

But it seems that all good things must at some point come to an end, and before we knew it, we were back on the Metro, back on the 200E bus, back in the airport, and saying goodbye all over again. And so it is that I am on the plane and he is at home, that I will soon be in Oxford and he in Budapest, that it will be a while before our geographic locations once again coincide. It is sad to leave, but it also feels like I won't be gone for long. It feels like my "base station" is in Budapest and that I am leaving for Oxford for some short time and then will return soon. Maybe the five months I spent there really had an influence on me. I think over those five months, Budapest really became home. A home away from home.

Day 205 (well, technically 206): Unexpected British-isms in Music Are a Cause of Awkward Walks and Confused Americans (i.e. me)

It turns out that there are loads of differences between the UK and the States in terms of how people do things. One particular example of this has been brought to my attention time and time again: music. I had an orchestra concert tonight (Trinity Orchestra) and I was concertmaster (or leader, as they say here in the UK), which meant that I had to do the whole walking-out-to-a-round-of-applause thing, which was a bit nerve-wracking because a) I was wearing heels, and b) I wasn't quite sure how it all worked.

So I walked out at the beginning of the concert, after everyone else had sat down, and I didn't know if I was supposed to bow or not, so I awkwardly leaned over and asked my stand partner (or desk mate, as they say here). She said I shouldn't bow. So I sat down. (The orchestra had already been tuned.) We had the concert la-dee-dah, and at the end of the concert, the conductor did her thing with the showing of the orchestra and the bowing, and then we all sat down again. And then someone whispered something to me and I couldn't hear, so I was just really confused, but eventually, after an extremely long and awkward period of time when no one knew what to expect, I realised that he was saying "Take a bow!" And so I stood up abruptly and bowed, and then someone behind me whispered, "Now walk!", and so I did and I walked off stage and everyone clapped. I was really confused and I must have looked like a complete fool because I had no idea what was going on. After the concert someone explained the orchestra protocol to me:

• The orchestra will file out and once everyone'e settled, the associate concertmaster (they call it something else here) will tune the orchestra. After that gets worked out, then the concertmaster will walk out and just sit down while everyone claps. Then the conductor will come on. After the concert is over, the conductor will show the orchestra, bow, and then walk off stage. At this point, the concertmaster is supposed to stand, bow, and then also walk off stage. And in some instances, the concertmaster and conductor will both come back out onto the stage and take a bow together.

This is quite different from the States. In my experiences as concertmaster, the standard procedure is as follows:

• The orchestra will file out and once everyone's settled, the concertmaster will walk out, take a bow, and tune the orchestra before sitting down. Then the conductor will walk out. After the concert is over, the conductor will show the orchestra, bow, perhaps shake the concertmaster's hand, and then walk off stage. 

And then that's it. The concertmaster doesn't do anything beyond that first walk. Which is exactly why I was so confused. Man. I should have asked for a step-by-step explanation beforehand. Well, I did, but I only thought to ask what to do when I walked out there... I had no idea that there was anything beyond that. But anyway. Interesting things. And now I know. If ever I am concertmaster in the UK again (which will happen tomorrow, but I don't think there will be the whole walk thing because it's a smaller orchestra), then I will (hopefully) look less like an awkward, bumbling fool.

But these concert protocols are not the only thing in music where there are differences between the UK and the States. The names of things are different too! This really threw me off for a while, but I think I have it down now. Here is a list of the new British English words I have learned over the course of many orchestra rehearsals:

• semi-quaver = sixteenth note
• quaver = eighth note
• crotchet = quarter note
• minim = half note
• semi-breve = whole note
• breve = something twice as long as a whole note ("double note"...?)
• (The above also apply to rests of different lengths.)
• hold (I think?) = fermata

I think there are more, but I can't think of any others at the moment. This may be due to the fact that it is 4 am, and as a person who has a typical sleeping schedule of 11pm-to-7am, this is quite a shock for my body, and as a result I am incredibly exhausted. Especially since I woke up at 7am this morning, did math until class, went to two math lectures, ate lunch, did math until class, went to sociology seminar, had a math tutorial meeting, went to dinner, played a concert, and then came back to do several hours more of math.

Oh, oh, oh! Dinner! It was great. I went to formal hall at Trinity and it was great. Everyone had these black robes on and it's all traditional and old-time-y. We had several courses for dinner, but I think my favourite was the first course: deep-fried brie. My friend (who sponsored me in to formal hall) said that it seems quite British to take lovely French cheese and then deep-fry it. So it's extra healthy. :P

And now I very badly need to go to bed. I think I'm the only awake in the Stanford House right now. Goodness. I'm usually the first one to go to bed, so the times when I'm the only one awake are right when I wake up. I should clean up first. I basically took over half the computer cluster:

Yay. Now, bed.

Day 204: Work, Work, Work

Tomorrow's the start of Oxford's eighth week, which is the last week of Hilary term. I think in a few days, it'll feel quite nostalgic, but for now, I'm sort of drowning in work. But exciting news: I finished the final drafts of both my essays for my sociology course today (YAY!!!), which means that I am done with my coursework for that class! It's been quite busy, so I'm very glad to at least have one thing off my page. To give a gist of how much work I have done/have to do... here's what I've done in the last few days:

• Looked over notes for the Schur algebra seminar
• Read 50 pages of lecture notes on local fields
• Read several chapters on some local representation theory
• Did some exercises on local fields and local representation theory
• Typed stuff
• Wrote up tutorial syllabuses
• Wrote tutorial evaluations
• Edited two papers

I also ran twice! Three miles each time. It's getting too easy. I think I might go for longer next time, whenever that is. Or maybe I should just try to run it faster. In the next couple of days, I will:

• Turn in two papers
• Turn in solutions for local fields
• Turn in solutions for representation theory
• Play in two different orchestra concerts
• Go to my last lectures at Oxford

Hm. It occurs to me that this list isn't actually that long after all. I had this idea that I just had an absolutely massive workload and it would be impossible to fit everything in, but the list isn't actually that insane. I wonder what I've been doing with all of my time, then... I feel like I haven't really done much other than work, and yet it also looks like I'm not actually doing that much work... Hm. I'll think more about this later. It's midnight. So it's past my bedtime. Good night.

Day 201: I'm sorry, Harry, but I just love math more than I love you.

I decided to go to the representation theory seminar instead of doing the Harry Potter tour. I spent a lot of time agonising over this dilemma (an unnecessary amount of time, no doubt) and only made up my mind a couple hours before either event began. Anyway. The talk was fantastic. It connected some things from the earlier parts of the Schur Algebras course I'm attending, so that was really great. It was a good pace for me, too, and so I think it was definitely worth going. Yay. I also went to the number theory seminar (which is right after the rep theory seminar), and that was interesting too, but way over my head. It was entitled "Reductions of local Galois representations arising from Hilbert modular forms" and there were lots of words I didn't understand... But I got a chance to talk to a professor before the lecture, so that was good. I got a couple book recommendations. :)

Anyway. This last week has been insanely busy, and things will continue to be insanely busy until Tuesday, which is when my last official tutorial is, when my last orchestra concert, the day after I have two papers due, etc. I'm trying to keep my productivity up, so I'm working in all sorts of places. The Magdalen library...

You can actually see the window to my room in this picture. It's the
window in the top right of the left window.

The seminar room in the Stanford House...

Oh, as a side note. I FOUND THE BEST MUESLI EVER. Seriously. Amazing. So I've been eating massive amounts of this stuff with Greek yogurt (Fage is my personal recommendation). Om nom nom.

So I finished writing my essays (and now just have to do some revisions before handing them in), and I rewarded myself with several hours of maths. Yayyy.

Trying to learn about Schur algebras...

It's crazy to think about how quickly the term is coming to an end. We just got packets of tutorial evaluation paperwork and it feels like I only just started learning stuff. I'm not sure. I feel like I haven't learned a full quarter's worth of stuff yet, but on the other hand, I've spent much more time working this term than I ever have. It doesn't make any sense to me. Hmph. Anyway. Back to work. Lots to learn in the next few days. Man, I love math. :)

Day 195: (Maths) vs. (Antenatal Care + Harry Potter + Age)

I'm thinking of locking myself in the library (where I have no access to internet, food, or any distractions of any sort) until I:

• Read hundreds of essays on women and health (focus: antenatal care)
• Write my sociology paper on women and health
• Plan out my 45-minute talk on women and health
• Edit my sociology paper on women in mathematics

From this list, you'd think I write sociology papers all day. There are, in fact, more things I need to do:

• Learn about blocks
• Learn about Schur algebras
• Learn about elliptic curves

But the last three things are things I really want to do, so I'm going to ban myself from doing them. It'll be my reward for getting through the sociology stuff (which is actually really interesting, mind you, but I just really want to do maths...).

In other news, I have a dilemma... next Thursday, our junior dean is taking us on a Harry Potter tour. I love Harry Potter. I'm sure it will be absolutely brilliant. But. This is happening at 2:00pm. And at 2:30pm, there is a talk on block components of the lie module for the symmetric group (by Professor Roger Bryant), and how can I miss that?!?!?! And so I have a dilemma: Harry Potter vs. Representation Theory.

Man, there seems to be so much against maths... there's all this sociology that's eating away my time, and there's Harry Potter, and there's also my daily walking-on-heels practice sessions... I should get going and do all this stuff so I have time to learn math. But I might already be too old for that. Enter XKCD:

Day 192: The Mildly Perplexing Matter of the Body Proportions of the Average British Woman

My tutorial was cancelled today (which was sad because I had a lot of trouble focusing on work this morning and I was looking forward to a motivation boost), and so I decided to go on a hunt for shoes. After all, there are only eight days left until the OUPhil concert, which is the first of three orchestra concerts I'll be playing in over the next few weeks. Anyway. So I went to Primark, which has loads of super cheap shoes (sneakers for £2?!?!) and surprisingly, the options available in my size were quite limited. My size was the smallest available, and the upper limit of sizes was, like, five or six sizes above mine. Crazy. And then I thought back to that day when I bought jeans and remembered that when I was looking for my size, oftentimes my size was the largest size available or not available at all. So this is what I think: compared to the average Brit, I have absurdly large thighs and absurdly small feet. I never really thought of myself as oddly proportioned, but, well, here I am in Oxford, monster-thighed and Tinkerbell-footed.

Anyway... Behold! New shoes! They're high heels and all fancy-like. Oh, and price? £10.

But there's just one problem... I said they're heels, right? Well, they're TWO-INCH high heels. That's two inches too much. Being someone who wears Converse everywhere, whether it be to the library, to a park, or even to a date, heels are really out of my comfort zone of footwear. When I got back to my room, I asked my roommate to help me. She told me to just try walking, so I did. And she said: "You're waddling." And so I tried to stop. To compensate, I tried picking up my feet more. And then she said: "And now you look like you're trekking through mud." Oh gosh. I think I'm hopeless. Here is a picture of this heel that may be the end of me.

On a related note: The new jeans I bought the other day are fantastic. They're super comfy and everything and I love them. I'm going to give it another week or so, and if I'm still really gung-ho about them, I might buy another pair (perhaps in a different color/wash).

Now for a complete change of subject... I was uploading the pictures of the shoes to my computer and it turns out that there were other pictures I hadn't uploaded yet. There was one day when I went out running and it was so beautiful outside that I ran back to my room to get my camera. The pictures don't do the scenery justice at all, but trust me. It was beautiful. The sun was setting and there a few clouds in the sky and there was the river/stream along the path and everything.

I'm still feeling really lazy, and I'm not really sure why, so I think I'm going to just take it easy until dinner and then really crack down on work then. Oh wait... I have orchestra tonight. Hm. What to do, what to do. Maybe I'll do a bit of light reading. Or knit. Or maybe I'll just accept that today, I'm just not going to get that much done. So much for the resolution of trying to have (some fraction of) the productivity of Terence Tao.

Day 190: I hate shopping. Also, it's almost the end of term. And just one more thing... I've actually been running!

I hate shopping. I went out for two hours yesterday looking for shoes. I came back with jeans. I'm pretty excited about the purchase of new jeans, but still: no shoes. I'm considering just getting a pair of black sneakers. Appropriate for the stage, where, as a violin-player, my footwear will be quite visible to the audience? We'll see how desperate I get.

I can't believe it's already fifth week. The end of fifth week, in fact. And then it will be sixth week, and then seventh week, and then this Oxford term will be over. :( I'm really enjoying it here... I study most of the time and I have a lot of motivation to work because I love the stuff I get to learn about, and I love that I basically have every waking minute available to just sit down and try to learn something cool. (As in, I don't have that much class, and aside from orchestra rehearsals, I don't really have that much on my schedule.) In some ways, I wish I were staying for an extra term---perhaps then I could continue working with my tutors and we could do even more, now that we've sort of set a foundation for things. But it will be good to head back to the States after what will be seven (?!?!) months of being in Europe. It will be good to go home, and it will be good to return to Stanford after a several-quarter hiatus.

But enough talk about the end of things... I still have a few weeks left here, so I should make the most of it! Oh! I've actually kept up my resolution of running twice a week. It's been good. In fact, I just came back from a run, which puts my total this week to... 6 miles! Most excellent. It makes me feel healthy and athletic (though the second adjective is a pretty big stretch...), and I think it's especially good because when I'm not running or walking to class, I'm sitting at my desk studying, or I'm sitting in front of a stand playing music, or I'm lying in bed being lazy and/or sleeping. So anyway. On with my day. Which means: MATHS! :D

Day 180: Music Is a Cause for Happiness (as is math)

I'm really enjoying my time here in Oxford. It's really fantastic. I'm doing a lot of math (by my standards, at least) (the two-inch binder that I used for my entire semester in Budapest is already full... and it's only Week 4), and I'm also getting quite involved in the music community here.

Just over a week ago, I was sitting in my room thinking about how lovely it would be to get try in integrate myself into the Oxford community. And then I thought about how lovely it would be to meet people through orchestra. Thankfully there are lots of non-auditioning orchestras here and so I joined a couple and it was fantastic. And then a couple days after I went to my first rehearsal, I got an email saying that I had been referred to the Oxford University Philharmonia! (I came across it when I was looking up orchestras but thought I would have no chance of getting to play with them since they are an auditioning group and only hold auditions at the beginning of each academic year.) I was quite skeptical about the prospect of having three orchestras on my plate, along with all the maths I'm trying to learn and everything, but I talked to a few friends and I've decided I'm going to give it a go. If it does turn out that this is just way too much, then I'll drop an orchestra, but for now, I'll try to manage. It's actually really nice---the rehearsals are all in the evening, and my least productive math time is right after dinner, so in some sense, I'm optimizing my time. Maybe. I think...?

Time vs. work dilemma aside... last night, I went to my first OUPhil rehearsal and it was absolutely brilliant. We're playing two gorgeous pieces (Saint-Saens' Symphony No. 3 and the Finzi Cello Concerto with an amazing soloist) and it was just fantastic. I walked home all giddy and music-happy. ^___^

I love music. It's such a nice way to get to know people, and I think it really makes a difference in my own happiness. Last term, at BSM, I think I was much happier once I started doing chamber music stuff with friends, and this term, music has once again made me a happy camper. Yay!

On a completely separate note, I got a haircut.

And yet on another completely separate note, I went on a run this week! So that takes my total this week to: 2.5 miles. I might go on another run tomorrow or something.

Back to music: All this music stuff is genius, but they all have concerts at the end of the term. Which means I will have to dress up. I brought a black dress here, but the only shoes I have are... rain boots, brown slipper-type things, bright orange flip flops, running shoes, and converse. I usually wear my converse with dresses when I'm going out to dinner or something like that, but somehow, I think that wearing converses on stage just isn't going to cut it. Problem. Solution pending.

I'm going to get some lunch (from the best sandwich shop ever---it's called Olive's and it's on High Street, so if you're ever wandering around Oxford, you absolutely must stop by this place). And then I'm off to a seminar by Ben Green!!! I'm unlikely to understand anything in the talk, but that's alright. I think it's good to go anyway. Okay. That's all for now. Bye!

Day 178: Maths and a Picture-Fest of Hamptons, Canterbury, Whitstable, and Dover

I've been doing maths all day. It's fantastic. I spent most of last night and most of today finishing up the remaining problem sheets I had for elliptic curves, which means that starting tomorrow, my tutor and I can go beyond the Oxford course and just do stuff! I'm really excited. I took a break in the middle of all the frantic LaTeX-ing of solutions to go meet with my representation theory tutor, and it was fantastic. Grothendieck groups, decomposition matrices, and oooh, what fun! :D I'm super excited.

On a less math-y note, this last weekend, the Stanford program took a trip to Canterbury and Dover. I took an oath not to do math while we were there, and almost made it through. I caved on the bus ride back, though, and read some lecture notes. Anyway. Pictures!

Palace at Hampton.

Painted wall (that turned out to just be wallpaper)

Gazing up in awe at painted wall
(before finding out that it was just wallpaper)

Rifles, swords, and other weapons of sorts = wall decor?

In case it gets sunny inside. You know.

Coolest trees ever.

Going through the maze!

Grossest looking tree I have ever seen.

Fancy dinner setting.

Yummy tomato and basil soup.

Potatoes, peas, carrots, and hake.

Chocolate mousse!

Our hotel room.

Hotel room take 2. (This was right before we left,
so it's a bit messy...)

Whitstable! Super pretty and super windy and super cold.

Awesome yarn store in Whitstable.

It's TEEMING with yarn!!!

Yarnified bikes. :)

Last meal of fried food I will ever eat. Ever.

Dover castle!

Gorgeous view.

More gorgeous view.

It was a pretty cool trip. We got to see a lot of different parts of England outside Oxford, and it was just generally nifty. It was a lot of bus-riding time, though, so I'm quite glad to not really have to do such long road trips from now on. Anyway. It was fun and relaxing. And it could not have been possible had it not been for the generous donation of the Bings! They, like, paid for everything. Amazing.

Anyway. Must go now. Orchestra rehearsal tonight, and then (surprise, surprise) more maths! Yayayayayay!

Day 173: Chinese New Year and More Resolutions

Happy Chinese New Year! 恭喜發財!


I don't know if making resolutions is a conventional thing to do today, but I love new year's resolutions (even more than I love breaking them), and so I'm going to add a few more to my list.


Firstly, I've noticed that because I spend all of my time either a) doing math, b) walking to hall to gorge on thousands of calories of fried food, c) gorging on said food, or d) sleeping, I have put on some highly unwanted weight. Baaah. So. I have decided (and putting this on my blog somehow makes it more official) that I will run at least twice a week. That is what I am going to do. Yes, indeed.


Also: Have better time management.


And: Eat healthier. (Just because there are chips at hall at every meal doesn't mean that you (or rather, I) have to eat them!)


It is now my bedtime and I have a jam-packed day of maths tomorrow. Good night!


P.S. Sorry the spacing's so strange here. I can't figure out how to fix it.

Day 172: Music, Maths, and Friendly People

About a week ago, someone was generous enough to lend one of his violins to me to play while I'm here in Oxford. Last weekend, I went to play with this informal group of people who just get together and read chamber music together, and that was really great. We played the Bach double (and we had enough instruments to have the orchestra part going, too!) and some stuff by an English composer whose name I can't remember and then we split up into two groups---a quintet for Mozart, and a piano quintet for Brahms. It was really nice to get to play with them, and I am so grateful that I have an instrument to play on while I am here.

A few days later, I decided that it would be an absolutely brilliant idea to join an orchestra! I looked up a bunch of stuff online and tried getting as much information as possible off the internet, which was difficult because a lot of sites were out-of-date and such. In the end, I emailed a couple orchestras, and now I'm in two! I had one rehearsal last night another one tonight, and the one tonight was particularly brilliant.

I was a bit lost getting there (the auditorium is a bit far into the college, and the porter tried to explain it to me, but I'm just terrible with directions), but I saw someone behind me and he happened to be going to rehearsal also! And: he's a maths person!

We got there a bit early so the auditorium wasn't open yet, and there were some other people standing outside the locked doors. They were really friendly so I chatted with them as well. And then people started coming, the doors were unlocked, and everyone helped set up all the chairs and stands for rehearsal.

They were such a friendly and welcoming group. When we had a rehearsal break, I was trying to work out some of the tricky bits in one of the Mendelssohn pieces we were playing (we're doing Symphony No. 5 and the Hebrides Overture) and then someone came over to talk to me. He complimented my playing and introduced himself and asked if I wanted to join everyone in having some biscuits. It was really nice.

(Oh! Interesting thing: they sell juice in concentrated form. As in, you buy a relatively small bottle and it can serve an entire crowd because you dilute it in water. I had never heard of such a thing before.)

Anyway. So I was talking to some people, and it turns out that about 50% of the orchestra are maths people! I have been going to the maths institute for lectures and seminars for the last three weeks with almost no luck at all in meeting anyone. And then I join an orchestra on a whim, and it turns out that it's chock-full of maths people! Who would have guessed?!?!

After rehearsal, we went to a bar to just talk and stuff, and I had an immensely wonderful time getting to know them. We talked about music and maths and all sorts of stuff. It was just fantastic. I really like this orchestra---they're so sociable (in a really casual and welcoming and non-stressful way) and they're really friendly (there were a couple of us who were new to the orchestra, and so we actually went around and did mini-introductions, which was really nice even though I don't remember anyone's name). I know this post is written terribly---I'm just really excited about this whole thing. It's brilliant. Just fantastic. :D

Day 171: -isms

As in, Oxford-isms. Possibly British-isms. This last week, I was asked to:

• Bring my diary to a meeting with my maths tutorial advisor.
• Bring a rubber to orchestra rehearsal.
• Put my work in my advisor's pigeonhole down at the porter's lodge.
• Put my crockery on the rack after I'm finished eating.

It's so great. I love it. I wonder how long it'd take for me to pick up on British English.

Day 170: Remember What Happened to the Dinosaur (continued)

So after that last post about how I want to be motivated to work harder and yaddah yaddah, I am, fortunately enough, not working hard at all. But there is a reason for this! I was reading some things about projective modules and came across this quote:

"Homological algebra starts from the regrettable fact that not all modules are projective. Similarly, algebraic $K$-theory starts from the regrettable fact that not all projective modules are free."
--J. F. Adams, in an introduction to Arūnas Liulevičius's Algebraic Topology book.

And then he goes on to talk about the genius of Serre when he gave a seminar about projective modules and vector bundles. 0_0 Anyway. I just thought it was really great the way Adams worded his sentence.

I went to the library today to check out some books. I originally thought that my college's library didn't have Serre's representation theory book, but it turns out they do! Just one caveat... it's in French. I decided to get it anyway in case I wanted to look through it sometime for fun. I'd love to one day be able to learn math from books in different languages. Anyway. Serre's book. It's crazy. Most of the math books I encounter (which isn't really that many) are yellow (GTM) or blue (GSM) or orange (Dummit and Foote) or maroon (those AMS books) or something along those lines. Serre's book... wait for it... is SILVER. SILVER! Like, metallic silver! Shiny, reflective, I-look-like-I'm-made-of-metal silver! And it has a spifferific cover, too. It says "Représentations Linéaires des Groups Finis" in capital letters in this super-artsy modern typeface. Such a slick design. To match the slick maths that's written inside. In French. Here's a picture of the book:

Mmmm. Maths. ^_^

Oh, so remember when I couldn't upload pictures for a time because I lost my mini-USB-to-big-USB cable? And then I went to the store and bought a super overpriced cable? Well, I found my old cable. It works better too. I think it's faster or something? I don't know. Anyway. Bummer. I wish I found it before I had gone out and bought a new one. Then I'd be 10 pounds richer.

And now I'm going to stop blogging and work instead.