Day 170: Remember What Happened to the Dinosaur

I wish I were Terence Tao. Actually, I would settle for much less than that. I wish that I could do one (I'm only asking for one!) of the following:

• Type as fast as he can.
• Be able to concentrate half as hard as he can.
• Think a quarter as he can.
• Have 1/2^n of his geniusness, where n is a positive integer that is neither too large nor too small, whatever that means.

Imagine how much you could get done if you could just have one of these things tacked onto yourself like some sort of Tao-superpower. I haven't made any new year's resolutions yet (or at least I don't remember them), so I think I'll start now. First one: learn to type as fast as Terence Tao and slowly work up to being able to concentrate as hard as him. 

I realized today that I've been in Europe for nearly five months now. Craziness. And in 46 days, I will be packing my bags and heading home to the US. It's hard to believe it's been this long already. I should really blog more while I'm still here. I'm not sure why, but I just feel like I should. You know, if I were Terence Tao, I would have already written over 500 pages of just blog material. If I were Terence Tao, I would also have a lot easier of a time learning all this maths. (Oh, oh! Look at that! It's maths!)

In the last few weeks, my friend was in Cambridge, so he came to see me and I went to see him, and as a consequence, work got pushed aside. So over the last few days, I've been spending almost every waking hour doing maths. I haven't been super productive and I know I definitely could have concentrated harder and worked for longer hours than I actually did, but it was okay. Summary:

• Problem sets done: 5
• Pages of textbooks read: 25 (counting generously)
• Pages of LaTeX: 21
• Papers read: 0
• Papers supposed to have read: 1
• Pages of textbooks supposed to have read: 50 (underestimating)
• Wikipedia articles read (in effort to learn (basic) category theory): 2130857

Not bad, I'd say, but it could be better. My plan tonight? MORE MATHS!!! Luckily, my roommate returned from her weekend trip to Paris, and so I am no longer spending my days talking to no one other than myself, maths, and the lady who sold me a sandwich down at the shop across the street. Have you ever spent several days completely isolated from the outside world? I think it's sort of nice sometimes. It's like you're (at last) relieved from the pressure of conforming to social norms. But then coming out of this isolation is the most bizarre thing. Last night, I stepped out of my room, and someone started talking to me, and I suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable, as if it was completely ridiculous to be expected to communicate with people and respond in a timely manner. There were some awkward moments, I think, when I got all tied up because I was stressed about responding in a reasonable amount of time but the stress simultaneously prevented me from responding. But point is: my roommate is back. And so: I'm hoping that her presence will prevent me from going completely mad.

Dinner has started and I think I'm hungry, so for now, here's an onslaught of pictures:

Cambridge?

Cambridge!

Sunset in Cambridge!

And again!

At my friend's place, they had this
glass sculpture of bok choy. Hars. 

I was worried initially that we weren't going to have enough to eat.
There were three of us. I think this could have fed eight.

We made garlic bread too. Mmmmm!

This is behind the maths institute at Oxford.
"REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DINOSAUR!"

"---I DID, AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME."

My college (Magdalen) at Oxford.

You're not allowed to step on the grass. Unless you're faculty, I think.

"Formerly Grove Street." Heh heh.

My friend said: "But Bill Stickers is innocent!"
I thought he was very clever until he told me that he
actually stole the line from somewhere else.

Mmmm! Peri-peri chicken at Nando's.

Now dinner time. So. Toodle-oo! Hopefully I'll update more soon. Maybe more pictures will come, too. Oh, and it seems I've mentioned Terence Tao a lot in this post. If you don't know who he is, you could Google him and check out his blog and stuffs.