Random Delhi Update (Wishing I was elsewhere)

Hmm, right about 8 days before I get back to Providence, ending my longest separation from said place after being there, woohoo for that. Thanks to CIS and other people involved in getting me to Providence, I don't pay for early arrival at Providence, which makes me happy, for umm all the right reasons. I am also scheduled to be brought up to speed on research as it progresses in Providence/have admitted that while a lot of it is really übber cool, I am still utterly and completely unsure about where exactly all of this is supposed to be headed, am scheduled to attend some sort of a training exercise, post which I would perhaps know where/what exactly I am working on, and other bit sized pieces of information about how to get my work done. I hear the phones used require logins, which somehow reeks of IP telephony, and seems funkyishly cool, besides being two floors below the I-Lab where I spent most of my research time, in the CIT, where I will end up having at least two classes, hopefully more (no disrespect intended, but B&H is sucky) here. I also managed to convince myself (hard sell, I am scared about amount of work I am looking at with 113) that I should take, or at least try taking combinatorial topology along with everything else I am doing, bringing my total course tally up to 5, and all of these are going to be for a grade, so woohoo. Hmm, I am currently really excited about Differential Geometry (TFB, woohooo), Combinatorial Topology (don't know anything about person teaching it, but seems like an exciting course), and cryptography, am less so about 113 (don't really like professor or supposed amount of work too much), and am kind of terrified about GM10. I haven't learnt a new language, or even tried starting out fresh with a language since 3rd grade, when they introduced us to bite sized chunks of sanskrit, was absolutely atrocious at both hindi and sanskrit (still am :D), and as far as I can ascertain, have been loosing abilities at certain languages for some time. On the other hand, English is closer to German than to either of those two languages, German sounds cool, I am not going to be given massive amounts of text to translate into another hateable language as was done with sanskrit (translations into hindi) and probably therefore have a chance of not being bored with it, besides 10, and 11 are supposed to be somewhat more conversational than everything else. Oh well, there is hope yet...


So yes, about all that TV watching, reading and other things. Moo by Jane Smiley is an awesome book, it is my second recommendation for the summer, and I liked it better than Paradise Lost and The Last Tycon, am currently reading Oni, which is this cool cold war assassin novel thingee, and seems to be fun in a trashy, Tom Clancy sort of way. I have also managed to find a good lineup of TV programs to keep me semi-entertained through at least an hour in the morning, and one of my favorites so far (reasons coming up) has been Wonderfall, which is cool because its main protagonist happens to be a Brown graduate (woohoo), half the people encountered so far seem to have been to Brown or something, it talks about Niagra falls, and is pretty funny.


I guess I really don't have much to say, I have been around a bit, mostly at home, my padre's over at Bali, and I hear there's a good chance I might get some cool Sennheisers for my iPod, which is good, I guess. There are a bunch of people who have been through Delhi, a few of whom I was supposed to meet, and subsequently ended up not meeting, not because I was busy, is strange in that way. I am still to meet usual fixtures in Delhi, though there's a good chance said meeting will take place tomorrow, the only time during this visit, and someone assured me about a possible meeting over the phone earlier today, though I am extremely queasy about this actually happening, and the results of such a meeting. I guess it's about time I faced up to this, time's passed, I have different people I am really close to, and while there are at least two people in Delhi outside of my parents I am still really close to, I am not sure about all the other people I know, I guess I have changed, and I have different expectations from what I had before, and let's face it, even my counsellor thinks my calling Brown fun is a sign of bad things. Oh well, if and when said meeting takes place, I expect I'll be faced with one royal mess/one grand day, am not sure which, but it shall be interesting, I guess interesting it shall be for sure.


On the research front, I saw some really interesting code, which finally did something provably good, which is a good thing™ in itself, that was kind of what prompted mail about übber coolness and being unaware of actual thing, summer's at an end, and I guess this is when I jump head first into doing this along with everything else, and in the process figuring out how much of what I can do. I also kind of wanna discuss stuff like the Caltech SURF, and Math research in general with JH, along with figuring out whether I actually want to concentrate in math. Two semesters to decide, if last year was any indication, two semesters is not really enough time, bah.


Hmm all of this entry sounds like screaming, bored, weirdly worded, bullshit, which it is, and shall continue to be until more interesting things happen, or I decide/realize I can actually explain what I am doing research wise online. BTW, somewhere in the course of the next few weeks/months/time units, I plan a majorly big change in this blog, and umm other things, perhaps more pictures (inspired by the admissions page having pictures which serve as too bitter a reminder of Brown), perhaps a change in software (am looking at Drupal and TextPattern which both seem cool), and other minor changes, perhaps a reduction in blogging, perhaps not, I don't know, I am going to change a few things, and I'll post things when they change, and they probably will be really visible changes.

Ze Panda

PS: The rest of the title, it's because I suggested to my mom that we head over to Geneva which seemed to be cooler than Delhi, and her thoughts on this, I was tired or sleepy can't remember which, and I was partially joking.

Delhi Vol. 1

Many days it has been since this was updated, and while I cannot honestly use being excessively busy as an excuse for my absence, in some ways it was being busy without working which indeed kept me away. If I have had one really productive day since I last wrote, it has to be yesterday, when I did get a major chunk of work done at night, I guess I have grown lazy since I last wrote, and things have been strange. Let's see, when I last left this blog I was nearing the end of my stay at Park City, and I figure it was right as I had two really cool lectures left, and other such things. Those came to pass, and the 3 days of flight happened to be upon me, the day before I actually flew out, or rather in a more accurate sense, the midnight of the day I flew out was occupied by such activities as acquiring the new Harry Potter (I flew out on the same day as it was released), attending parties for the release, and hitting up Java Cow one last time. I must express my love for Cows ice cream, and the Java Cow place on Main St, at Park City, it probably is the only thing at Park City that I shall truly miss, and I am forced to admit that the Canucks seem to have bloody good ice cream. It is interesting to note however that I don't find this in the slightest bit strange, something I could probably attribute to this past year, seeing as before then I remember people not buying ice cream, and a subsequent noticeable drop in ice cream availability during the "winters" in Delhi, and to think of it Delhi doesn't really get that cold.


Subsequently post Park City I have gotten back to Delhi, and contrary to suggestions from certain quarters, I am not engaged in, or even planning on engaging myself in any acts involving cattle and such things. Delhi's been pretty OK so far, it has been hot for the most part of it, and well I took a week off from Delhi to go off to Orissa, there really isn't much to write about from Orissa, I saw a few cool places, and had some really good food, though it still doesn't match places like the Andamans on the food front, I guess sea food, despite the fact that it is on the coast, is not Orissa's forte/is expensive/is not eaten by people unless special occasions arise/... It was intriguing in other ways, I guess I have done a good job of staying away from that one place for a really long time, or well to be more accurate, my parents have been indulgent with my requests not go there, and I guess now that I've been there once, I really don't plan on going back for a long time, as someone I know put it, the world's still out there waiting to be explored. Delhi's sort of lonely though, so far I can count on having called four people at most, one of them doesn't live here, and is merely visiting for a week or so, and the other two have been around, I still haven't hung out with people I usually hangout with when I am in Delhi, and said people are currently busy, which makes absolute sense, but is at the same time not conducive to the entire notion of hanging out. Well the food's been good, not eating at Subways everyday is a good thing, I guess, and it is kind of nice to have two refrigerators full of food just lying there, though I guess my snack coffers are still as empty as they usually are. I also ended up going to school, my first trip back since I went to Brown, and I guess it's still there, but it has lost its novelty, its not the place I used to spend whole days at, and the only reason I have been really about going to school this time round is because of the people I knew in there, and even they are fast disappearing. It is interesting though, I have gotten over a lot of what school was, I love Brown now, nearly everyone I know is at Brown, and being back at school isn't as exciting as it once was, I loved being at school through 2003, even after I had graduated, it was probably the closest thing to a second home I had at that time, and now it is just there, it is in my past, left there to never be forgotten, and a part of me, but not something that I really miss or anything. Exun however is a completely different matter, and I guess I was back at school because of Exun, and we had this little (like it was tiny compared to some of the things I have done before) programming thingamajig, telling people about recursion and DP, and trying to inspire some ideas, and I guess I noticed quite a few anomalies between how me and IB used to do it before and how we did it now. For one, because of our own divergent reasons, a lot of our explanations involved not talking about the code part of it worked, in fact if it wasn't IB, I had this entire grand plan about not writing a single line of code through the recursion part of it, but between Azgez and IB we kind of had to write code. I am however not entirely sure about how I'd deal with this if I had to do it again, I can still write C code, it's not even hard to do, it's just that between MATLAB and all the Scheme and OCaml I did last year, and all of the being annoyed over Java has really turned me into not liking what I did all through school that much anymore, and I guess I was just weirded out by some of the things I was doing, and I guess I managed to freak a fair number of people out. Pizza Hut has grow more expensive, and that's a weird thing, their pizzas really haven't improved, they need to learn from Antonio's even, and Antonio's isn't even close to the best pizza I have ever eaten (that was thanks to NTM in the city).


Other than sleeping, eating, and watching copious amounts of television (it hasn't improved, it has gotten worse, I have little else to do), I have been writing e-mails and reading papers, which contrary to how it may sound is pretty exciting, and I ran into this really cool thing yesterday, which had me all excited, and I have a mail from R of R&N (the book) fame, and I am kind of pleased about that, like it's really cool and all, and I guess the research is beginning to sound like more fun, even though I am hopelessly lost trying to figure out how Expectation Maximization works and about all those things I missed while I was lazing around in Delhi/Orissa, I kind of which I had my copy of R&N with me, though between the 6 books I am definitely carrying back, and the 3 or so others I plan on fitting in if I have space, I don't think bringing R&N would have been a really good idea.


Ooh things to appreciate, I forgot to ever mention that while I was dreading the entire act of American Air from Boston to London/Heathrow, I really really loved AA, it is the best airline I have been in so far, and the 777's they fly are majestic, they have absolutely gargantuan seats, the in-flight entertainment is good in an extremely non-sucky way, the food is good, and the people on it are really really good, and if it wasn't in the red whenever news about its financial status seeps through, I would make an effort to fly them wherever I could. Then of course of CNET's shenanigans in response to their 10^th anniversary/birthday, and I guess I really like the The Top 10 Tech We Miss list, though I wish I had had more direct experience with a Newton, I have heard a lot about it, though I have never really seen one.


Less than 3 weeks to Providence, that's worth looking forward to, yay.

Ze Panda

The Park City Chronicles 3

So it is the 5th, as I sit here in a sunlit hotel room, still at Park City, sitting here on the table, typing as I see my roommate still asleep. I already attended one of the lectures, and half slept through a description of mitosis, and it finally helps that I remember most of what happened through that entire thing. For those who are interested, and there can't be many out there, no, I finally did not attend the parade or the fireworks display, the parade because it looked far too crowded, and the fireworks because they were at night, were fireworks, and didn't inspire me to go. I did watch some part of Law and Order instead, so I guess it works out :). It is funny, 9 days , well 8 days of lectures/stuff (nearly half a day has passed for today, next Wednesday is a half day), give or take a few and I'd be done with this, and I am actually not annoyed by that knowledge, don't get me wrong, frequenting some of the trails over the past few days, creating my own "adventures" (getting lost on a trail for instance), seeing some of the off road places this place has, has led me to appreciate some of the beauty of this place, and it's really quite fun exploring it, but this is no Providence, I probably spend more of my "downtime" in the computer lab than anywhere else, if only because that's one of the nicer places to sit and use the wireless connectivity, and my keyboards beginning to irritate me, darn place sans Apple stores I know of (oh wait that was Delhi at one time :P), it'd be good to eventually get this thing set right.


It is the second week of stuff here, and while I know we get more notes for the only undergrad course I have been attending. the grad courses still seem to be proceeding uniformly, perhaps something which is to be expected seeing as at least one of them comes to an end tomorrow, I wonder who will take over for that, I hope it's not another foray into cardiac rhythms, I am sure ending unusual/bad cardiac rhythms is a good thing, and I am sure the mathematic modeling helps, but I don't want to see another chick "embryo's" heart and hear about how the electrodes were arranged inside it, like ugh, too much biology, need fresh unadulterated math or CS. Oh well, I know now why I don't take courses with the AM department, though I am told some of their courses are cool, might take Topics in Chaos, which JKD was taking earlier this year, it seemed umm interesting, and ya, I kind of already own the book :P.


Have to admit a day rolled over here, else a lot of this would not make sense. I went to this really cool, and cheap (which seems rare for Park City) mexican place yesterday, or more precisely someone took me there and that was fun, I finally know why people tend to like some of Mexican food, it really is that good :). Day rolls over, I had a mildly better start to the day today, reaching Breakfast at a time such that I could actually get a good seat, with people, not alone, and could go online later. Ever so often during lunch they people here try "social engineering", or basically to give us assigned seats so we can "get to know" other people attending this thing. The last two times we had any such attempts at social engineering, the way group dynamics worked were that we had big conversations, I zone out, and am subsequently lucky to remember even the names of most people, umm wait I must admit, I don't remember too many names from today. However I did meet someone from the Research Program today who was interested in talking to me, while the school teacher program people discussed things amongst themselves. That was fun, and I found at least one thing which sounded coolish in math biology. And I played soccer at night, yup I did play soccer, it was fun (apart from ball on face at one time), and ya, it really was worse than playing soccer at lower altitudes, so I guess I am not automatically acclimatized to high altitudes :P. I meant to write more, but I slept, and hence didn't.

Note to world: Stop blowing yourself up, it's really not fun to check on news every morning and find news of things blowing up instead of fun things. Oh and to mirror something mentioned on Plastic, what's with sucky/little news coverage outside of the obvious online, like so far the only good news stories I have seen on today's London stuff has been from the BBC (duh), which also spends a lot of time putting out announcements for people in London.

They have new stuff starting up today, including a series of lectures on something close to neuroscience I am told, that might be a whole lot more fun than things have been so far, hence am looking forward to that, hence am going to go away for now.

OK so the neuroscience lectures are interesting, and it is kind of funky, and I knew some of what he was talking about (OK, there were parts which I knew nothing about, but which still looked pretty), and umm ya. And I am sitting at a thing about Math in Africa, parts of which are sort of funny, but sound generally like a lot of the things you don't attend at school :).


OK, so I am going to stop this, so I can shutdown the computer, and eventually go for eating stuff.

Ze Panda