Today was excellent. (Which certainly means that I should start working T minus 24 hours ago.) It began with a venture across the river to Buda as a group to get residence permits. I had actually never crossed the river in the day. I cannot believe I did not bring my camera. We went out to lunch and then I went to the mall with a few girls from my program. Malls are all the same, by the way. Price and attitude wise. I was going to head home, as the mall is one stop away from my transfer, but there were police and ambulances and Terez Korut, a large street, was closed in both directions. People were just gathering on the platform, staring.
I decided to detour to the grocery store. That is, I even knew where a nearby grocery store was. I knew what I wanted to get, and I didn’t have to stare like a fool at every picture on every package while getting it. When I got to the juice isle, I actually thought “I am not paying 399 for a liter of mango juice.” On my walk home, I started laughing when I realized that is about two dollars. I have paid twice that for an odwalla.
This led me to a strange thought. It is starting to feel like I live here. I love the Metro that takes me from the nearest commercial area home. It is the oldest in europe, and runs right under the street. The M1. The yellow line. Unlike the M2 and M3, it is old. You do not take a tilted escalator which gives you vertigo past angled walls posted with ads and scrawled with graffiti. You take the stairs, down to a tunnel supported with decoratively cast beams. On the tram, there was a little girl counting to a hundred for her father. I wished I could tell her that is what I learned in school yesterday, too. (Actually, I could only guarantee getting up to 20). Hösők Terre is my stop. I walk home without thinking about where I am going. I am just walking home.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
17-2-09 At long last
Sziastok!
It has been a long time since I have posted, and I would like to let everyone know this is exactly because things are going very well and I have been busy. I hope that I will have more time to update on a regular basis when I am no longer working on REU applications all the time. It takes the gab right out of me (I know, right?)
Lots has happened. (Quiet, paperclip, it says what I want it to.) I have been over to Buda, and the trip across the river was lovely. This, of course, was on a day I elected not to bring my camera, so better luck next time.
I have been to Tesco, which is best described as others in my program have labelled it, the “Hungarian walmart with a soul” I think they are just being optimistic, as I see nothing guaranteeing that this megamart is different. It was certainly incongruous, compared with most of the small shops around here. (Fruit stores are abundant; grocery stores do not even have the same produce selection.) I cannot complain too much about the Tesco, though. It is the first place where I have found either tofu or peanut butter.
At the moment, I am in the computer lab of college international waiting for my Hungarian class to start. It is nice to have a place to wait, but the keyboard has different locations for many punctuation marks, so I keep typing sentences which have punctuation in the correct places, even if it is the wrong symbols. But look! £€ Good thing for my teachers that there is no way I will Tex here with the backslash on the wrong side, those look quite a bit like variables (more like sets, but anyway).
Wow, a spider that was just strolling across my wrist is very lucky I did not have more forceful reflexes. He must hear computer keys and mouse clicks all the time.
What was I saying? Classes have started, so I have more math facts to share and less time to share them. I am really enjoying all of my classes, and all of my professors, so far. And, I found a thermos, so I can at least bring coffee to school. This just goes to show I had indeed been in WA for too long.
Today I went to topology, which I may add to my schedule just to see numbers less than one this semester. Or this year. On the professor’s little (wait, what happened to the quotation mark?…) “introduce yourself” sheet, I left the mathematical interest spot blank. No reason to tell a professor right off that you don’t think you like his subject. Unless it is physics. So it goes.
I am getting the hang of the public transportation here, having only taken the tram the wrong way once in the last three days. This misadventure ended with me running into three other BSM participants who invited me to dinner. So it ended up that I had made a mistake in my favour. (heheh! Word just changed “favor to favour” Colour. Funny.
In Hungarian, I am learning how to count to twenty for a quiz in half an hour. It really gives you perspective on doing higher mathematics all the time when you have to learn to count. That, or I cannot escape numbers anywhere. Maybe both seem good.
Math fact of the day. Aut(J(5,2,0)=120 Where J(5,2,0) is a rather famous Johnson graph.
It has been a long time since I have posted, and I would like to let everyone know this is exactly because things are going very well and I have been busy. I hope that I will have more time to update on a regular basis when I am no longer working on REU applications all the time. It takes the gab right out of me (I know, right?)
Lots has happened. (Quiet, paperclip, it says what I want it to.) I have been over to Buda, and the trip across the river was lovely. This, of course, was on a day I elected not to bring my camera, so better luck next time.
I have been to Tesco, which is best described as others in my program have labelled it, the “Hungarian walmart with a soul” I think they are just being optimistic, as I see nothing guaranteeing that this megamart is different. It was certainly incongruous, compared with most of the small shops around here. (Fruit stores are abundant; grocery stores do not even have the same produce selection.) I cannot complain too much about the Tesco, though. It is the first place where I have found either tofu or peanut butter.
At the moment, I am in the computer lab of college international waiting for my Hungarian class to start. It is nice to have a place to wait, but the keyboard has different locations for many punctuation marks, so I keep typing sentences which have punctuation in the correct places, even if it is the wrong symbols. But look! £€ Good thing for my teachers that there is no way I will Tex here with the backslash on the wrong side, those look quite a bit like variables (more like sets, but anyway).
Wow, a spider that was just strolling across my wrist is very lucky I did not have more forceful reflexes. He must hear computer keys and mouse clicks all the time.
What was I saying? Classes have started, so I have more math facts to share and less time to share them. I am really enjoying all of my classes, and all of my professors, so far. And, I found a thermos, so I can at least bring coffee to school. This just goes to show I had indeed been in WA for too long.
Today I went to topology, which I may add to my schedule just to see numbers less than one this semester. Or this year. On the professor’s little (wait, what happened to the quotation mark?…) “introduce yourself” sheet, I left the mathematical interest spot blank. No reason to tell a professor right off that you don’t think you like his subject. Unless it is physics. So it goes.
I am getting the hang of the public transportation here, having only taken the tram the wrong way once in the last three days. This misadventure ended with me running into three other BSM participants who invited me to dinner. So it ended up that I had made a mistake in my favour. (heheh! Word just changed “favor to favour” Colour. Funny.
In Hungarian, I am learning how to count to twenty for a quiz in half an hour. It really gives you perspective on doing higher mathematics all the time when you have to learn to count. That, or I cannot escape numbers anywhere. Maybe both seem good.
Math fact of the day. Aut(J(5,2,0)=120 Where J(5,2,0) is a rather famous Johnson graph.
Monday, February 9, 2009
09-02-09 This blog may as well be called math and vegetarianism.
No pictures today. As a consolation prize, writing! (heh)
I have learned (and am learning) my lesson about starting the wash anytime anyone might be sleeping. I would probably stop it now if I was sure I knew how to do so. The washing machine in my apartment consists of a metal cylinder suspended in the square body such that its faces are perpendicular to the left and right sides. It then spins like you would spin if you were facing it as if to load and then did a summersault. There is a curved metal lid which fits onto an opening on this cylinder through which you load clothes. It is an interesting design, although it would seem to me that lifting wet clothes out of the water at any point must take a stronger motor than just rotating them in the water like ours do at home. (That is, like mine does at home, I guess the ones in the UPS dorm loaded through the face of a cylinder on its side.) There is a clothesline suspended in the bathroom for drying.
Today was an excellent day. I have the applications I need in motion at home, classes began, and I found my hat. (The hat I accidentally left in the desk of a lecture hall last week. I walked all the way to school on Saturday to retrieve it, only to find that the school was locked. The result of this little adventure, beside my frustration, is the picture of the school in the previous entry.)
I only had one class today. I do not really think I have a choice about taking advanced abstract algebra; any subject which gives me the capacity to pay attention to two forty five minutes of lecture separated by a ten minute break (the Hungarian standard) I simply should not pass up. It is going to be a challenge though. It was hard to gauge the class, because the material we covered today I had seen before. We’ll see.
We also had the Classical Algebra seminar, which is a three week course to ensure there are not certain holes in the education of students coming to the program. (That is, material a Hungarian college student would know, but most American college students don’t.) It is taught by an American professor who is here for the purpose. He is retired and likes the opportunity to hang out in Budapest. It is useful, but not nearly as interesting as the other class I attended today. Although, any class which does not give grades can not be particularly demanding.
I need to learn how to eat here. At UPS, I was always bad at breakfast. I compensated for this with bread and coffee, and always had a huge lunch at our vegetarian friendly cafeteria. Here, I still do not like breakfast but there is no easy lunch about. I definitely felt how much I had been neglecting my stomach when I left class at about 4:00. Thank you, leftovers.
Restaurants in Hungary, paired with the exchange rate, have been quite good. There is an excellent hummus bar, which will serve you a plate loaded with hummus and falafel for about four dollars. This was more than I could eat, even after not eating very much the day we went. There is also a vegetarian restaurant which is excellent. That meal, and leftovers which made another full dinner, cost about seven dollars.
I am getting to the point where my kitchen is stocked enough to cook. (This has taken about four grocery trips and a hundred or so dollars worth of food. At home, it would be fewer trips but twice the cost at least.) There are many pedestrians who carry groceries home on a regular basis, so there is a long line at the store right as businesses and schools close. The store itself closes at six, which is a bit of a pain sometimes. However, in the winter, it gets dark early and pedestrians, at least, do not want to be out.
Walking home from class and the store, just as the light was shifting was an excellent experience. Lighting determines the mood of a city. Seeing different streets with different light, culminating in a last glimpse behind the park on my walk home made me realize how much I am enjoying my time here. It is a subtlety beautiful city. I have my own place in it, and I am beginning to understand its relation to other places. I am starting to feel like I live in Budapest.
Math Fact of the Day: (anyone else excited? Save it for when I have too many and not too few; today was mostly review anyway.)
Let G be a group acting on a set A. Fix a \in A. We can use the orbit stabilizer lemma to determine the order of G in the following way.
1) Determine how many orbits of a there are.
2) Call the subgroup of G which stabilizes a G_a.
3) We know |G|=|O_a| |G_a|
4) Fix b \neq a in A. Determine the orbits of b in G_a
5) Call the subgroup of G_a which stabilizes b (G_a)_b
6) Then |G_a|=|O_b| ||(G_a)_b|
Repeat repeat…
(There is a bit of sloppiness going on with the naming of the orbits, but you get the idea.)
This is pretty intuitive, but it is a nifty way to determine the size of a group acting on a set. (graph automorphisms?!?)
I have learned (and am learning) my lesson about starting the wash anytime anyone might be sleeping. I would probably stop it now if I was sure I knew how to do so. The washing machine in my apartment consists of a metal cylinder suspended in the square body such that its faces are perpendicular to the left and right sides. It then spins like you would spin if you were facing it as if to load and then did a summersault. There is a curved metal lid which fits onto an opening on this cylinder through which you load clothes. It is an interesting design, although it would seem to me that lifting wet clothes out of the water at any point must take a stronger motor than just rotating them in the water like ours do at home. (That is, like mine does at home, I guess the ones in the UPS dorm loaded through the face of a cylinder on its side.) There is a clothesline suspended in the bathroom for drying.
Today was an excellent day. I have the applications I need in motion at home, classes began, and I found my hat. (The hat I accidentally left in the desk of a lecture hall last week. I walked all the way to school on Saturday to retrieve it, only to find that the school was locked. The result of this little adventure, beside my frustration, is the picture of the school in the previous entry.)
I only had one class today. I do not really think I have a choice about taking advanced abstract algebra; any subject which gives me the capacity to pay attention to two forty five minutes of lecture separated by a ten minute break (the Hungarian standard) I simply should not pass up. It is going to be a challenge though. It was hard to gauge the class, because the material we covered today I had seen before. We’ll see.
We also had the Classical Algebra seminar, which is a three week course to ensure there are not certain holes in the education of students coming to the program. (That is, material a Hungarian college student would know, but most American college students don’t.) It is taught by an American professor who is here for the purpose. He is retired and likes the opportunity to hang out in Budapest. It is useful, but not nearly as interesting as the other class I attended today. Although, any class which does not give grades can not be particularly demanding.
I need to learn how to eat here. At UPS, I was always bad at breakfast. I compensated for this with bread and coffee, and always had a huge lunch at our vegetarian friendly cafeteria. Here, I still do not like breakfast but there is no easy lunch about. I definitely felt how much I had been neglecting my stomach when I left class at about 4:00. Thank you, leftovers.
Restaurants in Hungary, paired with the exchange rate, have been quite good. There is an excellent hummus bar, which will serve you a plate loaded with hummus and falafel for about four dollars. This was more than I could eat, even after not eating very much the day we went. There is also a vegetarian restaurant which is excellent. That meal, and leftovers which made another full dinner, cost about seven dollars.
I am getting to the point where my kitchen is stocked enough to cook. (This has taken about four grocery trips and a hundred or so dollars worth of food. At home, it would be fewer trips but twice the cost at least.) There are many pedestrians who carry groceries home on a regular basis, so there is a long line at the store right as businesses and schools close. The store itself closes at six, which is a bit of a pain sometimes. However, in the winter, it gets dark early and pedestrians, at least, do not want to be out.
Walking home from class and the store, just as the light was shifting was an excellent experience. Lighting determines the mood of a city. Seeing different streets with different light, culminating in a last glimpse behind the park on my walk home made me realize how much I am enjoying my time here. It is a subtlety beautiful city. I have my own place in it, and I am beginning to understand its relation to other places. I am starting to feel like I live in Budapest.
Math Fact of the Day: (anyone else excited? Save it for when I have too many and not too few; today was mostly review anyway.)
Let G be a group acting on a set A. Fix a \in A. We can use the orbit stabilizer lemma to determine the order of G in the following way.
1) Determine how many orbits of a there are.
2) Call the subgroup of G which stabilizes a G_a.
3) We know |G|=|O_a| |G_a|
4) Fix b \neq a in A. Determine the orbits of b in G_a
5) Call the subgroup of G_a which stabilizes b (G_a)_b
6) Then |G_a|=|O_b| ||(G_a)_b|
Repeat repeat…
(There is a bit of sloppiness going on with the naming of the orbits, but you get the idea.)
This is pretty intuitive, but it is a nifty way to determine the size of a group acting on a set. (graph automorphisms?!?)
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Too little for one day, let alone three 09-02-09
Alright, I know it has been two long since I have made an entry, and this one is going to be short, but like eighty things have been happening to me at once (WHOA.)
1) Orienting myself physically
2) Orienting myself linguistically
3) Trying to decide what my academic life will be like this semester
4) (Albiet not directly) directing my social life this semester
5) The usual stuff like eating and bathing.
Yes, this is a list of eighty. A math major should know. Or, divides eighty. Whatever.
Today I went to the art museum. This was a good experience. I was throughly sick of art museums in Italy, and avoided the madonni con bambini wherever I could. There was one particularly interesting take on the crucifixion in which Jesus had six toes. Sweet.
Further, I was introduced to a vegan restaurant that has amazing foods and sells both hot dogs and seitan. Everything is going to be ok. (This is, until classes start and I become fused to this desk. For now, I need to find a way to wind down rather than typing quickly and trying to recall the last three (quite busy) days. Sorry for anyone who is interested, but I do not this moment have the energy to give much more. As a consolation prize, here are some pictures.
(great, in the exact opposite order I wanted them in.)
Millennium monument, Hősök tere (hero's square)
More of Hero's square. This is about two blocks from where I live.
This is a view with the millenium monument at your back. It is the art museum.
Here is the front entry of College International, where I have to be in about eight hours. So, night.
Math fact of the day:
I seriously am having a bit of trouble coming up with these before class starts. (Which is today, as it is just past midnight.) Let’s go with this: no generalization outside of mathematics is perfect.
1) Orienting myself physically
2) Orienting myself linguistically
3) Trying to decide what my academic life will be like this semester
4) (Albiet not directly) directing my social life this semester
5) The usual stuff like eating and bathing.
Yes, this is a list of eighty. A math major should know. Or, divides eighty. Whatever.
Today I went to the art museum. This was a good experience. I was throughly sick of art museums in Italy, and avoided the madonni con bambini wherever I could. There was one particularly interesting take on the crucifixion in which Jesus had six toes. Sweet.
Further, I was introduced to a vegan restaurant that has amazing foods and sells both hot dogs and seitan. Everything is going to be ok. (This is, until classes start and I become fused to this desk. For now, I need to find a way to wind down rather than typing quickly and trying to recall the last three (quite busy) days. Sorry for anyone who is interested, but I do not this moment have the energy to give much more. As a consolation prize, here are some pictures.
(great, in the exact opposite order I wanted them in.)
Millennium monument, Hősök tere (hero's square)
More of Hero's square. This is about two blocks from where I live.
This is a view with the millenium monument at your back. It is the art museum.
Here is the front entry of College International, where I have to be in about eight hours. So, night.Math fact of the day:
I seriously am having a bit of trouble coming up with these before class starts. (Which is today, as it is just past midnight.) Let’s go with this: no generalization outside of mathematics is perfect.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
04-02-09 Currency, Sustenance, and Trees
[This was written yesterday, but posted a day late when the internet decided to die right as I finished it.]
Forewarning: This is mostly about my apartment, because I spent most of the day straightening it (and catching up on sleep, as it were.) Although there are pictures at the end!
I found coins from eight different countries as I organized the apartment today. (I am counting Euro as one.)
Fortints (Magyar [Hungary])
Cents (EU)
Cents (US)
Cents (Canada [I think I brought them on accident])
Pence (UK)
Groszy (Rzeczpospolita Polska [Poland])
Lipa (Republika Hrvatska [Croatia])
Kurus (Turkiye [Turkey])
Certainly setting a bar for travel outside of Hungary while I am here. (Canada I think I will skip, at least for now.)
Today I had adventures in eating in public (apparently you tip at the beginning of the meal) and grocery shopping. I tried to listen to the language of the waiter while I was eating, but he was clearly originally Chinese and his accent just confused a few circuits.
The grocery store was an adventure. There were not many vegetables, but I can not tell if this is overall availability or just the small store I was patronizing. Either way, I am not anxious to buy vegetables again because you are supposed to weigh and put the label on yourself. This much I figured out before I go to the check out, but I could not locate the ‘Onion’ label on the scale, as I do not know how to say ‘onion’ in Hungarian. At least I had a bag with me. Many things, then, were prepackaged, which added to my inability to select things, being unable to understand the words. I was only sure of a few things. Coffee (kavet) I had seen before, and the pasta sauce I ended up with was in Italian, so I could read it. Oy.
There is no way to be a vegan here. Vegetarian I am hoping is possible, although I could not find any tofu. (Spelled To-fu in the Chinese restaurant, so this at least I can identify if I see it.) I was lucky enough to find soy milk.
As for the apartment, it has three rooms and an entryway. The entrance has a coat rack, an item for which I have searched fruitlessly in Tacoma. The bathroom is pretty basic; water heating comes on twice a day at random times determined by the electric company’s estimate of when the most electricity is being used, so hot water is limited but available. There is a large rack on the ceiling for drying clothes, as it is nonstandard to have dryers here. The kitchen is pretty basic: half-size fridge, microwave, coffee maker, toaster…However, you have to light the gas water heater over the sink. The stove is gas as well, and the burners are lit with matches. This makes sense to me, and reveals how [unnecessarily?] complicated things can be in the US. Took me a bit to learn how to light it, so I must get more matches soon.
My bedroom is the opposite of the one I had in Tacoma, with a ceiling about twice as high. (It is about 12 feet, if I had to guess.) I like how open it is. This building used to be a hospital, which is only a little freaky. I heat just the bedroom, and keep the door closed. Keeping one room warm is difficult enough.
Just unpacking and rearranging things here has made it feel much more like home. Knowing how my shower is going to work ahead of time is always a plus. Now that I know what is in the desk drawers, they feel much more like mine. I discovered that I inherited a student’s copy of a professor’s compiled notes (and a few exercises) of Functional analysis, which is exciting although I do not intend to take the class. It will give me something to do next time I am…in the mood to do functional analysis.
Class schedule came out today and none of the classes in which I am really interested conflict. This is good, but tempts me to take more than three, which I realize I probably shouldn’t. Two (Advanced Abstract Algebra and Combinatorics 2) were also on the list of ‘more advanced’ math courses, of which I should no doubt be wary. Number theory I think I must take. There is a graph theory course, but I think I would be bored by the first half at very least. It would probably get difficult right as my other classes did. I should probably go for Hungarian Art and Culture. Last semester was the best I have ever had, and I recognize this was mostly due to my schedule. I seek difficulty, but only when it is paired with interest. Suddenly, which classes I select seems doubly important. I think living situation is a large factor as well. I think I will get much more done with my current living arrangements, even if they may not be my social ideal. It also really helped living with committed students last semester [haha, Kyle, this is you]. (Randomly: I made the dean’s list.)
Well, now that I am a bit more moved in, I hope to explore the city more tomorrow, assuming that I am more adjusted to the time difference. An insomniac by nature, I am especially skewed when midnight comes eight hours early.
Math Fact of the Day:
The Arboricity of a graph is the minimum number of forests into which its edges can be partitioned.
My first round of groceries. I was trying to illustrate the foreign-ness of the labels, but all you can really see is FITNESS, which you can probably read.
My room from various angles. I want to show how tall the ceiling is, but there isn't really enough floor space to do so.
Forewarning: This is mostly about my apartment, because I spent most of the day straightening it (and catching up on sleep, as it were.) Although there are pictures at the end!
I found coins from eight different countries as I organized the apartment today. (I am counting Euro as one.)
Fortints (Magyar [Hungary])
Cents (EU)
Cents (US)
Cents (Canada [I think I brought them on accident])
Pence (UK)
Groszy (Rzeczpospolita Polska [Poland])
Lipa (Republika Hrvatska [Croatia])
Kurus (Turkiye [Turkey])
Certainly setting a bar for travel outside of Hungary while I am here. (Canada I think I will skip, at least for now.)
Today I had adventures in eating in public (apparently you tip at the beginning of the meal) and grocery shopping. I tried to listen to the language of the waiter while I was eating, but he was clearly originally Chinese and his accent just confused a few circuits.
The grocery store was an adventure. There were not many vegetables, but I can not tell if this is overall availability or just the small store I was patronizing. Either way, I am not anxious to buy vegetables again because you are supposed to weigh and put the label on yourself. This much I figured out before I go to the check out, but I could not locate the ‘Onion’ label on the scale, as I do not know how to say ‘onion’ in Hungarian. At least I had a bag with me. Many things, then, were prepackaged, which added to my inability to select things, being unable to understand the words. I was only sure of a few things. Coffee (kavet) I had seen before, and the pasta sauce I ended up with was in Italian, so I could read it. Oy.
There is no way to be a vegan here. Vegetarian I am hoping is possible, although I could not find any tofu. (Spelled To-fu in the Chinese restaurant, so this at least I can identify if I see it.) I was lucky enough to find soy milk.
As for the apartment, it has three rooms and an entryway. The entrance has a coat rack, an item for which I have searched fruitlessly in Tacoma. The bathroom is pretty basic; water heating comes on twice a day at random times determined by the electric company’s estimate of when the most electricity is being used, so hot water is limited but available. There is a large rack on the ceiling for drying clothes, as it is nonstandard to have dryers here. The kitchen is pretty basic: half-size fridge, microwave, coffee maker, toaster…However, you have to light the gas water heater over the sink. The stove is gas as well, and the burners are lit with matches. This makes sense to me, and reveals how [unnecessarily?] complicated things can be in the US. Took me a bit to learn how to light it, so I must get more matches soon.
My bedroom is the opposite of the one I had in Tacoma, with a ceiling about twice as high. (It is about 12 feet, if I had to guess.) I like how open it is. This building used to be a hospital, which is only a little freaky. I heat just the bedroom, and keep the door closed. Keeping one room warm is difficult enough.
Just unpacking and rearranging things here has made it feel much more like home. Knowing how my shower is going to work ahead of time is always a plus. Now that I know what is in the desk drawers, they feel much more like mine. I discovered that I inherited a student’s copy of a professor’s compiled notes (and a few exercises) of Functional analysis, which is exciting although I do not intend to take the class. It will give me something to do next time I am…in the mood to do functional analysis.
Class schedule came out today and none of the classes in which I am really interested conflict. This is good, but tempts me to take more than three, which I realize I probably shouldn’t. Two (Advanced Abstract Algebra and Combinatorics 2) were also on the list of ‘more advanced’ math courses, of which I should no doubt be wary. Number theory I think I must take. There is a graph theory course, but I think I would be bored by the first half at very least. It would probably get difficult right as my other classes did. I should probably go for Hungarian Art and Culture. Last semester was the best I have ever had, and I recognize this was mostly due to my schedule. I seek difficulty, but only when it is paired with interest. Suddenly, which classes I select seems doubly important. I think living situation is a large factor as well. I think I will get much more done with my current living arrangements, even if they may not be my social ideal. It also really helped living with committed students last semester [haha, Kyle, this is you]. (Randomly: I made the dean’s list.)
Well, now that I am a bit more moved in, I hope to explore the city more tomorrow, assuming that I am more adjusted to the time difference. An insomniac by nature, I am especially skewed when midnight comes eight hours early.
Math Fact of the Day:
The Arboricity of a graph is the minimum number of forests into which its edges can be partitioned.
My first round of groceries. I was trying to illustrate the foreign-ness of the labels, but all you can really see is FITNESS, which you can probably read.
My room from various angles. I want to show how tall the ceiling is, but there isn't really enough floor space to do so.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
03-02-09 Departure
It has been a long day (I use the term loosely), so I am going to keep this short, though I cannot bear the idea of not starting out right and writing something down.
I left Denver at 5:35 pm on February 2, arrived in Budapest at about 18:20 pm on the 3rd. The time hour difference is eight hours earlier in Denver. Feel free to calculate; I am not sufficiently awake.
The nine-something hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt was surprisingly pleasant. Thanks Lufthansa for the video screen in the chair in front of me which I could navigate between music videos in languages I didn’t understand, TV shows bad enough to show for free, and those movies you just couldn’t make yourself spend seven dollars (1540 forints, although who knows what it costs to see a movie here) to see. I am certainly not complaining. This kept me much more entertained than I would have otherwise been, and it helped to pass the time. You could also check the progress of the plane and time to landing on a map on the screen. Note for those who may be interested in international travel: the student (and university faculty) price was great, the movies were entertaining and, if you’re into this, they attempt to feed you alcoholic beverages every time the drink cart comes past. Not bad at all.
When I arrived in Frankfurt, I entered the EU, re-cleared security and then found my gate, which happened to be the penultimate one in terminal A. This was actually perfect because I fell asleep immediately on four chairs, and had immensely strange dreams. The flight from Frankfurt to Budapest was easy compared to the first, and I arrived to find not a representative from the school but my landlord waiting to pick me up.
Long story somewhat shorter, here I am in my apartment in a city I have never seen before. I am glad that I have some time to adjust, but I am eager for classes to begin and to meet the other people in the program. It will be an interesting bunch, and the enrollment in the program is 2/3 what it usually is at about forty, so I hope to get to know about everyone. Until then, it looks like I am exploring on my own.
My apartment is furnished pretty well. Further, there are many books (some of them about Hungarian language and culture) a bike, a pre-paid and refillable cell phone and about a hundred 1-2 forint coins left by the previous tenant, whose name my landlord tells me is Eric. After I got a few things in order, I went looking for a nearby restaurant. No such luck at ten at night. A more fruitful search was around my kitchen, where I found some powdered mashed potatoes (along with salt, pepper, tea, and a 1/3 full bottle of Unicum.) After I got the gas stove running (which is done with the use of a match), I realized that faced with the prospect of no dinner, powdered potatoes are not at all bad. Thanks, Eric.
Ok. Time to finally sleep in a bed.
Math Fact of the Day:
(I want to add this regularly once classes begin, perhaps even usefully. However, for now…)
I knit a scarf I have been working on for some time at length on the plane ride. (It is a parallelogram, as I add one stitch on one side and subtract stitch from the other at each row.)
When I was calculating how wide I wanted the scarf to be, I began with the label on my yarn, which gave me that 17 stitches would make 4 inches. I decided I wanted about 10 inches, so I doubled seventeen. Then I was faced with the decision of deciding if half of seventeen was going to be 8 or 9. In an even sort of mood, I decided on eight.
17x2+8=42.
What do you know?
(To make sure I am not adding or dropping stitches, I make sure the number I have is equivalent to 2 mod 10. That way I don’t have to count higher than ten. Who says math doesn’t have applications? OK, I’m done now, next time I will try to add some mathematics.)
I left Denver at 5:35 pm on February 2, arrived in Budapest at about 18:20 pm on the 3rd. The time hour difference is eight hours earlier in Denver. Feel free to calculate; I am not sufficiently awake.
The nine-something hour flight from Denver to Frankfurt was surprisingly pleasant. Thanks Lufthansa for the video screen in the chair in front of me which I could navigate between music videos in languages I didn’t understand, TV shows bad enough to show for free, and those movies you just couldn’t make yourself spend seven dollars (1540 forints, although who knows what it costs to see a movie here) to see. I am certainly not complaining. This kept me much more entertained than I would have otherwise been, and it helped to pass the time. You could also check the progress of the plane and time to landing on a map on the screen. Note for those who may be interested in international travel: the student (and university faculty) price was great, the movies were entertaining and, if you’re into this, they attempt to feed you alcoholic beverages every time the drink cart comes past. Not bad at all.
When I arrived in Frankfurt, I entered the EU, re-cleared security and then found my gate, which happened to be the penultimate one in terminal A. This was actually perfect because I fell asleep immediately on four chairs, and had immensely strange dreams. The flight from Frankfurt to Budapest was easy compared to the first, and I arrived to find not a representative from the school but my landlord waiting to pick me up.
Long story somewhat shorter, here I am in my apartment in a city I have never seen before. I am glad that I have some time to adjust, but I am eager for classes to begin and to meet the other people in the program. It will be an interesting bunch, and the enrollment in the program is 2/3 what it usually is at about forty, so I hope to get to know about everyone. Until then, it looks like I am exploring on my own.
My apartment is furnished pretty well. Further, there are many books (some of them about Hungarian language and culture) a bike, a pre-paid and refillable cell phone and about a hundred 1-2 forint coins left by the previous tenant, whose name my landlord tells me is Eric. After I got a few things in order, I went looking for a nearby restaurant. No such luck at ten at night. A more fruitful search was around my kitchen, where I found some powdered mashed potatoes (along with salt, pepper, tea, and a 1/3 full bottle of Unicum.) After I got the gas stove running (which is done with the use of a match), I realized that faced with the prospect of no dinner, powdered potatoes are not at all bad. Thanks, Eric.
Ok. Time to finally sleep in a bed.
Math Fact of the Day:
(I want to add this regularly once classes begin, perhaps even usefully. However, for now…)
I knit a scarf I have been working on for some time at length on the plane ride. (It is a parallelogram, as I add one stitch on one side and subtract stitch from the other at each row.)
When I was calculating how wide I wanted the scarf to be, I began with the label on my yarn, which gave me that 17 stitches would make 4 inches. I decided I wanted about 10 inches, so I doubled seventeen. Then I was faced with the decision of deciding if half of seventeen was going to be 8 or 9. In an even sort of mood, I decided on eight.
17x2+8=42.
What do you know?
(To make sure I am not adding or dropping stitches, I make sure the number I have is equivalent to 2 mod 10. That way I don’t have to count higher than ten. Who says math doesn’t have applications? OK, I’m done now, next time I will try to add some mathematics.)
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