Back in Oakland

So, it's 8:15 p.m. on Sunday, and if I've calculated correctly, I woke up at 8:45 p.m. (California time) yesterday, and since then, slept about one hour on the plane and that's all. It's a bit of a blur, but I made it. Back to my room, my favorite pillow, my flatmates - a whirlwind trip, but one of the best.

I'll check in again soon. Until then, I'm going to enjoy a bedtime as early as the one I had when I was 10. Goodnight.

Bakeries.

Mmm. 'Nuff said.

Hannover Part 2

For those of you who don't know, in Thailand, the nickname given to me by my host family (and thus the name everyone called me) was BaiTong, which means banana leaf. Very, very sexy. J, however, had the much sweeter nickname of Tawan, which means sunshine. However, she was kind enough to take me by this place in Hannover, and that prompted a long and positively lovely discussion of all we had gone through in Thailand, and perhaps the beginnings of a plan to go back together. I can't believe how young we were when we were there.

 And impressive amount of bicycles at the Bahnhof in Göttingen - the city is full of plaques on buildings that say which famous mathematician, physicist or sonst was lived there (or at least spent one night) - and as I was coming back from having Döner with my physicist friend, we found the plaque for Alexander von Humboldt, and as he was the subject of a book I just read (Die Vermessung der Welt - Measuring the World in English - I can't recommend it enough), I was pretty excited.

A very empty train station where I had a 25 min. "layover"

It was just me and some snow.

Wintry landscape - I forgot it was still winter in not-California.

Hannover Part 1

The view from inside the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof on Sunday morning.

A fellow who shared the train with me.

On my way!

River alongside the train tracks.

View from the final bus stop in Hannover near J's apartment.

"Take this sinking boat and point it home – we’ve still got time."

Right now, I’m sitting on the train from Hannover to Göttingen – yes, the same Göttingen where Gauß was (my math fangirl self is really excited!). In Göttingen, I will meet with a friend of Claudia’s who has also become a friend of mine and who is studying physics at the university there. For the past two years, he has boasted about the Döner at a certain shop in Göttingen and how they are the best there that he’s ever tasted – even better than our dear Dönerstag, which he tried when he came to visit C and myself last year. But I was in Hannover to see Jiska, the one who was an exchange student in Thailand and actually in Surat Thani, the city where I was.

Jiska and I have managed to see each other several times since Thailand, which is just fantastic. I saw her immediately after we came back from Thailand when I went to visit Claudia for the first time and the summer after we managed to connect as well, and last year, she came on very short notice to Mainz for my birthday party. Last year’s visit was particularly short and I am so glad that I decided to go for it this time to see her – I went to Hanover on Sunday and we spent all day yesterday talking and now I’m heading back today – I suppose a day and a half doesn’t seem like much, but – I don’t quite know how to explain it. Several times during the weekend, we pondered why it was that we had remained so close even though we don’t talk regularly and seeing each other more than once in a year is remarkable. And the conclusion we finally came to was this: we got to know each other under such extreme circumstances (15 and 16 years old, staying with host families in a country we knew nothing about and with each other as the only real outlets for talking) that somehow, all the surface level garbage that makes up most every day conversations was never part of our discourse. I remarked yesterday to her that she doesn’t know much about my everyday life (how could she, when we talk so rarely and live so far apart) but – she knows all of the important stuff. And the same goes for her.

To put it briefly, it was incredibly refreshing to see her. It reminded me of where I was six years ago and where I am now, what’s happened in between, what was important about what happened in between, and it even helped me know a bit more about what I actually want. A good friend is worth so much.

--

Have you ever experienced this? I am having this experience now which is rather interesting. I think it’s a common human trait to set goals for oneself – big ones, small ones, whatever. And you can be completely adamant about these goals, totally set on changing your habits or whatever it may be – and still, often you have to set these goals again and again because you fall short. I know I tend to be very vague or cryptic at times like this, so I’ll try to be more concrete. Say you’ve promised yourself that in certain situations, you’re going to change how you act. For example, you’ve decided not to be mean to a certain person who annoys you. And even though you promise this, the next time you see that person, you’re still mean to them. And you come home from that interaction, think “damn. I thought I wasn’t going to do that anymore.” And so you try again, and still you mess up, or you don’t do as well as you’d like. This is the situation I’m in, though it’s abit more complicated than “not being mean” to someone. It’s more to do with my own confidence in situations. To use a phrase I learned this weekend, it’s about my competence matching my performance in any given situation. And for ages, I’ve told myself to stop worrying about the damn confidence, to just be me, damn it. For years I’ve told myself that. Sometimes it works, for maybe a few days at a time, and then it stops again. And --- on this trip, all of a sudden (this is what I was asking about, has this particular part happened to anyone) – that problem is gone. But it doesn’t feel like it did before – the times before when I managed to not worry about my behavior it felt exciting, new, rare. And because of that, I knew it wasn’t lasting. And all of a sudden – it’s normal. It’s how I act. I feel comfortable and confident and – this clarity is incredible.

--

Whoa, there. This was an emotional post. Very much inside my own head and writing it helps me understand it, but it might not be interesting for you! No worries. That’s why I’m also going to post some pictures from this trip. A picture from an iPhone through a train window can’t quite capture this silent, cold and crisp landscape, but I tried my best and I think some of them came through quite well.

Just a bit of field theory at Starbucks in Mainz.

I promised pictures and then I didn't deliver. Yesterday was a whirlwind of jetlag and emotions. I saw my good friend from all of my math classes last year, we had coffee and ate waffles and wandered around the city - it was a stunning day. Gorgeous and sunny and crisp. And in the evening, I saw Django Unchained - brilliant films. Absolutely brilliant. And in between, I just thought about life - about graduating, about next year, about where I might be in ten years - nothing like being out of one's normal routine to make a person think.

Dorkily enough, the only thing I took a picture of yesterday was the beautiful aisle of pens in a office supply/crafts store downtown - the rest of Mainz is still here, too. The beautiful temple made of green glass, the river, the cathedral - but I guess right now, I'm taking it in more than taking photos of it all. But I think I will get around to pictures soon.

In the meantime, I'm going to prove a polynomial is irreducible. I had an amazing time this morning going through my old notes from Stochastik, Funktionentheorie, Differenzialgleichungen, and Lineare Algebra last year. I was sitting on the floor with those textbooks surrounding me, in addition to two books about programming in Java and my notes from Algebra this year, and - I just don't want to stop learning. :)

Wow. It's all still here!

The train station, my favorite bakery inside the train station, Dönerstag, the creaky floorboards in the apartment - expect some nostalgic pictures today.

Also, apparently in places where it's not California, it's still winter. Who knew?

A Rare Sight

I’m sitting in the SFO airport now, at the very end of a very long hallway, down an escalator, and to the left. And I found an outlet that wasn’t surrounded by too many people so I could plug in my computer and am sitting here and was checking my connecting flights, etc, when the crowd of crewmembers fort his flight appeared next to me. And right now, I am witnissing the welcoming of a new stewardess to a group that clearly have worked together before, the general pre-flight pep talk, and the discussion of any special passengers (food allergies, needing wheelchair assistance, etc.) and where they are sitting in the plane. They are all so jolly! I’ve never seen this before – but it’s so exciting. J

Also, it’s the first time I’ve heard German spoken by real-life people (not the ones on videos I watch for Model UN or clips from the Tagesschau) in months. They probably think I’m crazy for smiling so much.

Pi Day (3.14) at the California Academy of Sciences

Möbius hearts! A Möbius strip is a neat concept of an object that only has one side - you can make one by taking a strip of paper and curling it to make a cylinder, but twisting it half way before you close of the cylinder. Then, if you were to take a marker and draw on one side of the paper, you would eventually draw on all of it. One side! When you do a slightly more complicated version, you get two intersecting hearts, each with one side only.

Some friendly upside-down jellyfish.

A gorgeous octopus who crawled out of his glass tube to say hello as soon as I got my camera out. For reference, his tentacles were about the length of my finger. Quite a small thing! Love the spots, though.

Last night: the son of a close family friend taking a nap with their dog for a pillow. Is there much more heartwarming than that?

Intersecting Worlds

I feel that depending on where I am and who I am with, the world is different. Maybe because "my" world feels different, I am different - or maybe it's the other way around. But I sit in the math building on campus, room 206 (a familiar hangout), and my world is Algebra - fields (not the kind you're thinking of), rings (nope, not the ones made of metal), unique factorizations. Tutoring. Studying. Small notes written on thinly-lined paper. But then I stroll from there to my apartment - then there are friends! My world is then laughter, plans, wine, cooking, thinking about life after studying. And then I come here, to Santa Cruz for the weekend and see my father, grandfather, and aunt - and I remember my family.

I think we all live in lots of different worlds like these, and I think it's healthy in a way. It's good to get to emphasize different parts of ourselves in each place, to let ourselves be known for certain things in some circles and for other things with other people. But that makes the transitions difficult, or at least noticeable, I find. And occasionally I worry if it's the same "me" everywhere, but I do believe it is. There's just a lot of different parts of me, and each needs some room!

For the first time in my life, there's people who know me as "a math person" first and foremost. I didn't see that coming. I've been known as my parents' daughter, my sister's sister, a dancer, a language person, and a person who studied abroad- but I've never had my involvement with math be my defining characteristic, but on the Mills campus, it's become that way, and I have to admit - I'm not strictly opposed to this development. Especially because the people I mean who think of me that way are quite ready to see the other parts of my personality - the one who likes to run, dance, make tea, and talk. 

This weekend, a lot of people have asked me how I feel about getting ready to leave Mills, and that's made me think about it. And I believe the answer is: I'm ready. I loved it when I got there, I hated it for a while, then I grew rather indifferent - and now I have come full-circle and though I don't necessarily love it anymore, I really appreciate what it has done for me. And I feel ready to leave. Tomorrow is the 18 of March? Two more months. Four fast years, without a doubt.

Not enough lifetimes!

A few nights ago, I had dinner with a friend - one of those people who isn't a good friend, but you sure as hell wish he/she were. We get along so well. We get each other. And we make each other laugh. And of course, we only get to know each other two short months before we graduate and are going to go completely separate ways. And we're both busy as all-get-out.

Whoops! This was not going to be a post about how I don't have enough lifetimes to be friends (proper, real friends) with all the people I want to be friends with (though now that I think about it, I think that's true as well) -- no, I wanted to write this because this person is studying music. Well, no, actually she's studying psychology, but she's also kinda studying music.

Proper, theoretical music. All the different kinds of sounds and chords and how do you write them down, what happens when they interact, etc. I don't know what I'm talking about, because I'm not a music student - but she does, and she talked about it, and I saw that same level of abstraction that we get into in my Abstract Algebra class. And I was hooked. I want to know! I want to know why those chords interact the way they do, who decided to call them what, what does it mean if this set is all there at the same time.

But then, I go to my Tango class and listen to my teacher (a graduate student in the dance program) talk to us about her experience with dance. I get the chance to dance with her and can just feel the difference of dancing with someone who dances. And I just want to drop it all and be a dancer.

This is why I can't go to any concerts or performances. My whimsy is like a chameleon - anything I see done well, I want to know what it's like to do it well, to be around people who do it well! And thus, I need multiple lifetimes to live all these lives, learn all I can learn in all of these areas. There's so much out there.

For the meantime, I'll do my best with Algebra (for you interested folks, we're starting Galois Theory), and continue to be an avid amateur tangoer, swimmer, programmer, and model UN participater.

Something to read!

Interested in what I said about "displacement" during our freewrite the other day? Go ahead and check it out here. That's the link to the Poetry for Scientists blog in general, and my freewrite should be the second post on the page or so. Do take a look around at the rest of the site as well!

Brief Culinary Musings

I feel like telling you what I cooked tonight.
1. Spinach salad (okay, so I didn't "cook" that, but still) with avocado, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and cranberries. Dressing: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mustard, honey, basil, oregano, garlic, pepper.
2. Gnocchi with a sauce made from: garlic, onions, beets, dash of milk.
Served with goat cheese and walnuts.
Drooling? Mm-hm. Thought so.

Damn it, it's high time for another post!

Hey, everyone.

I've been gone a while, it's true. I didn't feel quite ready to write for a while, but I had an experience yesterday that reminded me that I do like writing, regardless of what anyone else thinks of my writing (or, perhaps even more importantly, what I think of it).

Since we last spoke, I have been accepted into two programs for next year and have chosen to attend the Budapest Semesters in Mathematics program. I start in September. I have survived half of my final semester at Mills - a semester during which I tutor for more hours per week than I am actually in class. I've started to swim, I've started to love rap music, I've realized I want to get my PhD in math, and I've gotten to know me a bit. And I've lost patience for pretentious blog posts!

It's been a busy semester. I'm living in an apartment now on campus, with four other lovely folks. Having control over my own living situation has been a breath of fresh air. I never have a day without spinach and sriracha, my flatmates and I get along, and it feels right that graduation is in 67 days.

Yesterday, I attended a meeting of a new-ish club on campus: Poetry for Scientists. (creative nonfiction - can you take topics from various sciences and write about them in creative ways? metaphors, poems, what have you. True stories told well. )We had some discussions and wrote for fifteen minutes on one word: displacement - and its definitions in physics, psychology, and sociology. I listened to pieces that others had written and got really excited about writing again. This semester, besides proofs and java programs, I've been writing UN Resolutions (also a blast - it's not every day that I get to talk in third person as Germany) and the occasional text message. To write creatively gives me a thrill.

However, it is again that time - actually, past it - that time when I have to do some homework before bed so I don't panic in the morning. But everything is under control. Something fun or exciting is planned every day for the next 7 days (seriously!), and things are good.  If you happen to feel like posting something here and have an idea for a free-write topic for the next Poetry for Scientists meeting, let me know! (Displacement has been one, "what is a number" was another...just to give you an idea.)