my weekend

Woke up close to 2 on Saturday. A group of guys were meeting at Heroes Square to go and play soccer. I went, there was a huge group of people at Heroes Square. There was an area barricaded off with a grandstand and a lot of police around. There were Hungarian flags, and some sort of red and white striped flag flying. There were peddlers selling pretzels near the subway stand. Not sure what it was. It made me not be able to find my group, and the other guy's cell phone # I had did not bring his cell. Ah well.

So I wasn't too happy and spent the next few hours on my computer. Finally beat the Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 Demo that I have had on my computer for forever. Still didn't save the vice president.... and my whole square died, but ah well.

Finally got to doin' some work.

Watched the 2 newest episodes of Lost, eating lots of bread and nutella. Jin!! Where are you? A pretty decent cliffhanger- there are no new episodes for a month!

Was going to cook, but my chicken had gone bad. So I made some cabbage for dinner.

Today I woke up relatively early- around 12:30. Last night at 2 the time-change had gone into effect, and we are now an hour later. Went to the gym, saw a friend there. On the way there on the bus passes by the carnival and the zoo. There were SO many kids out there, since it was soo warm today. It broke the 60s, and I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts for the first time, which was really nice.

After that went to the mall, and had a Bronx hotdog, from NY Hot Dog. This is probably one of those American-sounding places that doesn't exist in America. The Bronx hot dog, which I have never heard of before, consists of hot peppers and HOT chili sauce (it seems Thai) on a hot dog. It it excellent and very spicy. It was burning my mouth but I just kept on stuffing it in. These are even cheaper than gyros! Finished off my lunch with a scoop of ice cream to stop the burning.

Did grocery shopping, and went back and finally got some studying done. I answered the Combinatorics really cool extra credit problem, which makes me happy. The problem is as follows:

The names of 100 prisoners are placed in 100 wooden boxes, 1 name to a box, and the boxes are lined up on a table in a room. One by one, the prisoners are led into the room; each may go from on box to another and look in it, but may look in at most 50 boxes and must leave the room exactly as he found it and is permitted no further communication with others. The prisoners have a chance to plot their strategy in advance, and they are going to need it, because unless every single prisoner finds his own name all will subsequently be executed.
Find a strategy for them which has the probability of success exceeding 30%.

Isn't this a cool question? The answer is great as well.

I e-mailed the professor about CHA, and he actually makes me feel more confident, and I'll probably stay in the class longer.

Made a good dinner of chicken (new!) and rice, studied some more, including finishing up my Set Theory homework. Read some of La Boheme, since I have tickets to the show next week.

Its been a good weekend! i/e not too much work. But that I sure to change soon!

my 21st!

Was a pretty good day. Not great math, though.

Woke up nice and late, going to Functional Analysis. Professor did a lot of review, since most people weren't in the last class two weeks ago. We covered the Hahn-Banach Thm, which I don't completely understand, but the proof wasn't too bad. I was planning on leaving early to have a good lunch, but the professor let us out early anyway.

Had a tasty lunch of rice and some sort of vegetable and meat mix. Had a little bit too much of tomatoes, but the chickpeas were good. I capped that off with a pistachio baklava desert.

Then was my Character Theory midterm. The professor was a little bit late- so we had been talking for a while. As soon as the professor comes in, and hands us the midterms, my nose starts bleeing- profusely. So, I had to go to the bathroom and waste 10 minutes blotting my nose. Finally I sat and looked at the test. It was so hard! There were three questions, just like the homeworks, and one on induced characters, which I didn't even know was going to be covered. We also had to get as much information as we could from a character table, which is the question I think I did 'best' at. After this, I think I will take the class pass-fail, if, that is, I can pass!

So, I went back home, not too happy. 2 hours later me and two friends went out for a great dinner at Sir Lancelot's Restaurant. (www.sirlancelot.hu) It was packed, but we were able to get a table. It was great fun. There were people dressed up as knights, squires, and wenches. The menu was a bit difficult to understand, since there were lots of medieval-sounding words used, haha. There were lots of axes and stuff hung on the wall. As we entered, there was a guy playing a medieval-sounding tune, and there was even a stocks! I had the Charm of Sir Vincents- goose drumsticks! They were definitely great. It was a big surprise to cap the meal off, since one of my friends ended up taking care of my meal! I've never had a friend pay for such a nice meal before~

Walked back to my apartment, passed a nice looking sushi restaurant-Wasabi, with the 'sushi train'. I will have to go there sometime in April or May when it gets warmer.

Then went to a space-themed party. One of my friends made an AMAZING chocolate cake for me that was quickly devored. Everyone even sang happy birthday for me. It was a good time~

another midterm tomorrow!

So, I woke up early enough and actually cooked myself an egg for breakfast. I thought that would give me more energy for taking my Combinatorics midterm. It may have, but it also made me a minute or two late, haha.

The test wasn't bad. It wasn't at all pleasant though, and I heard the same kind of grumbling throughout the class. There was one problem involving an induction proof among the Fibonnaci numbers, and I tried and tried, and I just couldn't get what I wanted to come out, and that really bothered me.

During the break, I decided not to study and instead read more than an hour of Return of the King. After that I got lunch at the gyros place. For the first time- I actually did not get a gyro! I got yellow rice with a pork(?) potato mix. It was about $2 more than gyro, but it was quite tasty and filling as well.

Number Theory problem solving session was just okay. We were dealing with order, and to get the answers, we had to do lots of brute calculations, and making tables, and that was no fun at all. The book deals very little with this subject but the professor said he thinks it is important for us to completely understand what is going on.

For some reason, Logic was canceled. I went home- 2 hours early- and was not productive at all, haha. Got some good relaxation, then studied and studied. I finally got tired of studying and Character Theory problems, so I took a big long break and played- and beat! Sam and Max Season 1. The ending was quite brilliant (though sadly I had to look at a cheat to finish one part). There is already a Season 2 out, which I will suppose I will be getting one day.

I ate a good dinner of sausages, cabbage, and red pepper, and finished looking through my character theory notes. After studying, I have a more and more feeling that I will probably not end up taking this class. There is too much I do not understand, although I really want to be at that level one day. I am still very happy that I decided about this class, because the material is one of the most interesting things I have ever come upon. That being said, I probably need more background in the subject before completely getting character theory. The professor as always- is amazing- but he is really hard as well.

Well- I'll stop boring you and go off to bed now. I'm planning on visiting Krakow in about a month, and I hope to do Geneva in April as well. I looked at wikitravel sites and it seems that there is more to do in Geneva. I am quite surprised that so many of you are choosing Copenhagen. Any reason?

Oh- tomorrow is my birthday! I should celebrate somehow after my midterm.

And a BIG THANKS for all of you reading. I can't believe it, in the last seven days my blog has had almost 700 hits! Compare that with February- where I had a little less than 600 visits! I guess the pictures are attractive. Pictures are much easier to look at than words, huh? I will be carrying my camera to take pictures of all the interesting things that I have yet to encounter.

Goodbye for now~

midterm tomorrow!

So, Combinatorics midterm at 8 tomorrow. So obviously I'm going to go sleep soon.

Highlights of the day including having a wonderful chocolate torte after CHA. It was light and flaky, and had a little white creamy layer inside. This is at the most AMAZING sweetshop ever. I will go weekly, and take pictures when I don't feel too awkward. It was a little more than $3.

Got back my Number Theory midterm. Got a 79%. Which is a low A.

Siigh, even more studying is needed for my CHA midterm Friday. Its open book open note. Right now I have a 30% in the class. I have no clue what grade that corresponds to. There are some classes where a 50% is an A. I'm going to do the midterm, wait to get it back, and finally have a chat with my professor.

Also! Had the special taco flavored chicken nuggets at McDonalds for Lunch. They have peppers in them, and come with taco sauce. Very tasty- a bit expensive. I will definitely eat them again, though.

Over and out~

spring break was too short.

I'm not yet ready to get back to work!

A good Set Theory class today. We talked about Goodstein's Theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodstein%27s_theorem, which is a number theoretical statement unprovable in set theory, but almost trivial in set theory. It was very interesting. It made me disappointed in number theory. I wish that was my only class today.

Then had a good falafel gyro. Still not tired of them.

Then was my language class. I'm not quite sure what we did today. Oh- we had a quiz, which I didn't do very good on (its a whole 5% of our grade). We worked with times today. Hungarians do time very weird. 3:15 is said 15 4. So 15 minutes has elapsed on the way to 4 o'clock. Our professor thinks it is optimistic. I think its rather the opposite, and if you want the days to go faster and you're not happy with what you have.

Then was the Combinatorics review class for Thursday's midterm. I was extremely bored. We went for an hour and a half- until 6:30. I learned how to do one recurrence relation, and didn't pay much attention for the rest of the class. I got back my last homework, which I only missed one on. I'm curious to see how I'm going to do on the midterm, I think I can get at least a B range (probably a little more than 70%). But I have thought about dropping this class so I'll have more time for the other ones.

Got home, had a great dinner. Not much work done- I did read a bunch of LOTR- ROTK today. It was decent, it was about when Aragorn was healing Merry.

I have two midterms in the next three days. I need to STUDY! Siiiigh..................... I'm thinking about traveling all the time now. I'm thinking about Geneva or Copenhagen sometime. Right now I'm leaning towards Geneva. Any advice?

class tomorrow? nooooooooo!

The synagogue.
Holocaust memorial in the back. Each leaf represents a Jewish family who died in the Holocaust. There are lots of leaves.

Inside of St. Stephen's Basilica.
They were having their Easter service.
Up the stairs we went. There were lots of stairs.
The view was worth it!
There is yummy seafood in this landlocked country.

Class from 12-7(!!) tomorrow. Tomorrow I have a language quiz, I will study in the morning.

yesterday- at the museum of applied arts

Ceiling.

hallo!

i'm tired. more random adventuring stories and bunches of photos to be posted tomorrow~

up gellert, again

On the hill again~
Inside the WWII museum, up in the Citadel.
Going down in the bunker, where there were many pictures of the massacres committed by the Nazis.
Air command.
Ammution.

Across from rock church.

Rock church.

No miniskirts allowed in the church.

Did another CHA h/w today. Started preparing for the midterm for COA, was really boring and not-fun.

Tomorrow we will actually go antiques shopping.

exploring to the max

Ruins on Margaret Island.

Water tower on the island.
Parliament.
'The Little Princess.' Yes- he is a boy, but that is his name.
Our wonderful dinner.

Which was at the First Strudel House.

sitting in the cold.

So its late. I've spent the last two+ hours finishing my application to a project at UIUC- geometric group theory. Today I went to Széchenyi baths for the first time, which was great. Where else will you see masses of people walking with bathing suits in 40 degree weather? Also did LOTS of walking and saw parliament up close and personal. Walking next to the river was VERY cold. I think tomorrow we will go to this huuuge outdoor antiques shopping extravaganza. Apparently you can find anything Russian or Soviet there. I wonder what I'll end up with.

more CHA! and kabobs! a great day!

Went out to the end of the yellow line and went to the fair. Some girls came up to us in the subway and asked us to sign our names on a piece of toliet paper. It was odd. Walked along Vaci Street to the Central Market. Some more girls came up to us here. I asked them in English what was going on. They said that had a 'stupid exercise' at their school. Still was confused, but signed anyway.

Then spent a bunch of time at the Market, including some more cabbage streudel. Bought a bunch of fruits here- which turned out to be quite tasty. Tried on a gas mask- which was little over $10, which was entertaining.

Went back and ate kabobs at the fair, and went in Gerbeaud and had a cappucino torta. The luggage people called, so we went back to the apt and got the luggage.

Did a lot of CHA. I finally came around the problem and figure out the rest of the character table. That was an amazing feeling- hours and hours of thinking and no solutions finally paid off!

Went to the mall and shopped at the Match. Lots of groceries~

Mom cooked a very good smelling dinner. The smell still lingers~

Finished up some CHA. So now I'm done with 75% of that homework, which is nice. I'm not 100% of every answer, but this really makes me feel more and more like an algebraist~

Did a teensy bit of LOG, but as usual, I really don't know how to apply the compactness theorem and don't quite understand the question. Perhaps talking it through with friends will help later.

Nite~

CHA is making me a little bit crazy

So... I got up late and got my hair cut. They washed my hair and then it was cut. She asked if it was okay if it was a little modern. I said yes. I left with my hair all spiky. Perhaps I'll spike it again if something really exciting is going on.

Trekked off to the airport, reading ROTK on the way. Its about a 1.5 hr journey. Met my mom. NWA had lost her bag! Still in MN, siiigh. they will deliver it to us tomorrow. Took the taxi back. That was only like an hour or so.

Got back- went out to the restaurant. She had goulash, I had chicken with hot fruits. It was good.

Had chestnut dessert. Chestnuts- with rum- are tasty!

Came back and continued my CHA homework. Still obsessed with how to get those 3 extra rows out of the tables. I tried to brute force it with the orthogonality relations. So I had 16 unknown variables, and 33 equations. I cumbersomely put them all into maple and executed. 100 mb of memory later, I got nothing. It was tiring, checking everything. Maybe tomorrow I'll try induced characters. I don't quite get how to use them.

I'm tired already. I think I'll sleep now. I wonder what tomorrow holds~

a decent day~ nothing too exciting thou

I was thinking about doing a bit more tourist-ing, but I woke up at around noon, nice and refreshed.

Fun things done today include starting to read LOTR-ROTK, finishing up Sam and Max ep 5 and destroying the internet! Hooray! The end of the game was really creative. Watched two tv-show pilots that I had downloaded from itunes for free, New Amsterdam and Canterbury's Law. Liked the second one better, but its not worth buying either of them.

Work includes sitting around pondering a lot about CHA and wondering why Sum(X(g)/X(1)) is rational. I then proceded to try to construct a character table out of two rows, and after adding the identity representation, proceeded to only find the order of the conjugacy classes of 4 of them. Not a lot of progress, but a lot of thinking.

Also did a lot of Combinatorics, which I don't like thinking about. It just sometimes seems like trivial stuff to me, even if I don't know how to do the problem. I have a friend who says she likes it precisely for the reason I don't- because it is more playful than other subjects in math. Well, I guess its reasonable to not like everything in all of mathematics.

Worked some on Hungarian. That isn't fun either.

Did set theory, which was mildly entertaining. Showed the number of bijections from N->N is the continuum. And looked at the functional homework, which looks okay. We already went through the answer in clas, but I won't bother formally solving it. I have a feeling the final in that class isn't going to be a bunch of fun.

Starting applying to a REU at UIUC on geometric group theory, since I have still not really gotten into anything (for that matter of fact, have not been rejected either).

Tomorrow my mom comes. Now I shall sleep.

gellert hill continued~

Today I shall let my pictures tell the story.




Biggest vat of vegetables ever. There was an outside fair. I had a delicious kebab, some garlic potatoes that weren't so great, and some yummy hot mulled wine.

Ah, Hungarian politics~

My goal was to get all the way to the top~

Elizabeth Bridge!



Kids + artillery = great fun.


I made it!

A cross to cap off the day.

Other time-wasters for today include watching Star Trek 4. A little too Abyss-y for me. Reminded me of Hitchhiker's, though.

a very unproductive day! i can do that now!

not much done. i can do that now! read some on a book about chaos~

did some homework, including understanding induced characters. didn't go out and see any of the craziness. one of my friends got stabbed by an old woman on the street. and by stabbed- i mean got pinned in the jacket with a hungarian flag pin.

finished yesterday's movie with yummy cold pizza lunch.

went and played uno with friends. it has been a long time since i played it with friends. it was good- i won twice in a row! then went back. had to wait about 15 minutes for the bus at the not-at all late time at 9:30. that wasn't much fun. thats one of the few things i don't like about this city. it does sleep. and quite early at that.

bye for now!

hooray!

met my landlords dad this morning.

FUN was pretty good. only 50% of the class was there. we talked a lot about duals and they make more sense to me now. then the professor got really excited and talked for almost 40 minutes more than usual. tomorrow is the celebration of hungarian independence. there are big events around budapest- including speeches by the prime minister. he is hated. so there are obviously protests. a couple of years ago a really old guy stole a tank and drove it around town for a bit. according to the professor, no one knew whether or not ammuntion was in it. and then, when the police accosted him- he wasn't arrested because technically, there is no law against stealing a tank. what a unique country~

was like 10 min late to CHA because of that. we talked about induced characters. seems we're skipping a bunch of stuff in the Isaacs' book. we didn't get our last homework back, which was somewhat disappointing, because i wanted to see how i did.

then it was spring break time!!!! i went to the McDonalds near the Renyi institute. had the special hamburger pita that only exists for a few more days. it was interesting- it didn't taste exactly like a hamburger- maybe more like a big mac- but the pita added some interesting-ness. it was no gyro, though.

then i went to the arcade and played a lot, in celebration. beat the star wars game- it was fun! then played some sopranos pinball. i got 13 million, which was excellent. the free ball comes in at 12 million. some random hungarian dude was watching me and we played some together.

had a tasty dinner of a bronx hot dog. it had mustard and some sort of hot peppers on it. then i capped of my celebration with a tasty cold bailey's coffee, which was excellent as well.

actually did some work today~ i'm proud. reviewed CHA from class before today, it seems to make more sense. although i'm a bit worried about my birthday midterm. i watched part of the old Yours Mine and Ours. it was a decent watch, i think i'll finish it tomorrow.

its late. i want to go to bed.

well- here is the picture of the pizza, as promised. it doesn't look very tasty. but it was. i will finish it up for lunch tomorrow~

FUN with CHA

Up real early to go to COA. More and more on the inclusion-exclusion principle. Not very comfortable with it yet since i haven't worked the problems yet. But it will be on the midterm- next next Thursday. ;(

Tried to get my haircut. But at 10:15- the place still wasn't open. It was going to open in 20 minutes or so. Thats what is a little bit strange about here. It seems a lot of things are taken much more leisurely, and aren't as open as much as back in the States. So I went home with long hair.

Very unproductive in my 3 hour break. Thats where unproductivity is always the greatest. At least my roomate helped me fix my tex software on my computer so I can write real math now.

Went to LOG. Today we discussed decidability as related to computability and completeness. We talked about the Church Thesis, which was good, and we started to discuss recursion.

Went home with a friend- he had lost internet so he came to use mine. Watched the season finale of Terminator. It was so intense. The ending- with the pool, is one of the highest body counts I've ever seen on television, and so innovatively done as well. It better come back next year!

Was decently productive, solving another CHA problem by myself and convincing myself I was right. Had pizza, which was very unique. It was a white sauce pizza with corn, with a lightly fried egg on top. It was tasty~ I'm trying to upload a picture but its not working. So tomorrow, maybe.

Finished up my last character theory homework and was estatic~ I actually understand this stuff. Its very interesting as well. Then I wasted the night away on youtube. Its almost spring break!!!

gyro streak- broken

One of the last to get to class for the Number Theory midterm. It was a lot of fun! Ah, number theory. There were 7 questions, I solved six in the two hours. Solving 5 would give an A. One question was a divisibilty problems- i.e. show number divides big number ^ big number + another big number ^ another big number. I apparently didn't do this problem the 'smart way'- it took a page of space. But I came up with exactly what I wanted, which was very nice. Csaba gave us chocolate while we were taking the test. It was tasty. Solving number theory problems is really one of the most satisfying things~

did some homework during the break~

before CHA headed to McDonalds. I had a craving for a small yet tasty and pickle-y cheeseburger. I got two, and a soda. It was good. McDonalds has some seasonal items- i.e. a sandwich only available for a week or two, such as a chicken cordon bleu sandwich. That being said, I think I'll have to go back and try these things later~

CHA was great! First off- before class I actually solved one of the homework problems. That was amazing. Class was great as well. We finished the proof of Burside's Theorem, talked a bit about the history of character theory, and went on to another theorem of Burnside's. If Chi(1) is greater than 1, there must be a zero somewhere in the row. Pelikan said that this was one of the more amazing and remarkable basic theorems of representation theory. We ended class with tensor products and briefly discussing the concept of a character field.

Went home- went out to the gym and ran some more. I had almost ran 4.0 km when part of the gym's power went off. Moments later, it had returned, but the moment was over, and I was done.


Made an excellent dinner of my frozen couscous and chicken. Also deep fried for the first time, which was entertaining. Made these frozen 'burritos', which looked just like egg rolls. They had the egg roll wrappings, but contained some kind of beef-salsa mix. They were interesting, thats for sure. Some weird nature bug show was on tv where the bugs were clear and they were eating other bugs, and you could see them inside the clear bug. As I was eating at the time, this was not very pleasant. So I changed the channel, which ended up being Married with Children- in Hungarian!

Had a friend over and did some logic homework together. Made some real progress- I think.

So tomorrow I have CO1A at 8. ;( There is no number theory class- which is sad, apparently the make up made up for the real class, which I did not realize until today. Afterwards I shall get a haircut.

Goodbye for now!

a good day~

woke up at 10:30, without my alarm yet going off, which is always wonderful. did some number theory in the morning before even going to class.

SET class. further discuss into ordinals, now Von Neumann Ordinals. had lunch with the SET professor, Peter Komjath, at the gyro place. that was fun~ ate a falafel gyro with baklava. have you ever had a lunch with a man with erdos number of 1? haha now i have~

then was the language class. spent more time on word endings. then we went to this amazing little coffeeshop in the middle of nowhere that had wondrous pastries.

i got some work done, then i met my friend and a bunch of her classmates at a best western not too far away from here. we wondered around a loong time looking for a restaurant- but not finding anything to our tastes. we went to a place near my apartment, but alas! it was already closed. finally around 9:30 we settled in this pizza place near my apartment. the pizza was quite excellent. it was a lot of fun.

home around midnight- brief bout of number theory. im so ready for my 'midterm' tomorrow. i wonder how i'll do.

tomorrow i want to get a lot of other work done too. lets see how that goes~

g'night~

gyros: day number six!

So- I woke up late and didn't leave the apartment until 9:25 AM-ish. I was tired. The bus took almost ten minutes to come- and of course when they come they came three in a row. The first was very very packed so I waited until the second.

By the time I got the the college the number theory midterm-prepare class was over. I saw Csaba right as I walked in the door. He said- it doesn't matter. Its nice already to have an A. but i'd like to understand things nonetheless.

Then was FUN. We had Banach space theory. We talked a lot about BLTs which made me hungry. That is, bounded linear transformations.

So i went and had a gyro after class. this is the sixth class day in a row i've eaten there. i did look at the cafeteria, but it just didn't look tasty at all.

Then was CO1A. It was a decent class. I'm almost caught up which makes me very happy. So today we discussed the inclusion-exclusion principle. Nothing mind blowing, but useful nonetheless. We solved problems such as- how many numbers from 1-1000 are not divisible by 2, 5, and 7.

Went back home on the 73 bus. Walking back to the apartment, and saw the CO1A professor I had just had. Apparently he had taken the 76 bus to the exact same stop as me- but the 76 stops one block to the east. He needed to get to the west and I needed to get to the east. I thought it was entertaining.

Decided to go grocery shopping. I had seen a Kaiser's near the bus stop- across from the mall yesterday, and decided to try it out. I had brought my camera because I wanted to take a picture of the opening of my apartment. On the ground floor is a very nice women's clothing store. There are always mannequins lined at the door, and some that greet me as I enter the apartment. This is an example of the clothes they have. I live in what seems to be a very dense clothes section- there is a mannequin store a block or so away from me.

Kaisers was very nice. I didn't have to walk as much, but I didn't buy that much anyway. Then I went home and started getting stuff done~

Had a good late dinner of egg noodles and vegetables. I couldn't meet up with my friend today, I hope to tomorrow.

My first class isn't until 12 tomorrow, but I'm sure I will be sleeping in close to then anyway. It is SET theory, I really didn't understand my last assignment too well. I think tomorrow in language class we're going to a coffee shop to try out deserts and ordering in Hungarian.

will i have a gyro tomorrow? hmm.

more homework! and fun~

yet another decently productive day, homework and non-homework wise. so i did do a lot of work, including a lot of catch up in Combinatorics. i think i'll be staying in my class. a lot of what we were doing in class was not very exciting- because we were showing the techniques needed to solve problems and such. recurrence relations are pretty interesting after all~~

reviewed a lot of Character theory today. we have this problem on the homework about a character table you find in the street, and you're not sure what exact ordering of the columns are- you only see two since it is dirty, but you know theres a mistake, and you must correct it. Pelikan said he is fond of this problem, which he created. he said he found this on some american professor's website, e-mailed the professor- who didnt' come up with the problem, and got credit for that!

in cha theory friday we started the proof of Burnside's Thm. this is one of the great milestones of character theory. the theorem states that any group of order p^x*q^y, where p and q are primes, is solvable. the proof is really intense- and uses the concept of field extensions and galois theory, but i think i at least sortof understand it. i did some wikipedi-ing of galois theory, and it really looks very interesting. i feel my chance to take this class is lowering, however, but i'll probably have a talk with the professor the week after spring break to see what he thinks.

reviewed a lot of functional as well. Friday the beginning of class wasn't all that exciting- we did some proofs and then reviewed the homework, but then we started talking about linear algebra. apparently next we will discuss infinite dimensional vector spaces! that excites me. matrices act very differently. i.e. ST=I, but TS!=I. we also talked about the concept of idempotent matrices. (much happy will?)

today i also went to the gym for the first time. it is very nice! it even has a sauna and steam bath. when you go in they give you a key which opens a locker which you can throw your stuff in. I bought a membership for a month- 16 visits. the lady i bought it from spoke just a little english but we got it done anyway! and today i ran 30 minutes and 3.7 km. i didn't shower there today because I didn't really explore that part of the gym before.

took the bus back to the MALL! i haven't been there in a while, and i wanted to go grocery shopping, but it was too late. i had a huuge dinner at the chinese place. i ate duck with sweet and sour sauce, with rice. it was getting late and they had some fried fish. they asked me if i wanted some- for free- and i gladly accepted. i capped off my meal with a vanilla gelato. i was stuffed. i deserved it!

did some more work, including solving some number theory, and trying to prepare for the midterm, even though it doesn't matter for me. watched Terminator- Vic's hand. pretty good episode. i can't believe the next one is the last! i will have to watch it soon.

tomorrow Csaba is having a number theory review class from 8-10. he says it is only a Q&A session. i don't really have many questions, so my goal is to come at 9:15-ish. then i have class until 2. a friend of mine- who i haven't seen since the middle of highschool- is in Budapest tomorrow and tuesday, so hopefully i'll be able to see her.

i'm a little bit tired. maybe i'll have some coffee in the morning to help me survive the wee hours~~

a long day of homework

Lots of work done! Only fun involved was watching last episode of Lost- which wasn't that good, and James Woods in family guy.

This evening I spent a LOT of time working on 1 number theory problem that is driving me a little bit crazy. It seems so obvious but I just don't know how to make it work out. One day I'll understand~~

Woke up at 12:30-ish today, but am already tired. Want to get up early tomorrow to get even more work done. Only 1 more week until spring break! Hooray!!!

friday!

party~~ it was fun. now its late.

12 hours of math! can it get any better?

i think not.

8 AM combinatorics class. was really bored. spent all class talking about Catlan numbers. I am thinking about switchig to Combinatorics B because i think that class is easier and requires less work.

during the break finished up my logic homework and attempted number theory.

NUM1A was great as always. so csaba wanted to contact a girl who was in his class a while ago who had written excellent notes. he said whoever would contact her and get her to e-mail him a message, with your name in it, would get an A in the midterm. thanks to facebook! i was able to find her and make csaba and my grade happy.

we had another problem session today. we did more of fermat- then we moved into Dirichlet's Theorem and Chebshev's theorem. solved fun problems such as 'show there is a prime such that the sum of its digits is greater than 200020012002.' one of my favorite problems was the following, which i have modified slightly. is there a prime power greater than 17 which contains ever digit the same amounts? answer correctly with reasoning and you win eternal blog-fame.

then was LOG. we did Cantors Thm- two dense linear orderings without end points that are countable are isomorphic. and the downward and upward lowenheim skolem theorems, about infinite and smaller models. prof wasn't too happy about our h/ws so we get to redo them.

then i went to a talk on random graphs. i didn't understand too much- there were a bunch of conjectures and proofs of erdos and lovasz. it does seem more interesting than the combinatorics we're doing, but it doesn't seem the best either. i was really interested in the percolation problem- i.e. randomly removing the nodes of a graph and seeing when a liquid can make it all the way through. we also talked a bit about information theory, and how randomness can make data more secure against attacks our outages.

went home and procrastinated. got into a REU at Valpo! its a bit weird since theres no NSF funding yet, but they expect to hear from them in about two weeks. its cool since the project is cryptography, and i'd get to work with a hungarian professor! so although its probably not the hardest one to get in, its one of the ones i'm most interested in. i would have to do it a week from when i get back from hungary- then i would already be missing a week of it, which the professor said would probably be okay.

went out and attempted CHA. have pretty good answers for two of them, and like a 50% answer for the 2nd one. hope to get better ones tomorrow from another comrade in the class. spent a lot of time thinking and another person's house, but not that much actual solving. reminded me of those algebra problem solving sessions in which i got nothing done. got burger king on the way to my friend's apartment- a grilled chicken sandwich with a coke and fries. i was a little bit proud of myself since i ordered it nem paradichom- without tomato! and the lady understood me!

now i sleep. tomorrow is friday! no class until noon! HOORAY

routine continued---

it seems as if my life is rather routine now and not as interesting- for non-mathers any more. i guess thats how it is when you get settled, which is nice, but perhaps not as interesting for you guys~ i hope you don't get bored on my days!

had class-- problem solving day in number theory was fun. had yet another gyro for lunch, this time a falafel one and a baklava. only 600 ft! and character theory wasn't bad, we saw how to find the centers from a group. we also talked about p groups. they are interesting! for every g in G, their order is some power of p. we talked a bit about infinite p groups- just for fun- they include Zp-infinity- which has all finite proper subgroups, and some sort of Monster group, which is an infinite non-abelian p-group which i think i'd like to study more about later.

had done some homework in my two hour break between classes. also bought my functional analysis book which was ridiculously expensive. it is a 'methods of modern mathematical physics book', and ran for almost $200. it was not required for the class, but I definitely feel much more comfortable having reference material for the stuff we're learning. the guy who runs the program was telling me how i probably spent the same amount of money on books as 3-4 normal people combined! i replied that i will cherish these books for the rest of my life, and they will definitely be on my bookshelf when i make professor.

tonight i really felt like spaghetti, but i didn't feel like going out to buy the meat. so i just had a sandwich and a salad for dinner. i had just bought this bagged salad, it was rather bitter, and the ceasar dressing i had bought was rather over-milky, but thats life. i think i'll go out to the mall tomorrow- if i have time.

wanted to take a nap, but decided to solve a number theory problem instead. we had to find all numbers s.t. 49 divides (n-1)(n-8) + 28. it took a while for me to see it in the right way, but when i did- it was pretty and obvious. thats how i feel number theory is. Csaba says advanced number theory isn't much fun- using analysis and stuff, but I think the end result might be completely worth it.

then i watched Terminator- the Demon Hand. it was an AWESOME episode. dr. silberman returns in a very ironic way. and the ending was very elegant yet creepy at the same time. there are only 2 more episodes that exist for this season, i really really hope that more people watch it and fox brings it back.

i tried to do h/w afterwards but that didn't quite work. tomorrow i have to be in class at 8:15! and i will hopefully be done at 8:00 PM-ish. I have a break from 10-12, where I will hopefully accomplish my logic homework, which is due tomorrow, and have not yet started. and there is a math talk at 4:15 about 'the theory and application of random graphs'. I don't know much about this stuff, but it is a Hungarian speciality, so I will definitely go and see whether or not i really enjoy it. and then its off to my friends to do character theory! it shouldn't be tooo bad since now i understand these questions~ hooray!

at least spring break is getting closer!

more gyros!

Got up around 11~~ Lot of sleep!

Went to SET. Today we discussed well ordered sets, orderings, and segments. Discussed the axiom of choice- the choice function more in depth than in any class before.

Then ate a chicken gyro- not as tasty as the one yesterday, but I felt like a little healthier food.

Then was Hungarian. Today we talked about all the types of cheese and meats available at the grocery stores, and went on to describe plural-izing nouns. It isn't a very hard process- it involves adding a k to the end of the word- but words can become very long when they are a plural direct object!

Was only a bit productive tonight. Did a bunch of Combinatorics h/w and am almost caught up with the homeworks! Looked at the next CHA h/w, and I actually understand the question! Which makes me happy. Not quite sure how to solve it, though.

That reminds me, I heard AAL is really hard as well. I have a friend who was originally planning on taking both algebra classes. He bought both books, and was pumped for class. He first dropped character theory. Now he is in none- he wants to keep his sanity. And I completely understand. At least CHA seems to be very close to the text, while AAL is apparently not.

Cooked couscous for dinner (it was frozen in a bag). Ate it with a piece of chicken that went well with it.

Then decided to watch Legally Blonde. It was very unexpectedly entertaining.

Tomorrow I have 2 classes, but I shall stay at the college in the middle to study. I will also spend almost $200 on the analysis book. I think I really need it as a reference. What fun!

an ok monday

CO1A was not much fun today. Was bored after the first hour, we were doing more with linear recurrences and solving big complicated sets of equations. It would be something quite easy for a computer system to do, but for us, it took a while. Had a large hankering for Skittles during the break- they are my feel good candy, but alas the cafe did not have any. For that matter of fact, I haven't seen any here. If I do I shall buy some. We continued the second hour with derangements.

Went outside and had a great gyro in the middle of my classes. It was only 500 forint! And it had everything (except tomatoes) on it. They spoke very good english. I will be sure to return.

The had FUN. Today was integration theory. We talked about integration in a way I had not studied before- i.e looking at the limit of step functions. We went on to prove the big theorem- the Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem. It used Jegorov's and wasn't really that hard.

Stopped at the Opera. Bought about 8000 forint worth of tickets to Don Giovanni (the nicest seats!), La Boheme, Swan Lake, and a Midsummer's Night Dream. I will sure be doing a lot of opera in April!

Stopped by Csemgol, bought a bunch of groceries. Including this tasty pastry-thing that I quickly devoured for dessert today after dinner.

Went back to the apartment, and went out in search of the gym. Took the 72 bus for the first time (I'm normally on 73/ 76) and went eastward. Went through the park, saw the gym, the circus (with big huuge clowns), which was entertaining. Quickly found the gym, which was pretty nice. 1 month costs 8000 forint for 16 visits. I was tired today but I'll go back to exercise and buy the membership later. In going back I accidentaly sat on the 74 bus, remembering only that my bus was 1 away from 73. Finally realized I was going the wrong way (we were on the highway for a bit) and got off and retraced my steps without a problem.

Watched Lost- the Constant today. It was weird but of course good and entertaining. The flashbacks were very sudden! Reminded me other time traveling stories though and wasn't too unique.

Ate dinner of Lisa's leftover meal from Saturday night (the beef and rice was good!) and ate a sandwich because it wasn't enough. Then had the yummy fruit dessert.

Did a lot of homework tonight without much procrastination and was very proud of myself. Got caught up with two classes of FUN, did most of my SET due tomorrow, and actually understood and finished a CHA problem. Which made me very estatic. (The problem was- Show g is conjugate to g^-1 iff all the elements in the column of g in the table are real numbers.) Now I have hope again!

Would like to get a lot of sleep since I am a bit sleep deprived. Planning on waking up at 10:30-ish tomorrow to finish my SET. My last problem involves finding the product of all the natural numbers. Fun, huh?

3 hour language class is never much fun, but that is tomorrow. Have a great day! And good night.

its BUDA time

Rained and gusted wind a lot today as well. Jumped up once with my umbrella open hoping to get lifted up into the sky, instead the umbrella folded backwards.

Walked up to Buda Castle. A very nice view.

Since it was so cold we went to this touristy restaurant to get some nice thick hot chocolate. It was expensive but well worth it.

Walked around some more, heading north. Saw lots of statues and good sights.

Then we had a small lunch since we had already walked so much of Goulash soup.

After seeing the Vienna Gate, we headed south towards Elizabeth Bridge. Hungarians really liked Queen Sissi. We looked at the statue of her, and then walked over her bridge to return to Pest.

Walked to the opera, went inside to look for tickets. Tickets for April go on sale tomorrow; I think I will buy relatively expensive tickets to Don Giovanni after class.

Had an interesting dinner of potato cake with paprika beef and sour cream. I ordered a pickle salad as well, since I really felt like eating a pickle. It came with pickled cabbage and beet, which I didn't like too much.

Took Lisa to the trainstation, had a wonderful and cheap chocolate baklava there. Saw two men playing chess very intensely. Saw her off.

Went back and did a lot of work, trying to make my not-productive weekend a little productive. I actually did quite a lot!

Tomorrow I have class from 10-2. Then I will wander. If I am extremely adventurous I might go to another theatre, looking for Carmen tickets, and then look for the gym.

Good night!

out and about yet again!

So I've been out a lot today with my friend, Lisa. There was a HUGE rain and we almost got soaked. My umbrella blew back and forth many times.

Went back and was very good at procrastinating.

Took a nap.

Then the weather was a bit better and we went out to Heroes Square again.

Did a bit of homework tonight.

We wanted to go to Buda today, but as soon as we were about to go the rain fell harder. So that will be tomorrow.

getting up early AND fun-ness

I'm tired. Got up early to meet a high-school friend at the trainstation.

I want to go to bed now. I'll talk more about my day later.

Highlights include:

Gabor Elek talking about the silliness that is Hungarian Democracy.

Actually doing character tables in Character Theory! But Oh NO! D4 and Q have the same! My roomate said he heard it was God's little joke. And I got a .7/3 on my last h/w. That made me happy, since I was expecting 0/3 !

Eating really spicy non tomato-based pizza, and after eating the first spice almost choking and feeling very bad~ Then I took all the spices off!

Playing a LOT of darts at the arcade.

See ya later~