life goes on-

So- I guess I haven't written in a while. I didn't really want to bump those Gellert photos down and not have people see them.

What have I been to? Well- the usual.

Classes have been going pretty well.

In combinatorics, we started doing the pidgeonhole principle, then Ramsey Theory and the beginnings of graph theory.

Character theory is awesome, as always. We proved some awesome theorems. The best was "Let G=G' and suppose tao is an involution with a centralizer dihedral of order 8. Then the order of the group is 168 or 360." This shows the power of character theory. I spent a long time on the last homework- until 3 AM Friday morning, but I made considerable progress. I realized finally that the Frobenius groups we are studying are nothing more than the weird gamma groups we briefly discussed in intro Algebra. That was definitely satisfying.

Number Theory- quadratic residues and Legendre symbols. The proof of the flipping rule was a lot of fun- as is applying the rule itself.

LOG has been a continuation of Godel numbers. Next week we shall prove the incompleteness theorem.

And in functional- we just did the open mapping theorem, which was an interesting proof.

Budapest has been pretty exciting as well.

Yesterday, there was a big "flash mob" sw of the island. The story is pretty much this- a right winger tried to buy tickets to an ultra-nationalist band in a jewish section of town. They obviously weren't selling the tickets, but they were willing to go somewhere else to get the tickets, for a small surcharge. The customer got offended, calling the store keeper an offensive Jewish name. The store keeper quickly kicked the customer out. So he called up his Nazi friends and was going to protest the store. The opposition got voice of this and- the president of Hungary came to the store yesterday morning- telling they will be defended. One of my good friends went down to the rally- he came out alive, haha. A lot of times these things happen in Hungary. Now the government is in chaos as well because of other silly political things.

On another note- I saw an 18 year-ish guy get into a fist fight with a 30 year old on a bus taking me home. Needless to say, the 30 year old was promptly KO-ed. I'm sure the younger one offended him. It was weird- everyone just stood there as if nothing happened.

Onto arts:

Last night I saw Swan Lake at the Opera House. It was really very pretty. In this case, unlike La Boheme, I thought the ending was much better than its slow start. The costumes is what the opera house excels at, and the swans and- especially the outfit of the Queen, were super ornate. Of course the ballet and the music was great as well.

I had seats in a different angle as last time- here are the pictures. It was an awkward angle- I had to lean over the railing in order to see about 65% of the stage. Now my neck hurts and I think that may be the reason.

On another note, today we were all invited to the great Béla Bollobás' apt- he is one of the premier Hungarian mathematicians- he teaches at Memphis and Cambridge. He was really a great guy. I talked to theatre about him. I was wearing my 24601 shirt, and he made fun of me that I hadn't read the book. He had some really tasty wine at the gathering as well. He gave me a bottle of wine to open. I didn't succeed. He made fun of me some more and asked what I have been doing with my college education. He had a talk Friday afternoon- which I missed due to CHA. I told him, and he poked fun of character theory and said galois theory was more powerful. He did agree with the greatness of Prof Pelikan. It was a grand time, I think he will be doing it again another weekend.

And I've come dangerously close to addicted to the old video games I've played long ago. I just rediscovered http://www.candystand.com/ which is a good waste of time. I like bullpen blast. One day I will pitch a perfect game! I just found a website in which I can download Commander Keen for free! (Including many other old pc games. classic-pc-games.com) Has anyone else played it? I never beat the version I played- and I will one day! Today I wasted almost 2 hours on http://www.mccainblogette.com/ It is a very unique view into the political world. But I'm studying plenty too, haha.

I think that might be all. Congratulations to my college friends who are on Spring Break! I am envious. Tomorrow I have to wake up early to get some more homework done, then I shall meet a friend to discuss h/w, and then go play soccer again!