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QOTD

snurched off someone else's door:

on how chicago got started: some people in new york went "well we really like the crime and poverty, but it just isn't fucking cold enough."

Only in U of C

Can you talk about all of the above in one day:

1. How in an ideal situation with no air resistance and infinitely strong balloon rubber, a helium filled balloon rising into the atmosphere will oscillate and come back down to the ground before rising up again in Simple harmonic motion
2. How calcium adds to your bones and makes you grow taller
3. The economics of not eating chinese food until the marginal utility from delayed consumption is equal to the marginal disutility of delayed consumption
4. Rationality in humans and emotions and theory of mind
5. Chocolate.
6. Mickey mouse.
7. How freaking COLD it is.

Inifinitesimally

This one's for you:



And yes, it's an official house over here. So here's to the toast-a-que.

But the spelling's wrong, you say?
Damn americans, you know they can't spell anything rite.

Phew

Yes, well, thus hath passed, in the short span of 3 days:
1 x bio review paper
1 x mind paper
1 x mind response paper
1 x math midterm

and all the accompanying readings therewith.

Phew. I now know, with great certainty, that the maclab doth close at 1am dutifully, and that staying in the library past 1 thus isn't really worth it.

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In other news, for all you fans of the sims(tm):
Dante's Inferno?

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Also, because i have flooded off the old photos, here's a new one with a new story:

This weekend past we went out to the point to try and see if we could catch the aurora borealis, it being the super rare occaision when a magnetic ion storm whatchamacallit hits the atmosphere and does thingimajigs. In short, other ppl saw it on saturday and we oso want. So here's a photo:



And you can't really see it coz it's sorta small, but if you look reaaaaally carefully, and maybe turn your head a bit to compensate for the angle in which my tripod is artisitically inclined, you'll see a bottle on the floor.

But no aurora, sadly. Oh and we went there at like 12 midnight or something, my camera's just pretty good at making things bright.

The third day of the week

After tuesday and before thursday is of course, not wednesday, but shake day.

The day when cookies and cream shakes with whipped cream and sprinkles and a cookie (and a moraschino cherry but i despise those things) go for just $1.

Thus the tradition goes, you must take a shake every wednesday in the short break after bio and before math. And of course, purchase them for your friends so they don't have to line up for eons since you got let off your bio class early.

Now, if perchance a number of those friends happen to not want the shakes, you now have a number of shakes, n, which >1. Even if it is a reasonable assumption that everyone will follow their predestined fate and eat of the shake, i suppose nobody can accurately predict when they're going to fall sick on a wednesday, or when, for example, they need to go back to their house to get something.

Thus, perhaps, you might end up with a number of shakes which greatly exceeds 1, say, for example, a number which exists between 2 and 4. (yes, an integer, you honors math freaks)

And afterwards, as an afterthought to a BRILLIANT SPANISH TAPAS DINNER WITH AMAZING CHOCOLATE TRUFFLE DESSERT AND SUPER INTERESTING BAD ASS TAPAS DISHES and a NEIL GAIMAN READING OF A BOOK-IN-PROGRESS WITH AUTOGRAPH SIGNING SESSION you might wish to get, say, another shake, when you're at clarke's, a supertypical 24 hour american diner which of course is a novelty since you're neither american nor typical.

Of course you could cheat in the counting because you didn't actually finish ALL of those shakes, but hey, that doesn't mean that wednesday wasn't shake day. =)




Oh yes and the neil gaiman talk was really fantastic and he read SOOOOOO well and so amazingly in -just- the right cadence and accent and flow that engaged and enraptured, with his usual brand of humour brought to life (since, of course, it's him reading it) and it was just spectacular. And i managed to get a book signed for my sister (and, while i was waiting in line, after a great contemplation, with my name tacked on too) which made her excited and happy so that is all good.

It was a good omen. Buy Neil Gaiman's Anansi boys. *jedi mind trick*

Jia Cao

And so today i decided it would be a good idea to have lunch in the quads, out in the open, since it's a balmy 9 degrees out. So i dar-baoed a nice tasty lettuce,tomato, turkey, honey mustard, onion sandwich on grilled sourdough bread, which was nice and...toasty when i bought it... and walked the 4 minute walk to the quads, by which time it was naturally fridge-cold.

So i walked around, and found that they relocated the bench i wanted to sit at, and since i didn't want to sit on the fringes of greenery, plonked myself down on the grass and enjoyed the sunlight playing on my back, the wind through my hair, and the bright blue skies overhead.

Whereupon the wind coursing through my hair decided to pick up the cover of my sandwich container and blow it about 5m away. So, being a good citizen who doesn't like to litter, i went to pick it up, whereupon a number of squirrels (limit n --> infinity of Squirrel_n) saw me walking around with sandwich, and decided to investigate further. So okay, i took my sandwich, proclaimed how cold it was, and tore off a bit of bread crust, knowing i shouldn't feed it strange things which mess with its digestive system, but of course sourdough with honey mustard is a healthy alternative to starburst or whatever other crap ppl feed those things.

Which began my lunchtime entertainment. Naturally the squirrel sat there on its haunches nibbling furiously at the little bit of bread, which was absolutely adorable, but of course other squirrels suddenly realised what was happening, and decided to come and claim social security handouts. Now squirrels are smarter than pigeons, and a whole lot more aggressive (and cuter) so the aforementioned first squirrel started chasing away all the other prospective squirrels to protect it's newly found oil well. Border controls were set up, and the thing started rooting around the grass around me looking for scraps, getting a little bit too close for comfort (for some reason i had an irrational fear that it'd pee on my bag) so of course i did the natural thing that any threatened bag-owner would do:

I fed it another morsel.

Coz it was so damn cute.

And then of course i had to chase it away from my bag a few times, but it was all good

coz it was so damn cute.

oh yea and it was a good sandwich, cold or not, even though by the end i realised i couldn't actually feel my hands anymore. And i decided to come hide in Classics and wait for my next class, which is where i discovered that wireless internet is a good thing, and thus you have this post. It's truly fascinating to be sitting in a really old building with antique fixtures and furnishings (read: ugly floors) and have wireless access. phoosh.

The incredibles

Incredible movie. Cute animation with comic timing, impeccable voice-acting (E's particularly cracked me up), a realistic plot (well, if you discount the whole evil base in a volcano and all that stuff) and cool ideas for effects (insert another spoiler here) combined to give an experience that would have been nothing short of spectacular had we not all been seated in the front row.

This is not a movie review.

This is a rant about strange inefficient systems which have the theatres free for half an hour before the movie, and let the patrons and the market decide who sits where in a free for all. End result: it doesn't matter when you buy the ticket, it matters when you come to the theatre. Which i suppose does away with the problem of ppl coming late and stepping on feet when they enter the cinema late in an attempt to skip the trailers (why would anyone want to skip a STAR WARS EPISODE III TRAILER anyway?) but means your cinema infrastructure isn't efficiently used, coz money's made when you show movies, not when you let people sit around in your nice plush seats and drop popcorn on the floor.

ALSO, it means that people won't rush to buy tickets since it's first come first serve seating for buyers, so you probably won't know if you're going to sell out or not till much later.

Anyway i'm just upset that i had to watch a good movie from the front row and sustain a slight headache from all that amazing zipping around during the STAR WARS EPISODE III TRAILER. And all that jazz. But it was a good movie and i enjoyed it much. =) The company helped too, of course.

Wow

So that was the most exciting election i've seen. Never have people gone rallying in the streets, or handing out posters and stickers and badges(buttons, as they call it) and various other Kerry Paraphanelia (no bush ppl here), or had heated arguments over the merits of Hsien loong over chee soon juan (not that there's much of a debate there)... And i've never watched the TV, gripped, along with other people eager to hear the results before:



(yea that's everyone there trying to watch and do work at the same time, yes, the two laptops in the immediate foreground are open to MS word and trying to type out damn bio things)

That is, that was where i ended up after i eventually left the library at 12ish when i couldn't stand it anymore. We were all there trying to do our amazing bio homework with people randomly calling out "127:89!" and the rest going "argh!" or, well, more accurately, go clickety clackety on our keyboards as we try and do our homework.

But of course, as everyone knows, bush won.

And then all the leaves fell.



*cue dramatic music*

The Rain in Chicago Falls mainly wherever the wind blows it

Dear diary,

It rained all day today. I saw 3 umbrellas blow inside out, one of which was mine, but my trusty (damn expensive) US$15 with vents survived it without broken struts, unlike the poor, unaccustomed, fresh off the boat RJ umbrella (which i dearly loved) which kinda died within an hour of its first use. Chicago rain is so far sort of mao-mao yu, but boy does it know how to fall. and it's no fun when you're wet and the wind blows hard at ya.

That aside, the court is still out over the most satisfactory location for next year's accomodation. We have, however, decided on the fixtures for our house, wherever it might be:

1. Round glass-topped dining table with an aquarium below, which contains x baby sharks where x --> 1 as n --> infinity
2. Indoor waterfall/pool/rockfixture/thing to promote peace and tranquility
3. Foosball table
4. Pool table
5. Indoor pool (not equivalent to no. 4)
6. Mahjong table
7. Piano
8. Coffee-maker which can brew expresso, latte, cappuccino etc.
9. Cable TV connection which can get pay per view ESPN for EPL matches

Time to start saving, but hey, that would be such a cool home. It's good to have a buncha crazy cheap-thrilled housemates. =)