Htam::Diary

This Monday, I went to school at 9 for algebraic topology, as usual.  For lunch, Sid and I decided to try the food-sharing idea again: we got the enchiladas plate that is too big for either of us alone, and also got some salad.  Sid got way too much salad, so it was still too much food.  Eventually we should get better at this.

After algebra, I went to a presentation of the Morgan Stanley IDEAS group.  It was not very interesting, but I went so I have an idea of what kind of jobs a math PhD can do if not staying in academia.  At this point, I definitely still intend to stay in academia and become a professor.

This Sunday, I went to church for Breaking of Bread as usual, but then I left early.  I came back to have lunch, and then pick up Beren to go to the LA Opera.  We are attending Die Walkuere, the second opera in Wagner's Ring cycle.  The music was really good, I really really enjoyed it.  The staging is still weird like last time, but I suppose I am used to it by now.  There is also more action going on this time and not as static.  The general director of LA Opera Plácido Domingo was worth listening to--he is one of the world's most famous tenors.  He sung Siegmund today, a role that will not reappear later in the Ring.  I am really excited and want to attend the next two operas.  Originally Michael Woods was going to come with me, but he forgot it was Easter, and so suddenly dropped out.  This meant I had to drive all the way back to pick up Beren for the opera (he substituted in).  On our way, we saw this interesting car.

[Photo: A car painted like a Rubik's cube with the license plate RUBIK QB.]

This Saturday, I picked up Alex for Bible study as usual.  More people came to Bible study today.  Afterwards, we went to have lunch at the burger place near church.  Eddie drove Doris to get a haircut, and then went with Alex, Gershom, and Priscilla to get boba.  I drove to Caltech to pickup a ticket from Caleb Ng (originally from Michael Woods), and then joined them at the boba place.  Then I drove Priscilla back to church while Eddie went to pick up Doris and go back to church.  Now we have 6 people and 3 cars.  We paired up and drove back to my place.  It was Priscilla's idea to come to my place to sing Karaoke Revolution (we've been planning this for quite some time now).  We pulled Alex on board, and when Eddie also said yes, it was confirmed.  Gershom joined sometime during lunch and Doris joined right before we took off (originally we were going to go drop her off).  We sang for an hour or two, it was quite fun.  Then we all drove to a Hawaiian place to have dinner also with Steve and Tammy, Esther and Caleb, Chris and Dan, and Caleb.  Afterwards, we all went to Steve and Tammy's place, but I left shortly after to go home.  It was a long day, and I have a long day tomorrow waiting for me.  Ah, too many events.

[Photo: Group picture before heading out for dinner.]

This Friday, I got dizzy during Adam's algebra discussion.  I went out to get some fresh air, and I felt a little bit better.  But sitting through 1.5 hours of combinatorics while being uncomfortable was not the best idea ever.  I have not been dizzy for quite some time now.  Hopefully this is an isolated occurrence only.

This Thursday, I mainly worked on calculating the Zariski topology on Spec(Z[T]), the spectrum of the polynomial ring over the integers in one free variable.  I went to the Combinatorics Colloquium and worked on this before the talk started.  Professor Balmer came in and sat behind me, so I showed him I was working on algebra.  He talked to me after the talk and asked me if I solved it or if I listened to the talk.  I think he is quite a pleasant person.

This Wednesday, I rode my bicycle to school.  I have not done this in a very long time.  The reason I did it today is because my left leg hurts, and I want to use it as little as possible.  I figured if I ride my bike, I can avoid walking.  Furthermore, if I impart a lot of impulse (either with great strength or with long duration) with my right leg, I can use very little impulse from my left leg.  This works well.

[Photo: My sister sits on my desk.]

This Tuesday, the qual results were released.  My 3 closer peers who took the algebra qual all passed.  So Haokun and I joined the 3 of them for celebration afterwards.  We went and ate dinner in Westwood.  I believe this is my second time eating out with peers for dinner.  Last time was with Boris and Adam after my first table tennis match (it is arguable whether I should consider them as my peers as they are a few years older).  In any case, today we did something different.  I will be studying for the quals during the summer.

This Monday, my ex-roommate David Barmore came over to finish watching the finale of Battlestar Galactica.  Actually, I went to pick him up and we went to Bristol Farms together first to purchase sandwich meats and cheeses so we could eat dinner together.  I think the finale is kind of disappointing.  Well, the whole series was getting more and more disappointing, in my opinion.  The ending and the importance of Hera seemed to be quite contrived.  Oh well, overall, this series was definitely an enjoyable one.  I do not regret watching it.  I also don't have many more opportunities to do things like this with Barmore since he is moving away soon.

This Sunday, I picked up Alex, Jess, and Doris for church.  The interchange from I-5 to I-10 was closed, so I took the 110 to Pasadena and came back.  We were still on time.  During lunch we had a meeting for the high school group teachers.  I was really impressed with what Beryl prepared.  Then I went to play volleyball again (and once again it was when Steve and Tammy were not there).  It was fun today, since I got to spike successfully a few times (as opposed to last week, not having any such opportunity).  Then we had dinner and came back.  It is another long day out; I think I should try to have a simpler life on weekends if possible.

This Saturday, I picked up Alex, Doris, Steve and Tammy for Bible study.  I think I drove local streets picking up people longer than how then how long Steph says she takes to get to church. :-D  Anyways, I don't mind.  Steve and Tammy got ride with Dan afterwards, and Doris drove back (in her new used car!).  I took Alex to Caltech club fair, he has a friend who is a prefrosh.  Before going, however, we went first to buy some things at 99 Ranch, Target, and OfficeMax.  When we were at Target we saw Hou-En and June!  So interesting.  At the club fair, I got to see a lot of old friends.  I also played some table tennis demonstration (which was the main purpose of the trip).  Afterwards, I had dinner at Wahoo with Alex and Po-Ling Loh.  Then we talked in Avery for a while, then we came back.  It is really late.

This Friday, I finally caught up to my diary posting!  I am posting this entry right before I sleep, as opposed to retro-actively filling this in.  I have not done this in a very long, long time.

In other news, I spend today listening to a lot of Les Miserables.  I am surprised, I am starting to like it a lot again.  Well, I mean, I've always enjoyed it.  I used to not know if I like this better or Phantom.  Around last year I decided I like Phantom better, and many people agrees (that they think I do).  But now I am having second thoughts.  If I could only go watch production of both again.

This Thursday, I drove Josh Zahl to Pavilions in the morning.  Then I went to have lunch with Alex and Jonah.  Our weekly lunch is moved to Thursdays now since Alex has classes at 11 all other days.  The lunch was cut short because it was rather cold.  Then I had geometry discussion, followed by some free time.  The highlight of the day may be hearing Tao's talk on the density Hales-Jewett theorem.  We used to only have an ergodic theory proof, which, according to Tao, was quite difficult.  Gowers proposed Polymath1, where many mathematicians collaborated to find new proofs of this theorem.  They ended up with 3 combinatorial proofs and a new ergodic theory proof.  Tao presented the most elementary combinatorics proof today.  It was quite understandable, and making it an enjoyable talk.

This Wednesday, I went to eat lunch with the first year math grads again.  It is nice that so many of us are eating there together now.  Most of us have class at 12 and no class at 11, it is quite nice.  After geometry and algebra lectures, I played some table tennis with Sid.  Perhaps I would suggest to make this into a weekly thing.  Exercise is always good.

This Tuesday, I ate lunch at home, and then went to school for one hour of algebra lecture.  Originally, it would have been discussion with the TA, which would make me want to skip more readily.  However, Balmer and Massey decided to switch TA discussion on Tuesday with lecture on Friday.  So now I better go.

After class, I walked back, and Stephanie from church came to visit.  Her students are on spring break so she is free.  We talked for a while about different things, including my research paper Vertex-pancyclicity of hypertournaments.

[Photo: My sister sits on the edge of my U-shaped table from IKEA.]

This Monday, classes start.  In the morning, I still had nothing special to do yet.  I went to school for lunch, and there were a lot of people there (as in, math first-year grads).  Afterwards I had algebraic topology with Professor Kefeng Liu.  He gave an introduction with outline to what he will cover.  Then we had algebra with Balmer, a continuation of the previous two quarters.  Some of us were talking about the usage of whom versus who in sentences, and the cases when we have a clause as an object that has who as the subject.  Later in the night, I spent a lot of time thinking about pluralization in the English language, specifically for mathematics.  In math, a lot of "English" words are borrowed from Latin, and thus are pluralized in a variety of different (predictable) ways.  This is unlike German, where it is difficult to predict.

This Sunday, Alex emailed me early in the morning asking whether we could go get breakfast.  Apparently today is the old daylight saving time change, and his watch set itself forward accordingly, yielding Alex being ready much earlier.  I already had breakfast by then, but I still picked Alex up early and we went to Kang Kang on Valley and Garfield in Alhambra for some Taiwanese breakfast.  It was not very good, actually.  Oh well.  After church, I went with them to play volleyball.  Today, Guga and Rachel both came to play, which is why I decided to stay and play as well.  I am starting to like volleyball more and more.

This Saturday, I woke up early and left at 8:15.  I arrived at Toyota of Pasadena at 9:00 (as planned) and checked my car in for the 5000-mile maintenance.  Hou-En and June came to pick me up at 9:30, and we got to church at 9:50, perfect timing.  After Bible study, we ate lunch at Pho, and then Hou-En and June dropped me off at the Dealership again.  There I picked up my car, and went to 99 Ranch Market since it is very close (as planned).  After purchasing groceries, I drove home, but hit heavy traffic (unplanned!) and got home after more than one hour on the road--definitely longer than expected.  After putting things in the refrigerator and freezer accordingly, I checked the status of Alex's flight.  Oh no, he is getting in early (by a few minutes)!  I hurriedly went to my car and drove to LAX.  On the way, I hit more traffic again.  When Alex called me, I was 2 minutes away from the cell-phone waiting lot (thus I could say I am 2 minutes late to pick him up).  Anyways, after getting him, we spend more than an hour driving back in even worse traffic.  However, this leg of the trip seemed the shortest as I had him to talk to.  I enjoy talking a lot. :-D  Today, I spent roughly four hours driving.  Eeks.  Today is also the first time I ever drove to LAX.  I now know how it works and I am prepared to pick up dignitaries next time!

This Friday, I finished (more or less) all the errands I set out to do this break.  Usually I am very ambitious during break, and I write a list of 120 or so things to do, and ending up doing half of them.  This break, perhaps it is short, and I knew it was short (for me, it was only 3 full days), so I made up a much shorter list.  I have more or less accomplished them.  I say more or less because, some tasks are finished because they are removed due to difficulty.  Indeed, I have given up on my battle against X to get my desktop computer module to output in higher resolution on my TV.

This Thursday, I went to the dentist and spent about 3 hours there.  I got deep cleaning done, it was not as unpleasant as Josh Zahl led me to believe.  Then I drove half an hour to Venice (in traffic) to purchase a BENJAMIN stool that I saw on craigslist.  I have been seeking these for quite some time now, ever since I bought one last summer and then returned to buy more only to find that they were out of stock (even until now).  The man I bought the stool from lives near the beach--literally.  I found street parking after a long while, and then walked along the beach to his place.  Got the chair, and then went and sat down on the beach--I figured, I am already here.  After half a minute, I got up, and went to my car.

Today my bigger accomplishment was finishing revising the manuscript for Vertex-pancyclicity of hypertournaments, which was accepted by Journal of Graph Theory last year.  I got an email asking me to hasten my submission of revisions while I was in Hawaii.  I promised to deliver during Spring break, and this I did.  Hopefully everything checks out.

I then went to the math department, where I finished doing my taxes (both federal and state).  Then I picked up Davis Barmore with a broken computer and monitor.  We drove the monitor to Steve and Tammy's place, they will recycle it in benefit to Steve's high school e-waste recycling drive.  Then Barmore came to my apartment and we ate together and watched the first half of the Battlestar Galactica finale.

This Wednesday, Chris Chiu came over to my place in the morning at around 11.  We talked for a little bit, and then walked to UCLA.  I showed him around the math department, and then we walked over to Jonah's lab.  After a very brief tour, we went to lunch at the Bombshelter.  I left early to do some things in the math department, while the cousins talked.  Then Chris came to the math department and we walked home.  This was around 2 PM.  Then we spent the next couple of hours playing guitar and singing (actually, working on the songbook project, correcting chords and such).  Then we spent the next couple of hours talking about all sorts of things.  It was quite enjoyable for him to visit.