The Big One

I’m a bit annoyed that I am now a senior but I still can’t get into Linguistics 20. If you have ever talked to me about enrollment you probably know that I have been interested in this class for as long as I have been at UCLA. It’s always been sort of low priority: some other class filling rapidly inevitably forces me to spend my precious first-pass units elsewhere. For the Math 30 series and the first few math upper divs, there are generally 3 sections of each course offered each quarter, one taught by an awesome professor and two taught by horrible professors. Then there was always some GE which I was sure would fill up much quicker than Ling 20 (Scand 50W, Poli Sci 50, Geog 5...). Thus leaving me with zero choice in the allocation of my first pass units for my first few years as an undergraduate.

My capacity to be selective has purportedly increased in recent years, upon achieving “graduating senior” status. But I still have to compete with the other graduating seniors for the Classes that Matter. And I still can’t get into Ling 20. Blame resides with the first pass/second pass system, which we love as freshmen and hate as seniors. Something about silly freshmen being allowed to enroll in silly freshmen classes before their graduating senior overlords is just wrong. The worst part is even though the class has been full for a month now, the amount of students enrolled just keeps increasing:


Speaking of math classes, our selection for Fall 2010 is dismal. For some reason in the fall they mainly schedule The Ones that Everybody Takes, Math 110A, 115A, 131A, and 132. Which is absolutely fantastic for the people who have just started their upper divs and absolutely lame for the rest of us. It’s a trend I’ve been noticing - fall quarter has the most intro classes and as the year progresses they offer more specialized/unique/not boring ones. For example last spring I took Math 116, Cryptology, which incidentally is nothing like you think it is if you are unfortunate enough to be fan of the Da Vinci Code. But I’ve never really had an issue with a drought in class selection until this fall - presumably the budget cuts are at fault. Let us weep for the freshmen.

Until this year I was diligently writing a bit about each class I took at UCLA. I have gotten pitiably far behind so I’ll just tell you some of the highlights, although some of these should probably be called lowlights, get it?

CS 180 - Introduction to Algorithms and Complexity Theory: I’ll admit I didn’t really know what to expect from this class, but I did assume it would be useful for a computer-person specializing in mathematics. After all, it’s about algorithms. But it ended up being weighty and a bit too abstract and a bit too impossible. Every week I was assigned 4 impossible problems to solve by myself, problems which I spent hours thinking about without actually making any progress, and problems which I consequently got depressed about before writing down some crap and turning them in anyways. Fortunately the professor seemed to know his class was awful and let us out 30-40 minutes early from each lecture. And made some nerdy algorithm jokes, which I would have appreciated much more if I weren’t in a dank, stuffy room with no windows, surrounded by smelly undergraduate engineers.

CS 174A - Introduction to Computer Graphics: I still can’t believe the turkey that taught this class. On Day 1 he says to us “don’t expect to have enjoyable lectures,” and “I’m not going to make any funny jokes.” (This was a lie. He made several funny jokes. In fact I would say his ratio of funny jokes to normal speech was a bit higher than many other professors.) But he also told us some stuff about how learning is supposed to be a painful process, and how terrible our calculus and linear algebra skills were. So all-in-all he was a bit of a downer. He liked to tell us nothing about what would be on the exams. I scored about 30% on the midterm, which was the most below-average I have ever been on anything. I’m assuming this was because he threatened to give us negative credit for sufficiently awful answers, which dissuaded me from filling the page with my usual bullshit (I think this was his goal.)

This guy was quite full of himself, but deservedly so - he was brilliant. But he made it a little too apparent that teaching was not His Thing. After the midterm he gave us a course evaluation where he asked us to vent all of our concerns with him and with the class. Then he spent an entire class session discussing what we wrote, making legitimate excuses for some of our issues, but actually promising change for others. We left uplifted, or not completely screwed for the first time in the seven weeks we had been in the class. Then, he left the country. This sounds made up but I swear to you that he left the country and didn’t teach the rest of the class, just in time to not do anything he said he was going to do.

We were left in the astoundingly clumsy hands of the TA who spoke at about 50% normal speed. A smart guy, I’m sure, but he drew things out so much with his incredibly thick accent masking his already-broken English, things we didn’t particularly wish to hear in the first place. So I am pleased to announce that this is my new Worst Class of All Time, surpassing even 10th and 11th grade English.

German: I took an entire year of German just for kibbles and bits. I guess it’s because I like languages and because high-school me willed it. In the fall my TA was an old man, who was about as far from stimulating as I can imagine, and who failed to get us to speak German basically at all. He did quirky things like give us four copies of the same handout (maybe he had memory issues.) But I lucked out in winter and spring, when I had a very fun TA who reminded me a lot of my French TAs from freshman year. It was a good class, I met some great people (this is another reason I like to take languages.) But I’m afraid my retention of German is not so great - probably because German is hard. For some reason it’s much less intuitive to me than Spanish or French. My biggest problem is that there are way too many prepositions: an, ab, auf, aus, in, um, zu,, bei, neben, hinter, zwischen, nach, mit,durch, gegen, von, innerhalb, wahrend, etc., then of course they often contracted with other words, hinab, hinaus, herab, damit, danach, beim, zum, am, im, zum, hinterm, vom... All I can say is stay far away from German if you struggled with Spanish or French.

It has occurred to me that the university (at least mine) focuses on the theoretical rather than the practical, the abstract rather than the concrete. I suppose this is probably better, since the practical is usually a whole lot more obvious. But it creates a feeling of aimlessness that I find hard to shake. Am I really learning? Are these four years of solving impossible problems worth it? Being able to recite some new facts is a bit more tangible evidence of learning than suspecting “my thought patterns are a little different now.” I did have a bit of an epiphany during my sophomore year about mathematics and knowledge in general (this would take several more paragraphs to discuss), but how do I know that my university education is responsible, and that it wasn’t something that would have dawned on me regardless?

Coinciding with this is the longest creative draught I have experienced since I started calling myself a composer. This I am still struggling with. You would think that any emotion at all would lend itself to writing music (happy music. anxious music. sad music. mad music. lonely music.) But I have always found it much easier to write when in an optimistic/carefree/happy mood. Composing has never been very natural for me, but it is a bit alarming that stress seems to completely kill the entire process. This is something to think about, and for you to think about with me.

We played some incredible music this year in UCLA symphony:

Balakirev - Symphony no. 1: Oh how this piece grew on me. I am unsure why I did not like it at first, perhaps because it opens a bit slowly, with unquestionably the worst movement of the four. Not bad, but not terribly interesting - except a few bars towards the end of the piece where with a few brass chords he seamlessly gets the music back from Db to C. Half step modulations have always sounded terrible to me, but this one works. Then comes a scherzo which is probably one of the few classical works which I would describe as “catchy,” especially in its climaxes over a low A pedal. Then an andante with a melody which reminded me of the kind of melody I used to write. It’s even in Db, the key I imagine all pretty melodies in. I of course liked this movement instantly, although looking back I think its climax is a little less than effective: a bit of muddy orchestration of an odd chord, much less impassioned than a simple restatement of the melody earlier in the piece. A beautiful movement in general, but with a lot of exposed string writing in difficult keys, worsened by our hall’s unspectacular acoustics. The finale was the best movement of the four, and shouldn’t it be? It opens with a folk melody which I don’t particularly care for, except in that it makes me feel like I’m playing Tchaikovsky. Then a very upbeat clarinet melody which begins a triumphant allegro. Strings in octaves punctuated with brass and percussion - what’s not to like?

Tchaikovsky - Symphony no. 2: Another one that grew on me, but not all of it. The slow movement still sounds like it was written for the equivalent of today’s elementary school string players, some kind of stupid children’s march which spends way too much time with the dominant and tonic and no time anywhere else. But I’m willing to overlook this one because the surrounding movements are incredible. The first movement, absolutely a blast to play, is probably the most reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s 4th-6th symphonies which were the works which pulled me into classical music in the first place. Sometimes in an orchestral string section the writing makes it difficult to play energetically - Tchaikovsky will have none of that. This was the most bow-hair-breaking piece I have performed since Rodeo. 3rd is a scherzo, which is a word I have difficulty using to describe a piece which sounds as angry as this flurry of notes. Completely relentless, even in its transition to the brief trio. The final movement is nothing spectacular, but closes with a very Russian blast of C major, which works for me.

Stravinsky - Suite from The Firebird: Further evidence that Stravinsky was way ahead of his time. Listen to the 60-second Firebird variation and you will have no idea you’re listening to something from the early 1900s. A sort of romantic modernism, breaking away from the last few restrictions of the classical era while still embracing natural forms and occasional lyricism, the kind of modernism I love and strive for. Top notch orchestration - this was after several revisions of the original ballet. It reminds me of Ravel at times - particularly the lullaby near the end of the piece, which occasionally sounds almost plagiarized from the opening to Ravel’s own Rapsodie Espganole (In a good way.) Then the Infernal dance, 4 minutes of rhythmic fervor which reminds me of modern wind ensemble literature. And of course, the unforgettable B-major Finale, easily one of the most triumphant moments in all of classical music.

Vaughan-Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis: Have I really never written about this before? Along with Barber’s Adagio and Part’s Silouan’s Song this is one of the few works of string orchestra literature which doesn’t bore me. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Phrygian mode is as close as I will ever get to spirituality. I have wondered for a while now why modern composers don’t embrace the medieval modes more. This piece is haunting, like it’s the music of god, and it’s just because the As are flat instead of natural. And I’ll stop there because any more and I would feel like I’m repeating myself.

Elgar - Cello Concerto: This piece is devastating: I feel guilty that it was right before intermission. Shouldn’t we leave the audience with something uplifting? Elgar has this style of writing where he almost completely abandons the tonic, going minutes at a time without resolution. In high school I fond it very difficult to listen to; only when I come back to this piece 4 years later do I realize it’s supposed to be. How could you live in post-WWI Europe and write music with a nice perfect cadence every 8 bars? The third movement in particular tears me apart. It has nothing that is normally found in what I consider pretty music: no fortissimo climax, no soaring string melody, no suspensions. It just goes for a short 4 minutes and somehow it’s the saddest thing you’ve ever heard. The soloist just floats back and forth above the orchestra, meandering aimlessly, a bit reminiscent of Messiaen’s Louange à l’Éternité de Jesus from the Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps. And of course the material is restated towards the end of the 4th movement, just to make me even sadder.

Ravel - Ma Mère l’Oye: The most restrained of his orchestral works, I felt it was a good fit for our orchestra. Its highlights include l’Impératrice des Pagodes, a quick 2/4 dance over a major pentatonic scale. I love the last few chords: every note of the scale sounded simultaneously - and it’s still beautiful. Further proof that is impossible to write anything ugly with a major pentatonic scale. Then there is La Belle et la Bête, its titular characters represented by a romantic waltz and the rare contrabassoon, respectively. What a fun instrument the contrabassoon is. If you have never heard one solo before you should look into this piece. The work closes with Le Jardin Férique, a slow C major crescendo to a final few bars of sparkling harp and celesta over string trills and sustained horn chords.

And a not so great piece:
Mozart - Flute Concerto no. 1: I maintain that this piece could be played without much difficulty by a 5th grader. It’s absolutely unspectacular. I know you know I dislike classical era music in general, but this is just so much worse than Mozart’s own Symphonia Concertante, which we played last year, or any concerto by Haydn. At least the soloist had some nice cadenzas.

I have somehow managed to get a paid internship with Edison Mission here in Irvine. Mostly what has resulted is further disappointment at the plodding tempo of office life. Always waiting for somebody. Which isn’t quite what I needed, but at least this time I get money. It’s difficult to be here daily from 8-5, but I have survived for two full weeks now. The whole experience has grimly foreshadowed the rest of my life. At least I have a fallback position: math teacher. And perhaps my career as a composer will suddenly and surprisingly take off. But that’s probably just a bit of wishful thinking. I often feel guilty for doing so little here. Must try to convince myself it’s okay to take money from large corporations.

I’m approaching 2700 words - which is significantly longer than anything academic I have ever written. Am I redeemed now? Can I go back to saying I have a blog after 7 months of neglect? If you actually read this far without skipping please let me know, and please allow me buy you some delicious food.

2010

California's recent storms have coincided nicely with our discussion of weather in German. Almost immediately after my professor began to teach some weather vocabulary today came a roar of thunder - particularly loud because the classroom door was open.

Yesterday we waited about 30 minutes in similar weather outside of the Griddle Cafe in Hollywood, which turned out to be quite worth the wait. We ordered a giant pancake filled with Oreos, which was incredibly tasty, and so large that two of us could only finish about 2/3 of it. The issue was not so much its size as its sugar content. I would like to know precisely how many Oreos I consumed yesterday, because I have never been so repulsed by the thought of sweet food as I was after that pancake. I have now gone nearly a day and a half without eating anything sugary, which is a little unusual for me.

And now for a discussion of an eternally evident trend: that frequency of blog posts varies inversely with the blog's age.

Over the void of the past few months I have developed an admiration for daily bloggers - this is something to work towards. (Side note: Blogger.com's spell check insists that "blog" and "blogger" are not words.)When you've just started a blog the words come effortlessly: in 2007 I posted 17 times in November and December alone. You might not suspect writing a few sentences each day to be difficult - it certainly sounds simple to me.

But I have some chronic writer's block. I've attributed it to a lack of motivation: the same deficiency which prevents me from picking up a book and reading it, working on a large-scale programming project, or actually getting the music in my head onto paper. Instead I find myself watching movies and television, presumably due to their minimal brainpower requirement.

Case in point: this weekend I watched all three Bourne movies, which were quite enjoyable, though a bit formulaic:

Bourne, to self: Who am I?!
Some CIA division head: I want all eyes in (European city) on Bourne! Give the asset his location!
Bourne, on the phone with division head: Send (CIA employee) to meet me at (crowded European city square). Come alone!
Some CIA employee: That place is a surveillance nightmare!!
CIA division head: I want snipers on the rooftops! And all eyes on Bourne!
Bourne: You didn't come alone! I'm out of here!
(car chase in which Bourne escapes and then travels to another European city)

Intellectualism has been pushed to the sidelines. Although recently Frank told me he might be able to show my clarinet sonata to a clarinetist and a pianist, which prompted me to make some revisions. Since I finished the piece last summer there have been a few unsatisfactory spots: in particular a stale restatement of the main melody of the first movement down an octave. I've since replaced it with a passage in which the clarinetist refuses to play, to the pianist's dismay. They proceed to musically mock each other until the pianist flips out and begins to play discordant variations on the clarinet's themes. Of course, this probably sounds much more interesting in words than in reality.

This has only confirmed my suspicion that I need some incentive beyond personal satisfaction to actually accomplish things. School is never an issue because it entails its own deadlines and provides immediate feedback. But I worry that when I lack the motivation to do what I consider my hobbies, there might be a problem.

What motivates you?

Apples

Hypothesis: How good an apple tastes is inversely proportional to how good its name suggests it tastes. For example: Red Delicious. They have "delicious" in their name - how bad could they taste taste, right? WRONG. Red delicious apples are revolting. Then there's Fuji apples. I have no thoughts or feelings one way or the other on Fujisaki, Aomori Prefecture, and sure enough, they are pretty standard apples. Finally, Granny Smith apples. Granny Smith - really? That sounds like the name of the most boring woman on the planet. But taking a bite of a Granny Smith apple is like taking a bite out of heaven.

In other news, it's difficult to believe it has already been 4 years since junior year of high school. That year possessed some spectral grip over us; the killer year, when everyone took the most difficult classes simultaneously, braved those oh-so-important standardized exams, which would determine our future. In other words it was the exact opposite of now, which feels less important than ever. Maybe it's just that I've become accustomed to the rituals of college. I enroll in classes, put in minimal but satisfactory effort, they end. Recently it occurred to me that I lack any real incentive is supposed to be to get good grades, but I do it anyway out of habit.

And now to perpetuate the mundanity I will describe my classes, like I always do:

German 1: Elementary German
A few days in this class were sufficient to remind me how much I feed off of introductory language classes, and by that I mean I think I should take them forever and ever. They're a major self esteem boost. They force you to meet people, which I don't exactly do often. And expectations are so low that I honestly can't imagine how anyone could struggle with the material. After taking Spanish and French I can say this class feels even slower than usual, but that may be due to the flagrant incompetency of our TA, who never quite seems to understand what he's doing. I thought about keeping a log of exactly how he fails each day, but then I realized that would take more work than the class itself.

Scandinavian 50W: Introduction to Scandinavian Literature and Culture
I can't say I particularly enjoy what we've read so far - three Sagas of Icelanders and the Volusunga Saga, which are just about the least-compelling reads I have yet to experience. Fortunately we're quickly jumping towards the modern era, which means I may be able to read more than a few pages without nodding off. The professor is good, our TA is funny, and the class feels quite personal, which I suppose is how a writing class should feel. Whether it will actually improve my writing is yet to be determined. We did a bit of peer reviewing essays on Thursday and all I can say about is that I really should have not taken the humanities program at Northwood for granted, because most people's writing is just atrocious.

Geography 7: Intro to Geographic Information Systems
Honestly I have not put much thought into this class at all. Lecture has so far been completely self explanatory, which I suppose is a good thing. The professor spends half the time showing us cool websites like Photosynth. Lab has been basically a giant computer literacy test.

Math 134: Systems of Differential Equations
This class has emphasized graphical problem solving so far, which I appreciate. Hopefully I am developing some mathematical intuition, which I have really lacked since high school. I had actually been avoiding this particular professor, because she substituted for Rogawski one day back in 32B, and came off as incomprehensible. But in this class it didn't take long to realize I was completely wrong about her - she is completely straightforward, thorough, clear professors I have had to date. She has yet to truly confuse me - which every teacher I've had since pre-calculus has managed to do on a regular basis.

Beefless

Starting this quarter, every Thursday the dining halls are beefless - which basically means all of the beef is replaced with turkey or chicken. I guess the die-hard beef fans are upset about this but I welcome anything that begets a little variety. Though I'm not entirely sure they're accomplishing much when it's only one day per week, and they're just substituting meats.

It's almost fourth week already - I think I've got midterms coming up but I don't know when. I haven't written about my classes yet so I guess I will:

Math 151A - Applied Numerical Methods - I love this class. If you've ever become disillusioned by your math classes then you ought to take some numerical analysis. For example, after elementary calculus you know how to integrate a few pretty functions in a few special cases - that's great, but real life rarely works out like the questions in your calc textbook do. In real life, you don't get functions, you get data. Or approximations of functions - and even if you have these there's a huge chance you won't be able to manipulate or analyze them by hand. Numerical analysis is all about how to cope with this sort of problem - in particular, with computers. I'm not the hugest fan of the professor, nor the TA, who spends most of his time advising us about programming in Python. Which would be nice and all if only this were a programming class - but it's not and I wish he'd discuss the actual numerical analysis a little more. The programming required is rudimentary at best, especially since we can use MATLAB.

PIC 10C - Advanced Programming - I find it funny that inheritance and other fundamental topics in object-oriented programming are taught in a class with the word "advanced" in its title. I suppose it's not that necessary in C++, but with Java these are always the first things you talk about. Fortunately this has permitted me to tune out a little, and made this class very relaxing so far. This week we switched to C# - I guess we are working towards making some nice little Windows applications, which should be handy. But of course we have to start with basic syntactical issues - and lucky for me C# is even more similar to Java than C++ is. It amuses me that writing one program in Java ever allows me to breeze through so much of this class.

Physics 1C - I hate this class. I come in every day and tell myself: "Self, this is the day you will stay awake through an entire lecture" - but it never happens and within five minutes I'm out cold. My notes are consequently a little disjointed - fragments of the second half of the past few weeks' lectures. Incidentally, I strangely recall saying most of this about 1B - physics classes must not be my thing. We'll see how the midterm goes...

Math 131A - Analysis - Another theoretical class in the same vein as 115A. This one starts with everything we've taken for granted since elementary school; for the first three weeks we have been building up from simple set theory into constructing number systems. Like defining what it means to add integers. Proving things that we have used without thinking for 75% of our lives. The professor insists that the actual analysis will start soon. I have grown to appreciate this type of material much more through 115A - it's nice to see where all of this came from.

Of course

Monday was my first upper division math midterm, for Math 115A, which as you might expect, was soulcrushingly difficult. The exam rendered me hopelessly desolate; my only consolation was a classmate telling me she "wanted to cry." All was repaired however, when we received the results:
My favorite midterm grade distribution ever - especially the part where I am rank 4 in the class with a 55%.

Unfortunately the professor decided that we should have another midterm to improve our scores - which would clearly have the exact opposite effect on mine unless I somehow manage to be 20% above the median again. To make matters worse the midterm takes place right when my first enrollment pass starts, so now I have to get someone to sign up for classes for me. Of course. Further proof that anytime something good happens, something irritating has to come along and ruin it. And whenever bad things happen they take advantage of as many unfortunate coincidences as possible.


Other recent thoughts:

I love rain. If you know only one thing about me, it's probably this. But what surprised me recently is how much more tolerable the cold is when it's not windy. Cold in itself doesn't bother me at all, but wind makes me miserable. I guess windchill is responsible, and I knew this intellectually, but it still is quite a shock to actually experience.

I will never pledge Calpirg. Over the past two weeks they have returned in full force, coming to classrooms, stopping you even late at night. One of them was dressed up as Batman (I don't know either.) As much as I probably agree with what they believe in, it's terrible how even people who have pledged are stopped by dozens of Calpirg people over the course of a week. This goes for all of you who solicit us on Bruinwalk: If you want money or something, that's fine, but don't waste our time making us fill our forms, don't make us give you contact info, don't make us dismiss you awkwardly.

You will be missed

"You" refers to my physics professor for the first 3 weeks of the quarter, who left us to write some proposal for the physics department. He was a welcome contrast from my Physics 1A professor last winter, who droned on and on and always managed to stand in such a way that we couldn't see what he had just written on the board.

Bruinsma was different - I felt I was actually learning, rather than just taking the equations and running with them, as we often get away with in physics classes. His most memorable quote occurred during the review session before the first midterm: "One thing I have learned as a European in the United States is that modesty gets you nowhere."

Alas, physics has regressed. Now I spend most of the time napping or counting how many times my new professor says "how you do dat." Farewell, Bruinsma; you will be missed. Even though I didn't understand 40% of your midterm at all.


Do dat: 9
Stars: 11

Miscellanea

Vivid descriptions of recent happenings:

Tuesday morning I attended the first lecture of Asian Am 10: History of Asian Americans. I decided to drop it immediately afterwards. It wasn't so much that the professor was bad - he was just a bit too lively for my tastes. At least, that's the excuse I'd give if I were ashamed at all to admit the following: (1) I was still on the waitlist, (2) I don't want my professors to call on me, (3) I don't want to be forbidden to doze off, (4) I don't want to be in an 8 AM discussion on Thursdays, (5) I don't want a class in ugly ugly Bunche Hall, and (6) I don't want to read six novels.

Speaking of dozing off, I have decided to draw a star in my notebook upon awakening from each of my inadvertent classroom naps (It helps to keep track of when they occur). Plus the lectures of Psychology 15 are videotaped (Is that still the right word if no tape is involved?) so I can go back and review the spots I missed; I only hope now that my lethargy is not caught on film.

I entered MS 5147 on Wednesday just as the previous class was finishing up - and heard a familiar voice explaining something to a student. I looked up and saw that the professor of the previous class was none other than Shifty Ifti, looking just as he did before the incident. Needless to say, I avoided eye contact.

Houdayer used a smiley face to denote a set that were vector subspaces and unsmiley faces to denote set that were not. I am a math person and I like smiley faces, Weisbart does too, and now Houdayer. I thought to myself, "Math people like smiley faces." Then I felt immediately guilty because I was sititng in Math 115A, a class in which we have to explicitly prove virtually everything. Speaking of proving things, I hate it. It's one thing when you're proving something advanced and exciting. But when it takes 5 lines to show that if x + z = 0 then z = -x then it seems to me you are looking at things in a little too much detail. Proving things in this level of abstraction is like the math version of being politically correct - what you're used to saying is totally fine except in that it upsets the old math dudes. This is why my major is a variety of Applied Math - I'll leave this crap to the theorists. Alas, 115A is a prerequisite to most other upper division courses.

I previously mentioned PAB 1425, the large lecture hall in the Physics and Astronomy building, unquestionably the nicest building on campus. One of this building's perks is its amazing chairs, which swivel around in a way I can only describe as sitting like I've never sat before. Tragically, Wednesday's lecture left me conflicted upon the discovering a fatal flaw in this revolutionary chair design: if two people seated next to each other try to exit their seats simultaneously, legs will collide. And I don't mean just brushing up - it's more of an intersection.

Walking to lunch on Wednesday I saw a guy with a spiked backpack, which made him look as if he were Bowser. Or a stegosaurus. Laugh all you want, but you don't mess with someone with spikes on his back.

Day One, Winter 2009

The obligatory first impressions post:

Psychology 15 - Intro to Psychobiology: The syllabus says to read not for memorization, but for understanding. Online study questions, multiple choice, graded leniently. Only 3 hours of lecture per week, with no discussion. In other words, the perfect class for me.

Math 115A - Linear Algebra: My first upper-division math course, which has been worrying me. Even though the class has only 35 students, it feels as impersonal as ever (this is a good thing for me.) I'll have to wait for a few more classes before I can determine whether or not I like the pace. And I have to open that tiny but terrifying textbook to humble myself to mathematics once again.

Physics 1B: The professors name is Bruinsma - how perfect for a UCLA. I still hate the four-lectures-per-week setup the 1 series has, and how discussion is ALWAYS on Friday. But apart from that it's hard for me to worry about this class. All the homework is online, and I'm familiar with most of the material from high school. Plus it's in PAB 1425, which would make any class good.

And of course, 2009 has begun. Let's hope it's better than 2008. That year sucked.

Cats and Dogs

I realize that a post about rain is redundant at this point, but there is something fascinating about unusual weather here in Southern California that I find impossible to ignore.

Monday morning I woke up and it was raining, which is decidedly the best way to wake up. Recently I was reminded of the phrase "raining cats and dogs", which I never quite understood - but I do know that it can accurately describe Monday morning, with a little augmentation. So I will say this: it was raining jaguars and rabid coyotes. Or so it seemed to someone who has been living in Southern California for the entirety of his life.

Naturally I was in a good mood, and naturally the 3rd Law of Everything had to shatter that. I went on MyUCLA to check grades, which I have a propensity to do the week following finals. I clicked on Math 61 and saw a big, hairy C-, the alluring symmetry of the 3rd letter of the alphabet a stark foil to my inadequacy. Hmm, I didn't think I did that poorly on the final. Then I realized I had no grade listed for the final exam, and calculated my grade with a 0 on the final: sure enough, a C-. Emailing the professor confirmed the error; he informed me that I should have received an A- and that he had already requested that the grade be changed. What a guy.

I had a whole bunch of Butlerisms which I would share with you, more for my sake than for yours, because I think he is hilarious. Unfortunately I wrote them down in my notebook, which I left at UCLA, so here are a few I can recall from memory:

• After making an error on the chalkboard: "Luckily we have such modern technology here." He erases it with his hands: "Touch screen!"
• Discussing the chromatic number of a graph, the amount of colors required to color each vertex such that no two adjacent vertices have the same color: "This is denoted by the greek letter χ [chi, pronounced as the first part in the word kite]. If you ever forget what letter we use, just remember, chi, as in chi-loring!
• While writing a set X and its subset x on the board: "That's the disadvantage of using X to denote sets - the uppercase and lowercase look the same!" Someone suggests using a curly x to make the lowercase more obvious. "Well, you're assuming I know cursive!"
  

Now I know

Math 33B: This class is regarded as one of the more difficult of the 30-series, but so far it's been considerably more tolerable than I anticipated. It's amazing how much of a difference that having a professor who actually pauses once in a while and asks "Does this make sense?" can make (even when the majority of the class is afraid to say no). And I actually like the textbook - a nice divergence from the one for 33A, which offered minimal explanations for abstract ideas, completely unhelpful and unrepresentative examples, and somehow managed to make even the easiest concepts appear daunting.

Math 61: It's called "Introduction to Discrete Structures" but I have decided that a better title would be miscellany. Every class we end up going off on tangents from our already disjoint material. However, it has proved to be interesting so far - we are formally taught things that we otherwise wouldn't have thought twice about, like sets. To my dismay, the topic for the past week or two has been combinatorics, which invokes nightmares from high school. Specifically, the memory of one of two math tests in high school that I didn't get an A on - the test on combinatorics and probability from Alegbra 2. Today's midterm was ridiculously easy - unfortunate because I rely so heavily on grading curves, and I've already thought of a few irritating mistakes.

The professor is amazing - here is some evidence:

• While giving an example about relations: "xRy if x has major Y. Let X be the set {Amy, John, Sam} and Y be the set {Econ, Math, Art History}. Art history majors. You've all seen some of those. They help subsidize the rest of us."
• While discussing unary operators: "You know, unary. Like 'ooone', if you mispronounce it. Like people who ride a unicycle. I ride a unicycle. It's a lot harder."
• While introducing combinations: "n choose k is equal to n!/(k!(n-k)!). This is really important. Now I'm going to draw a box around it because it's so important. Now I'm going to draw a halo around it. Now I'm going to draw some stars because that's how important it is."
• After erasing the formula for C(n,k) to make room for an example: "Oops, I shouldn't have erased that. It's imporant."

Geography 5: Think of the most stereotypical geography/environmental science professor you can imagine and that is my professor - one of those surfer-with-a-PhD kind of guys. He is so loaded with good quotes that it is basically impossible to write any of them down. I've found his lecture style to be amusing - every day he basically shares with us a few lists - lists of biomes, lists of megafauna, lists of countries by population density, lists of endemic vegetables - and yet each lecture inevitably transforms into a lengthy discussion of sex and drugs. Even once when his father was in attendance. I have a midterm on Thursday and have yet to remove the textbook from its plastic.

Music History 5: Undoubtedly the worst class I have taken so far at UCLA. Imagine this: Mondays and Wednesdays at 9AM, 500 people trudge into Schoenberg auditorium. The professor spends 30 minutes explaining to the class how to resolve some technical issue people have been experiencing with Moodle, the online portal where most of our work is done. Then she spends another 20 minutes explaining some aspect of our research project that somebody inevitably misunderstood. The lecture commences and she spends about 30 minutes explaining some inanely simple topic in music - AABA forms, 4/4 time, backbeats. Each lecture contains only about 10 minutes of actual history of rock - the rest is frivolous at best. You wouldn't believe how many Youtube videos she has shown us...

New year

There has been an admittedly shameful drought of posts here lately, but the rapid approach of the last few minutes of September has pushed me to remedy this tonight. The 2008-2009 school year has begun, and so far it hasn't been markedly different than the previous one - except perhaps in that I have been enjoying marching band a bit more. I haven't exactly had much experience in each of my classes yet - but I think I like all of my professors.

Yesterday our Math 33B professor wrote a function on the board and then spontaneously decided that it was time to demonstrate that our choice in variable names didn't matter (I still don't understand why he would even consider that students with 3+ years of experience with calculus wouldn't know this.) He erased what he wrote and replaced it with the following: And speaking of elementary, Monday's Math 61 lecture was all about sets - a concept that always seemed completely self-explanatory to me since it was formally taught to us all in 8th grade. Our professor was showing the class the notation for the null set, Ø : "Does that look like a zero with a slash through it? It's not a zero through the slash through it. It's actually a Norwegian letter or something. I think it's pronounced euuuuugh."

After class there was some crazy Chrisitian evangelist telling everyone on Bruinwalk that we are going to hell. This isn't hyperbole - he was brandishing a flag that read DON'T GO TO HELL! and on the opposite side, SATAN'S CHILDREN: followed by a list of everyone. I couldn't help but think of sets - according to this man, hypocritical Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, pornographers, and sodomites were a subset of SATAN'S CHILDREN. Nothing I read made me an element of this subset, but the list dragged on and on so I undoubtedly am. I wish I had bothered to read the rest of the list because it was hilarious.

There was something envigorating about the whole experience. I felt an odd combination of deep appreciation for freedom of speech, shocked disbelief that some people are crazy enough to actually believe that 99% of the world is going to hell, and sympathy for the real Christians who have to put up with this guy. And of course the endless amusement of being reminded that people like this regularly come and preach at college campuses and actually expect to convince anyone of ANYTHING.

UCI (and some more pictures!)

Over the past six weeks I've been volunteering for my mom's department at UCI, which has basically become my second home (I guess third if you count UCLA). The work has ranged from bearable to tedious, although the main problem thusfar has been not having enough to do. Hopefully a real office job is a bit more invigorating, but how can I have much confidence when that scene in Office Space where Peter tells the Bobs about his typical day at work depicts my situation perfectly?

Naturally lunchtime is sweet release, so each day I've been begging anybody in the vicinity of UCI to dine with me and protect my sanity. When nobody is around I kill time walking in circles around the Ring Mall - a mix of aimless wandering, listening to all of the campus tours, searching for people I know, and photographing anything out of the ordinary. (You'll have to forgive the low resolution, these were taken with my cell phone)

This little diagram was drawn on the whiteboard in the room where I work - affectionately dubbed "The Cave" by the employees. Apparently there used to be three people in here - remnants of an ancient civilization in which students were affordable. My favorite quote about the Cave: "Oh that? That's not the cave. That's the dungeon."

Two Asian student groups consistently provide excellent signs to look at.

If only the perfect friend cost a mere $2.00 (or if only boba were sentient) :


Nothing says Japanese like Domo-kun:

A confused Psyduck outside an engineering lecture hall:


The most prestigious Cal State:


I'm a sucker for modern-looking buildings so I have grown very fond of the campus - especially the comically superfluous McGaugh Hall (It looks a bit more ridiculous in person.) And at least three more fancy new buildings are currently under construction. I'll have to return when they are completed.

I do exaggerate the tedium in my work - I made some Visio diagrams mapping the flow of sensative information one week and actually felt productive for a while. I'd love to share them with you except they are security diagrams so it would be a bit counterproductive.

In other news, another Post-it from my mom appeared recently:
One of the most disturbing marketing gimmicks I have ever witnessed: free earbuds! Except they came with my sister's Clean & Clear Oil Absorbing Sheets:


My Fall 2008 schedule has been finalized:

MUS HST 5: History of Rock and Roll
MATH 33B: Differential Equations
MATH 61: Introduction to Discreet Structures
GEOG 5: People and the Earth's Ecosystems
MUSIC 90M: Marching Band
MUSIC C90E: UCLA Symphony


And last but not least some new faces (I should really start numbering them)

The lovely ketchup at Johnny Rocket's, where Courtney has been working (I'm not sure if this one counts because it's intentionally a face) :

The entire backside of Claire's car creates one of the most elated smiles I've seen:


And perhaps the most spectacular yet, which we discovered tonight - the mighty Tortillaface.

Weekend in Irvine, Spring finals week

Last Thursday was a bit hectic because I had my French oral final and my AUD 10b final. My last assignment of the quarter was the 9th homework for PIC10b. My printer had run out of ink the previous night, so I wanted to finish the written part of the homework during discussion (It was held in the PIC lab on Thursdays, so I could use a printer there.) It didn't take much time at all to finish so I printed it and left early to go "study" for AUD which I had immediately afterwards.

The next day was the last day of class. (As a side note, the only one of my teachers who received applause this quarter was my French teacher, who ironically won't be allowed to return to UCLA next year.) I turned in the written part of the PIC 10b homework and then realized that in my haste on Thursday I had neglected to place the homework's programming part (C++ files) into the submit folder by the Thursday, 6 PM deadline. Needless to say I couldn't pay attention in class. At 10:50 I hurried to the PIC lab and submitted my homework - I was going to talk to the professor but then I saw on the syllabus: No late homework will be accepted for any reason.

I pretty much gave up hope until I woke up this morning and checked MyUCLA to see that I have received normal credit on the assignment. I guess they didn't collect the files until the reader graded the homework. This pleased me.

Later I went back to Irvine so I could watch the Northwood Philharmonic play some of my favorite pieces:

• Maurice Ravel's Tzigane - Ian did an absolutely fantastic job with this. The orchestra did quite well too, considering it was Ravel.
• Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings - I think a lot of us were spiteful about this one because we all wanted to play it after sightreading it last year. I thought it was amusing that the high parts (including uncomfortably high treble clef passages for the cellos) were much more in tune than the low one. But this allowed them to pull off the climax very successfully - quite good overall.
• George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue - A pretty difficult piece and the orchestra did alright. Ellen played the solo piano part well too, although there were balance problems between the orchestra and the piano (I'm not sure if it's her fault or the piano's - I had previously only been on the opposite side of the piano)

And now for two lovely food-related photographs- first, the most glorious Sun Chip yet discovered (Phillip's countenance depicts our awe):
My brother likes to eat entire cans of pineapple at a time:

I had to return to UCLA Sunday morning so that I could take the PIC 10b final exam at 3 PM, which was relatively easy. They handed us a sheet with the solutions on it immediately after the exam. My algorithms for many of the programs we had to write on the exam varied from those on the solution sheet, but I'm confident they work just as well. Except for one, which I later realized would be an infinite loop (oops).

My next final was French, on Tuesday night - at least that's what I thought. I ate dinner and walked over to Rolfe Hall and became a little uneasy at the lack of anyone I knew there. However, all the French 3 finals are held in the same room at the same time, so this was only somewhat unusual. Then a girl a few rows in front of me asked another girl "You're in French 2? Oh, the French 1 and 2 finals are at the same time?" So I concluded that the French 3 final was at the same time as well. Then a bunch of French teachers entered, including mine - except it was mine from last quarter. So I left the room and took out the syllabus: Final Exam: Wednesday, June 11. Oops.

The actual final was easy as expected - except it seemed to neglect over half of what we learned this quarter. I guess that benefited the majority of people in the room.

Last night I went to bed around 2 AM and was having a wonderful dream until someone in my dream started hacking at my guts with a giant ax. Then I woke up and realized it was just the fire alarm going off, though these have basically the same effect (my ears are still ringing). I put on a sweatshirt, grabbed my key, put on my shoes and trudged down the stairs half-asleep. As usual the Hedrick Summit staff was whining at us to cross the street, and then to get out of the street. This time there was a cranky police officer telling us the same thing ("What part of get out of the street do you not understand?") We were slowly herded into Parking Lot 15 as usual until 30 minutes passed and they told us we could go back into the building. Unfortunately for Summit 4, someone had set off a fire extinguisher and they weren't allowed to return there yet.

Everyone was pretty pissed off and pretty asleep throughout the whole incident but I couldn't help but feel a sense of unity. We were completely screwed over the night before our last finals, but we were all in this together. One of the more memorable experiences of this year, to be sure.

Today was the Linear Algebra final, much easier than expected. It basically mirrored the practice Final which we got last week, except with slightly more irritating problems. Even checking my work, I finished in under 2 hours. I may actually get an A in math this quarter.

Now I've entered that awful limbo between the end of finals and actually receiving grades for them.

First final

Reasons why the AUD 10b final was the easiest ever:

• On Tuesday the professor reviewed every single project we needed to know. She also told us everything we needed to know about them, worded just as they were on the final.
  
• The other questions were about the vocabulary lists which were online, also worded just like the questions on the final.
• The remainder of the questions were about primary source readings. The majority of these questions were the exact same questions which were on a quiz we took and reviewed with during discussion last Friday.
• We could bring a page of notes with anything on it, including what she told us on Tuesday, the vocabulary online, and the facts from the readings quiz.
• We had 75 minutes to do 100 questions.
• The questions weren't even very hard to begin with.

Fun things that happened during the exam:

• 11:13 AM: The TA says "It's 11:13. Not even 15 minutes have passed. You should all stop and take a deep breath, you're all going to do fine! Just relax," as if there were someone in the room who was not relaxed.
• 11:15 AM: The TA says "Okay, it's 11:15 now!"
• The room was silent and all of a sudden the professor exclaimed "Oh shit! I think the answer key's in there. Does anyone have a test with blue highlighting on it?"
  

PIC 10b quotes, French words, AUD midterm, a face, and music

Lectures in PIC 10b typically start like this:

The professor of the previous class, finishing up talking to his students: "...But let me get out of the way so the next class can get started."
My professor: "No, no, we've got ten minutes. Take your time!"

I have started writing down other notable Wittman quotes.

• About the word queue:
  "I hate that word. Because it just looks terrible. It gives me the shivers. I hate writing it, I hate hearing it, I hate saying it. It reminds me of my 8th grade English teacher, who used to sneeze by saying queue."
• About this image, which was on the title slide of his lecture about binary trees: (Every document he gives us or shows us has a Star Wars image on it. He doesn't actually like Star Wars that much; it's more of a running gag)
  "Is that a squirrel?"
  "I guess so. You search 'Star Wars trees' and that's what comes up. A squirrel on a speeder.' "
  

It's time to update the list of awesome French words! (The bold ones are new!)

Orthographically awesome French words:

• créée - Feminine past participle of créer, to create.
• mangeaient - Third person imperfect plural form of manger, to eat. (I spelled this incorrectly when I first wrote about it!)
  
• étudiions - First person plural present subjunctive form of étudier, to study.
  

Phonologically awesome French words:

• semblable - similar - Because "blab" sounds like "blob."
• souhaite/souhaites/souhaitent - From souhaiter, to wish - Because they sound like "sweat".
• honnêteté - honesty - This one speaks for itself.

In Spanish with conditional si clauses you use the imperfect of the subjunctive mood:
Si tuviera mucho dinero, sería contento.
In French with conditional si clauses you use the imperfect of the indicative mood:
Si j'avais beaucoup d'argent, je serais content.

This bothers me.


Yesterday was the midterm for AUD 10B, which was quite easy - aside from the ten questions about projects that the professor neglected to put on the list of projects we need to know. Much more exciting than the midterm was the 20 minute hiatus that the back third of the classroom and I had to endure while the TAs hunted around north campus for a functional copy machine. The exam was also mysteriously missing a page which had to be distributed to all 120+ students. The girl next to me was clearly bored and slightly insane and started to hum elaborate melodies while we waited. The girl in front of me turned around and gave her a look which combined "Are you seriously singing right now?" and "I am going to kill you immediately."

While reviewing the review slides I stumbled upon another face that I have forgotten to document here:
These lovely gardens are those of the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte, in Maincy, France, landscaped by André le Nôtre.

It has occurred to me that I haven't written much about the music I have written this year, so here is an attempt:

• I have yet again revised my suite for string orchestra, with significant changes to the third movement, a new ending, and some performance notes - hopefully I am approaching a final version.
• I have also arranged both movements of Winter Solstice for percussion ensemble (which they mostly were to begin with anyway). They are very simplistic, but so were the originals. Plus, I can pass this off as branching out stylistically!
• Last Friday I finished a new MP3 work, in typical style. I'm quite fond of it still, though this is perhaps just becuase it's the first one since November.

A final side note: Today is Tchaikovsky's 168th birthday!

New quarter, new faces

After two weeks I am ready to make some remarks about my new courses:

Math 33A: Linear algebra is a refreshing break from two years of calculus. A refreshing homage to Algebra 2 in high school, except this time with unnecessarily fancy vocabulary and notation. The professor is a jolly old Mr. Rogers-esque man who likes to call the discussion sections recitation sections (antique terminology!) The TA is a Chinese girl struggling with English and only 7 out of 30 people showed up to discussion last Thursday (therefore my guilt will require me to attend every session). I am now passionately in love with the number 0.

French 3: Just as easy and slow as the first two. This one only covers the last four chapters (as opposed to the usual 5) so I am wondering how exactly we will occupy the last few weeks. Last Wednesday the professor asked me if I was shy (in French of course) and told me to make an effort to participate more.

PIC 10B: So far, the most enjoyable class - though I hear from people with more C++ experience that the material we are approaching is unbearably tedious. On Friday some guy two rows behind me was snoring sonorously enough to fill Humanities A51 which is a HUGE lecture hall (inappropriately large for the size of the class). The professor and us took a few seconds to laugh at him, which he slept through as well. My TA is Chinese guy also struggling with English, though I think I learn a bit more from him than from my math TA. Some random old lady (presumably the professor of the class after this one in Humanities A51) usually shows up about 30 minutes before our class ends, takes a seat in a front corner, and just stares at us in her little sunglasses (yes, indoors) until class ends.

AUD 10B: The class is interesting enough - I only fell asleep once in the first four lectures. I have found it difficult to take the class seriously though - history classes always end up seeming like extensive trivia sessions to me. Not that trivia is a bad thing - quite the opposite, but I forget it quickly (just try asking me about Italian gastronomic literature). The professor is good, except for her criticism of Wikipedia on the first day, but the discussion sessions are the kind that significantly disadvantages us shy people. You know, where participation, which is defined as being comfortable with spouting out the first garbage that comes to mind regardless of how helpful it actually is to anybody, counts as 20% of your grade in the entire course. Not to mention the TA's trite lectures on the ongoing relevance and impact of history, you know, the kind that always makes it sound like they are mostly trying to convince themselves that what they chose to pursue in life is actually going to get them somewhere. The TA is quite friendly though and I feel a bit guilty about being this harsh.


I am SO excited for this - what better way is there to recognize the starved suffering of billions around the world than with free food?
"The problem of hunger lies not within an inability to produce food, but instead in the unequal distribution of power, knowledge, and resources" - For example, while billions around the world will go to sleep hungry tonight, we get to have a lavish banquet!


Two new notation-related faces:

Each statement in C++ and many other programing languages ends with a semicolon. Apparently a class declaration is considered one giant statement, hence the following:
Physicists often use a "dot" notation to signify the derivative of a variable with respect to time. The second time derivative is represented by double dots. This produces highly satisfying results with radial acceleration, the second time derivative of theta (I can imagine u would work as well):

And finally, a face which has been right under my nose ever since I have been at UCLA - the hinge on the large wardrobes in each dorm room:

Last day of classes

I've always been a sucker for the ends of things. The finale of a symphony can make it or break it for me. The last few pages of the AP Euro textbook two years ago were worded with such grandiloquence that they eliminated all of my regret for laboring 5 hours a day all year doing stuff for that class. Nothing beats a good sense of culmination and at the end of a quarter like this week you get a lot of it:

UCLA Symphony concert on Wednesday, which went quite well (though whoever decided that there wouldn't be an intermission needs to try playing the string parts to Schubert 9 nonstop themselves). Standing up for applause after the last C major chord of a 60 minute symphony. The choral director and his students thanking us for allowing them to conduct us for the quarter (as if we had a choice...)

The course evaluations we have to fill out. Extremely satisfying, particularly when you're anxious to vent to the University how much you hated professor so-and-so. I had two such professors this quarter and I can't help but feel that through the evaluations I have achieved vengeance. We even had to fill out one for our PIC10a professor, who our new professor told us to evaluate based upon his performance during weeks 1-8, which is decidedly a nice way to say "pre-insanity."

The last day of each class. Other people probably find this trite but I love it when the professor spends the last 5 minutes or so of class for the quarter telling us he enjoyed teaching us or specifying what he hoped we got out of the course, etc; last quarter my professors for Math 32a and Italian 42c did a particularly good job with this. The best part of this is that it gives a perfect opportunity for the students to applaud if they liked the teacher or the course, which is probably one of my favorite things to do ever. This year I applauded for two people: the guy who was responsible for all the demos we watched in Physics (befitting, because this was the only part of lecture I could stay awake for), and Rogawski, who was easily my professor this quarter most deserving of applause, despite the almost comical abundance of typos and errors in the documents he posted online for us. He, however, was still rushing through his last few minutes of lecture after 11:50 when the class was supposed to end. He didn't finish until around 11:55; clearly he would not have time to make a few of the sweeping, class-concluding generalities that I am so fond of, so I was a bit disappointed. But fortunately as people were standing up and filing out of their seats in rows to leave someone started clapping and after only a second or two we all joined in. Needless to say, immense satisfaction followed.


Apparently we have not one, but TWO readers (people hired to just grade homework in large classes) for physics. The first few homework assignments were all clearly graded by the same person. He/she adorned the top of each graded homework with the following (these are actually taken from my homework):

"25/25 Super! :) "
"23/25 :) "
"25/25 Perfect! :) "

Today we received back two homework assignments which this person graded and a third by someone seriously passive-aggressive. My paper read "25/25. WRITE YOUR SECTION #!" As I was thumbing through the stack trying to find mine I saw a row of 10 papers or so with increasingly frustrated marks:

"Section?"
"Section #?"
"Please write your section #!"
"SECTION?"
"SECTION!?!?!?!?!!?"

Yes, the reader started writing in all caps and using multiple punctuation marks to get us to write our sections on our homework. Yes, it was the last day of class and no more homework would be handed in.

In other news the schedule in the previous post is now final, as I am now enrolled in ARCH&UD10b. Very pleasing.

Neglected

Some arguably noteworthy things which were neglected last week due to the PIC10a incident:

My math professor started using colored chalk, which naturally blew my mind, as the majority of my education has been conducted on whiteboards. Today he used a bit of yellow chalk to draw a circle, which refused to be erased completely once he was done with it. I don't think he noticed.

He canceled class last Friday - the fourth Friday he has not been to class. (Though the previous three he found us some Russian math professors who we couldn't understand to fill in for him.) That is 2/5 of all possible Fridays he could not have been in class. Makes me wonder what he likes to do on Fridays.

Math Sciences 5200 is sloped at an angle that enables me to put my feet below the seats in the row ahead of me, but with a little bit of difficulty absent from other lecture halls that just makes it that much more satisfying to do. About 15 minutes into Monday's lecture I was doing this as usual when I tried to pull my foot back out and my right flip flop fell off onto the floor. Now the slope was my enemy and I could not pull it back to my row. I struggled with this for around 15 minutes during the lecture; luckily nobody was sitting in that seat, and the rest of the class was far too asleep to notice my plight. The flip flop seemed too wide to pull out from between the seat and the floor without a bit of force, which my foot could unfortunately not provide. I acquiesced for a few minutes, deciding to just endure the remaining 45 minutes of shoeless lecture, until a bout of inspiration struck. I grabbed it with my toes and turned it completely sideways which allowed me to pull it back up with my foot. Success. And yes, this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened during a calc lecture.

Wednesday after French a pickup truck was driving up the hill. Some resourceful skateboarder (I know, I didn't think it was possible) grabbed on to the back of the truck at such an angle that its driver was unable to see him, and let it pull him up the hill. At the top I gave him a nod of approval.

Tentative spring quarter schedue:
MATH 33a: Linear Algebra and Applications
FRNCH 3: Elementary French
PIC10b: Intermediate Programming
ARCH&UD 10b: History of Architecture and Urban Design: Baroque to Contemporary Moment

I am first on the waiting list for discussion 1E of ARCH&UD 10b; all I can say is they had better let me in even if nobody drops. Not too happy about the 8 AM math again either, but at least I can just eat lunch at 11.

Leap Day

Writing in your blog on Leap Day is obligatory so here is my attempt.

Wednesday was my first pass for signing up for classes for Spring quarter. The original plan was this:

10:00-10:50 PIC10b
12:00-12:50 French 3
1:00-1:50 Math 33A
2:00-3:50 Linguistics 20

As predicted this plan has miserably failed, this time because 33A with Laub and Linguistics 20 were both filled by the time my pass started. Now it looks like it will be the following:

8:00-8:50 Math 33A
9:00-9:50 French 3
10:00-10:50 PIC 10b

and I will have to wait and see what is left for my fourth class.

Yesterday we entered the stairwell on the way to dinner and saw a bunch of inspiring post-it notes stuck to the walls of multiple floors. I photographed as many as possible but there were 2-3 that I missed:
Whoever is responsible is my new hero, though I suppose this goes without saying.

March 12 is my second concert as part of UCLA Symphony. This quarter's program is as follows:

Glinka - Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla
Lots of nostalgia of Sophomore year marching band with this one. It sounds quite good at the moment; the only problem is that we're not playing at the hilariously fast tempo that makes this piece worthwhile. Even more disappointing because one of the two recordings we were provided with by our director was selected exclusively for its tempo ("They barely hang on, it's remarkable.")

Debussy - Nuages and Fêtes from Nocturnes for Orchestra
The biggest disappointment on the program is that we are not playing the third movement, Sirèns, presumably because it requires 8 sporanos and 8 mezzo-sopranos. The irony in this is that this quarter we are being conducted by graduate conducting students of the choral director here. You would think that it would be easy enough for him to find some singers. The second movement is a bit worrisome at the moment, particularly the middle section which features the trumpets, who were still struggling with the part last I heard them (two weeks ago). But I don't have any doubts that they will have it ready by the performance, they are excellent players. I would have preferred to play Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune but playing any Debussy is an exhilarating experience.

Schubert - Symphony no. 9 in C major - "The Great"
At 2000+ measures and 55 minutes in duration, performing this piece probably burns more calories than most people's daily workout routines. We have not actually played it start to finish yet. The final movement has some very awkward arpeggios in the string parts which some of us still need to work on. I am consistently impressed by Schubert, whose music is far more romantic than his contemporaries: a larger emphasis on melody, with hints of chromaticism in multiple places, and to top it all off, trombone parts that are actually significant. It should be a fantastic performance overall (we have been promised pizza), though it will likely be difficult for our audience, which struggled through Shostakovich's 5th, to sit through. But it's definitely a very rewarding piece to perform.


Today in Calc we had another substitute; apparently Rogawski doesn't like to come on Fridays. At least this time she was somewhat comprehensible, though I was unfortunately half asleep for the entire lecture and couldn't take advantage of this.

Tonight we paid $2 to see No Country for Old Men in Ackerman. Though a little too intense for my tastes, it was quite good. It also has the creepiest villain ever.

I have also discovered my new favorite question from Who Wants to be a Millionaire?:

February

Maybe I remember things incorrectly but it has rained much more this winter than in previous winters. It was supposed to rain on Friday but it seemed to arrive a day earlier than predicted. A highly appropriate quote was Quote of the Day sometime last week:

"The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it."
- Patrick Young

On Thursday amidst my usual afternoon boredom I looked to the right and saw that it was raining like mad, which improved my day to an extent. But the best moment was around 2:45 PM when suddenly the clouds disappeared all at once and all that remained was the largest rainbow I have ever seen (this photo doesn't really do it justice but I like it anyway):
Yes, this is the view from our dorm room window. I know, I didn't think this kind of thing existed in Los Angeles either.


Orthographically awesome French words:

• créée - Feminine past participle of créer, to create.
• mangaient - Third person imperfect plural form of manger, to eat.
  

Phonologically awesome French words:

• semblable - Because "blab" sounds like "blob."

My computer struggles have finally been resolved, after more than a month, and I got a nice 45nm processor out of it too. The old, presumably defective E6600 is currently being sent to Intel; hopefully they will replace it.

The rest of February was mostly spent failing midterms. PIC10a: 60%. Math 32B: 61%. PIC10a's was four questions, one of which revolved around information he taught THE DAY BEFORE THE EXAM. So we hadn't gotten a chance to try it out in homework or anything so of course I had no idea how it worked. I could have gotten like 75-80% otherwise. Calc was disappointing because I knew the material well enough, but I made a bunch of stupid mistakes, like wasting 30 minutes getting angry that my integral was so messy because something possessed me into thinking that the derivative of 1/u was ln|u| (I guess I confused it with the antiderivative). Fortunately I fixed this one by the end of the exam, but similar errors were made on nearly every other problem. Round 2 of the midterms for these two classes are this week - both on Wednesday, actually.

College is too hard. I'm transferring to NASCAR Technical Institute: