Morning, woke up late but happy after another weird night of sleep. Must be tough to be Brandon and have one’s sleep schedule slosh around involuntarily–it’s emotionally doable but plays havoc with one’s use of time!
Hung out with Jerico and Rachel, drank tea and ate some of their delicious spicy fish, which oddly enough was too spicy for them.
I started TeXing my old math paper to use as a writing sample for the Microsoft internships. Soon it was time for hoops, and I headed over to the gym.
I got on a kick-ass team, a balanced-height, pass-happy dynamo of a group who were all nice to boot. We lost our first game against another very good team, but there was some suspicion about the ending scorekeeping. We had to wait a couple games to get back in, but once we were back in nobody could take us out! Some games were over so fast I couldn’t believe it. The atmosphere was festive–I could tell none of us had played games like that in quite a while! I mostly played an assisting/passing role but I had a few good takes and shots–and I played great defense. I just stonewalled some people who’d done really well in other games. I hung out several games after I thought I was completely exhausted and just kept running. Hung out a bit with the friendly teammates afterward then went to lift weights.
I did a few slow-motion pull-ups, then went to the lat pull-down machine where I’d been trying to lift as much as I could. Just two days ago I couldn’t do 85 kilos. So I sat down, tried 80–it was easy! I jumped up to 85 and did 4 reps. Surprised, I drank some water, did a few more pull-ups, then hopped back on. One of the players on our team was looking on with amusement as I shocked myself with 4 more reps at 90. I should have kept going up, but there was a guy waiting.
I went downstairs to exit the gym and met another guy from our team, Ollie (spelling very questionable). Turns out he was an atmospheric scientist working on identifying conditions where the weather could be predicted farther out than 10 days with decent accuracy–a defier of chaos, this man! Fun chatting with him; finally made it back to Culmann, hungry as an ox.
Wrote a few messages, made myself a big omelet with the last of my eggs (with fried garlic! It was tasty!). I said hi to Yeomin and Michéle and went out to the store. I had to walk down to the HB, still had a bit of energy, but after a successful and cheap shopping trip I took the tram back up the hill. Felt very organized.
Kept at the TeXing; at some point my mom messaged–it was my sis, wanting a copy of a German sunday edition periodical that she and her dog had appeared in. I ran down to the HB (after repairing my headphones by re-pairing them, woot!) I was in a jolly mood; alas, her informant had been confused and the periodical contained no mention of the dynamic duo. Mildly annoyed at the world, I reasserted my internal locus of control by running up the hill back to Culmann.
TeXed more of the paper. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way through, I realized that my t - 1.5 self’s mathematical writing was just too naive to serve as a good writing sample. I’d mixed up things that should have been theorems with definitions, used notation as a placeholder for things that should have been defined, and carried on a folksy dialogue with the reader throughout (not inherently bad, just looks unprofessional). It was actually kind of cool to see how my mathematical writing has since matured (although I may have lost a bit of the intuitive flair of my past self). Plus, my other writing samples were probably sufficient. I wasn’t going to give up, so I powered through the last third of the work anyway. The paper was TeXed, I was drained and hungry. Made myself a big plate of sausages with bread and a cucumber and tomato salad (wow Spence, really branching out there! I’ve discovered that no dressing effort is required–just douse the assembled bowl of greens with balsamic and olive oil). I ate the meal, still winding down from the big TeX effort.
Then I went up to my room, watched a second third of the anime Your Name, which is one of the most beautifully animated things I’ve ever seen and has a cool, uncynical story. It was really great. Then I wrote this log and hit the hay.