It was a fine bright morning and the sun lay golden gleaming on the amethyst waves a warmth of contentment was swept away by a rising breeze that whisked waves to froth and birds to flight…
Sorry, listening to some pretty Ludovico Einaudi piano right now! My morning was actually pretty normal. I managed to get up before 10 today (high five, Brandon!) by setting 5 alarms at 1 minute intervals (too annoying to turn them all off, and you can feel the contradiction with your past self).
After that I returned the email I got from one of the MSR researchers (super prestigious guy, replied in like 3 hours, beginning to think this is the norm and all these awesome researchers are just sitting on their phones all day). Then I started working on quantum. I somehow got sidetracked into rederiving change of basis matrices, which left me with some interesting pedagogical material (why didn’t they explain it this way in intro linear algebra??).
I made myself some sausage and pasta again for lunch, was tasty.
Martin came over to study; I left him a few sausages and went on a walk up the hill. It was blustery, and therefore, marvelous outside. I summited the hill, thinking about what really characterizes opportunism, as a strategy, and what conditions in the environment and inside a person cause it to succeed or fail. I’m not sure I have anything there yet.
Got back, studied with Martin and Gideon and Daniel. Today I felt the study group lag that caused me to study alone at the UW, so I took a break, then put my headphones on and switched to quantum for a bit, which alleviated the mild frustration.
Played foosball with Martin, and then with Alexis and Matthias. We had some great games. I made myself a burger for dinner, took a long, hot shower, and then:
Went swing dancing! Gideon had invited me to a place I hadn’t heard of. It was a nice 30 minute walk; then another 30 minute walk because they didn’t take card and I had to find an ATM; but it was really fun! I got right back into dancing :D :D Had some fun conversations, got to use a little bit of German :D, felt pretty comfortable introducing myself and carrying conversation, which was great.
Took the tram home, made myself a bowl of cereal, watched Mad Men, and hit the hay.