The weather today.
Part one: lying in the dark, not moving, not thinking too hard, marinating in your own sweat as it refuses to evaporate into the incredibly humid air, asking what you did to deserve this.
Part two: the most intense thunderstorm frolicking EVER. We basically went outside and screamed with joy, then came inside after maybe a minute and literally wrung water out of our hair. So intense. And so necessary.
Holy shit.
I am not in Budapest anymore.
But I am at WILLIAMS. As far as re-introductions to the US go, that’s pretty good.
I am also ridiculously tired.
Good night.
Had a random and kind of silly trip to Eger on Wednesday. Before EVERYBODY STARTED LEAVING ME and I had to drink multiple delicious shots to cope.
I’m going to miss this.
What I wasn’t expecting was that performing would be so damn FUN. Performing! The most stressful thing in the world, when you get one shot to show people what you can do, and if (when) you screw up, you can’t just tell them, “Oh, but I did it so well yesterday!” because it doesn’t matter how well you did it yesterday.
Maybe because it wasn’t in front of experts who really knew much about music, and the setting was very casual, but performing at the little party yesterday evening at a prof’s apartment (with his adorable children and family and neighbors as well as students) was really fun.
And afterwards, some other people played and we sight-read some chamber music and essentially had a classical music jam session, and I kind of (definitely) remembered why I loved music.
Jam sessions are the best. I have fond memories of opera jam sessions in the shitty practice room at IHS (yes, really). And there are other kinds of jam sessions too — jam sessions where we hang out in lab and write a lot of code, jam sessions where we do number theory in ruin pubs (or McDonald’s, you know, anywhere works), jam sessions where we bust out some paper and doodle the shit out of it. And so on and so on and so on.
In my mind, jam sessions are just what happens when people get together and do stuff they really love doing, just because they can. And there’s no better way to do anything than that.
A brief summary of afore-mentioned finals (now with less FEELINGS).
- Dynamics & bifurcations: the only final I really had to study for, as it turns out
- Number theory: essentially a spelling test, where “spelling” is mapped to “solving Diophantine equations over the positive integers”
- Combinatorics: borderline impossible, at least in the time allotted, and I think the whole class agrees
- Hungarian: hahahahahahahahahaha
DONE WITH FINALS
LEAVING BUDAPEST IN LESS THAN A WEEK
CAN I JUST SAY, HAVING SOME FEELINGS RIGHT NOW
Visited the largest church in Hungary this weekend. It’s pretty freaking big, especially compared to the not-so-big town it looms over from its hilltop.
Also featured: the Danube, from that church in Esztergom, a boat near Visegrad, and the Chain Bridge in Budapest. Love that river.
And in New York, you walk. Your rapport with the terrain is like nowhere else; you measure distances with your bones and your muscles. You build a physical relationship to the city.
Emmanuel Schalit (CEO, Dashlane) in his article “Why We Chose Silicon Alley Over the Valley”
I don’t care that much about the article (though it’s interesting), or about New York in particular, but strangely this quote has become like a mantra for me when I walk places.
Some people say they do their best thinking in the shower. I do mine when I’m walking home alone, when I don’t have to worry about where I’m going or who I’m with, when I can turn up my music and my pace and just walk.
(via grapelet)
Source: sniffandflehmen
Last night I had a dream that there were really good oranges at Spar. This was because they were in like the bakery instead of the produce section, so nobody knew they were there and hence nobody could take all the good ones.
This post is brought to you by ORANGES: the fruit April is pretty into these days, apparently.
Two days, two long walks, two parks on the Danube.
