[Title of Blog]

The Boston skies have not been too happy since I got back.  This is the third weekend that I’ve spent here, and in that time period, I feel like we’ve had clear skies for less than three days. That doesn’t bode too well when you’re trying to play tennis every day - that darned 60% chance of precipitation is always looming over you, and you never know if you’ll get to go out.  Muh!  This isn’t what Summers are supposed to be like!  I wish the sun would come out…

On the other hand, life here hasn’t been too bad.  This summer has been a summer of doing things that I’ve been meaning to do, and I’m really happy with it so far.  My UROP is going all right.  I’m working with Scott Aaronson at CSAIL.  What does that mean?  Well, right now, I’m working on a problem for him, and in the meanwhile, I’ll be looking through literature for other problems that I could try my hand at.  As for the problem that I have now, I have a partial result, which is encouraging.  Research is a lot of fun, and I’m very glad that I chose to do this this summer.  There are also a few grad students in the area, and it’s nice to talk to them.  I share an office with a chinese student, and when I can, I try to practice my mandarin with her.  Also in my office is Brendan Juba, my TA for Complexity Theory this past term.  He’s in around his fifth year of school, though, and getting ready to graduate, so he isn’t around too much.  In all, this floor of the Stata Center is pretty quiet.

What else has happened?  Well, when it’s not raining, I’m playing tennis nearly every day.  It’s been a while since I’ve played regularly, and I hope that I can get some good feel again.  There have been a few days when I’ve felt like I was hitting well, which is encouraging.  The problem is that my fitness level isn’t very high, but I’m working on that. By the end of summer, I think I’ll be play at a good level again.

What a nice summer!  What a nice life!

Summer has started again, and life is, as always, busy.  Sometimes I wonder if I will ever settle down and have a normal life.  One where I’m not rushing from thing to thing, and I’ll be able to savor the things that I have.  I got back to Boston last Saturday, and and my life has been a whirlwind since then.  Unpacking, groceries, and cooking for food (yikes, I’m really starting to feel the whole lack of a dining hall situation).  Since then, my schedule has migrated to a stable  point, but I still feel sometimes that there just isn’t enough time in the day, to do everything I want to do.

So, what am I doing this summer?  Well, at the highest level, I’m searching for what I’m interested in in theoretical computer science.  More specifically, I’m a summer UROP student for Professor Scott Aaronson.  He gives me problems to think about, and I think about them.  Other times, I’m reading papers and the good ole wikipedia to try and see what else is out there, and what would be interesting to try.  This life is not too bad, though the feeling of not being able to solve a problem is pretty terrible.  I guess this summer is, you could say, me trying to figure out if I would be all right with grad school.

Oh, well.  It’s 12:30, and I’m getting tired.  I’ll try not to neglect this page as much as I have been…

I have a few thoughts that I will put down into words later, but until then, I leave you with this:

Angelaise   says (12:54 PM): rook at you