The next installment of the David Chronicles...

Well, I've just survived a work week from hell and had a 5 hour nap (about as much sleep as I've had each night this week...) so thought I'd finally update you on the last few weeks. I've got 4 or 5 weeks to cover so I'm warning you that this may be a long one...

I left off last time at the start of IMR - the new math grad seminar. Being held at the Hill Center (the math department) it was a chance to see where I'm going to be based for the next 5 years, as well as helping me prepare for grad school and get through all the admin stuff. It was also a chance to meet my peers, and grad students from other years.

It all started with tea and coffee with a few professors which was great. I met Prof Lepowsky who had given me some advice on selecting courses and a few of my course professors - it was useful to know that they are real people and not just scarily-intelligent exam-setting robots! This was the start of a very intensive 3 days - 15 lectures on everything from Linear Algebra to Differential Manifolds, other grad student's research topics and how to be a 'good grad student'. 100 pages of lecture notes, a scavenger hunt (only mathematicians would set a scavenger hunt that involved solving limits, differential equations and classifying algebras!) and a party with the senior grads later, I emerged as a fully fledged grad student... I also got my own website, which I'm gradually updating with things like contact info, my dissertation, which courses I'm taking etc (the website is here)

Then term started...

I've done quite a bit over the last 4 or 5 weeks so I'm not going to go over everything, so here are my highlights etc...

*Lectures - not so much a highlight, but a necessary evil taking up all my time. I'm taking 4 courses this term - 2 core courses and (because I got exempt from the other core courses) 2 extra courses (effectively 2nd year courses). I have two 80 minute lectures for each course each week (plus 2 lectures in a course I'm not taking for credit) and then 4 seminars a week (each 1 hour long).
For the two core courses I have to hand in a problem set every week, and for the two other courses I have to hand in a set every fortnight. This means that I alternate between 'nice' weeks and 'evil' weeks. For each set I have to hand in about 20 pages of typed solutions, on top of actually working out the solutions, so the workload is pretty intense... Even so, I suppose this is what I'm here for, so I can't complain too much! Combine that with not getting much work done last week (with me being ill) means that this week I've gotten to bed at 4am, 4am, 2am and 4am - this lead to a 3hr nap yesterday afternoon and a 5hr nap this afternoon (the first one planned, the second one unplanned) which certainly leads to a screwed up sleep pattern...

*Cycling - After finding out that I won't be able to row while here, I decided to take up another sport. It didn't take me long to decide on road cycling and I went to the first meeting of the Rutgers Cycling Club. They seemed a really cool bunch, and it seemed a sport I could really get involved with. I've decided to concentrate on road cycling rather than cyclecross or track - but hopefully I'll be able to pick those up some time during the next 5 years... I ended up getting a bike from Kim's Bikes - the local bike shop, and the owner's son cycles for Rutgers so I ended up getting a really good deal on it. It is an absolute dream to ride and I've been on a few long rides, including a great one along the canal in the glorious sunshine. Being ill the last fortnight, the rides have been sparse, but I'm hoping to step up the training again, and look to be racing with the cycling club come the spring.
One note about cycling - it takes a while to get used to being on the wrong side of the road... Normally it doesn't really bother me, but roundabouts are terrifying! I swear when I first went round one I thought I was going to die - it just seems so wrong to be going round them the wrong way...

*New York! - So the first weekend after term started I decided to visit the city that never sleeps and see what all the fuss is about. Me and Simon, my flatmate, headed up to have a look around and meet some of the other Fulbrighters. It really is an amazing city - there is so much going on it is crazy. We first went to the typical sights round Manhatten - the Empire State, Rockafella Center, Times Square before meeting with the Fulbrighters. Now a bit of advice - never try to organise a group of around 20 people meeting in New York - it is the worst logistical nightmare ever imagined. We decided to meet at the Apple Store just off Central Park (such a cool shop) and it seriously took us about an hour to find everyone. Afterwards we had a wander around Central Park and caught up. It was really nice to see how everyone was doing and it was a shame it was such a fleeting visit. I'm heading back up to New York next weekend to start volunteering at KEEN NY (the New York branch of the charity I volunteered at in Oxford helping at youth clubs for disabled children) so hopefully will start seeing more of the Big Apple more regularly.

*Food - American food is different from British food, and when I say different, I mean really different. First off, words don't necessarily mean the same; when I was asked if I wanted some 'Veggies' with my meal I thought it was some weird "Buy a lunch, get a free vegetarian" offer... Also, the word might be the same but the pronounciation different; I still can't pronounce yoghurt or raspberry so that they understand me first time.
Next up, cereals. These take on a completely different form than back home - everything is either chocolate coated, or bright red, green, blue and orange. I found a pack of Raisin Bran and thought I had finally found a healthy cereal, only to open up the box and be shocked and appalled - they coat the raisins in sugar! I mean, this is a simple breakfast of bran flakes and raisins and they can't help but add sugar - as of now, I'm sticking to toast.
Ask any Brit here about tea and it seems we all agree - Lipton's tea tastes like tea, but only if you add sawdust, grit and anythign else you might find on the ground. Not to be disrespectful to Lipton's, but their tea just doesn't come close to a good cup of Tetley's, Yorkshire, Rington's, PG Tips etc. Hence my excitement when (a) mum sent me some Earl Grey in the post and (b) I found a local shop that stocked a full range of Twinings!
Finally, a non-US specific moan: why did people think condensed soup was a good idea? Obviously it saves space, and probably makes it last longer, but it is one of the worst ideas in the world. When I was ill last week, I decided to have the stereotypical comfort food and opened a tin of chicken soup. Now the problem with condensed chicken soup, is that if you are ill and feeling naseous, then the last thing you want to see is condensed chicken soup partially mixed with water. Seriously, why make it look like that?!? Sorry, rant over...

*Shopping - Americans have truly turned this into an art form. My nearest mall is Menlo Park and I assumed being a 'local' mall, it would only have a handful of stores. How wrong I was. The mall had any store you could name: Macy's, Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale, Barnes & Noble, American Apparell and a HUGE food court. Top that off with a Target next door and you pretty much have naything you could ever need in one place.
You might remember me complaining about not really being able to get much food anywhere locally - well then I discovered Stop & Shop. Think of a huge Tesco's, and make it even bigger... They have everything you could ever want to eat, and then some. They have a massive freezer section (about a 1/3 of the store) and in the veg section, every few minutes they freshly 'mist' the root vegetables - giving them a nice sheen, but it does soak you if you stand too close when it goes off!

Well that's about all for the updates right now, I'll try to update again soon!

Later days

P.S. By the way, the British accent is still working it's charm :) It seems most days I get at least one girl saying how cute it is, it's all rather flattering really!

P.P.S. I'm going to try and put some more pictures up on my Fickr page, so have a look here