A professor sent an email offering free tickets to the play "Julius Caesar", so I took one of them (actually both of them, as nobody else wanted them). I went to the play on Thursday night on day that had already been very fun as I had lunch with Greg and Paige, and presented a talk on Brun's sieve for the number theory seminar.

I arrived a couple of minutes late, so I couldn't go in my assigned seat, but seat on the balcony. I couldn't get into the play at first and fell asleep for about 10-20 minutes. When I woke up I was more energized and started paying more attention to the play. It wasn't too fun to see it from the balcony as I would often lose track of the conversations. Once Julius Caesar is killed, the play turned more interesting for me as I had thought his death was the end of the play and not just the end of the first half. There was an intermission and after it I could sit on my assigned seat. The play was much more enjoyable on the front rows than on the balcony and I could follow every conversation and see the performances better. My favorite character in the play was Cassius, the actor did a great job of making him look smart at first and temperamental later on, but very loyal to his friend Brutus. The play had some female characters instead of males (for instance, Marc Anthony was a woman), that was interesting (and confusing at first). I really liked the second half of the play, it was fun to watch.

After the play I went salsa dancing. It was 10:35pm and it technically stops at 11pm, but this night it went on till 11:50pm, so I had a little over an hour of dancing time. I had a lot of fun, the most fun was dancing with Dafina as she's very good at dancing and I could experiment with different moves, it was fun to be able to dance well outside of the moves I have already internalized. I also met a couple of interesting people, one of them was a girl named Caty who was lived all over the world (Chile, Spain, Italy) because of her love for being in new places and learning their language and their literature. It was interesting, at first there was some confusion as when she said her favorite city was Santiago, I thought she meant the one in Spain and not the one in Chile. I also met Judith's mother, Judith is a professor here who always goes out to salsa and her mother was there to dance too, she has been all over the world too (born in Netherlands, currently lives in Israel). It was fun talking to people outside the math world.

On the week, I have had some fun doing mathematics, I learned Brun's sieve for number theory and the wonderful proof that the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes is bounded (the sum is called Brun's constant and it is known it is between 1.9 and 2.3). I gave the proof at the number theory seminar this week, it was interesting because the proof is not hard, I read it a couple of times before I was ready to present it without having to look at my notes, a lot of the ideas are very intuitive and yet they are so powerful in analytic number theory. Very fun stuff.

The highlight of the weekend was the semi-formal and watching Lust,Caution by Ang Lee. The semi-formal is a party for graduate students, it is done every year at this time of year. Greg, Amir and Paige didn't attend, so it wasn't as fun as last year but once I got in the mood of dancing to 80's music (the theme of the party was the 80's) then I managed to have fun.

The movie "Lust, Caution" was fantastic. The movie is long, but it didn't feel long, I was immersed in the story. The main actress was really good, as you could see the difference in her two faces (the shy girl, the confident woman). The movie was interesting and emotionally powerful. It is one of the best I've seen in a while, and a movie that has lead to several interesting conversations this weekend (one with Rachel, another with Xia).

I have been having interesting conversations about China with my roommate Xia. I learned some of the history (the power struggle between two main parties, the communist revolution), I also learned of the devastating weather in China in the first weeks of February which caused a lot of sadness with Chinese as it prevented them from traveling on the most important of holidays (New Year).

This year is the year of the rat, I was born on a year of the rat, I don't know what it means.

I've been working on number theory to prepare myself for the qual on Friday. I am not well prepared yet (as I have to memorize some stuff for the qual besides knowing the theorems and proofs I already know). I am looking forward to having this qual and start preparing for the last one (topology).

On Saturday I had lunch with Xia and her boyfriend. They made some Chinese style meal. It was tofu and cabbage and rice. It was very good. Then they gave me a ride to school.

Paul got a very good job offer (a postdoc offer) and we went to celebrate to Ben and Jerry's. They were out of many things, so the shake I ordered wasn't the one I wanted but it was still very good. It was also fun to talk with Ben, Ralf and Paul.

I went to dance a little at a latin night thing. Last year it was packed and awesome, but this year it was empty, yet I danced three songs with a girl named Luisa. She's interested in the latin culture because she wants to do research in Bolivia on the impact of drugs on indigenous people.

At night I went to Paul and Annalies's home and watched an episode of Buffy. I headed home after that as it was very late.

On Sunday, I came to school and watched the Colts game. I was very saddened by their loss. My dad and I were planning on attending the AFC Championship game between the Pats and the Colts, but the Colts lost and we don't like the Chargers that much to go. My dad went to the Cowboys game and they lost too.

After the game, I TA-ed for three hours. I am TAing Differential Equations, a subject I took 3 years ago and I don't remember much about, but it looks fun.

I went to see Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois. I was happy that Dartmouth finally showed a Luis Buñuel film, one of my favorite directors. This particular movie is not one of my favorites, but it definitely has several very memorable scenes. The movie got a lot of recognition when it came out and it is a movie that makes you think.

At night I watched half of the miniseries "BattleStar Galactica" since Desmond convinced me in San Diego that I should watch the show. The miniseries was looking good and I wanted to watch it all, but I had to bike home before the snow came (I now follow weather reports to see when I should bike).

On the bike home I saw 5 deer and 2 cats. First I saw 3 deer, two adult and one young one. Then later on the road (about 20 minutes later) I saw 2 more deer. They are very pretty since they are white-tail deer. I heard a cat scream and I noticed two cats in front of me. One of them wasn't moving, I hope it was okay.

It has snowed all day, so I'll get some heavy biking, but the weather is not cold, so it will be fine.

Annalies and I went to Collis Center to see if the Lone Pine Tavern was open to play some board games, since we were bored of watching movies. It was closed, so we just sat at the lounge and talked. Amir showed up because there was a special salsa night at Collis Center. It was empty, but by 10:30pm more people showed up and we went downstairs to dance.
I left at 12:30pm. I had a great time, this time girls were saying "yes" when asked if they wanted to dance. I went 6 out of 7 for the night, so I had a lot of fun. My skills of remembering names are pretty good since I remember five of the names (the other one I don't because I didn't understand what it was).

After dancing, I went for some tea with Amir and we talked a lot. I learned some history of Sunni vs Shiite, Zoroaster, laws in Iran. It was really interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a friend of legality of drinking, he thought it was legal everywhere. Well, Amir told me it is illegal in Iran (for muslims) and if you our found with alcohol, the punishment is 74 lashes. The good news is that police officers accept bribes, so most people don't get that. The bad news is that the militia usually doesn't accept bribes. In other awful laws, if you commit adultery you are stoned to death (assuming you are married), if you are atheist than you can be sentenced to death. Scary stuff.

Had a great night, very fun.

We met the president of Dartmouth today and had cheese and carrot cake and sandwiches. Before that, Chrisil cooked Dal, omelet and rice in the house. It was delicious.

I had my first TA thing today. Only two students showed up (who would show up after the first day of class). So, I talked with Mitsuo (mits) about number theory and he mentioned an interesting problem. I think I'll work on it soon, it looks really nice.

At night, I went to salsa dance. Every Thursday from 9-12 there's salsa dancing. From 9-10 is a class and then two hours more of dancing. There were more males than females, so it wasn't very fun, plus the fact that they were playing more rumba than salsa or merengue made me leave early. I only got to dance half a merengue song and another song that I don't even know what it was, it wasn't merengue, salsa or cumbia, I danced it as if it was a salsa, but it didn't really matter since the girl I danced with didn't know how to dance either of those.