With friends / Top-10 things Bush is not going to tell / Does the size matter? / Coin…

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election. Otto Von Bismarck

With friends

Great evening today. First, I was writing and doing some research at home, then I took the T to the Harvard Square and to the John Harvard's Brew Pub. I have read many good things about the pub and it turned out to be more than a decent place: food was quite OK and beers about the same quality as in other local brewery pubs. But most important was to enjoy the company of Wilfried, who had just completed his quals (an exam every aero-astro PhD-candidate has to pass), and other aero-astro friends of mine: Bill, Paul, and Alex. Such a nice company one seldom has - very intelligent but also bitingly sarcastic and fun. Nice time. Bill drove us all home, and having 5 students of Crawley's (a criteria being more than 6 feet tall) in a small Acura certainly made us close friends...

Top-10 things Bush is not going to tell

Or is he? Check Juan Cole's list and compare it with your notes after the speech. And remember what Bismarck said about telling lies (see above).

Does the size matter?

I mean does the size of one's home matter. My cave was very small. Now I live at Dave's place, which is huge, maybe 80 sq meters or so. Dave left for Charlotte, NC, and I have the place all by myself. Since I do not visit his room, I have just 60 sq meters to dwell in. But I do not need all of them. I have found that I either sleep on my futon, nap on the couch, or sit in one reclining chair reading and writing (in addition to visiting the bathroom and getting beer from the fridge regularly). So, I am using about as much space as I was in my small cave. The only real advantage of larger space comes when listening to music. Sonic Youth sounds much better from decent hifi-system here. I like this place, but being modest, I cannot really know how to enjoy it any other way than I enjoyed a much smaller place.
In similar vein, I think that the right size for a bedroom is the size of a futon plus less than one meter at the foot of the futon. Anything more is too much. We stayed once in the Andon Ryokan in Tokyo. It has traditional Japanese rooms, which are only seven squre meters in size . I found that to be the ideal size for a bedroom.

Coin problem

I have two kilograms of US coins. I would like to either deposit them to my bank account or change the coin in bills. My bank says, that they will take coins only if they are wrapped and that they would give me wrappers if I would like to wrap the coins myself. Somehow I have better things to do than wrapping coins. Maybe I will take a handful of coins every day and give them to some local street musicians.
The bank teller did not know where I could find a coin wrapping machine. Do you? Or are the musicians going to be lucky?

Happiness

Having coffee at "Au bon Pain", reading on sustainability, thinking what to discuss with professor Marks later this morning, having no hurry but not a second to waste, overhearing some academic discussions on engineering. Knowing that today I have time to read, write, and think, and whatever I think or write is evaluated by its own merits, not by some organizational politics, or sheer bad will, or misunderstood due to lack of intellectual depth/ability. I would be happy to continue this, to come back to MIT to pursue my PhD, even if that would mean not having a lot of money, living in smaller apartments, or not being able to fly here and there and have martini by the pool-side. Happiness seems to equal to intellectual freedom and modest financial safety. Corporate environments never can be as free as academia. Enough rambling.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs January to February 2006".