Two Down, One to Go

I took my algebra and MPS finals back to back this past Friday. I had studied all week for them and I'm glad they are over and done with. I enjoyed both classes, but they both had their difficulties. Algebra is a course that every math major must take and is the foundation for much of high-level mathematics. I took it last Fall at UT, but dropped it halfway before the midterm because I couldn't follow the professor during lectures and the textbook wasn't a big help neither. My professor here was the exact opposite, writing detailed proofs on the blackboard and going through many examples. We covered a lot of material and at times it was hard to keep up at his pace, but at least he was thorough. I just hope I don't have to take it again next semester. Its the only class I took this semester that I needed for my degree back home.  

MPS is a whole 'nother story. The problems we had to solve weren't what I was used to at all and I didn't know what to do most of the time. Every now and then I would get one right without any help, but it was tough. It didn't help that half the problems we were solving were contest problems given to Hungarian high school students in the 1930's. The MPS professor is a teacher at Hungary's Fazekas high school, which  offers college-level math classes. The material in my MPS class was just as tough as anything I've taken at UT. I'm going to keep my Hungarian Problem Book, partly as a memento, partly to show it off to anyone who's interested.

And now, my days in the Budapest Semester in Mathematics are numbered. My last final, combinatorics, is at 8am on Tuesday morning. Later that day I'm starting a three and half week journey of European adventure. I'm catching an afternoon train to Prague to go see the Franz Kafka museum and the old town that everyone has been talking about. I'm taking a night bus back to Budapest on Wednesday night and arriving Thursday morning just in time for the BSM farewell party to get my transcript and say goodbye to all of the great friends that I've made here. Later that day I'm taking an overnight train to Kiev, Ukraine and then onto Dneperpetrovsk, Ukraine to see a distant relative, Nataliya Nechukhayeva, and her family. My travel plan after that takes me to Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, England, Switzerland, and back into Budapest to get few last licks before I jet back to San Antonio on June 18. I'm also meeting up with my mom in London, who is flying in to sightsee Europe alongside me.

Sounds epic? I know. The best part is that I hope to travel with only a backpack. I'm not known for travelling light, so this is going to be a real challenge. But that isn't anything compared to what this guy did: Here is a recent article in the New York Times about a guy who walked from Vienna to Budapest along the Danube River. Maybe I'll do that the next time I'm in Central Europe.

Now I have to study. It's 2 days until I'm done with school, 26 days until I return to Texas. Start the countdown. 

Election Day

Another weekend has ended. How productive was I? Depends on your prospective. Many of the math kids had midterms and homework due on this past Thursday and Friday. I myself had my algebra midterm on Friday. Let's just say that I'm glad its over with and I can move on to making a strong second-half semester push towards that A. While I studied for test in the days leading up to it, I realized that I had clearly allowed the lecture material to slip away over the past few weeks without understanding it. I will try not to make the same mistake in the coming weeks. So, after the test was over I joined dozens of other BSM'ers letting off steam around the 7th district on Friday night.

Our first stop was the "basement bar." It was a tiny, smoke-filled room with a couple of tables occupied by students. There are many places like this all around the city. They are characterized by their claustrophobic interiors, disregard for second-hand smoke, and cheap drinks. Many people were drinking pints of Arany Sozok, the Hungarian Bud Light (but worse), for 200 forints, 1 dollar. I sipped on a shot of Johnnie Walker Red for 350 forints, $1.75. It was severely watered down which made it taste too-smooth-to-be-true. Later we left the basement bar to go to our old favorite, Mumus, which had just opened up its courtyard for the Spring. The Mumus courtyard was a real treat. There were many tables with heat lamps positioned alongside a long bar with a handful of bartenders. A projector displayed static psychedelic images onto the blank wall of the adjacent apartment building, casting a trippy glow over the crowd outside. Cool. Just one more reason why I love coming here.

Saturday I woke up late and went with Christy and Mike to the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Glenn Brown exhibit. Glenn Brown is an artist from the UK that I had never heard of until two months ago when prints of his paintings started appearing at tram stations advertising the special exhibit at the Ludwig. This was the last weekend of the exhibit so I wanted to go check out the guy who had the weird paintings. See for yourself.

 

Suffer Well

His paitings are full of swirls of color, providing a sense of motion to the pictures. Many of the scenes and objects he paints are surreal or futuristic, and in fact he mimicks Salvador Dali's technique and expands on it, at least that is what the brochure said. I had a great time spending a Saturday afternoon looking at pretty pictures and checking out a neat museum on the Danube. 

The Ludwig Museum

View of the Danube from the Ludwig Museum

Hey! You found me!

Sunday was election day in Hungary. Since I've arrived here I've tried to understand Hungarian politics in order to gauge how people view policy here. There are campaign posters scattered throughout the city. Hungary has a parliamentary government so there are many political parties each vying for your vote. On the sidewalk outside my apartment in the 9th district there are campaign posters on every street lamp and every kiosk. Many posters are ripped down overnight and a rival party's poster is put up the next day. I have been looking at online news and blogs about Hungarian politics to get a feel for the local political climate. A good website is www.Politics.hu. 

However, I couldn't vote and had different priorities on Sunday afternoon: cleaning my apartment and my room and finally washing a load of laundry out of desperation. For those in America reading this blog: appreciate the convenience of your huge washers AND dryers. I do now. My room now clean, my clothes now hanging on the drying rack, it was time to do some homework. I had to catch up on some combinatorics and attempt the MPS homework so I headed out with Andy to eat, study, and check out election day festivities. We stopped by the Humus Bar first to eat some falafel, then went to Deak Ter to see if we could find some political rallies. By now it was 7:30pm, thirty minutes after the polls should have closed, but all we found at the city's main square were a some couples sitting on park benches and kids rolling around on their skateboards. We went by parliament and found nothing there as well. Hmmm. We decided to find a coffee shop, do some work, and then come back and look for a rally. Of course, as we searched for the California Coffee Company, our favorite study area, we ran into the Fidesz rally in Vorosmarty Ter. There was a big TV screen and a stage set up for a band. There were about a hundred people milling around but nothing was happening at the moment. We left the rally, found the coffee shop, got our homework done, and returned to Vorosmarty Ter to catch the start of the election results on the TV. I suppose it was just our luck to run into the rally of the victorious political party. For more information on the recent Hungarian election, check out these links.

Far Right Could Gain in Hungary Elections - NYTimes.com

Hungary's Opposition Wins First Round of Voting - WSJ.com

Politics.hu - Election Digest

Index.hu (in Hungarian, but has lots of pictures. Use Google translate to read it in English)

The second time we came to the rally there were many more people. Many were waving Hungarian tri-color flags and Fidesz flags. Fidesz won the election with 52% of the vote. They are the center-right party, not to be confused with the extreme nationalist Jobbik party that I profiled earlier. Jobbik came in third place with 17% and the Socialists were second with 19%. I'm glad that Jobbik didn't do as well as some predicted, but its still scary to see an outwardly racist, anti-Roma, anti-Semetic, homophobic political party do so well in the first place. Many of their votes came from rural areas which have been hit hard by the economic recession. 

The Fidesz rally in Vorosmarty Ter

Me at the Fidesz rally

A political campaign poster for the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), a conservative Christian democratic party. Here they are comparing the other parties, MSZP (Socialists), Fidesz, and Jobbik to cigarettes. I don't think this sends the same message in Hungary as it does in America. I'm not sure about the exact translation. I'll get back to you on that.

Political poster for the winning Fidesz party. April 11 is election day. The caption reads: "Only the Fidesz!"

Andy and I stayed at the rally for a while to soak up the political fervor many of the supporters around us were expressing. As we left to go home I saw a guy selling various Hungarian pins. I wanted to buy one but many had the Trianon-era Hungarian Empire or the tural bird on them, both of which can conjure up some nationalist images. While I thought about which pin to take we met some American college professors who were looking to buy pins also. One professor asked the merchant how much for a Hungarian flag he was selling. He said that the Hungarian flag costs 2000 forints, the Fidesz flag costs 1000 forints. The market has spoken. The professors were from Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, and were looking to open up a Hungarian campus in a town near Lake Balaton. They all taught in the liberal arts and were a little shocked when Andy said that we were in Budapest to learn math. Some of them picked up a Fidesz button and stuck it on their coats. I wasn't ready to choose sides yet, so I chose a politically neutral pin with Petofi Sandor on it commemorating the 1848 Revolution. Maybe Austrians might take offense. Just don't tell the Governator. 

For more pictures of the Ludwig Museum, the election night rally, Memento Park, Paris, or Switzerland, check out my Picasa Web Album here or click the permanent link in the upper right-hand corner of the blog.

Oh, That's Right, I'm Here for Math.

Yesterday was the first day of math class, the primary part of the BSM program. There was a buzz at the College International Building, as everyone mentally prepared for the start of actual schoolwork. If people still used regular pencils, they would have been sharpening them. I arrived at the school for my 10 a.m. class AL1: Introduction to Algebra. The class is scheduled for two hours from 10 a.m. until 12 noon on Mondays and Fridays. The professor informed us that there wasn't as much class time as there appeared to be, since the slotted four hours per week includes three 15-minute breaks and a 45-minute period for the professor's office hour time.

The Algebra class looks promising. Its the only class that I need to take; it's fulfilling my Algebraic Structures I requirement back at the University of Texas, which I dropped this past Fall semester after I couldn't follow the teacher at all. It wasn't just myself, either. That class started with 13 people and when I left it was at 8, and I don't think I was the last to leave. The other person in BSM who is a student at UT, Christy, took that Algebra class a year ago at UT from the same professor and got an A, though she is so uncertain about what she learned that she is also in the BSM Intro to Algebra class with me re-learning everything anyway. So I guess I had made the right call. This BSM professor seems nice, well-prepared, and matter-of-fact, which are all good things when you are teaching a course as fundamental and important to math majors as college algebra.

The other class that I had on Monday was MPS: Mathematical Problem Solving, scheduled between 12 noon and 2 p.m. on Mondays and Fridays. I had tried to rush to get a quick sandwich during the 15 minute break between classes, but showed up to MPS five minutes late. I walked into the small room filled with a dozen students and the professor, who handed me a problem sheet and asked me to work on the first three. Everyone else was hunched over the problem sheet also, working out the simple number theory problems. As I caught my breath, I thought back to Professor Starbird's number theory class at UT that I took my sophomore year. I thought about the prime factorization of numbers and wrote down some answers when suddenly the professor played a little tune on the tiny wooden ocarina flute that he had hanging around his neck on a string the whole time. Time was up. We went over the problems as a class, the professor keeping us transfixed on the math at work. While I had stared at the clock during algebra, I didn't notice an hour and a half go by at all. At first I had my suspicions about registering for MPS, since I'm a senior and the problem solving techniques would be more beneficial for underclassmen or juniors. I was so impressed that I've considered keeping it which means taking five math courses along with intensive intermediate Hungarian. Looking back after a day I don't think I can handle all of the schoolwork, and if I had to drop a class it would probably be MPS even though its by far the most fun, but I would at least try to audit it.

After MPS I went up to Anna's office to talk to her about my bed frame. My IKEA bed doesn't have attached planks to lay the mattress onto. It comes with loose "ladder" of planks that are laid onto the frame to support a mattress. The problem is that the planks on my bed have been whittled down and are falling through the frame onto the floor. Now my mattress is on the floor next to my couch. But I'm not complaining. It could be worse. I could be in Serbia. Anna will talk to my Hungarian landlady and have it fixed soon.

At the end of the day several dozen BSM students sat in on the optional classical algebra review course. The review is taught Monday and Thursday afternoons for the first three weeks of class and no grades are assigned. The professor described the material as "everything that Gauss knew when he was 19" and publishing some of the most important theorems in mathematics. I thought I know what was up, so I went. Plus my algebra is terrible anyway.

I went by the post office after school to mail in my Texas absentee ballot application to the Travis County Clerk. I had already sent one last Friday, but a subsequent conversation with my Uncle Ben Larry and Papa Max enlightened me that I had forgotten to write in which party's ballot I wanted to receive for the primary election. I asked Ben Larry if the county office would do me a favor and send me both ballots. He said "No way, Jose."

Tuesday, today, ran very similar to Monday. I got to school at 8 a.m. for my CO1B: Introduction to Combinatorics. The "B" signifies the normal pace of the course, as opposed to the other "A" course which is fast paced. I initially thought I should take the fast paced course, but then I realized that I might end up taking four or maybe five math classes instead of just three, so I'm opting for the slower scenic route that takes me around the mountain instead of through it. The class appears alright. The professor likes to illustrate how the theorems work instead of just showing us the formulas, which he had given to us in the handout anyway. This class meets from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The second class I took today was GRT: Graph Theory. I had heard that the class was very interesting, that the professor was great, that graph theory is really important and applicable somewhere, and that the class was really hard. So I wasn't surprised when it all turned out to be true. The professor walked into class, said hi to everyone, and quickly passed out his contact information. He said that "students always ask me 'how hard is your class?' but I don't like answering that question because I can't give an accurate answer. It's hard for me to think like I'm in your shoes. So, let's begin." and he started lecturing immediately. He didn't speak so fast as much as not take any rest in between topics. His chalk writing kept up with his speech and I took notes as fast as I could while trying to understand what he was saying. I've had teachers that move through material quickly before, but I don't think two months of slouching over winter break got me in the mood to focus. Once I've had a few days of math class, I'll be able to keep up with him. Plus the material is all new to me. I've never learned anything close to this before so its all fresh. I definitely want to keep this class even if it means dropping something else.

I only have two more new classes to take this week. Tomorrow I have NUT: Topics in Number Theory at 12 noon and on Friday I have my first HUN2A: Intensive Intermediate Hungarian at 2 p.m. Today Christy gave back my Literary Austin anthology that I had lent to her. She said it made her homesick and couldn't read it anymore. I looked in it just now and I completely understand.