I hate imaginary numbers. They ruined math for me forever.
I mean, honestly. It’s not that I hate math. I love math. The logic of all of it is just so beautiful. I remember when I was first taught trigonometry, how astounding it was to me that you could calculate the length of a triangles other sides if you knew their angles even if they were composed of line segments longer than the entire planet’s circumference. When I was first taught that, it put a smile on my face all day. Sure, I hated all the memorization and formulae, but it was almost worth it when you arrived at a conclusion and knew it couldn’t be any different. Then imaginary numbers came along, and my entire world collapsed.
It was just like “Hey, you know all that stuff we told you to memorize and take to heart because we insisted that it would be easier than doing all the trial-and-error research that the ancient Greeks and Mesopotamians did? Well now that stuff doesn’t work out for us, so here’s a number that doesn’t really exist. Use it.”
And the gods of math did weep, for yet another eleventh grader had slipped through the perfectly symmetrical cracks of their divine fingers.
I just wrote all that because I had no idea how to write an appropriate introduction. Introductions are just always awkward, whether they’re in speech or writing, because you always have to pretend you have both something interesting to say as well as a reason for saying it, when often you have neither, and all you really have is a desire to get a conversation going.
In any case, I’m Max Marks. Some of you might remember me from last year’s first year blog squad, which is why I now carry the title of second year blog squad. Isn’t the passage of time an amazing thing? I guess a lot has happened last year, though I didn’t do a very good job of documenting it. I’ll try to correct that a bit more this year.
If you read the admittedly better blogging of my lovely ladyfriend, Samantha, you already know I was originally going to room with her in Marine Drive’s tower 6, which required us to stay in subletted apartments for two weeks before MD6 actually opened, but as a result of UBC housing being really awesome we’re now staying in Fairview starting tomorrow morning. This is like a dream come true for the both of us. My only real complaint is one of our landlords doesn’t seem to want to give us our deposit back because we canceled before we moved in.
There weren’t exactly a lot of events leading up to this, but we had more than a bit of time to kill, as flights to Vancouver from Toronto were pretty hard to get (I’ll let you come up with your own joke about Vancouver being better than Toronto if this information provokes one to you) so my dad had to book a flight arriving on the 23rd.
There’s not a whole lot to do in Vancouver when you’re a broke college student with a week before studies, especially since the apartment we’re staying in has limited access to both television and internet, to the point that I’m writing this in a bagel shop. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do at all. For example, yesterday I went to get the rest of my books before the September 1st rush cleared them all out. It was at this point that I made an amazing discovery: The UBC bookstore hates philosophy students!
Seriously, for every book I went to get, it wasn’t on the shelf for the philosophy section. However, the books were in the store. There were dozens of them, in fact. They were just all given to the shelves for history and literature. Come to think of it, this could also just mean that there are a lot more philosophy students at UBC than literature and history students, but since pretending to be victimized is more entertaining, I’ll go with my previous statement.
I was also very surprised when me and Sam went for lunch at what I consider to be UBC’s best Japanese restaurant, Suga Sushi, to find that their owner, Ken Sugahara, was no longer the owner at all. I was flabbergasted to discover this. I mean, you can’t spell “Suga” without “Sugahara” A lot of you who frequent the University Village will remember Suga Sushi always had a banner above it announcing its “Grand Opening” which was apparently perpetually happening for upwards of three of four years. I always found that funny and charming. However, now the banner merely informs us that it serves both Japanese and Korean cuisine. Granted, that’s much more informative, not to mention consistent with reality, but I feel like I lost an old friend.
You leave town for four months and find out things have already changed. But I guess change is a good thing, so we shouldn’t complain about how fast it works.