Sunday, October 23

 I woke up around 10:30am, hardly getting up. Let's start the day with The Strokes – The Adults are Talking; let it be the soundtrack of this day, "you want me to do it the same way as you". B fried an egg for me, and we slowly drank coffee and chatted, then I started looking into Munkres' topology. 

I read some proofs about compactness, limit point compactness, and different formulations of compactness in metrizable spaces. Okay, that's not too hard stuff: I just need clear mind and time to focus. The homework asks to visualize what's going on in the proofs. That looks creative. 

2pm lunch. Chicken soup that I cooked another day since I couldn't eat solid food. B was praising it again; said it turned out perfect this time. I said I did a few experiments on it, adding tomato paste was one of the odd things, but I said I knew what made the real difference. I said she wouldn't approve what I did. Well, I added MSG. Back when I was into learning how to cook ramen, back when I learned all the kinds of dashi and miso pastes, I remember back then I'd read somewhere that for real Shio ramen on chicken stock you really need to add some MSG for authenticity. So now I thought why not to add MSG in my chicken soup as an experiment. B started laughing. Yeah, – she said, – it made sense why it was so yummy. Now she recognized the taste. Then she said my previous soups were more subtle and sophisticated without the overwhelming umami. Oh, alright then, I agree.

3pm I went to the library. At the entrance the "kids" were talking and laughing; some played frisbee, some sat on the benches and chatted. Good mood in the air – nice, I approve; the kids have a lot to do these days in the midterms, no excuses for not having fun. The library was full; all tables taken, occasionally, someone puts a bag on the chair – but I didn't wanna ask and squeeze in too closely anyway. Some people just leave their stuff on the table overnight. Most people working on the laptops, some writing in notebooks, some looking into the books. Someone shooting an interview in a conference room. In the hall, some kids sitting on the floor and whispering, and eating snacks. In the reading rooms it was too quiet. It took me a while walking around 3 floors to finally find an empty table. My bag was heavy; all I needed was in it: my laptop, iPad, A4 size notebook, a thermos with green tea (hoping for good effects of theanine), a chocolate bar, Gelvin's book, a charger, headphones, and whatnot. So I stayed there in the library writing my paper till about 8:40pm when I decided it was time to catch a dinner before the dining hall closed at 9. I almost finished six pages, but writing further needed more browsing the books and finding references. 

By 10pm I sat down with the paper again. I wrote another page, but then laziness took hold of me. I don't know what I did: browsed the Internet, or watched some YouTube, drank 3 cups of tea and ate chocolate. The time passed quickly and it was 2am. 

I played some Slay on iPad trying to unwind, but I kept loosing. It annoyed me: I wanted to win and feel good, and go to bed. I played 5 or 6 games and lost all of them. Did I get logic-wise dumb after a day of writing about history? Finally, I won from a very unluckily position – it felt rewarding. I wonder what makes me so attracted to this ugly game. I keep thinking it has something to do with combinatorics: the simplicity of the rules giving emergence of a large number of interesting situations. But also it is not computationally as involved, as say chess, and more suitable before bed. I want to understand better what's the attract of it.

Bed after 3, but fell asleep after 4am.