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Published: February 7th 2012
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I should have written earlier, as far as the number of things that merit being mentioned. I haven't been feeling well, however, so I put sleep as a higher priority than writing. This sort of format/style still doesn't quite feel normal to me, either.
The last few days of language classes were about the same as those previous. Last Wednesday, however, the BSM students travelled en masse to some sort of office to initiate the process of obtaining our residence permits. There was some uncertainty about exactly how much time this would take, and when it ended up only being a couple of hours total after arriving at the office, there was some frustration that we had been asked to meet at 8 am. One event of note was that, during my approval process, I was asked (it seemed to be after they looked at the "mother's maiden name" field, but I'm not at all sure of their rationale) to write and sign a statement that neither of my parents had ever been Hungarian citizens (which I was fairly certain of, though hopefully they will let me know if otherwise).
Afterwards I went to a museum on Victor Vasarely,
a French-Hungarian artist whose work prominently features geometric forms and a fixed, discrete color palette. Many of the pieces had some interesting effects, playing with one's perception similar to an optical illusion, though others I found less engaging. There was also an exhibit of pieces from the Open Structures Art Society, which was in a similar vein.
I'll describe one work which was particularly fascinating, both because of how convincing it was as well as how simply it was achieved. Unfortunately I can't recall the name/find it on the internet in a reasonable amount of time. A metal disk was attached to something that made it spin, and had several circles of varying radii etched lightly onto it. For any given circle, a observer near the disk then would see two bright spots where the overhead light was reflected directly. As the disk turned, the bright spots moved around the circles. The interesting bit is that the circles were so arranged that at any given moment, the bright spots seemed to form the outlines of several cubes, which rotated realistically as the disk itself turned. I am tempted to try to recreate it at some point, though I am
Another Mangalica
This one was a bit more active... not sure how crucial the nature of the circular grooves is.
On Saturday I went to the Mangalica festival. The 'c' there is pronounced like a 'ts,' as it is a Hungarian breed of (wooly) pig. The event went from Friday until Sunday, and I get the sense it was a fairly authentic (annual) event. From Google translate's version of the festival's webpage, it seems like the locations in previous years were not nearly as central/convenient to reach. I'll upload pictures in a bit, mainly of pigs and food (generally pig derived). There were many stalls not devoted to meat, but the majority of those were for cheese (not from the pigs, as far as I understand), and only very few offering wares other than food. The most remarkable occurence was probably that, while my roommate was up getting something warm to drink, two Hungarians approached me with a video camera. They were allegedly making a film/video about the festival, and needed a shot of someone eating. Somewhat confused, I did as they asked. I'm not sure I have much hope for actually finding their finished product after the fact, as I didn't get much of a chance to
One of the less crowded areas, I guess. There were many similar stalls. You can sort of see the hanging meats. The festival was in Freedom/Liberty Square, which I think refers to when Soviet troops drove German troops out of Budapest. ask them for further details.
Sunday I did little more than go to the opera in the evening. The show was Mefistofele, which I'm glad I read a bit about before seeing as the only translation offered during the show was in Hungarian. This production in particular had many remarkable elements in its set and overall presentation. After the chess show ("Sakk"), I am beginning to think there is some appreciation of what I only feel qualified to call oddity in theater. The pictures will probably stay up on the opera house website, opera.hu, for a while. The central element was a double-helix staircase, which was often rotating and full of members from the enormous cast. The witchs' Sabbath was a casino scene with, as per the program, Chippendale dancers. A scene representing an imagined future had several players suspended in the air and enclosed in transparent spheres. I guess I'm grateful for the visually striking nature of most of the opera, as I was unable to get very much out of the (spoken/sung) Italian or (written) Hungarian.
More recently, of course, math classes started. Friday evening was an orientation as well as an event to meet some
of the professors and make arrangements for the so-called "reading classes" which are more flexible due to having fewer students. Monday I attended Theory of Computing and Number Theory (the introductory class, since the advanced one won't start until next week), and the "Classical Algebra" class, the purpose of which is to make sure everyone has some of the prerequisite knowledge common to multiple classes. I don't think it's quite necessary for me, but if we will be solving problems, and the majority of the student body is there, I may attend anyway. Today I went to Advanced Abstract Algebra, which I am excited about as it does not correspond to any course back at school; Combinatorics (one of many, the combinatorics of finite sets, which seems to mean a generalization of graph theory); Conjecture & Proof, which is occasionally called the flagship course of BSM and certainly seems worth attending; and Algebraic Topology, which is a combination of a lot of topics I have seen a small amount of to approach ideas I haven't really been exposed to at all, and which seemed a bit intimidating to be perfectly honest.
I will probably go back and update this
Most of the meat here was in sausage form, though market vendors often have less-agreeable-looking wares to offer. I am fairly certain these are slabs of fat. with more details as I have time/remember them, as well as the pictures, but for now, goodnight.
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