My home, well, one of my homes.

My parents are closing on a house in the Catskills today. They seem to be inclined towards calling it "187 Dewitt" (the address) or "187" for short. My sister and I were hoping for a David Sedaris-style debate, or at least for our choice of names to be taken up. The house is blue, albeit a pale periwinkle, and we want it to be known as "ol' blue". (There's some debate as to who came up with this brilliant appellation.) Dad seems oblivious to even the existence of our opinion. *sigh*

They'll be moving in this weekend. Actually, I think they will have all of their stuff there today, so I would say that they'll be settling in this weekend, except that they'll be in and out (what with having to go back home for church and all) so much that I can't imagine there will be anything settling about it.

Not far away from there is another event I'll be missing this weekend. This one's another regularly occurring Go event, a workshop given by our teacher, Guo Juan, at the Woodlands. I always regret missing an opportunity to spend some time with her, but I should get a chance to visit her at home in Amsterdam in the near future. Siu (who was in China with me this summer and also hails from The Netherlands) complains that the country is so small that on many world maps, they don't have room to write both "The Netherlands" and the capital "Amsterdam" so they opt just to put the latter. He then has to deal with questions like "What's the capital of Amsterdam?"

Paris

Tomorrow I give my first tutorial for a section of David Burns' Linear Algebra course. Inconveniently, the students turn in their homework each week on Wednesday afternoon (while I am at Imperial College for the London Number Theory Seminar) and I have to grade it in time for the tutorial on Thursday. I met with David this morning ostensibly to discuss details about grading and giving the tutorial, but the first thing he asked me was, "Would you like to go to Paris in November for the first Paris-London Number Theory Seminar? We'll pay for it."

and yes I said yes I will Yes.

The seminar is only one day, and I will only be there one night, but I'm happy to go. Fred (my advisor) is one of the speakers, and the whole seminar is supposed to be about Serre's conjecture, which (since this is what I am studying) should be useful for me.

Unrecognizable

I had another Go lesson online with Guo Juan today. She's amazing.

In her audio Go lessons, she has started a series called "typical mistakes" where she explains mistakes that amateur players often make. In one of the games I sent to her to have reviewed today, I made a typical mistake (one that hadn't made it into her lectures yet) twice in the same game!


In a situation like this, when White approaches at 1, Black should not play 2. Note that the Black stone at C9 is not at C10, in which case 2 is a normal response. The reason is that White will immediately jump into the 3-3 point. Why should White immediately jump into the corner? This is a principle: if White does not immediately jump into the corner, Black can close off a large territory with just one move (at A). This is very efficient for Black, so White should prevent it. So where should Black play instead?


Usually, Black should play at 2 here. Black gets a lot of points this way. However, Black ends in gote with this sequence.








If Black really needs sente, Black can play 2 as in this diagram to protect the corner.












In my game, I actually pincered at 2 here, but I still should have protected the corner at D3.









In both of the games I sent to Guo Juan for my lesson today, I killed big groups of my opponents. She said she didn't even recognize me. I have a reputation for protecting myself rather than being aggressive against my opponents. In fact, among the Vermont Go Club (where I started playing), it got to the point where everyone recognized that I wouldn't ever kill my opponents' groups, no matter how weak they were. That's no longer the case, but I'm still working at being less afraid and more aggressive.

Languages

One week from today I start my Chinese class. It's just a beginner class, and only meets once a week, so it won't be moving too quickly. Though I'd like to learn faster, this is probably good, as I don't have a lot of time to spare for Chinese. By the end of this year, they tell me that

"you will be able to communicate in basic everyday-life situations, including greetings, introductions, daily activities, finding your way, telling the time of day and the date, making simple purchases, ordering a meal, etc. You will be able to understand simple texts and ascertain specific information on simple topics."

If I'm able to keep it up through next year as well, they say

"you will be able to communicate verbally on everyday matters, including personal and family information, shopping, simple health problems, housing, free time, job-related issues, etc. You will be able to deal with written simple texts, such as personal letters and emails."

I think on principle that I shouldn't be able to get a PhD without at least some language skills. I'm trying also to read some maths papers and texts (relevant to my research) in French. I don't know French at all, but with a dictionary and knowledge of the phrases used so commonly in maths, it's not too bad. The problem is that for material that's really new to me, it's hard enough to read it in English.