Mathematical Personality Test

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Joe Harris's Algebraic Geometry: A First Course. I am intended to introduce students to algebraic geometry; to give them a sense of the basic objects considered, the questions asked about them, and the sort of answers one can expect to obtain. I thus emphasize the classical roots of the subject. For readers interested in simply seeing what the subject is about, I avoid the more technical details better treated with the most recent methods. For readers interested in pursuing the subject further, I will provide a basis for understanding the developments of the last half century, which have put the subject on a radically new footing. Based on lectures given at Brown and Harvard Universities, I retain the informal style of the lectures and stresses examples throughout; the theory is developed as needed. My first part is concerned with introducing basic varieties and constructions; I describe, for example, affine and projective varieties, regular and rational maps, and particular classes of varieties such as determinantal varieties and algebraic groups. My second part discusses attributes of varieties, including dimension, smoothness, tangent spaces and cones, degree, and parameter and moduli spaces. Which Springer GTM would you be? The Springer GTM Test

Coincidence

Last night I left my office around 8 pm and was heading home, weaving my way through gawking tourists. Someone ahead, blocking my way to the street crossing, called out to me. I looked up, expecting to provide directions to some landmark or other, but there in front of me stood Baskar and Stefan! Seven and a half million people in this massive sprawling city, and I run into two people I know. I didn't even know they were in London -- they're only here briefly, stopping on their way from Montreal to Coventry or Israel via France and India.

So, naturally (this being England), I turned around and we went to a pub.

Smokefree!

As of this weekend (July 1), London goes smokefree! The new smoking ban applies to pretty much all enclosed public spaces and work places. I can't wait. Of course, it probably just means that I have to deal with more smokers outside.

Our local (which is a chain pub) has boasted a non-smoking section for longer than I've been here. It consists of precisely one table. And that table comes equipped with an ashtray.

现在几点了? (What time is it?)

Having a flatmate who is also learning Chinese is great. (Séverine 也学中文.) Anything that we know how to say in Chinese, we do, and waking up in the morning and saying "早上好!" reminds me of being in China.

I think I'm as bad as Robin though. This morning, Séverine asked me (in English) what time it was. I coughed pointedly. "Um... um..." she stalled. "现在几点?" she asked. "十一点零五分," (11:05) I replied.

Yesterday I went to the Chinese bookstore (昨天我去中文书店). I bought "The Little Prince" (我买 "小王子"). It's in both English and Chinese. I was excited because I could read the title (and because I love the book). Trying to actually read the text in Chinese is more difficult. It reads more or less like "I something something something. You something something something. I want something something something." I guess I'm not quite ready for it, but they didn't have the baby books I was looking for.