Welcome. Before beginning to recount what I have been up to, I thought it appropriate to at least be clear, if only for my own benefit, about what exactly I hope to accomplish here. Nearly a year ago now, I made this website in the hopes of having a platform custom-built to my particular desires and needs to share any thoughts or things I had learnt to quite literally anyone who cared. To this point, this has resulted in a fairly anemic output of occasional writing. With a fresh year, and now a **legitimate** source of interest to broadcast here, it seems fitting to take up the practice again. But, given my current situation, is a strong writing habit the most applicable use of time? My conclusion upon reflection is certainly <Highlight text='yes' />.

## What Am I Doing?

But let's start with a more important question. Where am I actually? Perhaps you already know, but perhaps I never told you. I'm currently on study exchange at Purdue University in the USA. I will return to Monash University for the Spring semester, but for right now I am taking my usual electrical engineering/computer science units from this bitterly cold campus here in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Following this, I will be doing what 90% of Melbournians it seems at this time of year by heading over to Europe to visit family and old friends. And to meet new ones.

## Why?

First and most obviously, writing is a very easy way for me to keep you updated on what I am doing, and more importantly, how I am responding to these goings-on. Given the number of requests I received prior to departure, and given the limited amount of time I have here to do a seemingly infinite amount of things (which includes actually studying...), it seems like a weighty opportunity cost to engage in extended conversation on an individual basis, when from prior experience **a lot** of this dialogue tends to be repetitive. Of course, if there are particulars that come up any point, this is by no means to say you **shouldn't** reach out to scratch that itch, just that I don't see great value in answering the line of "how was your first week?" or "how are things going?" more than once.

To be sure, the answer contained in any weekly update to the above questions will **far** exceed anything I could hope to convey to you via text or email. In engaging directly with a singular person, it is a vain attempt to not let my responses become coloured by the particular relationship that I have with that person; certain events will get downplayed, exaggerated in their significance or otherwise entirely fabricated altogether in those exchanges. But in writing to everyone simultaneously, this bias is more easily sidestepped. And, **since most of what you will read is hoisted directly from my own [interstitial journaling](https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling) on a given day** (more on that process surely to come in future) it has the important effect of <Highlight text='incubating my actual response to that moment in time in perpetuity' />. What I find when writing or talking after the fact is that the descriptions fall victim to many bad pitfalls:

The inexorable fading of memories as they are attempted to be ported from short-term to long-term channels. The number of times I have had an insight which I thought so vivid as to be impossible to forget, yet for it to elude me only hours later, are uncountable. Hence, given the goal of sustaining as much detail as possible, writing in this long-form, stream of consciousness format allows for the greatest brevity possible.

The time transpired from the event allows opportunity for my brain to wander carelessly back to said occurrences and rewrite it in a manner that is perhaps more digestible to my own mind. Additionally, over time my perspectives on things is guaranteed to change, and so any reflection that takes place after such an alteration is going to **necessarily** read far differently than it was originally experienced.

In order to best capture as much of my current situation as possible, then, there has to emerge a commitment on my end to engage with each and every second of my time here at the strongest possible level of observation. At the level of direct experience, all I have at my disposal to aid in thought generation are the faculties of sense: there is nothing else. So it seems obvious to me that if every walk across campus, every meal in the dining courts and every class in a lecture hall is infused with keener interest, searching in awareness for the next noteworthy appearance to report on, this can allow me to get even more out of my time here.

I do recognise that that the written format is perhaps not the most impactful medium for me to share my adventures along with you. However, it is most time-effective given my limited video-editing skills, and I think I do enough screen-watching that taking the time to pause and read is perhaps not the worst thing in the world.

What I hope for this above all else is that it is a reflection of my responses and interpretations to a particular chapter of my life. There is no joy in me simply enumerating the classes I took, the names and degrees of the people I met or the meals I ate - for neither the reader nor the author. In this way, and this way only, there is no space for inference on your part, or obfuscating the true proceedings on mine; if only for the simple fact that you may be one of the unlucky souls that make up my retellings, in which case any misprints (intentional or otherwise) will surely be caught.

If you read all of this, or choose to read anything I put out in the coming weeks, I am so very thankful. I hope you got something from it. If you don't, however, do not give it another second's thought - there are undoubtedly plenty of better ways for you to spend your valuable time.

Nick

A Travel Whitepaper

**Notes from the 4th-8th of January**

## Wednesday, the 4th of January (AEDT)

After what felt like an eternity, December 2022 came and went, and with the new year rose the date of departure. It must be said that this date was met with some relief, mostly because of how many things had to be gotten in order for a trip of this order. There was obviously all the documents I had to file with Purdue University and Monash to ensure proper enrolment, not just in courses but insurance plans as well. Then of course there was obtaining an American Visa, which was not the easiest thing in the world. And finally, the packing. But for all the moments when it felt like I wouldn't getting everything together, for the paranoia of my mum regarding the weight of my checked-in bags, we got out the door smoothly. I was going to go to an American college. Finally. And nothing could bring this train to a halt - except, perhaps, for a plane bound for LA that left some 90 minutes late...

### On Farewells

Saying goodbye is something that I had never imagined I would find quite so difficult as it ended up being for this trip. However, I think the mindset I am adopting here with respect to these farewells is that in some way - and this "way" varies depending on the person in mind - being distant for even a period of 5 months or so is the best possible thing that could happen for that relationship. As I near the end of my undergraduate studies, I am approaching a junction of unpredictable flux: friends and family will begin to very chaotically move in and out of my life as the prospect of new jobs, travel and plans to settle down intrude and serve to rapidly explode the close proximity to those I care about that I have enjoyed up until this point.

In that vain, then, an exchange like this serves as a trial, a dry-run for what is inevitably coming up ahead. In the absence of repeated physical/direct interaction, it also divulges the true robustness of our ties. As a contrast dye unveils under a scan a more intrinsic view of our bodies, so too do these short hiatuses make abundantly clear the solidity of the grounds on which a relationship has been formed.

But most importantly, emotionally-charged farewells with (grand)parents, friends and siblings gives way to the possibility for the most beautiful of reunions. It is this that I held with me I think closest of all as I had to repeatedly turn my back on those most cherished in my life until my return.

It was also (sadly) farewell to my home in Paxton Street, the place where I had lived since the day I was born. Modulo the few trips and time spent in a rental whilst it was being renovated, to now be met with the unavoidable fact of never returning there (at least not as one of its inhabitants) is something that I feel has not properly set in yet, since I don't really have any context for how it **should** feel. What can be said though is that I am expecting a wave of emotion to hit me either when I return to Australia and to a brand new home, an unfamiliar one, or when I drive past Paxton Street again. Regrettably as well, though this is something I will just have to live with, in the freneticism of packing my bags and room up for departure, I never gave myself a day or two to just sit there and look around the house one last time. Oh, what I would give for that chance...

### On Anticipation

One question put to me with high frequency, and understandably so, was whether I was excited for the upcoming trip that loomed ever larger ahead. Either that, or whether I was nervous about the prospect of travelling to the other side of the world and being lurched about by the tides of a foreign culture (albeit, as an Australian, a faintly recognisable one). The answer, to both charges, was (in fact, had to be) always **no**. It became very apparent to me that this was indeed **not** the answer most were looking for in such a question. But I genuinely believe there is a really important point to underscore here[^1] about the way we interface with both the past and future in the current moment.

Let's start with the (hopefully) agreeable statement that you and I are working parallel to the vectors of happiness maximisation and suffering minimisation. The goal of any moment, and of the months and years more broadly, is to get the net sum of good days minus bad days as high as possible. Obviously, the notion of assigning a score to your life satisfaction is wrought with all kinds of troubles and inaccuracy (e.g. [availability biases](https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/availability-bias/)), but I suspect that each of us implicitly has some aptitude that informs us on how we are tracking with respect to this metric.

Now suppose that you were in some position to view the contents of your mind with each passing second. As every thought or emotion arises, you are able to filter out to some extent particular appearances in this spotlight of awareness. Think for a second along what axioms you would choose to operate here. Would you filter nothing? Would you filter everything? Most people have a good intuition for why the latter is not an optimal modus operandi, unless we want to be interacting with something adjacent to a T-8000 from **Terminator**. Interestingly, though, very few people seem to appreciate that <Highlight text='the converse, the lack of any catchment for emotions, is just as damaging, just as much a source of suffering and malcontent' />.

Let's take the expression of excitement and/or nervousness that most people would expect to find in themselves when readying to step off the precipice into a semester exchange in a very foreign part of the world. I've known since the middle of October that this trip was resting in my future right below the horizon. This left me with about 60 days of growing anticipation, growing trepidation to soak in before I departed. And suppose, as I would imagine most of us doing, that I allowed myself to be swept up by the rising and falling tide of thoughts that these emotions procured.

The first claim is that such a position **must immediately sabotage the possibility for legitimate equanimity being found in these 60 days**, the type of balance that is synonymous with more deeper forms of contentment. Because excitement **is** fun, it feels good, but my belief is that these sensations run largely perpendicular to the goal of more substantive happiness. I'm painting with **really** broad brushstrokes here, but the enlightenment or nirvanic insight taught in many spiritual practices centres around a fundamental acceptance of the present moment, which means cutting the roots of attachment we feed daily with the past and future. And what is trepidation but becoming lost in contemplation of an unknown future? One may reject this premise on the grounds of being able to **both** be excited **and** maintain a sense of grounding in the present moment. But it should hopefully become obvious the oxymoronic nature of this preceding statement.

The ultimate punchline though is that even if you reject the above claim, even if you think that saturating oneself in anticipation for an event like this is worthwhile, it is difficult to reconcile the rewards of this against the happiness metric highlighted earlier. In exchange for 60 days of being rocked off course, being unable to adopt a calm state of mind, I get maybe a few seconds of payoff: the few steps as I finally turned my back on my parents one by one, - first in the driveway, then at the departure gate - the rush as the plane took off (and then, many hours later, landed).

Okay, that's the ranting over, for now.

## Wednesday, the 4th of January (ET)

The 14 hours to Los Angeles went by more or less painlessly. In-flight entertainment on these long-haul transits is an absolute blessing, especially for someone like me who can vaguely remember similar flights in my childhood without such options. Of the three movies I watched, two I can recommend highly: **300** and **The Northman**, both offering thematically congruous inspections on mysticism of the warrior and masculinity more generally[^2].

Due to the delayed flight leaving Melbourne, I was under serious time pressure to catch the connecting flight to Denver. I must have checked my watch several dozen times whilst standing in the Visa security checkpoint, watching as the line ever so slowly snaked its way around. The other sticking point is that for flights like this you have to pick up checked bags from the carousel and then **re**-check them in again for the domestic flights. For those who haven't been to LAX before, it is an airport of gargantuan size, and of course the international and domestic terminals were not at all close. So, with my two suitcases and backpack and onsetting fatigue it was a matter of hustling as fast I could to the United gate to check-in. There was a moment of panic when the self-service monitor errored on my entering my ticket information because I had missed the check-in window by some mere minutes. The prospect of hours spent sitting at the airport and the immense hassle of rescheduling my two later flights flickered jaggedly in my mind. Fortunately, a blessing descended from above in the form of a United rep who did a manual override to get me my tickets.

There is little to report on from the remainder of the day, save that I finally found myself at 10 PM in the Indianapolis Airport with all my possessions in hand. Due to the late hour, I had booked an overnight stay at a nearby hotel. Being able to finally lay my head down to rest was bliss.

## Thursday, the 5th of January

Another really long day, but full again of novel moments. I caught an Uber out to Purdue in the early morning, having not thought to book early enough in advance a shuttle service from Indianapolis Airport to the university. Oh well. This error did have the unexpected benefit of me making my first friend in the state. The driver was a a guy in his early 30s I'd guess from [Benin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin) who had moved to America in search of a more stable life. He was doing some online certifications in IT and backend software development, so we chatted at length about how that was going. Most moving, though, was that his wife and daughter, the latter of whom he had never seen in his life, were still in Benin and coming over for the first time in a couple of months. His story very quickly allowed a feeling of gratefulness to wash over as we entered Lafayette, and its effect on the rest of my day was certainly worth the extra money I paid.

![Map of Purdue - sites in black are university buildings, but the streets and residences in the upper right corner and elsewhere are all non-officially related to the university](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FNJewMnfxJH.png?alt=media&token=7ab93780-6064-4297-aafc-c1cbe745e763)

The first challenge after getting dropped off was finding my apartment building. The Purdue campus is enormous, seemingly infinite compared to that of Monash in Clayton, which is by no means a small place either. Having taken a few wrong turns, upon reaching my residency (Aspire Apartments), I was to bear witness to a comedy of repeated errors.

I couldn't check in at Aspire, instead having to check in at another residence hall a few streets away. Great.

To check in I needed a student ID card which I didn't have, and required a trip to the accounts hall (Hovde Hall) in the campus mall. Terrific.

Hovde Hall is of course no longer the place where the ID cards get done since it is under renovation, so I was redirected to yet another building. Remember, without a SIM card yet and not wanting to burn through international roaming, I was stuck navigating around on the anemic free campus Wi-Fi. Splendid.

Upon returning victoriously with my ID card I received my keys and went to open the entrance door...to find they weren't working. So I went to the admin office for Aspire right nearby for assistance, and naturally the manager was away for the day and couldn't assist.

Once I got into the building by tailing someone, the key to my room in the apartment didn't work, because it was the key for the room in the apartment I had originally (and incorrectly) been assigned to.

Dot, dot, dot I could go on. Point being it was a pain. But it was actually such a joy walking around the campus. It was a complete ghost town and there was a beautiful light snow falling. The kind that tickles a little on the skin. And despite the cold, the actualisation of a moment - finally getting to the Purdue campus - that I had ideated on for months had a tinge of euphoria to it. But perhaps relief more than anything.

![My new home until May](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FwTXmWd-Evx.png?alt=media&token=5fe39f36-8ea7-4875-935e-e6ec1ee6572c)

## Friday the 6th, and Saturday the 7th of January

### Boiler Cold Rush

A program that has since well and truly paid back its costs (about $150 from memory) in allowing a really smooth transition into a new university. BCR is an orientation camp that they run every year before the Spring semester to acclimatise and introduce new students (exchange or otherwise) to the campus. I was assigned to a pod of about 8 or so with two group leaders, and beyond three meals a day, some free merch and other paraphernalia, I walked out of there on Saturday evening having met some really fascinating people who I have since been hanging out with extensively.

Each day ran from 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM and consisted of various different tours, seminars and game sessions. Easy highlights for me were the tours of some of the facilities, in particular the Co-rec center. This is the student gym and it is stupidly large.

![The France A Cordova Center AKA The Co-rec](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FpAzWgXBYmE.png?alt=media&token=ae1895fa-359e-4e6b-8e3b-e1e61b4fbb62)

Most impressive here is the fact that it is free for all students to use, and features the sorts of facilities that had me salivating when I was glancing through the building directory: 8 basketball courts, indoor running tracks, multi-level workout spaces, 4 belayed rock-climbing walls, bouldering walls and a partridge in a pear tree. Coming from Monash where access to the gym requires a hefty membership, and I can't even use an indoor basketball court without booking out the entire court at a steep fee, this is quite the refreshing change.

### On The Difference Between Australian and US Universities

I also really enjoyed hearing from current students about the way in which they view their own university. Like many of these really old colleges, there is a very rich and very unique sense of tradition to be found. And it is to be found in the small details:

Walking under the main belltower is considered to be extremely bad luck and the curse is that you will not finish your (undergraduate) degree in four years.

There are a set of train tracks that maraud the campus[^3] and at a particular point, it is convention for freshman to jump across the tracks in one direction to signify the start of their studies, then to jump across the tracks in the other direction once they have graduated.

The clock on the belltower is not quite right.

![The clock face on the main belltower. Notice anything? (Source: gannett-cdn.com)](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F29uKHTK47K.png?alt=media&token=abeb00eb-044e-4005-85e6-1467d565fdbf)

The '4' on the clock, instead of being written (correctly) as **IV** instead reads **IIII**. The reason for this is because IV very closely resembles **IU**, as in Indiana University, the other major college in the state. And both schools **hate** each other.

**This** is what struck me as being perhaps a fundamental difference between the way Australian students interface with their university experience and the way American students do. For me, I am happy to go to Monash, I am excited by the accomplishments of other Monash students, but most of the time it is little more to me than serving as the background environment for the place where have I studied and met new friends. In contrast, and in large part because most students live on campus, <Highlight text='your college is your home, your identity' />. **"I am a Purdue alumnus"** vs. **"I went to Monash"**. I'm not sure yet whether this relationship to your university is for the better or worse. But it certainly is what enables a clockface to be redesigned specifically to antagonise another university.

## Closing Thoughts

The thing I sense most as I am about to begin the first week of classes is a vast chasm of possibility opening up. There are just so many opportunities here that can only exist in the climate of an American college. And they are opportunities I think that are well-suited to me. In selecting somewhere to go on exchange, I really wanted something where the main focus was on the academic side of things. Despite there being plenty to do at night here at Purdue, because West Lafayette is an **extremely** quiet city and because Indiana as a state is fairly dead, all the activity is taking place on campus. In this way, then, I am optimistic about the potential to explore some really interesting areas of life here, not just in engineering but in a wide variety of fields.

## Footnotes

[^1]: One which I hope to expand on greatly when I get around this week to writing about my recent meditation retreat

[^2]: The third being **Don't Worry Darling**, which is essentially a much worse version of **The Truman Show** - watch at your own loss.

[^3]: In case the university's interest in trains is not clear, Purdue is known as the Boilermakers...


Ep. 0: A Prelude

Ep. 1: And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave

As I mentioned in [the weekly recap](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-1-and-all-that-beauty-all-that-wealth-eer-gave), the plan to go to Chicago was something that transitioned very quickly (within less than 24 hours) from an ideation in my head[^1], to something that I vocalised as a possibility to the fellow exchange students I had literally met the night before, to something that we actually had accommodation and transport booked for. Is this the ideal way to squeeze maximum enjoyment from a holiday? The answer is an unequivocal no, yet on the other hand, if one is confident in the company he is keeping, and in this case I very much was, a spontaneous construction should be of no concern <Highlight text='as it places the quality of the trip squarely at the feet of the traveler and his group themselves, their combined excitement, energy and creativity being the driving force of memorable experiences' />. Given the diversity of backgrounds present, of national identities and otherwise, I was extremely fortunate in this regard to have the company that I had.

## The Saturday

**AKA January 14th**

### Transit

Due to our limited available time in Chicago, it was an imperative to leave as early as we could muster on the Saturday so we could arrive at our destination prior to midday. This was perhaps the most perilous point of the trip, since having decided on taking the bus, we were left with an 8:30 AM and one that didn't leave until **late** morning. The earlier option it was. Only problem being that I didn't have the greatest amount of faith in the rest of the group to be up and down at the station on the other side of the Wabash[^2]. I ended up almost being the biggest liability that morning however. I hadn't had time to pack the night before owing to the basketball game and a late night call to the parents, and I wanted to go for a run before leaving. Along with breakfast, let me tell you it's miracle it came together. And sure enough, we all congregated at the bus stop awaiting our transit to the Windy City.

![The vibrant city streets of Lafayette!](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FJWklfyNnhL.png?alt=media&token=558f1fb3-edb8-420f-a36c-6e2ddcb3689c)

We were travelling by Greyhound Bus, which to a non-American can most aptly be described as pretty cheap, dirty affairs that enable those without the means to fly to still travel across the country. Its routes quite literally form the roots of America, particularly through the central states where airports are many many hundreds of miles apart. To give insight into the sorts of places it connects, our bus made a stop at Gary, Indiana. Famous for being the birthplace of Michael Jackson, this place today is just about as bare, derelict and lifeless as could be imagined. It is hard to conceive of anyone living there. Other than what looks like a steel mill, little beside remains. Crime here is rife, and properties owned by the federal government can allegedly be had for $1, so hopeless are the prospects here. **This**, and cities like it, are really what one should talk about when they talk about America. The "real" towns of this country, a far cry from the gaudy excess of Los Angeles, and certainly holding no resemblance to the metropolis we were headed towards. Modulo the drug-infused swings from melancholy to euphoria, the scenes here reminded me of Kerouac's **On the Road**...

![Nothing beside remains... (Source: indystar.com)](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FoZ07ZEQ81L.png?alt=media&token=e966f8bc-9a2d-4a37-a09d-802245db4928)

### Walk, Walk, Walk, Gently Down the Stream

Eventually the bus pulled into the Chicago station and we unloaded, not having the foggiest where we were. One problematic aspect we encountered was that our AirBnB was not available for check-in until 16:00, so we were left with several hours to kill (and all of our luggage - not much for two days, but still enough to be cumbersomely heavy...) to make use of. Since we also had no formulated plan of what to do, lunch was called for to discuss the things we might wish to see. Shortlists were made, Trip Advisor was searched, and a general plan of attack was sketched out.

**Here's where we get to lesson number one.**

The plan originally was to spend the few hours before check-in walking along the river and through the parks to get a better geographical grasp of the city, then allocate time on Sunday for a gallery or museum or two. If you find yourself going to Chicago, it is worth every dollar to take out what is called the Chicago City Pass I believe. It costs around USD 130, but it gets you access to something like five of the big tourist attractions around the main district - Willis Tower Skydeck, the Art Institute, the aquarium, planetarium and science museum being but some of the options here. Each alone will set you back between 30-60 dollars, so the math works out very handedly from a financial sense in your favour. Of course not knowing of this pass' existence until we were out of time, we didn't get to go **into** as many of the sites as we had hoped, merely wandering **around** them.

With full bellies[^3], we set off and the sights for that afternoon then proceeded thusly:

A casual stroll along the East side of the river gave for plenty of photo opportunities. Our walk took us coincidentally within stone's throw of Willis Tower with its famous skydeck, and we never got closer than this with the cost of the deck giving us little enthusiasm to partake.

![The river walk](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FUQWiJ1Lymb.png?alt=media&token=ee66cc12-9ce5-468b-82da-cc8ad6fc43bd)

A first stop was made at the Chicago Public Library, a beautiful old building with some wonderful study spaces, the clear winner of course being the Winter Garden on the top floor. Were I to live in Chicago, I have no doubt that I would frequent this spot with tenacity as a place to code or to write or to read or even to sleep.

![A (fittingly) winter garden at the public library](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FSUaq0Sld4Q.png?alt=media&token=f99dce8c-ad23-421b-8b9c-79fddde61753)

Next was cruising past the Art Institute enroute to the Millennium Park and the Cloud Gate. The latter was much smaller than I had anticipated, but very pretty and very busy. At this point, we were an hour away from check-in, and coincidentally (according to Google Maps) an hour away from the apartment. So we went there on foot, which proved to be a challenging prospect. Most of us were pretty weary by the end, and asking me constantly (as the navigator) how far away we were.

![Metaphotography at "The Bean"](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FsJx8hAtRJD.png?alt=media&token=d2c789a3-3156-4353-b14e-b6d3871e45fe)

**Here is lesson number two.**

Despite the apartment itself being terrific for our purposes, and on such short notice a spectacularly good find, it would have been worth checking exactly how far away from the main attractions the place was. The couple of miles displacement certainly on Saturday took its toll on the group, and meant that our ability to flexibly go back and forth between the two places as needed was essentially zero. Conveniently, the place was near a subway station, and a day-pass on the blue lines (train and bus) can be had in Chicago for $5 - a very good deal!

## The Sunday

**AKA January 15th**

Another day full of a lot of walking, but certainly less than yesterday now that we had acquired day passes for the blue line transport. After some brief, undirected walking about, we eventually decided upon The Art Institute of Chicago as the place we wanted to go and spend some time. Unbeknownst to many I would say, this gallery arguably is the world's finest, in my extremely unknowledgeable artistic opinion rivalling that of the Louvre's, and with a fraction of the crowd. Again, upon arriving we initially baulked at the entry price, but thankfully we met up with another exchange student and his cousin who goes to school in Chicago. Students at the University of Chicago get free admission, so we attempted to pull of the miracle and convince the ticket office to let all 10 of us in for free on his one ID card. Which somehow worked...I'm not going to ask too many questions. All we were told was that it was our lucky day, and too right they were.

The 90 minutes or so we had set aside were entirely not enough to walk the many sides of the gallery and we each left feeling as if we'd done well, but reached perhaps 5% of the total paintings and pieces housed there. But the 5% was pretty phenomenal. The institute has entire rooms devoted to Monets and Manets and Seurats and van Goghs and Warhols each fetching tens to hundreds of millions. it is also home to **American Gothic**, a painting whose name probably means nothing to you, but a quick Google search and you'll have definitely seen it before.

I found myself next to these masterpieces as someone who had little idea about how one should go about exploring such a gallery, how one should properly and most adequately observe these works. The most impactful thing I workshopped, lacking the ability to analyse the pieces at the level of technique or composition, was to simply stare at the painting long enough until the higher-order mapping of faces and scenes decomposed into simple lines, strokes and textures. Then, quickly shifting back up the ladder to view the piece as a whole and sitting with whatever emotions boiled over proved to leave an effective residue on me for particular works. Suffice to say that the whole proceeding was very evocative and a place I would happily return to and spend a whole day at.

![Heated debate on artistic merits](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FvNo794uYXQ.png?alt=media&token=62d0a464-722c-4391-883e-6e78672f7458)

Then, for the most traditional part of the weekend, we dined on deep-dish pizza at a local Italian joint. Though I might squawk at the proximity of the term "pizza" to whatever monstrosity they served up to us, I cannot deny that the taste was quite compelling. If you are in Chicago, it is a must, and if wanting to be done most traditionally, it can only be done at Giordano's.

With only a few hours to spare before the sun set on our time in Chicago, we made plans to head over to Shedd Aquarium, a place we had heard very good things about.

**Here is lesson number three.**

What we didn't realise was that sights like this sell out weeks in advance, and so we rocked up full of excitement, only to be met with long, snaking queue and signs informing us that the place was sold out. To our dismay, we had left our run a little late and the nearby science museum had closed minutes prior. Whilst we didn't get to go inside of any of the buildings here, this point on the lake is just stunning, with a backdrop of skyscrapers to the West and the immense expanses of LM to the East, stretching out seemingly through the horizon itself. A prompt retreat was made here back to the warmth of our apartment.

![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FhQUDekeiWp.png?alt=media&token=1763a134-d027-47be-ade8-ff22b6152773)

## The Monday

**AKA January 16th AKA Martin Luther King Jr. Day**

Conditions finally took a turn for the worse here and with a fairly fatiguing two days behind us, the collective interest in going out and about for one final push before getting back on the bus was minimal. We **had**, to be sure, booked in for the mid-afternoon departure time, in the hopes of being able to do something productive with the morning before going back to Purdue, but as it turns out we would have been equally well served returning in the morning.

However, little was I to know that the clear highlight of the trip in my eyes was still on the cards.

I had been itching to go for a run whilst in Chicago, as I've found that in other cities it is a remarkably useful way of getting around to a variety of different sights in short order. A rapid sight-seeing tour it was to be then. I set out whilst the others were sleeping in shorts, a t-shirt and a beanie, with a general inclination to loop around the river, along Lake Michigan, then back through to the apartment via the parks we had traversed on Saturday.

I'm not quite sure what got into me that morning, but between the frigid air that left me feeling oh so alive and the tremendous viewings to be had around Chicago, I found myself a few miles from the flat having notched up about 15 kilometres, and in fairly quick time to. Then, like in **Inception**, the seed of an idea was planted in my mind and very quickly came to be something that I believed in - I'm going to go and do a half-marathon. I had come this far, and I could easily take the scenic route back for those final 6 kilometres. And besides, I'd never done one before, and what better place than this. So it was that I found myself, looping around foreign streets and anxiously monitoring the meterage on my watch as the numbers slowly crept up. Having left the lake district behind, I found myself in the parts of Chicago that one perhaps would not want to be alone at night in, and to make matters worse, it started raining.

It was here, somewhat lost, shivering with wet hair and fingers so numb I could barely bend them, that I wondered why I had ever thought this sensible in the first place. But, with not a few stops here and there to check my location on maps, 21 ticked across on my Garmin and I could finally be at peace with returning. Running back over the river for the final time and hitting our home street was so very exhilarating, and I felt unconquerable for the rest of the morning.

![Touring Chicago](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F3aCvvAT4Gl.png?alt=media&token=093ed7b8-4f8f-45f8-89c2-53c2117f097c)

Which didn't consist of much. We had to check-out by 11:00 and so there was time for little more than eating breakfast and packing before we were flung back out with our bags and a few hours to kill. There was originally suggestion of finding a shopping mall to walk around, but what this manifested into was having coffee at a Starbucks and doing some homework.

Sitting in the bus station terminal waiting to head back brought back precisely the same thoughts as had transpired on the trip there on Saturday. In an airport terminal, looking around at fellow travelers gives a sense of people commencing far-reaching, momentous journeys. Here, the matter is far different. People, often with very little possessions to them, leaving from unknown lives and departing even further into the shadows. I cannot help but feeling that some of these people, were you to only ask, could have some of the most fascinating of stories to tell about how they ended up there.

## Nighttime Activities

What made this aspect of the trip challenging was that most of the group were under 21, meaning we had to make some salient choices about which bars/pubs/etc. we wanted to frequent on the two nights we had. Dinner on the first night we had out at some Irish pub with the NFL Playoffs on, and it's moments like this where it clicked in my head - "Ah, so this is what it means to be American". By some miracle, after some extended walking around the streets near our apartment, we managed to find a really chill spot to hang for a few hours before the night was up.

The second night was a more homely affair. The two Italians in our group had offered to make pasta and such an offer should never in good spirit be refused. With limited ingredients and cooking supplies, they made a fairly good fist of it. In any case, the pasta was perfectly cooked!

---

Even with all the walking, the cold weather and the disappointment of missing some major attractions, I came to develop in short order a really strong affinity for the city of Chicago, a strong attachment that I readily expect to pull me back in the near future, if not on this particular chapter in America. I loved how clean the place was (or at least the parts I visited), the city's thriving music, arts and performance scene and the overall aesthetic. It had a sniff of the hustle and bustle of New York (though on this long weekend it was empty), the highly modern skyscrapers and parks to boot, yet it was done in far more tasteful fashion, and without any of the smoky, polluted excess.

A tiring, but wholeheartedly memorable three days, and in my eyes the perfect way to spend these long weekends on exchange. Sure, a longer trip might have been nicer, but even the slightest taste of a city like Chicago left me wonderfully satiated to start back up again with classes at Purdue.

## Footnotes

[^1]: Knowing full well that my time here is limited and opportunities to travel for at least two days to another city even more so

[^2]: The main river running through West Lafayette. It separates the Purdue campus from the "city" part of West Lafayette, if you can call it that.

[^3]: My first time having Chipotle as well...


Ep. 1.5: My Kind of Town

Ep. 2: The Cold, Cold Winter

**Notes from the 23rd-29th of January**

Likely the single most recallable thing from this week, the defining feature of it if you will, was a rather regrettable one. Ever since getting back from Chicago, I have had this hacking cough that I develop perhaps once in a calendar year. It appears to never be a sign of sickness[^1], and one can only speculate as to whether it is a signal of some underlying condition. My best guess is that it is some form of post-viral thing, where my body believes the best way of expunging whatever I am recovering from is to cough up every last ounce of pre-existing mucus and throat tissue in what can only be described as fairly violent terms. So, though I feel absolutely fine, it is safe to say that you would have a hard time believing me, given that to anyone nearby for more than 5 minutes it will appear that I have developed a packet a day habit. Which, in a place where I am constantly bumping into new people, makes for, well, slightly embarrassing first impressions. Discussions this week about what I'm studying, what they're studying and so on have doubled in duration as every third word seemingly is interrupted by a rasping cough from my end. The one positive though is that I can happily bypass working out my abs at the moment, this activity sufficing entirely and then some to serve as a workout.

![Outside the Armstrong Hall of Engineering](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2Fva4sPsvC20.png?alt=media&token=881a78ec-1743-4ad6-8487-2bf67a36ce26)

The other main feature of the week was celebrating Australia Day abroad. Well, **celebrating** is a strong way of putting it. Although interestingly, for a holiday that I pay little attention to when at home, it was front of mind for much of the 26th, mostly as an interesting topic of conversation with American students in my class. Reactions to what the day is denoting ranged from bemusement, to dismissal, to downright horror. And fair enough, too. Regardless of what it symbolises now, it is concerning to have Australia stand alone as perhaps the only country whose national day delineates a day of colonisation and not some other culturally significant event. One of the professors in my classes, upon hearing about the public holiday, was nice enough to play **Advance Australia Fair** as he was handing out some paperwork to the rest of the class. He was also under the impression that Beck's (a German beer) was an Australian one, so I gave him a quick tour of the most popular beverages actually consumed back home. In my other classes, I tried prodding to see if there was a possibility of receiving an extension on some homework due that night due to the immense weight of import the holiday carried for me personally. Sadly, no luck on that front.

## On Piano

One thing I was deeply saddened to leave in Melbourne was my digital piano that I had bought about 18 months ago now. Though I claim very little proficiency as a pianist, it is something that has brought great contentment since, and I was remiss to leave it behind. As ridiculous as I can be as an over-packer, even this was far beyond justification. Fortunately, a quick search through the [Purdue Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Purdue/) revealed a list of possible locations where I might find freely available pianos to practice on. All of them are, however, in fairly obscure rooms around the campus, so I'm treating it as a bit of a scavenger hunt to find them all and verify their existence. The first one I ticked off was in the **South Tower of the Purdue Memorial Union**, and entering into this old ballroom turned miscellaneous space[^2] really did feel like I was going somewhere I shouldn't be.

<VideoEmbed url="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F_xugTLByHS.mp4?alt=media&token=34b0d91a-50f8-4268-b1c4-f36aece033b0" caption="Reaching the South Tower of the PMU..."/>

In any case, a piano was indeed to behold there, and what a treat it was. Sure, it's prehistoric, the keys in the middle octaves are a little wobbly and two of the keys don't work full stop, but it has a wonderful charm to it. And what's best, there is only ever at most 1-2 people up in the room studying, and is readily vacated if I tell them I want to play piano. After all, there are far nicer places to go and sit in the PMU than this crusty old ballroom I would have thought.

![A piano with rustic charm](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FNCbvV83gsa.png?alt=media&token=3dedb0c2-0367-49f5-8b99-24193fcaba54)

## On Snow

Wednesday brought with it the first snowstorm of the new year, and the last since the violent ones that ripped through large parts of America shortly before Christmas 2022. Upon hearing about the forecast, the prospect of 6-12 inches of snow, there was for me a great anticipation. Obviously coming from Melbourne, I have been in the snow no more than a dozen times in my life and have actually **seen** it snow even fewer, perhaps twice. To awaken to find paths hidden beneath a soft white blanket, and to feel the flakes falling thickly on my coat and face as I walked around campus that day was such a wonderful treat.

![Making the most of the snow!](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FKjb1jdSikE.png?alt=media&token=c49254e7-edb9-4e88-8062-dcdd0dffcf9f)

Despite many of the in-state students bemoaning the weather, I couldn't be happier. Especially since in a place like Indiana where, due to its flatness, there is likely only a few such snowstorms each Winter. Of course, the snow is a dual-edged sword. It starts out creating the most magical of sceneries, but over successive days this serenity gives way to a far more dour one: melted snow turns to muddy slush from trampling footsteps and the snow left untouched hardens to an icy consistency.

It is traditional for Purdue students after a snowstorm to go sledding on **Slayter Hill**, and since actual sleds are in short supply any relatively flat item (and even then, sometimes not even this) play substitute. From different sources, I've heard of: trash can lids, old doors, planks of wood, bath-tubs even. Tragically, the snow was not **quite** thick enough to be suitable for sledding, and even if it were I was hastily slaving away on some homework due the next day to have the time to head out there to partake. Fingers crossed we can get one more good snowing before the Spring weather rolls around.

## On Happy Accidents

Perhaps the most cherished memory I will take from this week came completely unexpectedly, and in the most beautiful and organic sort of way. I was taking dinner in the Earhart Dining Court near my apartment, very much minding my own business. But, I had learnt from past experiences to keep a casual eye out for the comings and goings around me in case of a familiar face or something worth observing. In this instance, it was an older lady and a female student who had sat down next to me and had engaged in a curious conversation about grits. And indeed, curiosity got the better of me here. Not knowing what grits were, though having certainly heard of them many a time, I enquired as to what exactly they were made from. Yes, I could have just googled the answer on my phone and I **certainly** would have gotten a more revealing answer than the one Toni (the older lady) ended up providing me. But, one thing lead to a another, and aided by their own interest in my accent, we ended up chatting away for the next 20 minutes or so.

Toni works over in one of the newer buildings in the Engineering department, but she has the dual role of running directives for Women in Technology, providing girls in STEM with resources (career or otherwise) for their studies, and the girl she was speaking with was one such example. Relevant to this recounting though, is that every fortnight this group does some sort of (usually arts-related) program in the evening so the girls in the group can socialise with other members and generally do something fun and relaxing.

As luck would have it, this Thursday night was one such night and why the two were in the dining court at all, because in short time they were to head over to the room they'd book to run their session. Very quickly a kind offer was extended for me to come along and despite having two assignments due that night, it was an opportunity I would be remiss to pass up on. Despite being the only guy there, it was a most welcoming crowd and I funnily enough met a girl (Vidisha) who was in my Electromagnetics class. Following this event we have corresponded a bit regarding homework and exams, which has proved useful in a class where I really didn't know anyone else.

![The finished pieces - don't look too closely at mine!](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2Fuy8T0DUI_y.png?alt=media&token=0223e32c-5667-4a48-9b06-194dd663469c)

The selection of choice for that evening was doing Bob Ross paintings. I feel as if everyone knows who he is at this point but the rapid-fire bio on him is that he was an ex-military piolet who became disenchanted with the aggression shown by his fellow soldiers and so left. He then made the totally natural transition into recording these short, 30-minute art tutorials painting mostly landscapes with acrylics. Beyond the artwork, though, his fame has grown since his passing primarily because of his immense calmness and positive outlook on life.

> There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.

This quote of his was relevant in two ways for this Thursday night:

1. More directly in the sense that my particular painting was a mess especially compared to those of the rest of the group, and
2. Indirectly, as it relates to how I even stumbled into that place to begin with.

And yes, I did try the grits being served that night. **Very** salty, but I could readily imagine they would go down a treat with a proper Southern-style barbeque (when they are usually eaten).

## On "Square Pizza, Where Do You Get It?"

I recalled a moment earlier this week from one of the opening seasons of the TV show **Suits** where Mike Ross and another associate are engaged in a Harvard Trivia Quiz. Louis, the host, asks the former the above question. Without spoiling anything, Mike comes up with no answer, since he never went to Harvard. For me, <Highlight text="this represents one of the really nice aspects of college towns anywhere, but especially in the US; there are just some features of the place that you can only know about if you were there." />

The answer to this question was **Pinocchio's**.

I thought it might be nice to start collating a list of similar such places at Purdue, each with their own distinguishing characteristic. Because despite not being as old and historic as the above-mentioned Cambridge school, Purdue has its own charming bars, restaurants and storefronts.

It was on Sunday that I had my proper introduction to the first addition to this running list. Purdue were playing against Michigan State in the annual **"white-out"** match, where every attendee receives a free white T-Shirt. The effect is pretty dramatic.

![White-out at Mackey](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FGSlnkh8Ie5.png?alt=media&token=5b39a9af-acba-4fe6-bbde-9d0cc40aa5d3)

The game itself was another really solid win for Purdue, and Zach Edey nearly had 40 points, effectively having half of the team's combined score. As a fun fact, Purdue Athletics also claim that the noise in the stadium at one point in the second half was their loudest on record, notching **122.3 decibels** which is allegedly louder than front row at a rock concert (this should probably be taken with a heavy grain of salt). Suffice to say that the place was rocking.

![Celebrating a buzzer-beater to end the first half](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FMB_zs2zNPs.png?alt=media&token=76d153fe-58e7-4ae2-959f-f63ea46974ec)

Afterwards, I made a stop at **Panda Express** for a late lunch. This was my first time there and I have to say, despite previously thumbing my nose at the place since there was no conceivable way it would be good quality Chinese food, I was suitably impressed and have since been back 3-4 times. It reminded me a lot of lower quality Chinese takeaway that one might get back in Melbourne, recalling memories of late dinners with the family after returning too exhausted to prepare a meal from a road trip or holiday.

Okay, but as promised, what iconic Purdue place did I visit on this day? The answer? **Harry's Chocolate Shop**, which humorously sells no chocolate whatsoever, unless chocolate is some new euphemism for beer and pub food. This is of course **the** bar in West Lafayette, and it is absolutely rocking whenever a game is on. Word on the street is you need to get there sometimes upwards of 2 hours before tip-off to get in, because as soon as there is a line out the door, you're out of luck.

![Harry's Chocolate Shop (Source: tourdelafayette.com)](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F03k2In5rPH.png?alt=media&token=85cb4ec4-1744-4ab3-9541-60a233095c99)

The other thing I find hilarious about Harry's is their merch. Their infamous slogan

> Go ugly early

can be seen plastered on shirts, jumpers, hats and any other wearable item everywhere on campus. I will certainly be picking some up before I go!

## On Frats and Sororities

Before coming across to America, I had a short list of topics that I wished to become more knowledgeable on during my stay. On this list were things like electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, coding, etc. But at the very top of the list was uncovering the dark pall that rests of the so-called **"Greek Life"** of US colleges, namely fraternities and sororities.

Having spoken to a few people who are in such 'glorious' institutions, I am in a position to begin collating my findings and hope that they may be of service to you the reader, and more generally, a tool used in ridding the face of the Earth of these frankly embarrassing relics of a past world. This will be a fairly biased account of what I've found so far, but I hope in subsequent weeks to do more of a deep dive into their true origins.

![The Purdue Pi Kappa chapter (Source: purduepikapps.com)](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2Fdtg3L1_hfY.png?alt=media&token=4d7838cc-fd23-45bb-af57-6e942754e3c0)

As far as what I understand so far, the idea of Greek life emerged in the 20th century as a form of secret society on college campuses. Like a budget-version of The Illuminati, these groups were aggregators of the finest talent, and would work in devious machinations to alter the workings of their school, from student government elections to academic outcomes. Firstly, the co-opting of Greek culture (where each house will bear a name consisting of 2-3 letters from the Greek alphabet e.g. **Phi Epsilon Delta**) to nail together the flimsiest of high-browed facades is a little cringeworthy. Secondly, whatever the more serious intentions of these groups might have originally been, it is safe to say that these houses have devolved into little more than vapid vessels for sustaining drinking habits and a sense of superiority.

At the start of every semester, each of these houses will have what is a called a **rush**, wherein hopeful applicants will go through an arduous series of trials to gain the approval of their brothers (fraternities) or sisters (sororities). Beginning with more palatable events like a tailgate or BBQ, these rushes quickly descend at the pointy end into some of the most hideous of tasks dished up to their new recruits. For a sampling of what goes on here, a quick Google search of **hazing US colleges** should suffice.

What fascinated me though was that there exists a nation-wide organisation under which all of the various chapters are registered. This group functions essentially as the enforcing body of guidelines and rules for each of the houses in every state from California to Idaho. The main appeal today of Greek life are the ridiculous parties that get thrown seemingly every weekend. Interestingly enough, it is only the fraternities that are allowed under the regulations to throw parties. If a frat wishes to have such a party, it must register and notify the said event with the national body and have it approved. In such events, there are stricter guidelines in place regarding who can be invited, how much alcohol (if any) can be served and so on. However, these official parties make up but a fraction of the overall number actually thrown - most are never filed with the national organisation and are where all of the wild shenanigans go down. Getting invited to one of these parties as well is also another point of concern. Invitees are drawn almost exclusively from other sororities **or** other girls (deemed attractive enough) on campus, with the gender female-bias serving to support a really **"positive"** ratio for the frat brothers of girls outnumbering boys.

Sigh. More to come on this topic in weeks to come.

## On Purdue Orbital

[Last week](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-2-the-cold-cold-winter), I mentioned that I had applied to a few clubs and societies around Purdue. Happily, I can report that I got accepted onto the Purdue Orbital team under the **Guidance, Navigation and Control** (here on, GNC) team. The setup and organisation of the team is still something that I need to wrap my head around[^3], but I am quite eager about the prospects of what I might be able to learn and subsequently contribute to their works. GNC essentially relates to constructing the control systems that drive the small nozzles connected to compressed gas cylinders you might see towards the bottom of a craft near the thrusters which, when actuated in particular sequences and intensities, allow for controlling the pitch and yaw (basically the orientation) of the rocket when outside of the atmosphere.

Now, since all of Orbital's crafts are (funnily enough) sub-orbital at this stage[^4], the necessity of a GNC system like this is effectively mute. So, the work we are doing is very much proof-of-concept, and will come into play later down the line when subsequent iterations of their crafts reach higher and higher heights. I am yet to have my first meeting (which will likely just be onboarding), but am excited to hear about the mechanics of these systems and how they are put together. Fortuitously, this semester at Purdue I am taking a digital control systems unit, without which I would very likely be technically **way** out of my depth.

## Footnotes

[^1]: And multiple COVID tests and a lack of other symptoms would seem to confirm as much

[^2]: Given that you can make bookings for this room and have it setup to your needs, and given how old and musty some of the furniture there is, I like to think of it as Purdue's **Room of Requirements**.

[^3]: They have a lot of codewords (all related to Greek mythology) for their different projects and subprojects...

[^4]: Though still reaching many, many thousands of metres in the air. Interestingly enough, no student rocket team has ever reached orbital altitudes, the highest being about 25 km from what I'm told.


Ep. 3: Let It Snow!

**Notes from the 30th of January-5th of February**

As we leave January behind, the month of so much discovery and novelty, it is fair to say that the meaty part of the semester as officially been reached. Being nearly a quarter of the way through the 16-week term, the comforts of syllabus week and review material has well and truly been shed, leaving behind the terrifying beast of engineering topics that vex me to no end. For the most part, at least. My unit on Artificial Intelligence is proceeding smoothly, so much so that I have developed an unimaginable habit of nodding off during the afternoon lectures twice a week for it. Not great, but this all content so far that I have been exposed to previously, so I'm not reaching for the caffeine shots just yet.

The unit that has me in fits is the one I forecasted as being such, the one on integrated circuit analysis and design. The lecturer Saeed has grown on me, with his very softly-spoken manner and super cringey jokes[^1], but the material is just very dense, convoluted and ambiguous, the latter mostly emerging from the fact that coming up with concise mathematical models for these devices is essentially impossible and so a paraphernalia of approximations and rules of thumb are employed which are useful for those knowledgeable in the field, but make little sense to a novice like me. 

By way of example, here is one of the questions from our most recent homework:

![Sorry, what.](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F7P6PthfdSr.png?alt=media&token=d3a3c54c-0015-42cc-81fc-eae82068e3ba)

Now, to be fair, Saeed maintains consistent office hours and he will essentially give you all the steps to complete these problems if probed, but at face value I am often finding myself unable to make heads or tails of this.

---

I have tragically been still plagued by my hacking cough throughout this entire week, and suffice to say that without improvement I will likely pay a visit to the student health centre to see if they can give me anything for it. I am pretty ambivalent though about making use of __any__ American healthcare, despite having the approved Purdue health insurance, because I readily imagine the cost of even a basic inhaler to be eyewatering. To my absolute shock, I have still succeeded against all odds in meeting some new people and strengthening ties with those relationships already existing despite the weird glances I get with the cough. This week there was a career fair running on Tuesday which I decided to miss, with this being but one of the reasons. The other being I was in stitches looking at all the kids walking around in their suits carrying their resumés safely ensconced in an expensive looking leather pouch. Not for me!

## On Those Rivals From Bloomington, IN

Saturday afternoon marked the first of two matchups in conference play between Purdue and Indiana University. It is safe to say that I have never been a part of such a big sporting rivalry in my life. Seemingly the entire state tunes in to watch whenever these two schools meet. This particular encounter was an away game over at Assembly Hall, and by most reports students were rocking up to watch some 3-4 hours before tip. Given that Purdue was #1 in the country at the time, and since IU was also ranked, the stakes were absolutely massive, and you felt that this particular encounter was taking on a life wholly of its own.

Purdue Athletics put on a watch party for students down at Mackey Arena, and even getting there 60 minutes before the game started, the line to get in wrapped essentially around the entire stadium. Some couple thousand of us filed our way in there, with free food on offer no less. This number was slightly inflated by the fact that there was a chance for students to win a Golden Ticket for the Paint Crew in 2023-24. These golden tickets and the associated passes you can purchase give you a (free) ticket to each of the home games for the next basketball season and are highly coveted items as you can imagine. In fact, there were more of these boarding passes handed out when the women's team played IU on Sunday at Mackey Arena and the lines were so big, so overbearing that a few people fainted and ambulances had to be called. Yikes. Read more about that incident [here.](https://www.purdueexponent.org/campus/article_240d0204-a66f-11ed-9d9c-33b9496538b3.html)

![Watch party at Mackey](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FdcLnnsXRy8.png?alt=media&token=a715195f-004f-474d-9cad-9abe6d3d3b90)

In any case, energy was high for the men's encounter, but it was not to be unfortunately. Despite being number 1, we went in as underdogs due to the seismic nature of the contest. A poor first half meant that even with a strong surge through the latter parts of the second, the comeback was too little too late. With that, Purdue suffered their first loss in some two months and their first since I had been on campus.

<VideoEmbed url="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FGqWPjwD6_S.MP4?alt=media&token=53391ea8-6b16-408d-92f1-f4365da4521e" caption="Literally what even is going on here..."/>

After the game, the Men's wrestling team had a fixture against Nebraska quite literally 50 metres away in the gymnasium, so I stopped by there to take in a sport which frankly I have no understanding of, outside of that one [South Park episode](https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/0xzjqa/south-park-the-fine-sport-of-wrastling) about it. I ended up asking some people nearby who seemed to know what was going on (pictured below) and they were able to at least explain some of the basics. By the end, I was still very perplexed by the whole ordeal, but had a little grasp of how the scoring worked. A pretty fun conclusion to the day though, and was nice to see Purdue have some athletic success. 

![The poor souls who had to explain wrestling to me](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FMx_PthYJou.png?alt=media&token=b2a1074c-6b74-4e49-beef-54d9d1b22c18)

## On Sports

### On Climbing

Way back in Year 10 as part of an outdoor activities program at school I went rock-climbing each week in the city with some friends for a term. Since then, I have thoroughly enjoyed going climbing or bouldering (climbing without ropes) on occasion, though have routinely been left feeling as if there is a lot more to be unlocked there by a more serious commitment to the sport. Admittedly, the financial barrier to entry is relatively high, with memberships to climbing gyms costing at least what a standard gym membership would, and so opportunities remained scarce. The beauty of the Co-Rec here at Purdue though as I flagged in [Week 0](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-0-a-prelude) is they have both top-rope climbing __and__ bouldering. What a blessing! This week (and now going forwards) I've gone three times, each session being about 60 minutes or so before my hands are blistered and my forearms feel like they might pop.

I really hope that with consistency I can build up strength in my arms. The other aspect of climbing which I have utterly neglected at all times is the associated technique, because brute force will not be enough after certain points. There is a lot to be learned in this regard, though thankfully the other students who man the climbing walls are very generous in sharing their knowledge and passion for the sport.

In order to use the top-rope wall, you need only show up when the gym is not too busy and one of the staff their will tie you into the wall and belay. However, I ended up taking a $10 course where they teach you how to become belay-certified which ended up proving very valuable. For one, I gained a finer appreciation of the art of climbing itself, but two, it means that I can belay for other people (and very likely they will reciprocate), making it easier to get more climbs in as well as meet knew people.

I had to take a belay test after this course to get my little certification card, and tragically I failed, butchering the double figure-8 knot used to tie in the climber and incorrectly clipping in my karabiner to my harness when belaying. Fortunately, it is something you can do as many times as you wish, and I have since passed this test.

### On Jiu Jitsu

Sometime during the middle of 2022 I finally enacted on an interest that I had for some while in martial arts and took my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class at a local MMA gym. With a looming exchange, along with a few injuries, I never ended up registering there and taking the practice seriously, however despite this setback I still maintained an eagerness to begin again when the opportunity arose. Fortuitously, there is a really strong BJJ club here at Purdue, and with only having to pay $30 for the entire semester it was a no brainer to start going.

There are two 3-hour sessions a week and it's safe to say that I've been loving it so far. The first few lessons were fairly claustrophobic, with limited mat space and an influx of newbies like myself wanting to try it out, but now a few weeks in, the numbers have begun to thin out nicely.

Jiu jitsu as a martial art is quite modern and involves a lot of grappling and submission work - there is no striking. For someone who considers themselves to be in pretty good shape, there are few things I've ever done that have fatigued me in such a short period of time as rolling (the name for grappling with someone in a semi-competitive fashion). After mere minutes, I am sweating profusely and absolutely gassed.

The appeal of the practice though has grown and grown. Not only have I begun to become friendly with many of the other guys attending, but I am still very much in that honeymoon period of a new skill where improvements come thick and fast.

### On Basketball

Another intention I had before coming over to Purdue was to rediscover a passion for basketball that I had felt waning slightly in recent years. And what better place to do it. Beyond watching the varsity teams play, the near dozen courts available for free use in the Co-Rec should serve as a strong incentive to get out and play as much as I can. Of course, training by oneself is one matter, playing competitively another, so I had a sharp eye out for opportunities to participate in some rec-league type setting. That opportunity presented itself in the form of **intramural sport**, though sadly to register properly I had to form a team of 7+ and clearly in the first week of being there, this was nigh impossible. Instead, I elected to nominate myself as a free agent to the Men's Black (the more competitive division) league in the hopes of someone picking me up to fill numbers on their roster. This was back in week 2, so I had sat, and waited. And waited. Until I thought surely nothing would come of it.

Until, on Sunday evening whilst having dinner, I got a message from one of the teams asking me to play for them that night at 11pm. Now, despite how late the tip-off was, I was pretty eager to take the opportunity. Registering officially onto the team was a bit of a last-minute ordeal, but eventually I found my new teammates - __The Purdue Latinos__: 6 guys from Central America, and me. Safe to say I was culturally right at home...

At any rate, they were a really friendly group of guys, and we managed to pull out a victory in our 2nd seeding game. The standard was not outrageously high, but good enough to be enjoyable, and certainly I've heard of some teams that are going to absolutely pillage us if we happen to play them.

## On Career Changes

On Tuesday night I attended the first round in a series of undergraduate seminars on physics research topics that some upper-classmen have conducted in the last year or so. The first was on __The Evolution of Free Particles in Curved Spacetime__ and the second on __Quantum Graph Products__. 

The former was **hideously** outside of my comfort zone, yet I was still able to pick up some useful bits of information with my minimal knowledge of classical mechanics. To summarise, if I asked you what the shape of the universe was, most would likely say that it is flat, stretching in every direction as far as you can hope to reach. The reality is that this is one of the most important open questions in physics, and its resolution would be of paramount importance into gaining further insight into the origins and future of everything. Contrary to being flat, it is just as likely, if not probable, that the universe is curved in some fashion, such as resembling a sphere, torus or saddle.

![Possible curvatures of spacetime (Source: astronomy.com)](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FB9HR3rb0oH.png?alt=media&token=266ad05a-f17c-4db5-aaa9-ea1f8f0a4865)

In a curved spacetime, space as we know it is no longer infinite in the traditional sense, and it would be possible to arrive back at where you started if you traveled in a straight line for a long enough period of time (which would be a __really__ long time). And it turns out that depending on the curvature of spacetime, matter in particular settings will behave in unexpected and potentially revealing manners...fascinating stuff.

The second was much more within my wheelhouse as it dealt with particular types of graphs, a subject I had taken only last semester at university. One common question to ask with graphs (a collection of nodes and edges) is how many colours are required to give each vertex a colour such that no two connected vertices share the same colour. The smallest such number of colours is called the **chromatic number** of a graph.

![A graph that has been coloured using 6 (left) and 4 (right) colours. It turns out that 4 is the minimal number for this particular graph (try using 3!) and so the chromatic number of the graph is 4.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1676817806/ql_cfd58e4bfa51fd59911e24b9e0b02c63_l3_dpyjwv.png)

The above graph has chromatic number 4, because it has what is called a **clique** of size 3 (a triangle of connected vertices, e.g. $$a, b, d$$). In general, the size of the largest clique drives up the chromatic number. The bad news is that there are some horribly behaved graphs such as [Hadamard graphs](https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HadamardGraph.html) whose chromatic number grows exponentially on the number of vertices. This is bad news for a number of reasons. However, the driving point of this lecture was about how there are these things called quantum graphs which are armed with particular properties, and the chromatic numbers of quantum graphs are <Highlight text="exponentially smaller than those of their "normal" graph counterparts" />. Again, fascinating stuff.

The point I really want to make here is that walking out of those lectures, I was absorbed in this feeling I often have from time to time where I fantasize about how much fun it would have been if I had elected to study maths and physics at university, rather than engineering. Be it after watching a lecture like this, or watching a video by the likes of [3Blue1Brown](https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown), there is the swelling of strong emotion owing I suspect to the beauty and elegance of the material being presented here. I absolutely love it.

## Footnotes

[^1]: __"And so when the input is connected to ground, the output of the inverter is high. And no, it hasn't taken any drugs or anything..."__ 



Ep. 4: The Plot Thickens

Ep. 5: These Vagabond Shoes

**Notes from 13th-25th of February**

Coming back from the highs of my trip in New York on Monday night (Feb. 13th), I awoke next day to the tragic news of a mass shooting at Michigan State University. With three dead and five critically injured, this was something that rocked colleges all across the country, but especially at somewhere like Purdue given our (relative) geographic proximity and that both schools are in the Big 10 conference. West Lafayette is (I hope) a very safe place to be, *though it is safe to say that this was a sobering return to reality and something that upset many of the students here*.

---

Despite this very dark start to the week, there was much to keep occupied with.

Tuesday was Valentine's Day of course, and was sweet to see some little booths set up around campus giving out free roses, chocolates and other small little things. The day is certainly much more widely celebrated over here than in Australia. One of my professors even made these little hearts that he gave us with funny little quips written on them when we asked a question or answered one correctly.

![ECE = the electrical engineering department](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F5SRhIXKBmT.png?alt=media&token=24fd2c95-bc5c-4c8f-aa73-c74db5ed46d8)

Later that week on Sunday we had our final round-robin game of the basketball intramural league, again slated for an 11 PM start. We unfortunately drew a team that apparently either won the competition last year or came very close to doing so and they absolutely wiped the floor with us. They were up 20 points in the blink of an eye, and the game was actually stopped with a few minutes remaining when they got up by over 50 points. To be fair, our team was extremely undersized (I was playing center) and the other team was shooting lights out so it wasn't much of a contest. Nonetheless, we finished 2nd in our pool of four, and so will carry a decent seed into the first round of the playoffs starting next week.

I also managed to find a really great spot on campus to practice piano. In the basement of one of the residential halls (Hillenbrand) there is a music room with a baby grand Steinway piano sitting there for use in really good condition. Compared to the one in the South Tower I flagged earlier, the room/environment is overall nowhere near as nice, but this is made up for in spades by the improved playing experience. The only issue with this setup is I have to be a little covert in getting there because it is only intended for Hillenbrand residents. Getting to the room looks like this: waiting outside the residences minding my business until someone swipes in or out with their special fob and then quickly ducking inside; loaning out the music room key from the front desk, which is easy because they don't check that I am a residence; then finally (and this is the hardest part) getting down to the basement floor via elevator or stairs (key access) by convincing someone that I have left my swipe card up in my room  or doing that manouevre where you stand in the corner away from the buttons when someone else is there and have them ask you what floor you want to get to. All in all it's a fairly manageable operation, just a little bit of extra overhead!

![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FORTP2ks2pW.png?alt=media&token=0dd2feaf-d2ee-4683-ac8e-ece8b5c9e7ad)

---

I've been making some good strides the past two weeks in the photography realm as well I feel. There are two aspects I am splitting this up into: learning how to take a good photo, and learning how to edit a great photo. Currently, most of the focus appropriately is being spent on the former, since no amount of editing prowess can recover a bad image. Garbage in, garbage out. To this point, I really have just been aiming the camera and pressing shoot, and that leaves nothing to say of the way I have been indiscriminately swapping between modes and twisting dials without having any idea of the theory behind what I am doing.

The good news is that the basics concepts are pretty easy and intuitive to pick up, and yet even these few ideas have opened my appreciation of photography immensely. I picked up a 50mm lens with a wide aperture for shooting nice portraits, and will certainly look at adding maybe one more lens for more landscape photography, but at this stage there is a lot of quality improvement that can be made with the equipment that I have got.

## On Dancing

The major development over the past two weeks has been that I finally got around to going to Salsa classes on Tuesday nights and Bachata classes on Thursday nights. To this point in the semester, I had always been finding an excuse to not go - homework to do, dinner to eat or whatever it might have been, something always took priority. Given that I have never done any dancing before in my life and have been known to vocally oppose dancing when in a club on a night out (though that rests more on the environment rather than the actual act itself), there was also surely some *hesitancy/fear/perceived future embarrassment* keeping me back.

As always, though, <Highlight text="perception is always outsized when compared against reality" />, and after my first class I realised I had nothing to worry about really. Aside from every being extremely friendly[^1], the first class I went to started off with a review of all the major basic steps of Salsa and so the ramp into this new skill wasn't criminally steep. The same goes for the Bachata classes. I am always wary of entering into a new field and learning two different variations at once (e.g. learning French and Italian at the same time) since as a beginner the learning signals overlap so much that it can be difficult to distinguish, however so far the improvements are coming rapidly which is pleasing - I am certainly far from the worst dancer there.

The other tangential reward to be gained from these classes is meeting a large influx of new people once again. Well, pretty much exclusively other girls, since as a leader (almost always male) I only dance in partnerwork with a follower (almost always female). Admittedly, these roles have been somewhat reversed in the first two weeks as I am developing, but even at this point it has been immensely satisfying to complete some extended sequence of moves with your partner and achieving fluid levels of synchronicity.

For a club where you have to pay only \$40 a month at the start of the semester, this is a pretty good setup. The next step is going to some of the social dances that they run and dancing in a free-flowing setting where as a leader you have to actually conjure up the movements as opposed to following some prescribed spins and turns that we have been taught and practiced multiple times over. Even the small amount of practice I have had with doing this has left my head reeling with all the computation it is doing, from the footwork, to thinking about what move to execute next. Clearly with further work at some point down the line both of these aspects become instinctual rather than premeditated.

## On the IU Game

The home basketball game I had had penciled in on the calendar essentially from the first week of classes was against Indiana University (IU) which was on Saturday Feb. 25th. As in-state rivals, it doesn't get much bigger than this in Indiana basketball.

And there is a lot of animosity between the two schools. There's actually a myth (potentially true) that some time ago a few drunk IU fans wandered around campus to visit the grave of John Purdue and subsequently dug up his body and took it with them. The legitimacy of this story aside, it does add substantially to the venom between the two fanbases. And given the close loss we had suffered to them on their deck a few weeks prior, the stakes were massive. With a win, we would seal up the Big 10 Championship and get a strike back against our rivals. Safe to say then, that the prices for tickets to this match were going through the roof. However, I managed to sneak one for \$175[^2] on the Monday and then sat anxiously waiting Saturday evening to roll around.

---

The build-up to the game was truly special. Normally with these home games I have been safe getting a good seat by rocking up about 45 minutes before tip, but this time around **showing up a full 2 hours** before the start, there were already thousands of students lined up in queues that wrapped in both directions around the arena. Spontaneous chants were oft to be heard, and anytime a small group walked by in IU gear, boos rung through the afternoon air.

<VideoEmbed url="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FN9gfhJ-ETb.mp4?alt=media&token=12e6a894-e213-438f-9981-9bfc59b40042" caption="IU sucks!"/>

It was also pretty cool to walk around the campus and see it transform into a breathing trash-talk of IU. My personal favourites were the banners draped from the awnings of many of the frat houses lining University St and Northwestern Avenue as you walked down towards Mackey.

![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FOBmrIDA-f0.png?alt=media&token=4b8abd6a-e0c5-41a8-b398-462f78d2c1aa)

Now, the following will only make sense with a bit of background context. Each college arena as a section of seating designated as the "student section" where, naturally, the students sit. It is the section that generates the outsized majority of the noise, despite making up the minority of seats, and the placement of this section makes each stadium unique. Many colleges put the students along the bottom deck wings, so that on the TV broadcast all you see are crazy fans jumping up and down. Mackey Arena however has the section split into two, one behind each basket going from ground level right the way to the back[^3]. It used to be just one massive congregation behind the Southern-end basket so that when opposing teams ran out of the tunnel all they saw was this wall of fans, but I personally like the split approach. The South end is the main one, the one you would prefer to sit in if given the choice; it's bigger, it's where the band is, and like I said it has a great view of the tunnel. However, upon arrival, the lines for the Southern entry were massive, and so I elected to go to the North entrance and joined a *much* smaller queue in the hopes of securing a great seat, albeit on the inferior end. But for a game like this, there is no bad seat in the house[^4].

I would say I was about 50th in line at my entrance, so things were looking good. Gates opened at 6 PM, so now it was just a waiting game for half an hour or so. Then, much to my dismay, at 5:50 PM peering through the glass gave a view of students piling around inside the arena and filling up seat after seat after seat. Turns out they had opened the South entrance early. So for all of us in line who had tried playing it smart, by the time we got in literal seconds to minutes after the designated opening time, both student sections were entirely full. Many people had jackets flung over entire bleachers to reserve seats for them and their closest dozen friends, and to make matters worse there were many, well...people that didn't exactly look to be of a student age. Once you're in the arena, unless you are trying to get to reserved seating, **no-one** checks your ticket.

After frantic scrambling up and down the stairs, the four others who I had organised to sit with got to the game and managed to miraculously find seats for us on the South end. Right in the very last row.

![Back-row bandits](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F75Y_a29fhW.png?alt=media&token=865aec86-7861-4c2f-ac82-104068903828)

Despite this, we still had great views of the court and because we were right next to the roof (if I were a few inches taller I reckon I could have touched it above our heads), the reverberation from the crowd was immense. And I thought things got loud the first few times I had come here. This was on a whole 'nother level. Even a single three pointer or defensive stop was enough to release the shackles of the crowd, 15,000 rising to their feet and unleashing wave after wave of sound.

And then we lost the game. Disappointing for sure, but a truly remarkable experience. It does mean that we have lost now 4 of 6 games and whereas we were once crowned as the best team in the nation, the wheels are starting to fall off a bit now, and at the worst time of the year with March Madness looming.

## Footnotes

[^1]: Which one would expect of the sorts of people that like (salsa) dancing

[^2]: A lot of money sure, but many were going for much more and this sort of thing is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

[^3]: Foreshadowing.

[^4]: Foreshadowing.

Ep. 6: Under Lights

**Notes from 26th of February - 4th of March**

## Monday

I had my usual Jiu-jitsu class on Monday afternoon which was probably my favourite to date. We were working on a technique called side control, basically where you have passed the legs of the person whose back is on the mat and pivoted around so your bodies now run perpendicular. It is a very dominating position to occupy but as was being explained to us, is often poorly executed and understood. The guy teaching us was an absolute meat of a human being, but the thing I am beginning to appreciate here is that size alone is not sufficient, nor is it particularly painful. Sure, having 250 lbs. resting on top of you is uncomfortable, but it won't cause you to submit anytime soon. Size plus leverage however, now that is another story. The teacher was demonstrating a particular technique on me to a few others, and the sensation of having someone absolute crush the life out of you is one that I have never really experienced, nor appreciated before. By maintaining immense pressure on my neck, chest and back and locking my wrists in a way that made them feel oh so fragile, it was about enough to suck the air out of me within seconds.

Several hours after the session finished, we had our first final for the intramural basketball league. I mentioned in [a previous week](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-4-the-plot-thickens#on-basketball) about the team of Latinos that had recruited me to play for them, and after finishing second in our pool of four in the round-robin games, we had received a first round bye. Regrettably again, we were tipping-off at 11 PM on a week night no less, and what should have been a simple game for us to win was anything but. The other team were absolute rubbish, but on that night we were even worse. I had a lot of fun playing, but it was an objectively dismal affair and we ended up losing by a few points, ending our hopes of a deep run in the bracket.

![Just 7 dudes from Central America](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FCvsOlYZ0b-.png?alt=media&token=a4300ca5-fc91-4c0b-b6cf-1652e29d7bb8)

In any case, I was thankful even for the opportunity to play a few games of semi-competitive basketball whilst I was over here. I also just found out the other day that the championship game for the intramural basketball league is played in Mackey Arena. Not that we had any chance of ever reaching that point in the competition, but my that would have been quite the experience.

## Thursday

On Thursday night Purdue had their final away game of the regular season, and of all places it was at Madison, Wisconsin. I had briefly considered catching a bus down to try and catch the game in person for reasons that will shortly become clear, but it was a really busy day for me with exams and a few other items to attend to so this was one of those opportunities I had to regrettably let slide. For anyone not in my direct family, the Marks tie to the Badgers is one of great importance for us, deep enough that I have been an avid supporter of their sporting teams and the city at large ever since I was able to appreciate said connection. 

My Dad's side of the family is from Sri Lanka, and it was a Rockefeller Scholarship won by my grandfather to study at the University of Wisconsin that gave my grandparents a pathway out of the country and to a new, exciting but tremendously unknown life at a time when life in Sri Lanka was becoming increasingly tumultuous, ultimately culminating in the outbreak of civil war in the early 1980's. That I never got a chance to meet Grandpa Geoff is one of the very few points of deep sadness in my life, but on almost every occasion I visit my grandma she speaks so warmly of their years in Madison, she having left her family behind to move to a completely foreign culture at an age several years to my junior. As such, over the years I have developed a deep affinity for the school and the role it played in placing me into the life I now lead, because surely without it things would look a lot different.

![A close finish!](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F81h5bnj7DD.png?alt=media&token=6f2a15fb-fa8e-4d40-811a-e1685422bf68)

Watching the game at a friend's apartment[^1], then, I was deeply conflicted as to who I should support. Ultimately, for a struggling Badgers' basketball team, they put up a really good fight and the game went right down to the wire, which is perhaps the best result I could have hoped for. With the win, Purdue won at least a share of the Big 10 Championship, now the 25th in school history and by far and away the most in the entire conference. Following their final game on this coming Sunday (see below), the season then shifts to tournament time, and my favourite season of sports all year. First, the Big 10 Tournament, then the big dance - March Madness.

## Saturday

I was perhaps as surprised as anyone to receive an invite during the week to a pre-Spring Break house party that was being thrown in one of the off-campus apartment buildings. Way back in the first few classes of the year, a girl in my electromagnetics class had introduced me to this guy Timmy, a good friend of hers who also does electrical engineering. After a brief first conversation, ever since that point we've said hello every time that I see him in the electrical engineering study space, which is often a few times a week. Aside from celebrating some guy's 21st, Timmy had also just finalised selling off some software and so celebrations were indeed in order and he was nice enough to invite me along.

![Out around campus late on a Saturday night](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FdaWXEpnQNh.png?alt=media&token=dd92762f-9935-46a9-ae53-02a87539d948)

I had fairly low expectations of what the party would be like, but it turned out to be a great deal of fun. I met a few people, put names to faces that I had repeatedly seen around the place, and overall had a solid time of it. Best of all, it ended up not being a ridiculously late night. It was very much what you would imagine - loud music, guys in beach shirts acting like their king dick, and beer pong. Some of the others there who I already knew, upon seeing me rock up, seemed to be just about to explode from euphoria, so strong was their delight. Very nice of them, but it would appear that much of this can be traced back to being (slightly) drunk, because rocking up to class and saying hello to them a few days later brought a much more funereal level of warmth and enthusiasm. Oh well.

---

## On Mackey Arena, One Last Time

Sunday brought with it the final home game of the regular season for Purdue, and given how many fond memories I have had at Mackey since I got here I was definitely not going to miss this one. It was no where near the rivalry of Indiana, but given our recent rocky form, I was a little apprehensive about the result awaiting us playing against Illinois. With several attempts under my belt now, I have become rather proficient at sourcing tickets from the Discord server and so I ended up getting two extras for two other exchange students to come along with. One has already been at Purdue for a semester already and had gone to an exhibition game late last year, and the other just arrived at Purdue a few weeks ago on a research program and had as such never been, so I was glad to be able to (re)introduce them to the thrills and wild atmosphere of Boilermaker basketball.

![Four morph suits, three exchange students, two googly eyes and a partridge in a pear tree](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F1v59RLRT2F.png?alt=media&token=2c7dcf82-2ea4-4962-bb16-2255b3dfb145)

As the first half wrapped up, we held a *very* comfortable lead of about 20 points and it looked like a question of not whether we would win, but by how much. Then, as has happened repeatedly the past few outings, we hit a cold patch and all of a sudden we found ourselves in the dying minutes with the game hanging in the balance. Victory would eventually be ours, but it gave us a right old scare to be sure. With that said, it did make for a **much** better viewing atmosphere, given that with the earlier large lead most of the spectators had begun tuning out a little bit. Not the student section though, never the student section.

And with that, the magical outings at Mackey Arena have come to an end. At least being in the arena as a student, that is. Though there is much basketball still to be played in the season, all the remaining games are played at neutral cities, so the best we can hope for are one or two games in Indianapolis, but I'm not holding my breath. I feel like I've said it several times already in this piece[^2], but reflections upon leaving the stadium for the final time left me with nothing but radiant memories and deep-seated gratitude. Beyond Mackey being consistently ranked as one of the top 3 loudest/hardest places to play in the entire country, to be here at a time when the team is having such unprecedented success is yet another stroke of supreme luck.

![Where's ~~Wally~~ Mario?](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2F4wOWH2Ust_.png?alt=media&token=a5259656-6875-45ee-bb11-415589199ce9)

## On Spring Break

Before I stepped foot on campus this year the term *Spring Break* to me meant the big Summer holiday break after the semester has finished. Don't ask me why I had come to that conclusion, especially with the clear season discrepancy entailed, but that's how it was. Of course, what it actually is is the equivalent of a mid-semester break, although whereas Monash has tended to define mid-semester as after week 9 of 12, at Purdue it pretty much is around halfway through the term. Common associations with Spring Break for me are with wild partying and music festivals down in Florida, and I am happy to report that all of this seems fairly accurate. And no wonder, given that the weather here in Indiana is still very cold for the most part with only the occasional sniff of warmer weather. There is also every incentive to get away from campus for a bit too. Apart from the university and West Lafayette more generally becoming a ghost town upon the mass exodus, I discovered this week to my amazement that all of the seemingly essential university services are closed up to for the week, the big one being the closing of dining courts. For the unfortunate souls stuck in their dormitories for the week, I can only imagine the sad dietary lineup that is in store for them at this time, probably some combination of two-minute noodles, instant ramen and microwaved meals. Ouch.

With only one more week after this one until Spring Break, I thought it fitting to finally sit down and make good on the travel plans I had been ideating on for the past little bit. If there is one part of the US that I feel I have missed out on to this point, it is the country's immensely beautiful and varied national parks. From Sequoia to Sedona, from the green, Avatar-esque rainforests of Washington to the flat plains of the Midwest, there is nothing quite like it in my opinion. I had messaged a few Americans and done a little bit of research and a common consensus emerged around a recommendation of doing a bunch of national parks all closely situated together on the tripoint of Utah, Arizona and Nevada. I had actually stumbled onto an Instagram reel that had a 7-day national park road trip all outlined in fair detail, and so I busily set away at researching cheap flight options and so forth. This all proceeded with gathering momentum until it came time to rent a car for the trip, in which case for the 7 days I was looking at at least US\$700 which for one person was a fairly eye-watering sum. And so progress ground to a halt, a seemingly impassable one at that. I had also wanted to go and visit Philadelphia and Boston during my time here, and so all of a sudden I found myself hurriedly looking at possible accommodation in either of these two cities.

That was until Wednesday night when I was about to leave the dining court after dinner until I bumped into a friend of mine Jose. He and a few others had come to the Windsor dining court for the very first time to try out the food, and so I swung past their table to say hello. It just so happened that at the table with them were Ludo and Armando, Italian exchange students I had gone to [Chicago with earlier in the semester](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-15-my-kind-of-town). And it just so happened that they asked me what my plans for the break were, including how they had suddenly changed. And in a miraculously fortuitous turn of events, it just so happened that *they too* had planned almost the identical trip that I had, plus or minus a few details. An invite to tag along quickly came and I jumped at it even faster. With a few more things to book in, we are going to fly out to Las Vegas at the start of the week off and do a road trip to around four of five of the parks there. I cannot wait.

It is moments like this where with even the slightest of changes - finishing dinner earlier, going to a different dining court, taking a slightly different route on the way out - I may never have heard about the Italians' plans and would have gone and done my own thing out east. It is yet another source of <Highlight text="unceasing gratitude I have for just how supremely fortunate I have been with all that has transpired at Purdue this semester." />

## On Purdue Orbital

Having had about 3-4 weeks now of meetings with Purdue Orbital (the rocketry team I mentioned in previous weeks [here](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-2-the-cold-cold-winter) and [here](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-3-let-it-snow#on-purdue-orbital)), the details of our project work have become incrementally clearer. Above all else, it makes it almost impossible for me to conceive of the amount of work that goes into making an actual scaled rocket, not to mention anything of one that has people in it. We take it for granted looking at launches of these crafts that this is something of an almost *commonplace* nature, but allow me to remind you that these are some of the greatest engineering feats in human history.

A [few weeks back](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-3-let-it-snow#on-purdue-orbital), I gave a brief sketch of the sub-team I am working on which is *GNC* (Guidance, Navigation and Control). Put simply, we are designing the "rudder" of the rocketry, maintaining what is known as the **attitude** of the trajectory. Basically what direction the pointy bit of the body is pointing in. How does one do such a thing? There are three basic components:

1. The plumbing: the rocket contains a tank of pressurized gas (here we are using nitrogen because it is inert) which is connected via transducers and actuators to the four outlet nozzles. The actuators (solenoid switches) are fancy switches which can be programmatically opened and closed by a simple little integrated circuit. The transducers allow you to convert between pressure and current. Part of the project is both sending and receiving data from the craft whilst in flight about what it is doing, and so we need a way of signaling to the tank what pressure it should deliver to correct its attitude but then also a way of receiving back from it the actual pressure it ended up delivering. Ensuring proper calibration between the two is critical.
2. The hardware: For about \$30 you can get your hands on a nifty little device called an IMU that tracks the rocket attitude and angular velocity (how fast it is rotating) via an accelerometer, magnetometer and a gyroscope (I believe). These two readings are then sent via a transceiver (basically a two-way radio) to the ground station but also to the onboard computer (see directly below).
3. The software: Upon receiving the data from the IMU, we need some sort of computation to take place that will tell us which nozzles to fire and for how long to stabilise the flight path. This is done using **control theory**, which is a really interesting field of applied mathematics whereby you construct a system that takes in a reference signal and does its best to tune the error in the output of the system to zero. There is a lot of complex theory behind the state system that we have implemented so far, most of it revolving around the use of quaternions which are mathematical constructs conventionally used in 3-dimensional problems featuring rotation. Do I understand it all? Absolutely not, but there are some really smart people involved and they are very graciously taking the time to explain a lot of it to myself and other new members of the team.

At the risk of introducing an anachronism, in Week 9 (the future week of what you are currently reading), we delivered a project review to the leaders of Purdue Orbital to document how we are progressing and whether we are on track to meet the mission requirements. If you wish, the PowerPoint from the presentation can be accessed via the link below.

<Button text="Purdue Orbital CDR slides" link="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jdcy0wA5nD1uNY5Gf3s9WWB8iJV_Hqo4/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109663782600806929810&rtpof=true&sd=true" />

## Footnotes

[^1]: To all of whom I told the above story about my family's ties to Wisconsin, and with the level of interest it received it was as if I had pulled out a maths textbook and started doing long division right in front of their very eyes...oh well.

[^2]: And it certainly won't be the last I'm afraid!

Ep. 7: Whose House?

**Notes from 6th-12th of March**

And, by the time Week 9 at Purdue came to an end, the campus resembled the ghost town it once was when I arrived. The global checking-out that accompanies a mid-semester break is made very explicit when living in residence in the USA, and once the pre-break exams were out of the way on Tuesday and Wednesday, numbers fell off rapidly. The destinations of choice naturally, especially for a Midwest college still struggling to shed off the cold Winter weather, are the warmer climates of Florida - Fort Lauderdale being a particularly popular one outside of the usual choice of Miami. Having asked around a fair bit with friends of mine to see what they had planned, or even for those I didn't know so well, it gave a fairly strong insight into their personality/character to know where they were heading to with their week off.

As for me, plans with the two Italian exchange students to go out to the Southwest became concrete very rapidly. I must say, having done none of the organising outside of booking my plane ticket, it has been a very relaxing build-up to departure. Part of me was wondering whether it might be good to know a few more of the details surrounding accommodation, car rental and so on since I essentially bought a round trip ticket out to Las Vegas under the premonition that everything would be setup in place correctly. I guess we will find out next week!

The only highlight of the latter part of the week was the Big 10 Tournament taking place in Chicago. Since I was departing for Vegas on Monday night, it had crossed my mind to head down to the Windy City [again](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-15-my-kind-of-town) and take in the games. The tournament is 5 straight days, basically an elimination-style affair involving every single Big 10 team (of which Purdue is one), so even the worst team has a shot at winning. Purdue had the No. 1 seed received a two-game (and therefore two-day) bye. The quarterfinal on Friday against Rutgers was a fairly tense affair, the Scarlet Knights having been the first team in the country to beat us this season at Mackey Arena back in January. The semifinal and final were more convincing displays however. Well, the final was convincing until Purdue gave up a 17 point lead in 6 minutes to only win out by 3 points. Nerve-wracking stuff, but it was nice to see Purdue hoist both the Big 10 Championship and the Big 10 Tournament Championship. Now all that is left in the season is the **Big Dance** AKA March Madness.

![Watching the Big 10 Tournament semifinal](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FQ3oYjxY6yp.png?alt=media&token=013ddeb2-f739-4f62-9528-4fa16b18fffa)

If you're not familiar with this tournament, in short it is objectively (in my subjective opinion) the best thing in sports. The top 64[^1] teams in men's college basketball across the country play off sudden-death until one team emerges victorious. Why is it the best thing in sports? Well, the 64 teams are split into four regions, each region assigning a seed 1 through 16 to its teams. No. 1 plays No. 16. 2 plays 15 and so on. Since all the venues are neutral, since it is sudden death, and since the stakes are so, so high, upsets are aplenty. Purdue was announced as the fourth No. 1 seed, and will play their first match against one of the winners of the last four in games. Purdue has never won the national championship, and it has been many years since they even made the Final Four, so I am crossing my fingers, saying every prayer I can, that this is the year all that changes.

Lastly, it is worth noting that from Saturday midday, all the dining courts closed up shop until the recommencement of classes 9 days hence. For the kids in dormitories that are staying on campus for the week, which would be a significant minority, I have no idea how they survive. Well, I do, but it's pretty nasty. I mean the only options really available to them with the lack of a kitchen are 2-minute noodles, sandwiches, or buying food from some of the fast-food joints nearby like Chick-fil-a. It's a pretty grim prospect! As such, I actually went out for dinner on Sunday night to a ramen place in Chauncey (the main street/off-campus area near the PMU) with an Irish exchange. To my surprise, it was actually pretty decent, certainly comparable to the sort of stuff I would expect from such a place in Melbourne.

## On The Nightlife in Lafayette

I was minding my business on Thursday night at the bachata class when a Colombian friend of mine, Manuela (pictured on the right, [here](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-7-whose-house#on-mackey-arena-one-last-time)), sidled up beside me with a pressing question. She is living in an off-campus apartment ([Alight](https://alight-westlafayette.com/)) and one of her roommates' boyfriend is starting his PhD in the middle of the year over in Australia of all places. And, as the coincidences on this trip continue to pile up, **it is not just any place he is going to study in Australia, but at Monash University**. My interest having been suitably piqued, I told her to poke him to get in touch with me in case he had any questions about life in Melbourne or the study itself. He studies maths and computer science as well, so I was eager to hear from him about which professor he was completing his research under. It was at this point that an offer from Manuela came to hang out with her roommates and the Monash-prospective on Saturday afternoon, an offer of course I did not hesitate to accept given as mentioned above the campus was fairly dead at this point in time.

After watching Purdue win their semi-final of the Big 10 tournament against Ohio State, I caught the bus out to Alight, no easy feat given that on the weekends the buses run so infrequently as to make walking a faster alternative to near any location within a 1 mile radius of the campus. Once I finally got there, I was greeted by a cooking frenzy. All of Manuela's roommates are Colombian, too, and they were preparing some specialties for an afternoon meal: coconut rice, guacamole and most importantly, patacones, which are a twice-fried savoury banana. I was rather apprehensive about whether I would like them given my disdain of regular bananas, but they were pretty delicious. I guess anything twice-fried is!

I chatted a fair bit with Andres about his move to Melbourne in the next few months. Thought Monash itself is rather well placed amongst other Australian universities when it comes to maths, that a Colombian should have selected it above all places seemed rather bizarre to say the least. The connection it turns out was that one of his home professors had brought on some colleagues of his to talk about their research, one of which happened to be Monash professor Ricardo Ruiz and from there Andres had struck up conversation with him about a possible PhD. At this point, Andres hadn't sorted out accommodation yet so we spoke mostly about potential suburbs I thought would be a good fit for him over the next few years. Most importantly, I've set up plans with him already to take him to an AFL game at the MCG when he gets there - safe to say that Hawthorn will be acquiring a new South American when he arrives 🟫🟨.

In yet another incredible coincidence, it was later revealed that he and his girlfriend Sara had met whilst abroad at Delaware University. I of course was quick to inform him of my parents' own tight relations to this quaint little state!

We then headed out to downtown Lafayette on the other side of the Wabash River to hit up Vault, a pool bar that abuts almost directly onto the main bus depot in town. On a Saturday night before Spring Break, the place was pretty quiet, mostly being populated by older crowds, dads with pot bellies that had been carefully cultivated over many evenings spent drinking at watering holes like this one. None of us were particularly proficient that night with the cue, but we played a few games and had an absolute blast, Manuela and I taking plenty of time to shoot some (what I think are) nice shots. With many of these, I took the opportunity to later practice editing them in Adobe Lightroom, mostly just giving the interior shots a slightly green/orange colour grade to add some further warmth to them and give them a vaguely "shot on film" quality. I'd definitely recommend scrolling all the way through the carousel below and checking out the weekly photo gallery (see the associated newsletter) because some of the shots I was very pleased with!

<Carousel images="https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260176/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-01_sswvkb.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260178/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-03_tpf3qf.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260176/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-05_hgdo10.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260174/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-07_bdaik6.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260232/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-26_ivdqjk.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260177/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-09_yucqyy.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260174/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-14_uyjewd.jpg|https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1679260175/ep-8-winding-down/Vault_Edits-02_xjxhol.jpg" captions="From left to right: Andres, Sara, Manuela and me|Arriving at the vault|Downtown Lafayette|Game ready|Strategising over nothing|Smile!|Contemplative|Patacones, a Colombian specialty"/>


Such a fun night and I am eagerly awaiting Andres and Sara's arrival in Clayton when I get back!

## On Good Faith

Prior to bachata class on Thursday evening, I had earlier been wandering down to the university book store opposite to the PMU to take advantage of the final 3-point Thursday discount[^2] for the season. I was however stopped in my journeying by a large stall set up in front of the PMU with a unusually large crowd gathered in front of it. Perhaps it was my quizzical glances, perhaps it was something else, but a few of the guys manning the store out front asked me if I had a few minutes to chat and naturally my curiosity got the better of me. They were part of a group called *The Salt Company*, a Christian college network of sorts with centres set up at a number of universities in the Midwest. At the start of the Fall semester in August, they were setting up what for them would be a very first - a brand new centre at Purdue with no prior establishment, and on this particular night they were putting on a preview service in the PMU to build up a bit of excitement for their arrival later in the year.

As has been mentioned above, I had very little to do at this point of the week, so I rocked up to the stated venue at 8 PM, not really knowing what to expect. What greeted me was a rather lovely evening, if only for the fact that I met a lot of interesting people with interesting stories to tell. Some of these people had driven from Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan, each of which is at least 8 hours of dull highway driving away, all to *simply support the preview service*, nothing more. Many were college students themselves that were planning on transferring or applying to complete their Master's at Purdue, again simply to be in the presence of the new centre and help to grow it. And for some, having graduated from college and started working, they were moving across the country to West Lafayette[^3] and volunteering what time they had outside of work to lend a hand. All of this, I must say, is extremely admirable, and symbolises a level of commitment to their faith that I have only really found in Australia amongst a small handful of people. As far as the service itself was concerned, I found it moving, not so much for the content of it but the intense, almost resonating, <Highlight text="love and kindness that it emanated from those in attendance" />, which would have been somewhere nearing 150 I'd wager. Though I could sense a palpable disappointment in some when I happened to declare (mostly to avoid deceiving them) at some point in conversation that I did not share their same belief in God, the exceeding majority were thoroughly glad of anyone's participation, even a non-believer as myself.

![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FiZFnOe77c5.png?alt=media&token=416a8f63-1a5f-46ba-ae4d-8cee30e4960c)

One particular guy, Xander, who I met from Minnesota, is worth noting here. He fell into the category of ex-college student now working and moving to Lafayette, and was sticking around at Purdue for a day or two to explore living options and the general lifestyle here. With little to do on Friday afternoon, he was hanging out in the PMU and hit me up to see if I wanted to drop by and chat. For the third time in this piece, I of course accepted to fill up my own afternoon. What followed was a near 5-hour discussion[^4] on a broader variety of topics than you could shake a stick at. Many were well outside of either of our expertise, but we spoke in great depth about our own relationship to faith/religion, my own experiences with spirituality, meditation and my general lack of belief in a god, and above all else delineating the many areas where our worldviews overlapped in a non-trivial manner. Far from being a painful exercise[^5], it was as usual extremely enlightening - both Xander and Amanda had a great depth of knowledge of Christianity and communicated their views in a very effective fashion. Despite my fears, mostly emerging from the stereotype of a bible-thumping American, it was pleasing to find a great deal of mutual respect between both parties, and I have since stayed in the proceeding week or so I have stayed in touch to share any new findings or discoveries either of us might have had.

![](https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/firescript-577a2.appspot.com/o/imgs%2Fapp%2Fchumbers%2FwXyfuRc5XV.png?alt=media&token=e901923f-9825-4345-8a2b-ce16a2d68976)

## Footnotes

[^1]: Well, technically 68. The lowest 8 ranked teams play off for the final four spots in the tourney to make up the field of 64.

[^2]: After every men's home game win in the basketball, there is 3% off merchandise at this book store for every 3-pointer made, up to 39%.

[^3]: Which, as I've hopefully made clear by this point of the semester, is a fairly lifeless town outside of the Purdue campus.

[^4]: Towards the end of which another member of The Salt Company, Amanda, came and joined in having finished some homework.

[^5]: Though perhaps it was for any poor soul sitting in listening distance of us for the afternoon.



Ep. 8: Winding Down

Ep. 9: Spring Break!

**Notes from the 22nd-27th of March**
## The week at large
Coming off the highs of [Spring Break](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-9-spring-break), the next few days really did pass by in a blur. A lot of life-admin was in order, catching up on payments, emails and the like. It was also the first point of the semester that I can distinctly recall feeling like I was *actually* getting really close to the end of my time at Purdue. Before, there had been the road-trip to look forward to; now there was really nothing sitting in between me and finals.

### Those mysterious things...
It was at this time in proceedings that the physical nature of Purdue began to change. With the faintly increasing temperature, the campus languidly began to emerge from its Winter hibernation - and perhaps no better addition exemplified this best than the littering of VEO scooters all over the place that we found after Spring Break. VEO is a micro-transaction/transport company founded by ex-Purdue graduates and is in principle no different to Lime or other such companies that allow you to *"rent"* scooters and drop them wherever you wish. I don't actually know how their business model or technology differs from their competitors, all I know is that they were **everywhere** from Week 10 onwards.
![The VEO scooters as endorsed by the Purdue board](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1697191166/ep-10-lexington/pt-veo-purdue-800x450_ckxlkt.jpg)And fair enough, too. Indiana is about as flat a state as you can imagine, and West Lafayette was no exception there, so even from January it was possible to see kids zooming around between classes on electric skateboards, bikes and scooters. The VEO idea then is a very natural one, and people didn't seem to mind the (what seemed to me) exorbitant hire costs[^1]. I only ever used the service once in my time at Purdue (more on that in the next instalment).

### Scumbags and misfits
One of the things that I really appreciated about Purdue (and the Midwest more generally, at least from my experience) was that the topic of one's politics was very rarely broached, and if so, never in an overly confrontational manner. This is not in any way to condone Indianan politics[^2], just that the toxic nature of such discourse in Melbourne grows wearisome. <Highlight text="And it is certainly in stark contrast to the hyper-polarised attitudes of people out West, especially at the UCs (Californian state universities)." />

The pointed exception to all of this came Thursday night. I had gone to bachata class as per usual, and had a grand old time. However, a few people carrying rather provocative signage and streams of rainbow tape around the student centres raised my eyebrows. And upon leaving the class, things had only escalated. I went down to the PMU for my usual Middle Eastern takeaway dinner, when I was confronted by a mob of students yelling and causing quite the commotion. Turns out that unbeknownst to me, right-wing pundit [Michael Knowles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Knowles_(political_commentator)) was giving an address that evening at Purdue, and his mere presence alone was enough to cause some of the more liberal-minded students to protest and run a drag-queen show of sorts in opposition. Fair enough, and as for the contents of his address[^3]. I wish to cover them (and perhaps my opinions on conservative politics currently at large) in another piece.

<VideoEmbed url="https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/video/upload/v1697192309/ep-10-lexington/VID-20230323-WA0003_jlnjjt.mp4" caption="Oh the humanity..."/>

The main thing to take away here is that for a brief flash, the seeming tranquillity of the campus was upended in a very unpleasant way. I appreciate the passion of both parties here but can't say that I find myself settling down on either side of that aisle anytime soon...

## On the road again
And with the dawn of Friday, it was time to pack my bags again and head out for another trip! Not quite as glamorous this time, but still a rather significant one I would have to say.

Way back in a long-forgotten time when my dad was my age, he met an American named Jim in South-East Asia. They were both doing some solo travel and really hit it off. Through staying in touch (via letters or some other ancient media) Jim ended up staying with dad in Australia when he travelled on, and then reciprocated the favour for my parents when they were in the States living in Pennsylvania on the Delaware River. I don't know when the last time they saw each other was, but my parents saw Jim's wife and daughter in Italy a few years back and when it was revealed that I was going to Indiana for a bit, not too far away, an offer was put forward for me to go visit for a weekend.

And that is precisely what I did. 
### Cross-country
No planes this time, though, back on the trusty-old Greyhound just as [when I went to Chicago](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-15-my-kind-of-town). This time in the opposite direction. And as before, it was a wholly profound experience where I was not expecting one. I commented in this post about how travelling with the Greyhound feels like being in the "true" heart of America, and this was even more so true the second time around.

The passing from Lafayette to Indianapolis was rather uneventful, but it was upon entering the bus again after this stop that a voice chirped up, belonging to a one Alex, a black guy from Chicago. He made some off-handed remark about the pants I had on, I made a joke back, and before long we had settled into steady conversation.

It wasn't long before others joined the fray, pulled in by his undeniable charisma. Next was Eddy, an ex-inmate who had grown up in California and now gave off the appearance of being a reformed Christian. Then it was Joanna, a lady making the monthly trip from Chicago down to New Orleans to visit family. A couple of others chimed in over the trip, and before long the bus had transformed from dead silence to full of cavernous laughter. The first thing to comment on is the fact <Highlight text="that most of them were taking trips damn near halfway across the country, in Eddy's case well exceeding 24 hours of total transit time. Sitting on a bus for 24 hours. Wow. Turns out this is really the only way for a lot of people to get around these days in America: land of the free, home of the brave, country of the poor public transport" />. I suppose people will do what they need to to get by.

More importantly though, you could not have put together a more eclectic mix of people if you tried. Yet surprisingly, there was so much in common. They all had fascinating stories to tell of their lives, their upbringings, where they had come from and where they were going. For Alex, it was the childhood spent on the dodgy streets of North Chicago. For Eddy, the trajectory from high school, to prison, and out again. All made for such wonderful plots that I sat there listening most of the time, entirely captivated. Perhaps most funny was Eddy's interest in my being Australian since his hero growing up had been none other than Steve Irwin.

When we reached the stop in Louisville, I insisted on us all taking a picture together:
![A rather motley crew. Alex and Joanna are on the left, Eddy is up front.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1697191440/ep-10-lexington/IMG_3734_c7s2mx.jpg)
Shortly thereafter, I found Julia (Jim's wife) who had generously driven all the way from Lexington to pick me up. Not sure she was the biggest fan of the Greyhound bus stop though 😅…

## Bourbon and blue grass
Lexington is a rather beautiful city. For Jim and Julia, I can very easily understand why they would have swapped out the bustling city life on the east coast for the much quieter Kentucky. And Lexington really has a lot offer. It is home to the University of Kentucky[^4], horse racing and, of course, plenty of bourbon. Yet a short drive from the main town are rolling hills, stretching pastures and stunning golf courses.

The Friday afternoon of my arrival was a rather quiet one; we went out for dinner and I finally got a chance to meet this Jim that my dad had told me so much about. On the one hand, it was hilarious to me to hear him repeatedly saying how much I looked like my old man. Fair enough. On the other, dining out for the first time in some while was a remarkably refreshing change from the (increasingly stale) profferings at the Purdue dining courts. I think I had a steak.

### On the waters
Despite being the opposite of an avid drinker, I was eager to learn more about one of (perhaps the) biggest export of the state of Kentucky - bourbon. So it was that on Saturday morning I went down to [*Maker's Mark*](https://www.makersmark.com/) distillery for a tour with Jim.

Turns out there is a lot more to this liquor than meets the eye, and the science and history of it is something that I can definitely get behind. The first and most important question to answer is - *what is bourbon?* I'd always thought that it was synonymous with whiskey, a misconception made all the more confusing by virtue of Maker's Mark having **bourbon whisky**[^5]. Well, turns out they *are* very similar, but there are specific rules for what constitutes bourbon. From [*seeker.com*](https://www.seeker.com/7-things-that-make-bourbon-bourbon-and-not-just-whiskey-1765464964.html):
1. Bourbon must be made in the USA, and specifically at least 95% of the ingredients have to come from Kentucky. This is why Kentuckians are a little snobbish about their liquid gold and almost dangle it in front of the luckless Tennessee folk who can only make whiskey.
2. It must be made of at least 51% corn, distinguishing it from other grain-based liquors.
3. The distilling must be at less than 160 proof (80% alcohol), otherwise it is considered **moonshine**.
4. The whiskey must be aged in charred, American White Oak barrels. This is what gives the very distinct, smoky flavour to the finished product. There is also an insistence on these barrels being new, that is having not been used to age any other liquor, less this contaminates the whiskey.
5. It must enter into the barrel at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol).
6. The ageing process must last at least 2 years.
7. No additional flavouring such as fruits or honey can be added to the aged whiskey.

The tour finished with an obligatory tasting session. If you know me, you know that in Melbourne I am a bit of a tee-totaler, but I do think there is little point in having such strict rules when they can be eased for one-off exceptions that are important (in my opinion) cultural experiences. So it was that I partook in said tasting, which was all up probably not more than 100 ml of five different bourbons. Most of them I rather enjoyed, though the 110 proof one lit an absolute bonfire in my throat. I think I liked walking around the grounds most, the distillery itself was nestled within a fairly sparse forest with a small river passing through it and gave the place such a warm, bucolic feel. They had this adorable old cat, aptly named Whisky, that kept watch over the reception area.
![Whiskey! Or is it whisky? I don't know...](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1697191544/ep-10-lexington/IMG_3740_datr2q.jpg)

### Afters
My remaining time in Lexington was thoroughly enjoyable, albeit short-lived. Some weeks ago when I had organised this trip, I had done so in the hopes that Purdue would make it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament and I could go watch their match in nearby Louisville, but their absence meant we took in the came on TV. I must confess to adoring the Pezzi's place, in particular the voracious supply of books that littered its many shelves. 
![Some of absolute cracking books here](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1697191635/ep-10-lexington/IMG_3776_zntwwb.jpg)

I also couldn't help reflect on the many similarities between where I was now and the points of their respective lives that had brought Jim and my dad together. My imagination revelled in the opportunity to search forward many years from now and wonder if I might be so lucky to form friendships here at Purdue or elsewhere that would stand the test of time and international borders. 

I called my parents on my final night there and this of course gave a natural excuse for them to catch up with Jim and Julia. It always fascinates me how resilient some friendships can be; like a hardy plant, they need only the most occasional watering every handful of years to carry on merrily and blossom once more when the time is right.

On the topic of interactions, there is always one other matter which perplexes me, and it was present again as I said by to Julia at the bus depot. In life we often find ourselves in the company of a (relative) stranger for extended periods *where your experience becomes redefined to include them conclusively within that interior*. Then, *just as swiftly as they enter, they leave, and these boundaries are once again redrawn*. All of this happens intuitively, but there is something quite jarring in the discontinuity that transpires at the moment of farewell and I have never quite properly known what to make of it.
![The Pezzi's beautiful family dog](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1697191710/ep-10-lexington/IMG_3779_lppzqv.jpg)

The return trip to Lafayette was uninspiring, a return to the mean after the unexpected joys of the bus ride there. The solitude of it though did allow me time to mull things over. Something about the steady rumbling of the engine and the world outside pulling slowly past you I have always found conducive to deep thinking.

There were plans for me to head back out to Lexington for another weekend later in the semester to take in the annual Keeneland racing festival, a weekend of pageantry and flowering display. Sadly, however, this never materialised. Thus my one voyage to Kentucky would be my last trip for the semester, and I was to bring out the rest of my nights at 1225 W State St until the 7th of May tolled my final day at Purdue.

## Footnotes
[^1]: There was a flat unlocking fee of a couple of dollars or more depending on the type of scooter and then a per-mile rate in addition to that.

[^2]: Being a very red (i.e. conservative) state that has illegalised abortions

[^3]: Which I indeed watch in its entirety, albeit via a live-stream in another auditorium

[^4]: As a fan of their men's basketball coach John Calipari, this was rather exciting for me.

[^5]: Spelt the old way as was pointed out on the tour in honour of the distillery's founding family.


Ep. 10: Lexington

**Notes from the 28th of March - 9th of April**

And with that, I was into the final month at Purdue. March 31st and April 1st are, for all intents and purposes, the same distance away from D-Day (May 7th), however <Highlight text="something about the new month brought with it a greater intensity and voracity of reflection on leaving" />. But, there are still so many days to enjoy, so many more memories to be made - and of the kind that I would never have been able to predict.

## So totally vintage

It would be hard for me to obfuscate the fact that I am someone that likes using old stuff. I have a record player and a growing vinyl collection. I don't like e-books. I write with a fountain pen[^1]. I like watching black and white films and listening to jazz music. And so it seems only natural that with my foray this year into photography it would only be a matter of time before I got myself an SLR (film) camera. And yes, there are arguments to be made about why film cameras _are_ better in certain contexts. There are cases to be made as to why using a film camera will make you a better photographer. And those all have merit. But let's face facts. <Highlight text="The majority of people my age using film cameras do so for the vintage/nostalgic/retro appeal. Plain and simple" />. Of course, that DEFINITELY DOESN'T apply to me.

I spent a fair while researching the various different models[^2] that were within my budget and well-received by those who understand these things better than I do. I finally settled on the [Nikon FE2](https://casualphotophile.com/2021/10/08/nikon-fe2-review/) and picked one up at a reasonable price from eBay. Getting used to it was challenging - I perhaps did not appreciate that, given its analogue nature, you can't just go around pressing random buttons and seeing what happens. You can legitimately break something and it is a pain to repair.

But after a few days, with the sun out and the warmth of Spring now very really coming to the fore, I ventured out down to the main junction and took my very first exposure[^3].

![A Spring afternoon at Purdue](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1701674890/ep-11-youre-a-star/7827fb23-f90a-42ca-b40f-c1e96c2ce426_msge9c.jpg)

It's safe to say I really took to the medium from that moment onwards. Something about the process of manually setting all the details of the photo - focus, aperture, shutter-speed, ISO - was very appealing. And (months) later, when I finally saw these first pictures, that grainy quality really did transport me back to those moments in a way that digital perhaps never could.

## ¿Qué pasó?

This semester I have increasingly been coming into contact with Latin culture. First, it was the [salsa and bachata](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-6-under-lights#on-dancing) classes. Then it was playing [intramural basketball for the Purdue Latinos](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-4-the-plot-thickens#on-basketball). Globally, this has been one of the happier coincidences of my time at Purdue.

This week, two further additions to the list.

First was a house party I went to with some friends after going to see a one-night showing of Jesus Christ Superstar[^4].
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1701724524/ep-11-youre-a-star/000011330026_pbyiz8.jpg)

It was something that we had been invited to by friends of friends, meaning we had no idea who the host was. We therefore had the great pleasure of being the first to arrive and awkwardly meeting said host. Not that they cared we were there.

It is however, a very interesting place to find oneself in, at a party where essentially everyone else speaks Spanish and you don't. I can't recall feeling more culturally out of place before in some while. What did amuse me though was that for many of them, I was the first Australian they had met. <Highlight text="And it's safe to say I perhaps did not live up to the mental conjurings they had of how an Australian should be - rough and tumble, and very, very loose at parties" />. Their loss, not mine.

---

The next Saturday night, I had planned with a group to go out to Neon Cactus, which is likely a close second to Harry's (see below) for "iconic" night-out locations at Purdue. It's certainly the biggest nightclub for a long way. Anyway, a few members bailed when their fake licenses got rejected, and since the rest of the group I was with were Colombians, they favoured heading off to a bar called The G.O.A.T. - where Saturday nights were Latin nights.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1701725433/ep-11-youre-a-star/338506790_6802760789741159_8853158182011934499_n_jzpwbz.jpg)

This turned out to be a _really, really_ fun night. I must confess: I knew none of the songs, didn't really know what I was doing. In fact, a girl from Bolivia came up to me at one point and jokingly ripped me for not knowing any of the lyrics to any of the songs. But as the night drew on, I settled in pretty well and enjoyed what was a terrific atmosphere. There was that semester a group of Spaniards at Purdue whom I knew quite well and they were all there; and they lived up to the notion that Spaniards know how to party hard. The way people dance in these settings is very **different** to the vanilla club-dancing I am used to in Melbourne, but it grew on me rapidly.

We emerged out into the cold Indiana morning at 2 AM - hot and bothered but very, very content.

### April Sun in ...

The following day was one of the most splendid days I can remember having for some time.

I was surprised at my energy levels given the overall lack of sleep, but with the weather being so very stunning, there was perhaps no excuse for lethargy. One of the nice things about being on exchange is that I have often felt entirely comfortable spending the weekend doing effectively no studying whatsoever, and today was no exception.

I spent some of the morning organising some tentative dates with people that I might wish to visit in Europe over the Summer (more on that in future articles), and then rolled out for a run around the campus to fully take in the morning sun. Whilst the same is true of Melbourne to a lesser degree, being in a place like Indiana for the back half of Winter and the front half of Spring reveals two almost irreconcilably differing colourscapes. The former: bleak, muted and funereal. The latter: vibrant, almost effervescent.
![Even with some of the trees not fully in bloom, the campus looks totally different to a few months ago.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1701726401/ep-11-youre-a-star/000011330003_pqxfoc.jpg)

This was one of the first truly "warm" days of the semester, and so it was only fitting that I spent the afternoon lounging around on 3rd street on a deck chair, listening to some podcasts and fading intermittently in and out of sleep. Glorious stuff.

It was a source of great joy to see so many people out and about doing the same. In fact, on the way back to my apartment, <Highlight text="I chanced upon a sight I had ruled out as an impossibility in the land of the free: a game of cricket" />. Yes, the players were all from India and Pakistan (that is, not America), but I thought it would be remiss of me to not sit and watch for a while, if not to actually participate. They got a real kick out of having an Australian around I think, even if my aptitude for the sport has not advanced past my days of Milo cricket.

## Come a bit earlier next time

I have spoken in [previous articles](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-3-let-it-snow#on-square-pizza-where-do-you-get-it) about Harry's Chocolate Shop and their notoriously befuddling slogan "Go Ugly Early". As stated, it is _the_ bar in West Lafayette, regardless of what anyone else might claim. This doesn't necessarily mean it is the best, mind you. What belies a modest exterior is a claustrophobic two-level bar packed with wooden tables and yet paradoxically never is an empty seat to be found.

But what Harry's has going for it is the atmosphere. And you can't say you went to Purdue if you didn't go to Harry's at least once. So it was that on a (not unbearably) cold Friday evening I got in line for my chance to drink from the cultural watering hole that sells no chocolate. I was fully aware that it was going to be pretty busy - I just underestimated how busy. We waited in line for some 90 minutes, watching the queue slowly, almost imperceptibly so, advance person by person. Excruciating stuff. Thankfully there was no shortage of slightly drunk people around who were *very* eager to chat with me and a few other international students[^5]. And there was music playing, and plenty of free drinks being passed around. So no worries. But my, how the anticipation grew. And grew. Until finally we were first in line and...

...we were turned aside because we didn't have our passports with us. What?! Perhaps I should have known better, but this was my introduction to the fact that the US does not accept international driver's licenses - no passport, no entry. Which is ridiculous, mind you, since having such an important document tucked in a pant pocket or handbag just screams a bad time waiting to happen. But so be it. For me, it wasn't a biggie. I could just run back to my apartment 5 minutes away and skip the queue. But the others I was with...they lived much further afield. And so, dejectedly, we shuffled off elsewhere, ruing a missed opportunity and an evening wasted.

But fear not, we would be back! Eventually.

## On turning into a gym bro

Yes, it's true. I'm bulking. Or, at least I am trying to. This was in part "accidental". I stepped on the scales for the first time this week since arriving and noticed, to my bemusement, that I'd put on about 3 kg. That's not surprising, given the type and volume of food I was consuming. Admittedly, I was doing a better job than most - I saw far too many guys at food courts escorting around plates stacked high only with breaded chicken fillets, or pork ribs, or whatever the red-blooded protein source for the day was. Lovely. Below shows the sort of variety that I was at least aiming for.
![A night at the dining courts - fine dining!](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1701676737/ep-11-youre-a-star/20230328_110915_rwetk5.jpg)

This was some sort of enchiladas I think. And don't worry Mum and Dad, you can clearly see I was eating vegetables. But imagine knocking back 2-3 plates like this twice a day and no kidding I had bulked a bit[^6].

It's been a fairly clean bulk, though. I've been going to the gym damn-near every morning. And like every good gym bro, I have been diligently taking creatine before workouts and guzzling protein shakes afterwards like they are going out of fashion.

Speaking of the gym. Firstly, I am impressed by the number of people that are there at 6:30 AM, and more impressed by the number that are _leaving_ at that time. I never knew so many Gen-Z'ers could be so motivated. Secondly, some of the "fashion" is rather remarkable. Perhaps I cannot knock it until I have tried it, but every second person seems to have rolled straight out of bed in their winter pyjamas to go and toss around some iron. Each to their own I guess.

## Footnotes

[^1]: Admittedly this last one was something that I had picked up from exchanges in Germany where it _by far_ the more common writing instrument.

[^2]: Unsurprisingly, like digital cameras, there is a never-ending amount of money you can spend here...

[^3]: Excluding those taken with disposable film cameras

[^4]: I enjoyed the musical generally, but found myself confused at parts. Perhaps owing to how far away from the stage we were.

[^5]: Perhaps disconcertingly so?

[^6]: This phenomenon happily has a name - the "Freshman fifteen" (pounds of course, not kilos - though in some people's case perhaps the latter!)

Ep. 11: You're a Star!

**Notes from the 10th-16th of April**

## On gallivanting

Back in October I did many things, one of which was to book flights to Indiana, out of Indiana, and back home again. Why three legs? With the Purdue semester finishing at the start of May and the next Monash semester not starting until the last week of July, I had about three months of holidays lined up. And I was sure as hell not going to be spending that in the dreary Melbourne Winter. So, to Europe it was.

But in October, I had no idea conception of _where_ I might wish to start and finish this trip. So I just made them up. My choices? Start in Rome, finish in Frankfurt[^1]. Within a few weeks of arriving at Purdue, however, a more alluring start location emerged - Lisbon. Given I was planning on training between cities and taking **no** internal flights, the start location would have an incredibly oversized effect on the eventual path that I would take. <Highlight text="So, since I wanted to visit a few places in Portugal anyway, and since Portugal/Spain form somewhat of a 'dead end' on the map of Europe, why not start there and work my way into the 'heart' of Europe" />[^2]?

Fast forward to April. I now begin to go through the process of changing the USA-Europe leg. Should be easy, right? Especially since we _intentionally_ booked a flexible fare back in October with the foresight that such a situation might arise.

Issue 1: United Airlines do not have an email/chat help desk; queries can only be made by phone. And my AT&T SIM card[^3] cannot make or receive phone calls in America. No problem, my roommate let me borrow his phone whenever I needed to make a call.

Great. So I call United, give them my flight details and explain my situation. "No worries", comes the reply, "You will be able to receive a full refund for the Indianapolis-Rome leg and book a new flight". With the green light, I could now start exploring flights into Lisbon.

Issue 2: My friend I was travelling home with booked did _not_, as discussed, book onto my United flight from Frankfurt, instead finding a cheaper one with Vietnam Airlines[^4]. Given I was not that keen on flying back solo if it were avoidable, this meant I now needed to cancel _both_ remaining flights and reschedule. Shouldn't be a problem, according to the lady at United I spoke to.

Issue 3: I called United back a few days later to cancel and receive my refund. Only this time I was informed it was _not_ fully refundable, that it was impossible to say how much I could be refunded without going through the calculus since I had booked all flights as one trip, just with months and months in between flights[^5]. This annoyed me greatly. So be it. I got them to cancel my reservation anyway and was directed to a website link through which I could request a refund.

Issue 4: I had to call back a third time to be given my reservation numbers for the flights since upon cancelling the booking I could no longer access them. But finally, I had everything in hand and submitted my refund request. A few days passed. No response, then...

...I ended up receiving a full refund for not only the two remaining flights to and from Europe, but the original flight from Melbourne to Indianapolis too. You know, the one I had already taken way back in January.

I don't know what happened at the United refunds office, but I was thanking my lucky stars. Part of it I suspect lay in the slightly deceitful nature of my refund request message, which essentially stated that on the basis of the first call I had _already_ booked new flights to replace them and then received the news about a partial refund subsequently. All's well that ends well.

### Abroad-ening

Don't get me wrong, I was really looking forward to backpacking around Europe. But planning a trip there is _really, really_ difficult for me. First, there are a functionally infinite number of cities/towns you can visit, and asking people for recommendations not only doesn't clarify existing options, but will reveal countless more. Secondly, I have grown very comfortable here at Purdue (see **On familiarity**). And I kind of don't want to leave.

On the topic of overseas travel. It is well-documented the common perception that many Americans lack [awareness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoDAFjbMKNw&pp=ygUebmFtZSBhIGNvdW50cnkgc3RyYXdiZXJyeSBhcHJr) and [knowledge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AugdKPSmp-w&pp=ygUebmFtZSBhIGNvdW50cnkgc3RyYXdiZXJyeSBhcHJr) of other countries that others may take for granted, however maybe, just maybe, in some instances this is understandable. I have met many a people here who are from Indiana that fall into one of the following categories:

1. They have never left the state of Indiana before.
2. They have never left the United States before.
3. They have never been on a plane.
4. They have never been overseas.
   Particularly for members of 1., a lack of geographical basics should perhaps not surprise as much as it does. Remember, Indiana is not just any state. One wouldn't have to leave a place like New York or California to sample a proportionate slice of the global pie. Not so here. For many, I am the first person from the Southern hemisphere they've ever met.

The solution to perceived American insularity does not admit of an easy solution, but surely offering more accessible exchange programs like mine to college students would not hurt. Someone down the hall to me who belonged to both 1. and 4. above was busily packing for her first trip abroad: a 3-week tour of Egypt. What a first foreign country to visit!

## Whether weather

As I flagged [last week](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-11-youre-a-star), the weather has taken a marked turn towards Spring. Long gone are the biting winds sweeping across campus as we trudged to classes in the morning. In their place, one finds now basking sunshine warmth. Depending on the time of day, Purdue _used_ to feel utterly abandoned and desolate. Now, even the rabbits are beginning to emerge and litter the campus streets. It is truly marvellous.

![Some of the trees still need a little encouraging, but Spring is definitely nearing.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702071324/ep-12-grounded/20230409_111706_fd8k2m.jpg)

Back home in Melbourne, Spring is normally my favourite time of year. If anything, I have found the olfactory experience in this period to be so vividly attached to a great deal of important and cherished memories of mine. Interestingly enough, in an entirely different country removed of the familiar flora, the content of memories evoked shifted markedly. In fact, most often I noticed my mind wandering back to the July week I had spent in Maryland way back in 2017 on a school trip. Then, too, I found myself on a college campus[^6], surrounded by a number of new, international friends. There is a [great](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09658211.2013.876048) [deal](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03193837) of literature on such evocative effects of scents on nostalgia. <Highlight text="What I find counter-intuitive about this, despite my direct experiences of it, is that in any given moment, scent is perhaps the sense we pay least attention to" />. Intriguing, to say the least.

With the sun coming out more and more, there is a new favourite spot for me to pass my afternoons.
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702072514/ep-12-grounded/IMG_3889_uec9c3.jpg)
There is a lovely, tree-lined walkway that runs from the fountain in the Engineering Mall to the steps of the Electrical Engineering building. Under the mottled cover of the leaves, leaning back against one of the pillars is a delightfully comfortable way to spend the afternoon. Even in the last week, I have spent many an hour here reading a book, whiling away the time. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

## On familiarity

I have now been at Purdue for some 13 weeks. Wow. What has become increasingly apparent to me is that I am no longer the lost soul I was when I first arrived. Whereas each building once looked the same, each passing face blending into every other, through daily exposure the place has become...familiar. And it is a process that when you step back and examine it is rather puzzling.

Nothing at the objective level has changed. The bricks of concrete of the centres I had once been lost in, the paving of streets whose names I could never remember, they have remained the same. All changes, then, have taken place at the subjective level.

A fact whose significance we perhaps do not appreciate enough is that we do not "see" the outside world. <Highlight text="Rather, we 'see', and therefore interact with, the version of the outside world as captured by our eyes. If you don't believe me, consider the fact that, staring at whatever is currently in your field of view, you can think of any particular object, say a red ball, and it will appear as if said ball becomes layered on top of whatever you were looking at" />.

Familiarity should be another example of this phenomenon. Notice that when you look at an object, you don't _really_ see the object. What you see is a function, a symbolic representation of the object. I look at my keyboard and I see something I can type with. I look outside my room and see a doorway to walk through. In the same way, when I look at buildings around Purdue, they are no longer foreign precisely because they have assimilated symbolism in my mental map of the world. From my memories, they have taken on their own respective purposes.

So, with all that in mind, take a look at the following picture and tell me what it is you really see. I suspect our answers may differ wildly.
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702093306/ep-12-grounded/IMG_3884_eseeh0.jpg)

## On Cadence

Lastly, a technical aside. I am currently taking a class on integrated circuit analysis and design, and since there is no final exam the majority of the mark consists of two large projects - one of which I have just completed, the other I am just starting.

The relevant preliminaries for this section are not extensive. In essence, the brains of a computer, known as a Central Processing Unit (CPU) contains the basic building blocks like adders that make everything else go. To this point in my studies, we generally treat these adders as black-boxes, only interested in the fact that if you provide it with two numbers $x$ and $y$, the adder will return $x+y$. However, chip designers have **a lot** of technicalities to consider when designing such a block. At the level of 1's and 0's, there are _many, many_ optimisations that can be made for addition. And moreover, one cannot just give importance to the logical architecture of the gate, but also the _physical_, too. The length of a given wire, the number of wires running parallel to a wire, these are all considerations that we gloss over in theory but in reality can entirely ruin the performance of the adder.

In this class' projects, therefore, we are tasked with designing basic blocks like an adder or multiplier that can run as fast as possible[^7]. The catch is we are designing these at the level of transistors, the atoms of a computer chip. Clearly it is infeasible to do such modelling practically, so instead we use software like [Cadence](https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home.html). Initially, I didn't like the program at all, but I have to say in recent days it has really been growing on me. It is super, super powerful.

I can make a basic NAND gate using [complimentary CMOS](http://bwrcs.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/icdesign/ee141_s03/Lectures/Lecture14-Logic.pdf) logic with a 45nm technology as such:
![A basic NAND gate. This means that the output is 1 only when both the inputs (A and B) are 0.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702075129/ep-12-grounded/nand_jxuz6q.jpg)
Which, with some other basic logic gates can be treated as "blocks" in a 1-bit adder:
![A 1-bit adder](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702075129/ep-12-grounded/1bitadder_rp5wkx.jpg)
Which become the blocks of a full 3-bit adder with carry-in:
![A 3-bit adder with carry](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702075129/ep-12-grounded/adderBlock_tfgy9v.jpg)
And finally, stacking a bunch of full-adders together yields a 4x12 multiplier, that is, it can compute the result of a 4-bit number multiplied by a 12-bit number.
![A multiplier](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702092219/ep-12-grounded/4x12schematic_zbmpiy.jpg)
This is all super easy with Cadence because it allows you to define these low-level components/modules like NAND gates and then cascade the gates up to the level of operators like multipliers and adders. Even better, we can test key metrics like high-low or low-high propagation delay, average power consumption and verify correctness of the operators through test harnesses:
![Testing a 1-bit adder. The waveform corresponds to a particular input combination along with a carry-in bit. Note that the irregularities in the bottom two waveforms correspond to propagation delays. If the clock speed of the inputs is too high, these delays will produce invalid outputs.](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702091970/ep-12-grounded/1bitadder_test_cziu4w.jpg)
If you are still reading, and still care, you can read the two reports I wrote on designing [full adders](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702092468/ep-12-grounded/NicholasMarks_project1_dtoutu.pdf) and [carry-save multipliers](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702092449/ep-12-grounded/NicholasMarks_project2_oiwpsb.pdf).

## Footnotes

[^1]: This latter choice wasn't entirely without logic. Frankfurt is the largest international airport in Germany and it was highly probable that I would be finishing in or around there, given all the people/cities there that I wanted to visit.

[^2]: I had to have a flight booked back to Australia when I left because my receiving the free travel insurance from my university was conditioned on having both an outbound and inbound flight booked at all times.

[^3]: Because of issues relating to my phone's incompatibility with AT&T's 5G cellular network

[^4]: Turned out to not be as dodgy as this may sound...

[^5]: Apparently this meant that the _discounted_ value of flights one receives when booking in a bundle forced them to recalculate the flight of each individual leg separately, back-dating to October, then issue a refund based on this new amount.

[^6]: Tucson, near Baltimore. Safe to say Purdue was a bit of an upgrade.

[^7]: Measured in terms of the frequency with which bits in the input can change without producing an erroneous output


Ep. 12: Grounded

**Notes from the 17th-28th of April**

## Comfort Food

This week, I am happily the bearer of good news. I finally went to Harry's! The PASSPORT group[^1] organised for a bunch of us to go on Friday night as a sort of end-of-semester thing. Given it was the Friday of Dead Week[^2], the line was...well, it was very, very long. If I thought 90 minutes was a long wait, I was in for a treat this time. Some 3 hours after joining the queue[^3],we finally got in. Not that it was a bad wait - as before, there were plenty of fun conversations and people to observe to pass the time.

Was it worth the wait? I'd be hard-pressed to say that _any_ bar is worth that time cost, but Harry's came as close as you could.
![Historical...](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702335041/ep-13/20230428_232343_x5sxoh.jpg)
I loved the history of the place, how old yet well-enough maintained it was. And the atmosphere was terrific. You had some couple hundred people cramped into a bar and walkways that accommodated half that number, yet no one seemed to mind. And yes, we made sure to grab a bag of free popcorn from the machine and order a drink off of the secret menu.
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702336090/ep-13/20230428_231354_fztnbu.jpg)

---

Two further expeditions from the week.

The beautiful thing about living on campus is that there is a plethora of house parties on every weekend. <Highlight text="And whilst I have had precisely zero success getting invited to a frat party, it is a relative cake-walk to go to basically anything else. I caught a bus out to one of the off-campus residences with a few friends to go to such a party, and as previously the connection to the people hosting was extremely tenuous" />. Moreover, we rocked up to find it was themed - Hawaiian - thankfully there were a few leis at the door so we could totally blend in.

By some sheer coincidence, the vast majority of the other exchange students I had become friends with all showed up independently, so it was a really good time. That was until someone decided to take leftover spaghetti and pasta sauce and toss it up as high as they could in the middle of a large group of people...gross. Everyone within about a 3 metre radius was covered. Thankfully I happened to be just outside the splash zone, so I only had to contend with some splashes of sauce on my shoes. I felt pretty bad for whoever had to clean up the mess off of the roof, though.

The other outing was a far cleaner affair: karaoke with some of the people I had met at dance classes and gone to Indy with.
![](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702336082/ep-13/IMG-20230428-WA0008_obilhv.jpg)
Despite accusations of my being tone-deaf from friends back home, I actually got up there for a couple of songs: _Live Like You Were Dyin'_ by Tim McGraw and _Let Me Love You_ by Mario. The first one went pretty well - I had chosen it intentionally because I was banking on everyone else knowing it and singing along - which they did. I think I had a bit of a blood rush to the head when I said I'd do the second one because it's just not in my wheelhouse, musically. Not that much is.

### Dancing in the Red?

This week sadly marked the final round of dance classes for the semester. Of all the things I have done here at Purdue, the decision to start learning salsa and bachata has to be one of the best. First consideration is given here to the fact that I have met so many wonderful souls in these classes, many of whom have become dear friends of mine. <Highlight text="But beyond that, I actually really enjoy the dancing" />. Which is something I never thought I would have said at the start of 2023.
![Group photo from the final bachata class](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702332528/ep-13/IMG_20230429_120746_911_sdzfqi.jpg)
So finishing up was pretty grim. It did, though, provide opportunities to thank many of them for making that experience so enjoyable for me, in particular the teachers. It also marked the first of many opportunities I would have in the coming two weeks or so to capture the treasured faces of the many people I met along the way.
![Some of the fine folk I met dancing :)](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702333076/ep-13/Faces_of_Purdue-11_rbdvse.png)
Above all this, I was also pretty happy with the progress I had made. From not knowing a single thing to being able to do some routines like the one below - I was pretty happy!

<VideoEmbed url="https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/video/upload/v1702333543/ep-13/20230420_193826_qstd6h.mp4" caption="" />

After the final bachata class, I went and got bubble tea with some of the others. Apart from giving me a chance to regale one of them (who was from Chicago) about [how much I loved their city](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-15-my-kind-of-town), it also led to me getting invited to go do some more classes the next week in Indianapolis. You know, at a proper dance studio. That ended up being a pretty fun outing - we did a Reggaeton class and then a sexy dancing one...which I was kind of mortified by my involvement in, but also found really, really fun(ny). Think Magic Mike here.

## Gentleman, Start Your Engines!

If you don't get the reference, here's [some prerequisite viewing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hMyzztXmmY) before you read on.

The Saturday just gone marked the 66th running of the [Purdue Grand Prix](https://www.purduegrandprix.org/), and it is surely one of the biggest events of the Spring semester. And no, we are not talking F1, nor F2 even. We are talking go-karts. And if you read that and immediately wrote off the magnitude of this charade, perhaps like I initially did, think again.

The whole ordeal is of such proportions that the entire week leading up to it is known as _Grand Prix Week_. This is (a) a sign of respect for the teams participating in the event, and more importantly <Highlight text="(b) a guise under which to throw week-long ragers from dawn 'til dusk" />. I kid you not, that from Monday to Saturday, the campus streets were generally overrun by a deluge of people heading in one of two directions - leaving a party, or going to the next one.

As for the actual racing itself, I was really, really surprised. But when it comes to Purdue engineering, what's new? For one, the preparation and commitment from drivers and crew was somewhat mind-boggling. A friend of mine from a control systems class was racing[^4] and he spent every afternoon for about 3 weeks leading up to the race down at Purdue's go-karting track clocking practice lap after practice lap. He even had software and computers on the kart that showed every metric under the sun, from deceleration zones to corner trajectories.
![The Purdue Go-kart track](https://res.cloudinary.com/df6vf0noc/image/upload/v1702180477/ep-13/IMG_3962_e6f7qu.jpg)
The actual setup for the day was something. Aside from the fact that I did not know there was a shuttle service running to the track and so had to walk a couple of kilometres to get there, the atmosphere, even hours before the start of the main race, was electric. And as I marched up there, the sun was out and shining[^5].

I spectated some of the time trials to start the day with some friends from Spain, which included me desperately trying to figure out which car my mate was in, a challenging task with helmets donned. Sadly, with two races down, and some hours before the main start, the heavens opened up and with it came a mass exodus from the track - including the Spaniards and I. I felt dearly for the karts caught racing as the rain started, left to helplessly spin out on just about every corner.

Whilst it was a shame to miss out on the rest of the action[^6], the group ended up going to get ramen for lunch on the main street and I was deeply honoured to join! I got the impression that they very much enjoyed hearing about Australia; I certainly did about Spain.

## Say. My. Name.

For reasons I do not fully understand, I have ferociously put off watching a TV show that I know is incredible[^7], and that everyone I know who has ever watched it says it's incredible. I speak of course of _Breaking Bad_.

For reasons I do not fully understand, the other week I finally began watching it. Finally. And, ugh, yes, it's absolutely incredible. The thing about me is that I don't watch TV shows very often; I am more of a movie buff. But when I watch a TV show, I watch it _really, really_ quickly. Case in point - within about two weeks I watched the entire thing, all five seasons, from start to finish. To make matters worse, this was throughout the weeks where a number of final assignments and projects were due[^8] - don't worry, I got them all done just fine!

There is so very much that can be said about this show, and perhaps at some stage I will say it all. What I will say, globally, is that, in contrast to watching a movie over the course of an afternoon, the process of progressing through a TV show is markedly different. <Highlight text="It appears to define a chapter in your life, each day being defined as being absorbed in any given episode(s), and then the rest of your life happening parallel to that" />. It is truly a bizarre feeling.

Final takeaways? I need to work on my impulse control and not binge-watch things. And if you haven't seen _Breaking Bad_ yet, do yourself a favour and watch it.

Also, also, my favourite episode in the entire series has to, without a shadow of a doubt, be the third-to-last episode of Season 5: _Ozymandias_. Absolute chaos, and you sit there in awe watching as everything falls apart around Walter. I am slightly biased here, I might add. The eponymous poem by Percy Shelley is probably my all-time favourite. It's a short one, well worth a read [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias). And you'll quickly see how fitting a title for this episode it is. An excerpt here:

> And on the pedestal, these words appear:  
> My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;  
> Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!  
> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay  
> Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare  
> The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

## Studying Abroad?

One point I have been considering in recent days as I finish my final projects and assignments is the optimal approach to adopt for the upcoming finals. In contrast to Monash, my final exams at Purdue are waited somewhere between 15-25%, and for one class I don't have one at all[^9]. Moreover, Monash employs a pass/fail paradigm for study exchange programs, meaning that, from their perspective, getting a C+ is as good as an A/A+[^10]. The good news for me is that, having done well enough across the semester, I would have to essentially receive a 0 on my finals to _not_ pass.

As this fact has come into view, my commitment to putting in a ruthless two weeks of revision has faded rapidly. But this should be a positive thing I think. I will have a few more opportunities to go through the "riveting" process of exam revision, but my days here at Purdue are fatally numbered. <Highlight text="To me, it would be a shame to waste those precious hours couped up at my desk pouring over notes and past exam questions" />. To be sure, I will make certain that I revise the core topics and patch up areas that need patching. But I will not be trying to go the extra mile. Not this semester.

A similar directive extends to some of my additional commitments I have taken up whilst here. I have gotten a lot out of being a part of Purdue Orbital [this semester](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-3-let-it-snow#on-purdue-orbital). The people there are lovely and fiercely intelligent, and in particular I've become really good friends with one or two of the other exchange students who joined up for the semester. So, in the effort to maximise the sorts of experiences and relationships that will be permanently lost upon my departure, I've been opting to miss the team meetings the past week in deference to meeting up with said friends for food. And I must say they have been such fulfilling conversations that I couldn't possibly have regrets about this.

## Housekeeping

It's been a while since I offered some general observations about life here in America, so let this be me clearing out the backlog that I have been accruing:

1. Grocery shopping is a seriously inconvenient experience. In West Lafayette, you have really two options: (1) the small and expensive Target just past the campus centre, or (2) the Walmart (cheap and large) which is about ~20 minutes away by bus. There are other options, but all of these are even further abroad and/or necessitate getting there by car. Which brings up an important point - if you do not live in a big city, you _really_ need a car here. Living in an Australian town, it is _convenient_ to have one, but it is not necessary. There will inevitably be small local grocers and a Woolworths/Coles within walking distance. And these are _entirely_ sufficient to get access to (reasonably) affordable and healthy food options.
2. Since the basketball season has concluded, I have found myself at a bit of a loose end as to what to do with my weekends. Before, at least a Saturday or Sunday would be dedicated to a match, but now both linger, unfilled on my calendar, at the end of the week. Perhaps I am not looking hard enough, but I have struggled a little to find worthwhile things on campus to do on the weekend. Understandably so, given the majority of people are not adopting my loosey-goosey study policy (see above). Happily, however, with the improving weather there is ample opportunity to sit outside and be content with just that - not having to constantly be _doing_ anything.
3. A few days ago Purdue had their annual [**day of giving**](https://dayofgiving.purdue.edu/). And no, the direction of giving is not _from_ the university, but rather _to_ it. Remarkably, they raised in 24 hours some \$110,000,000. This is compelling on a number of levels. For one, the magnitude of it begins to make sense when you consider just how many students are here, how big the alumni network is, and how deep the pockets are of many associated with the university. But on the other hand, it is a little galling to see. I am sure Purdue does great philanthropic work, and they are by no means the worst offenders when it comes to college funding, but I can't help but think that we would be achieving a lot more if even a percentage of that number went to other causes.

## Footnotes
[^1]: A student group that helps incoming exchange students make the most of their time by connecting them with returned exchange students from Purdue

[^2]: The week prior to finals week where professors will revise content from the semester. Or in the case of some of my classes, they will continue teaching new content because they were behind schedule.

[^3]: And I got there _pretty_ early, just after 6PM.

[^4]: Just in the sprint races, mind you, not the actual Grand Prix.

[^5]: Foreshadowing.

[^6]: Though apparently they managed to complete the rest of the races as scheduled.

[^7]: Without having seen it

[^8]: See **Studying Abroad?** for comments on this.

[^9]: The integrated circuit analysis and design unit, see [here](https://chumbers.io/content/ep-12-grounded#on-cadence) for more information.

[^10]: This is mostly because if they did not, there would have to be some weighting of subject difficulty so that study exchange students were not advantaged/disadvantaged when it came to your course WAM/GPA.


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