"WHEN LOVE & HATE COLLIDE" - D.L

THE QUOTE

"There comes a time, in every man's life, when he has to decide, whether he should have sex with an object of desire, or whether he shouldn't waste his manhood over such a worthless piece of trash" -- Quoted rarely, authored by ME.

CAUTION

For all you ladies out there, this blog isn't about "Sex with women". It's about Mathematics.

THE STORY

I always had a love and hate relationship with maths. Up until 10th, I loved it. Then in 11th I didn't bother to open the book, so no hard feelings there; I just didn't bother. In 12th I really wanted to understand the depths of calculus, but I didn't study 11th (pre-calculus), and to my dismay, I just had to make do with algebra & statistics.

At Idaho, I can safely say, I had the worst Prof. you could ever have for Calculus II. BTW: I jumped Calc I. So this was my first Calc class in US. Point to be noted your honor: "Americans chew maths with Graphs". Here, in Delhi, they don't even come close to working with graphs.

And I was gifted with this Prof. who was in his own world and would tell us stories about the mountains we could see from the classroom, and how the birds chirp while we talk, etc .etc....wait..he even mentioned the blue skies, the snow flakes and the maple leaves flying in the misty rain. Basically, he covered every detail of happenings out the window.

In the last 10 minutes, he would explain how this related to some formula that gave rise to some differential equation (did he say partial?), and how this would all combine to make maths so amazing. Well, I would genuinely look around, only to find half the class asleep, and the other half looking at each other, amused or bemused. After a few weeks, I had to take a decision.

Every now and then, we have to take such decisions. That day, we had a pop-quiz (surprise test), and the questions were fascinating. No mention of the snow fall the night before, or the occasional misty rain. It was all Greek Symbols, numbers, integrals, analytical geometry and things I had never seen or heard before. However, I was supposed to know how to answer the 2 questions.

The problem was, that the 2 questions were tightly knit. The answer to the 1st was needed to hunt the treasure of the 2nd. It were the blue skies that would help me pass the quiz. I simply walked out. Never to see Mr.Calc II Blue-Sky Maple-Leaf again.

INFINITE SERIES

An area of study in maths, which we shouldn't involve ourselves with, due to it's infinite vastness, else we'll diverge.

MONTANA TECH

"Here I am, This is Me, There's no where else on earth I'd rather be" - Bryan Adams

Or was I wrong. Anyways, I had to take Calc II again. This time I was dead serious. The Prof. was decent. But just before I could regain my consciousness, I was in a KLM flight back to Upna Noida. A short Episode. Some complications, are best ignored.


IGLOO

Naah. It's actually IGNOU. It's just that, I sometimes feel, it would be so much cooler, had it been IGLOO: Indira Gandhi Leftist Opium Opposition. This was my rescue team. They like to call themselves IGNOU. I gave myself to them, to save me. That was 3 years ago. Had I known that I was entering a death trap, I would run like my ass was on fire.

"Too late, to hate, the fate, I ate"

2nd Semester Maths: A combination of 3 courses from the Maths Curriculum and many short extracts from over a thousand math-texts, which we have to finish in 1 semester. It has no relation, whatsoever, to Comp.Sci. But it's there, and there's not much I can do about it.

I studied, and I failed. So, I studied again, and so I failed again. Ok. PAUSE. Meanwhile:

5th Semester Maths: The kind I like: Numerical Analysis. It's the cool maths, and it's related to my field of study. It's calculation intensive, and there's a lot of number crunching to do. However, on the arrival of December 2005, the IGLOO people thought differently. They, for the first time in the history of this exam, refused us, the anyways discarded lot, the privilege of a scientific calculator. No notice was given, and after 5 years, I was again shitting in a classroom full of students, half of who were looking each other, and the other half, abusing.

The bell rang, and I had finished a little more than half the paper. Long division of a 10 digit decimal point number with the natural log of 1.8394, four times in succession, MANUALLY, on scratch paper, wasn't really my idea of "Good Maths". So, as the IGLOO people would have it, I flunked again.

PAUSE-RESUME - PLAY: This semester, armed with decades of experience in flunking all sorts of math, I hope to clear, not with flying colors, the last of the dreaded math courses, still pending.

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR

I told God today, during our personal session, "But, I don't cheat", and he replied, "Thine shal cheat, if thy IGLOOs cheat with thee."
Now, I don't understand Ol' Inglish, so I just hung up the phone. But something tells me, I'm just going to have to give it another try.

SHAN'T I BEGIN THE CONCLUSION?

"To conclude, it to have the last say, and shut-up the opponent a.k.a. The respected reader"

Inspite of the ongoing battle with maths, I still love this enemy. It's the object I desire, filled with complexity, though not as complex as most women. Maths in fun, when you open the book, and is a hard nut to crack, by the time you're on the 2nd question in the problem set. But still, it has a charm, the kind I like. It's mystery makes me wanna go wild.

I'll hate it today, and yet love it tomorrow, I'll explore it today, yet, deplore it tomorrow. It's why I think, Def Leppard wrote a song, "When Love & Hate Collide", and just so you women out there don't feel lonely, they wrote one for you too, "Sorrow is a Woman". It's so touching.

THIS IS MY LAST SONG

I have, inspite of the numerous failing attempts, managed to learn a sizable portion of the following Math Courses:

Calculus I, II, III, Differential Equations, Discrete Maths, Graph Theory, Linear Algebra, Real Analysis, Numerical Analysis, Theory of Computation, Analysis of Algorithms, Higher Algebra, Probability & Statistics

"I'm surprised too."