Well, after a nice summer, I'm back in Bangalore. I visited Aditi this morning, had a nice time unpacking, and now I've got to do a damned English assignment. I had had it scheduled for the plane, but - you know how it is - I slept through both flights. Perhaps I should be more accurate - I slept and played Advance Wars 2. That game is amazing.

Anyway, school starts tomorrow, so I've got no time to spare on the assignment. A rough draft is all that's asked for, so I'm planning to exploit the system by slamming out ~1200 words and not being particular about quality.

If you pour sand onto a flat surface to form a pile, how does the impact energy of the sand determine the shape of the pile? This question has interested philosophers for ages. It has remained one of science's open problems, physics's answer to the Riemann hypothesis.

Or not. But anyway, I found it interesting, so I'm writing a paper about it for my IB extended essay. For those of you unfamiliar with IB, this is the equivalent of a senior research project.

I've just finished a "reasonably-final" draft of the paper. It's not hard to read, give it a look. Of course, it isn't really light bedtime reading. Most of my friends found it interesting, though.

Some readers (of my audience of three) are probably thinking, "Why the hell do we care about sandpiles?" Well, first of all, granular materials are really important in industry, geology, and other practical areas. Second, the pile is also a way to visualize the idea of self-organized criticality. SOC says that some systems evolve toward a critical point on their own, without having to have fine-tuned parameters. This idea is in vogue right now; it's been applied to everything from pendula to mass extinctions. Pretty neat. There's more to sand than meets the eye.

Strange how there's no category for "Health" or "Medecine." Maybe I missed it.

Anyway, I've received a message from Aditi's mom, saying she's in the hospital. The poor thing has had a throat infection for a while now. Whenever she was online, she was tired, but I'd keep here awake instead of letting her sleep (like she probably needed to). She's getting rest now, at any rate; her infection didn't respond to oral antibiotics, so she currently receiving IV fluids and antibiotics. I'm damned if I know the difference an IV makes, other than making things seem serious. Perhaps it's a digestion thing.

Thankfully, her mom reports that she should be home tomorrow morning, at ~10AM (IST). Hospitals are scary. I'm glad she'll be out soon, and that it's nothing major, despite all the medical paraphernalia.

Update: She's okay, and is back home. Tired, but okay. I'd like to thank god, but I'm an atheist.

...End of term exams loom. I've had a great time at Harvard Summer School. The only thing that's slightly dissapointing is how the courses get a little truncated - I guess you have to expect that when a term's worth of material gets stuffed into eight weeks.

The exams actually don't look too scary, provided I study and get some sleep (ha!). Math (Multivariable Calc.) looks fun (Stokes' Theorem is ridiculously cool), and the midterms weren't tough at all. Econ (Intro to Macro) will be a joke, if the final is anywhere near as short as the midterms were.

But anyway, this program has put Harvard high up on my list. The profs are really good, the campus is beautiful, and the place seems much more normal than I thought (normality is a relative thing). I wasn't even going to apply before, now I'd love to go here. Fun stuff. Incidentally, I've learned that laundry is easier to do than it seems - but harder to do well than I've imagined.

Finally, I've played around 2 hours of video games this whole summer. I usually play twice that amount every week. It's interesting how I just dropped them so quickly when I had so much other stuff to do. Visiting Aditi, working on assignments, writing my paper - video games can't really compete right now.

I've finally decided which colleges I'm applying to. Out of the twelve (twelve, and only a few take the Common Application), six are really competitive "elite" schools. Assuming I've got a 30% chance at any one of these, which is a reasonable estimate, the probability that I'll be rejected by all twelve is a scant 11.7%. Of course, this assumes random admissions (not that much of a jump :) ) and no correlation between admissions decisions.

The other schools also seem really nice, very down-to-earth in a way few Ivy League schools are. Let's not kid - I'd rather go to Harvard than Ohio State - but it wouldn't be bad to go to any of these places. Especially since oppotunities are wherever you care to look. There's always a way to get working on something cool.

The one thing that really irks me about these applications is the fees. I'm going to end up spending ~$500 just applying to these places. College is expensive.

I feel like I have a responsibility to update this journal, even though absolutely nobody, including Aditi, reads it. My Google rank (still #1; I've got to put this on my college application or something) is too valuable to waste.

I thought it would be nice to kick this thing off with yet another declaration of my love for that wonderful girl. Aditi, I love you - more than I can possibly put in words. I wish I had something tender or witty to say to add to that. Oh well, I'm sure you understand.

Apparently, this page is the number one result for "Omkar" on Google today (Aug 6 03). That's nice, considering I haven't written a damned thing in my journal.

I feel like I've won something, but I can't really say what.