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Summer here seems relatively nice, though I rarely go outside. I just met up with Yuri today, apparently he didn't do marvelously at the exam, so he is looking for a job next year, while waiting to apply for the year after. At least there exists someone around to chat about random things like Langlands philosophy, non-commutative algebraic geometry,... (though I believe he has no idea what he is talking about most of the time). Also he mentioned that Antonio is doing his PhD with Scholl, which is a bit unexpected since I always figured he would be the type to study under Coates (maybe he is actually getting a bit less clueless).
According to the notice board, Lilian seems to have gotten her distinction, so maybe she will be staying next year, working under either Bollobas or Gowers (good choices, I have to say); while Stefanos only got a merit, so I am not sure whether he will be around next year.
Next week Stergios is returning to Cambridge to resume his project, so I have more people to talk to, and maybe we'll study something together, although our interests are at the moment orthogonal (I wouldn't mind studying a bit Combinatorics or Analytic number theory, they seem amusing enough). I guess I'll have to spend a few days moving my books from Stergios' room. Despite the minimal amount of effort spending on the project (due to an excessively large amount of time watching anime :)), I seem to have destroyed Fisher's original hope to use modular units to do 3-descent, so he said he'll find something else for me to look at for the rest of the summer (the moral is any technique based on Modular curves can not distinguish different quadratic twists). In the end I never felt the need to use Magma or Pari (which took a good few days to register for), because the general theory was well developed enough to think without experimenting on petty numerical examples. Anyway, during the process of doing so I have found out that some of Lang's book are quite enjoyable (like the one on Modular units). In the mean time, I think I should return to algebraic geometry and automorphic forms (I have to abuse my borrowing rights from the Department library while it lasts), while starting some reading on the representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras, as part of the broader goal of understanding representation theory of all sorts of groups, since a thorough understanding of the contemporary questions in Arithmetic geometry would require no less (according to B.Conrad, anyway) (I actually found Fulton-Harris very readable). Hopefully there will a Part III course on this topic next year, I should have gone to Grossnowsky's lecture last year (despite his chaotic style, he is an expert in it and often has interesting perspectives). Also lately I have started to look at the faculty of various grad schools I plan to apply to, since I intend to apply based on availability of experts in my domain of interests. In summary, I think there are more things that interest me than the amount of time I am willing to spend on them (as has always been the case), and I suspect I will find inevitable clashes of courses next term (It is really a nuisance that the department only allocate 4 hours of lectures everyday).
On the 2D side of life (plane at infinity, if you want :)), I have recently started to marathon some older series, while waiting for the current season episodes to come out. Particularly interesting was Welcome to the NHK (or NHK ni youkosho) and GTO, which I definitely recommend to Mr.Thanh and Mr.Hop. It seems that my tastes has been gradually turning to the dark side. A preliminary list of shows for the Fall season has been made, and there seem to be a few interesting ones I might give a try.
More: http://www.hsengine.com/s?w=notice+boards
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