It's that time of the year again, summer for the northern hemisphere, and graduation season for North American colleges and universities.
Pretty nostalgic really, reminds me of my own graduation just a few years back. Now I'm starting to feel a little bit old heh. But then again, life goes on.
Graduation is an interesting social mechanic if one stops to think about it. It is largely symbolic---after putting effort for n years and taking k courses, the power invested by the board of directors of the institution confers upon you the degree that you had worked towards. Since we are talking about undergraduate degrees, of course we mean things like Bachelor's. But as I was saying, it's largely symbolic---has your journey in learning truly ended? Definitely not, since things are always in flux; this is the real world after all. But it does mark the soft ending of one chapter in one's life and the beginning of the nebulous part that is also known as ``adult life''.
Symbolism... that's something that the world, as a whole, seems to partake in. Symbolism is probably the very epitome of human consciousness, as it is a compact way of transmitting a whole host of related information without actually exhaustively enumerating them all. So far, machines cannot do that properly yet---the concept of auto-inference is not fully operational partly because most machines do not have the equivalent of a life-time of experiences that a human has. But as always, I digress.
Graduation. I look at the folks I knew from CMU and see that they have graduated. It's funny how when I first knew them, they were only froshlings straight out of high school, with idealism and enthusiasm infectious. And now they've all grown up. Hahahaha... I am starting to sound like an old man. Some of the friends I made over here in UIUC are also graduating, and being the rather sentimental person I am (an irony, I know), I do feel a little sad that they have finally graduated and are leaving. Happy that they have finally begun their life journey in the never-ending stream of the ``adult world'', sad that someone I know will be less close from now on, only because.
Yesterday was pretty nasty for weather. The temperature hit around 33 degrees Celsius, and the humidity was fairly low for most of the day, except in the evening/night, where it rained something fierce. I think I drank almost 4 litres of water yesterday just to cool down---and it was the first time that I felt that going barechested was actually necessary. Of course, as I am writing this now, the weather is something much cooler, probably under 25 degrees Celsius or something, I'm not too sure. Strangely though, even when it was getting hot, I didn't really find that my skin was exploding into anything weird, partly because the humidity was just that low. It would be interesting to see how I fare when I return home for a visit some time in the near future.
On Saturday, I did a crazy experiment, where I tried walking barefoot from my house to the ARC where my jujitsu training was held. Holy cow, it was the afternoon and I swear that the aspalt roads where bloody hot. I could only sustain a distance of around 0.7 miles before giving up and putting on my VFFs. Feet were sore as hell, and when I got home to check on the damage, a small number of blisters were already forming. The hot spots were terrible---it seemed as though I was sustaining some burn damage underneath the epidermis due to all the redness. Ice treatment was done, and I had to lance the four blisters because the fluid pressure was making it harder to walk than necessary. Of course, some anti-bacterial ointment was used around the incisions to prevent infection, and as at today, my feet feel rested, comfortable and blister-free.
Anyway, that's all the crazy updates I am willing to write for now. Till next time.
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