Why Maths?

Why did I choose to study mathematics?
This is a question I still ask myself.
There are many other subjects much more interesting or useful, so why this one.

I don't have a big passion to the subject, as some people might have, but I still find it interesting. But again anything could be of interest for me, since I am a curious person eager to learn about everything and anything. It was certainly not my dream subject, I would have found much more interesting to study astrophysics or medicine than mathematics. I really was keen to study the science of the space, because I was always amazed when I was looking at Hubble's pictures or reading astronomy's magazines. Or I could have done a more useful subject like medicine, because I really wanted to help people and being a medic can really do so. So why maths?

An easy answer would be to say that I was good at it when I was in high school and before. This was true, but is not anymore. I found doing maths was easy before university, at least easier than some other subjects but this cannot be a reason good enough to choose to study that subject.

A possible reason would be because of the passion one of my friends had when we were in high school. Seeing him so passionate about maths, telling stories about the Riemann zeta function or the number 0, emulated my interest in the subject. I eventually would want to feel the same passion as his, which I tried to do by starting to make my own research on the subject. So I guess I can thanks him (or blame him) for getting me into the mathematics buzz. I still haven't reached the passion he has but I still have strong interest into it.

An event, that comforted me in my choice of choosing maths, was when I went to do an interview in front of business and finance professionals to be admitted in a business school in France. One of the interviewer asked me whether I had other options besides my application to that business school. I nodded and told him that I had offers to do a Bachelor in the UK in Maths and Finance. At my surprise, he encouraged me to do that course and not to come to his business school. He explained me that Financial maths would be very useful for a career in Finance and that there would be a high demand for people with those skills. When you are so young and a professional told you that, you start to believe him, so that's what I did.

I guess all those things had inclined me to decide to study maths. But the main reason was that mathematics is a subject that offers opportunities to do all kind of jobs. Since I still didn't know what I wanted to be in my life, I didn't want to be restricted to one job. I wanted to be able to still have a large choice to choose from. Although I cant be a doctor (apart if there's a mathematical formula to heal all patients in hospital), I still can do most jobs available on the markets. I still can be an astrophysicist or a more literary job, since I always think that you can be a journalist or a writer if you have the passion for it, no matter if you have the required qualification. Therefore being a graduate from a Mathematics degree doesn't stop me to be anything I want to be.

What I want is more to enjoy my life and really do what I really like and want. I don't have regret choosing Mathematics, although there might have been some better choice. But what is done is done and I have to live with it. As I said many doors can still be open to me, I just need the passion, the will and the work.

Mars or Human's insanity

Today I was reading an article about a project to go to our beloved neighbour planet called Mars, also known as "Red Planet". It was explaining about how they wanted to go there and makes experiments to know more about different aspects of science. But one point that catches my attention, it was when they were explaining how feasible it was to populate and live on Mars.

I was thinking that might be a great idea to do but why would we want to go to a place where there is no oxygen, where the temperatures are really extremes and where there is nothing there, apart two robots we've sent and perhaps little green men =_=;;;

The idea I am against was we want to go there because we know that our Earth wont last forever and that life would be hard on our home planet, because I am totally for making new experiments and getting forward in science. But if it is to go for the survival of our species then it would be just a mess.

Now suppose it is the end of the world, the last day of our life because of black holes, or the earth is too hot, not enough food or whatever. Everybody would want to get on a spacecraft and go to Mars. But unfortunately not everybody can. Then who will go there, certainly not the poor people or the sick ones. Maybe it would be like when a ship shrinks :"Women and children first", but I doubt so. Then who?? The rich and famous people, maybe they could pay whoever owns the spaceship, but money would have no value at that moment. It would actually be quite fun to see the desperation of the rich people to go there, since money would have no value. Politics might use their power to go but the people who own the spaceships could be greedy and not accept anyone apart their relatives. How about animals? How would we eat on Mars without animals or plants. I was thinking of taking only the chicken, since they can lay one egg everyday. Or maybe we could take the DNA of all animals and recreate them once on Mars. All in all that would be just a mess. What I will do if it is the end of the world, would be stay with my beloved ones and try to live as happy as we can our last day.

Therefore I still think it would be better try to save our own planet. We want to go in the middle of nowhere while we are already somewhere. There are so much problems on Earth that still can be solved such as global warming, conservation of species, unemployment, poverty, famine etc...
There are so much to do and so much we can do to make life better here. It is too easy if we want to escape all these, because in the end we would recreate the same problems that we have done here. Spending big money to do this, while we could do so much more and better things with it to help our people. Better try to save our present and what still can be saved, than thinking already about the end of the world.

Laters.

Life so far

So I always wanted to do this, and share about my thoughts and life. I wont start from when I was born because that would be too long and would takes ages for me to type it ( I dont have that much time to spare either).

So I'll just start from 5 months ago when I started my MSc in Maths and Finance.
Already one third of the Master so far, and all I can say is that it is tough and hard. I got some moments, when I lost myself, but on overall I am enjoying it. It changes a lot from my undergrad, which was pretty easy to be honest (apart the last 3 months, which was such a pain).

I learned many new skills like programming in C++ and having to work hard (haha) all the time and not being lazy.

I met lot of good people in my course and in uni, makes a couple of good friends. It is very enjoyable to learn from their experience, because they all come from different uni and had different life, some even worked. So I am have a lot to learn from them and hopefully they can learn from me(but I doubt so, I have so few experience to share).

I have settled myself now in London. It was not easy at first, because I was not used to take the transport everyday. It takes me about 40 mins to get to uni, so I have to get up pretty early, which I am really not used to. Very different than before when I was living just 10 mins away from my department ( that was a perfect ). London pretty oki, I guess. It's definitely more busy than Manchester, and my hometown. Lot of things going on like Musicals and other events and many museums, so many that it is always hard to choose what to do. So always end up doing not much haha. I havent got time to explore all London, because of work , but will do when I will have more time. Actually I would have hoped more things going on, but I guess that's how is European cities.

Apart from my study, I am learning Mandarin again and started Japanese. I found out it is quite useful when you want to understand conversations Chinese people are saying. I managed to helped an old lady in the tube with my Mandarin as well, so I am pretty proud of myself haha. I am still quite bad with characters, but I guess I can have simple conversation. Hopefully one day I could speak fluently.

And oh, I started again Ultimate. It has become the highlight of my typical week, which really shows how depressing is my life: "work work work hahaha ". It was such a torture not to play it for 1.5 years. I was getting good when I played in my first year, but multiple injuries stopped my progression. Otherwise I would have been a much better player. The team is friendly and have some good players. I participated for the first time regionals indoor and outdoor with the second team and loved it. We didnt do good , but it is so great to play against the best players of the south-east of UK. I never got that chance in Manchester, so that was a great experience. I learned a lot about the game and improved myself. Still need lot of improvement, but Im getting closer to the level I was 3 years ago. I hope I could still continue to play while working.

So that's a quick summary of what happened, so much more to tell but not much time. Will try better though.

So far life's good, although too much work and sometimes I would like it to be more exciting, but I guess that's postgrad life is. Laters.