Mad Social Science

The economics of choice in social situations have always fascinated me, and I spent most of my life since I was 15 resisting (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) the urge to use them to further my own diabolical means. One way my empirical observations of social interaction have helped me were with family home evening groups in my church. It's a relatively small social setting of about 10-15 people, and it was my job to have them meet and have a good time every week. It was a blast trying to meld my group of friends together, balancing the need to include everyone, solidify individual relationships, and break various barriers. I figure I use my powers for good, not evil, right?

My latest attempt was perhaps more an exercise in game theory than mad social science, but nonetheless it has social implications. The concept was born under the name of a "jungle potluck." The idea is simple, a potluck where people vote who can and cannot stay. The problem with a potluck is always the freeloader who brings little. Even when this is harmless lack of time or something, everyone else gets the message that the potluck is not a big deal. This way, however, there is constant pressure to bring better and better food.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. The risk of offending people is too high. I think it would work among foodie types, but not with a normal social gathering, but even then it's risky. Just a rotating dinner group is easier for accomplishing the task of assured good food, but lacks the flexibility and dynamic of a potluck. So, I found a compromise, and a simple one at that, a creation I call: The Provo Society of Dining.

The idea is an easy one, and this one I do recommend trying at home. When people join the group, the idea is communicated to them that a high quality of food is expected, and then at each meeting (we do it weekly) contributing members vote on their favorite dish. The winner gets exemption from having to cook next week and his first pick of the left-overs (second place is determined by his first pick). It's a perfect cycle: start with the desire to eat good food, add in some competition, everyone gets even better food and then gets more competitive. Rinse, lather, repeat.

So far our winners have been a Thai curry and a homemade cheesecake, and it hasn't been obvious who the winner is. The food is high caliber and in good supply. I'm interested to see if the food gets better and better or worse and worse as people settle and get into a routine, but so far signs are good that I've created an amazing dinner group: flexible, high-quality, entertaining (because of the competition), non-exclusive, reliable, and with a good distribution of labor. I don't think it would work in a larger setting, because of the classic free-loader (although maybe house wives in church are the most competitive bunch of chefs ever, which would explain why I loved potlucks as a kid).

The Combinatorial Explosion

An artist friend of mine recently remarked that she didn't think anything was ever truly created, artist's conceptions always arise from a combination of their past experiences (paraphrasing, and possibly mis-paraphrasing, so don't hold this statement against artists in general) and my first thought was genetic algorithms (don't judge me, nerdophobes). The idea behind g.a.'s is just that when a problem is too hard for us to figure out, we make a program that takes a random set of possible answers and "breeds" the best ones together, occasionally adding further random changes ("mutations") for several generations until the answer, or rather a good answer if the not the absolute best, evolves out of the chaos, survival of the fittest. This is probably my favorite evidence of natural evolution, the principle works well enough to be applied to other things. They've revolutionized computerized problem solving in a number of disciplines. People have gotten a little excited about these g.a.'s and started applying them not to boring engineering applications, but to writing music and making art, based on user input. Crazy, neh? Last summer my roommate made a life simulation along similar lines. His undergrad was in mechanical engineering but he studies genetics now. He combines more and more elements from actual genetics with his programs and we saw some crazy stuff develop, including multi-cellular organisms and a creature with a predaceous larval stage and an autotrophic adult stage. Who knows what could come out of these self-improving machines? I'm convinced mankind has figured out a little more about how God and the Universe works.

This thought has lousy implications of the meaning of the individual, I'm afraid, so it's only half of the answer to life, the universe and everything. The other half might be the joy in all combination, to realize that even though we all should be going in a similar direction, our different paths add meaning to the journey as a whole.

I'm glad I got the philosophical issues out of the way, because I really need to start writing my own g.a. for my optimization class. Anyway, happy interneting, tiny readership, and remember that it's the survival of the funkiest out there! (If you don't get this joke you need to check the links again). :)

Getting in the Zone

I hate it when I have three awesome first dates in a row...with the same girl. This needs no further expounding, because I think everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about. Fin.

Recipes ala Rugó

So, I love cooking, and to spread the joy of Hungarian food, and for this purpose distribute some of my classic recipes. Jó étvágyat!

Chicken paprikás

This is pretty much my favorite and everyone's. You might never get past this one. This recipe I originally got from my companion, Lázár Gergő Zéta. We made it together, but with potatoes, which is much the same. Géza taught me the Szegedi style.

Ingredients:
1-2 onion (more to taste)
8-10 chicken thighs or drumsticks (beef or pork work to, and as a veggie option, mushrooms are also popular)
paprika
salt
1 large thingy sour cream
flour
oil (or lard for the more authentic Hungarian experience)

Chop the onion all crazy like and cook it in a large and awesome pot in the oil till it gets glassy. Take it off the fire and add TONS of paprika (2-3 table spoons even). In hot oil, paprika becomes an explosion of color and taste, but it burns easily. Cook it as long as you dare, taking it off and on the fire. Add your chicken, stir it around to cook the outsides just a wee bit and then add water so that (with the chicken packed down) it almost covers the chicken. Braze to perfection (a good half hour at least, the more the merrier, stir occasionally, add water as needed). Mix the sour cream with a little water and flour. When your chicken is done, add the sour cream mixture to the sauce, stir it and let it bubble a while (the flour keeps the sauce from separating). Serve over pasta (if you want it legit, find a recipe for nokedli instead).

Jó étvágyat! (Bon apetit!)

Don't like sour cream? Instead add in a finely chopped tomato and pepper for the southern version.

Fruit Soup

This is as first explained to a friend of mine, pardon the inside jokes. I got this recipe from Lázár, too, originally, with modifications coming from my friends Kinjo and Goff.

Ok, first off, close all of your windows. They won't stop the inevitable hoard of people that come after your soup, but the breaking glass will alert you to their presence. Then, obtain the following ingredients:

4 cans of fruit (at least 2 sour cherry, if you can find it. It might be with the fruit, it might be with the baking stuff. I like to do 2 sour cherry, 1 sweet cherry and 1 pear)
cloves (12 whole cloves, if you've got whole cloves)
cinnamon
Other sweet spices, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, etc. to taste. Lots because its Hungarian.
A pint to a quart of sour cream or whipping cream or combination
Cook and serve vanilla pudding (instant doesn't work)
3 lb of pig fat (just kidding, but let's be honest, you believed me)
sugar
salt

Empty the juices from the canned fruit into a pot, add some water and the spices and just a little salt. Let it simmer for a while (10 min.)

On the side, mix the cream and pudding together very well. If you use sour cream, add in a little milk, too.

Take a couple spoonfuls of the broth only and mix it with your cream, stir well (otherwise it may curdle, still tastes fine, just looks funny)

Stir in cream mixture, cook another five minutes.

Add in your fruit to the pot, cook some more (5-10 min.)

Let it chill overnight or put it in ziplock bags in the freezer and it can be cold in an hour. All times are approximate. Once it comes out of the fridge, consult the manta dragon, and he will show you the way, but I can help you no further.

Nokedli

Ahhh, nokedli, giving new life to flavorless side dishes. I learned the recipe originally from a woman in Dunaújváros, with the cool water idea coming from Mariann, in Buda.

Mix 2 eggs, several cups of flour and water in a bowl. Add water/flour until the consistency is as thick as possible, but still runny enough to go through a cheese grater/nokeldi maker.

Once you get good batter/dough, spoon it through a flat cheese grater into boiling water with salt in it. Once it floats it should be done. Use a slotted spoon to spoon it out and put it in some cool water. Once it cools (this stops the slimy and lets you use softer batter than normal) use the slotted spoon to put it in your final container. Eat it anywhere you'd use pasta.

Rakott krumpli

Stacked potatoes just seems an inadequate translation for this deliciousness. I got this recipe from a woman I only met once, and just kept adding to it and changing it.

Boil lots oh sliced potatoes, at least 10 pounds. Skinned or not, whatever. Don't boil them all the way, though, they need to be a little firm. Also hard boil 6-8 eggs, then slice or break em.

Slice some sausage and cut up some bacon a whole kielbasa and maybe a half a pack of bacon. Scrap bacon works best!)

Mix salt, pepper, and whatever other spices you want into a large thing of sour cream (getting low fat is almost as bad as spitting on the Hungarian flag, btw.)

Slice two large onions into rings

Rakd!!!! Stack!!!

Sour cream, potatoes, onions, sausage, bacon, eggs, sour cream, potatoes...etc.
I use a pretty good sized pan. (Cause, well, it's 10 POUNDS of krumpli!)

Bake for about an hour at 350 degrees F, first with foil on. When it's getting close, take off the foil and put some fresh sliced pepper or tomato on it as a garnish. Let it brown, and you're done.

Borsóleves, Hungarian pea soup

Simple, and delicious. I got the recipe, again, in Dunaújváros.

Put one peeled onion, a big pack of frozen peas, chopped parsley, and a couple sliced parsnips and carrots into a big pot. Fill with water. Add in salt. Let it cook for a while, maybe 20 minutes, add sugar to taste.

In a separate saucepan, mix half flour and half oil together, cooking it a while (you can add paprika here as well). This is called a rántás in Hungarian cooking. Pour and cook it in to your soup to thicken it, and you're done!

Copper wedding bands: an adventure in metallurgical symbolism

Metal, I swear, is by now far more a literary device than a phenomenon. I recently was perusing some marvel comics and I love the mythical attributes attributed to adamantium and vibranium. Now possessing a modicum of metallurgical knowledge, I find a lot of advertisements and popular culture sources funny in their perception of the stuff. Man's fascination with metal is rightly justified. For tens of thousands of years, the greatest technological advancements were made in metals, archaeologists dividing eras by which metals were being smelted at the time. In the modern age of plastics and advanced ceramics, metal still plays by far the largest role in terms of what mankind makes, but nowadays it plays a behind-the-scenes type role, cased in plastic. All this has only contributed to metal slipping from an everyday reality to a symbol. This doesn't really bother me, what does is the fact that despite amazing progress in metals, metallic symbolism is still rooted in what is very old news.

No metal is attributed more symbolism than gold. This metal had been arbitrarily been equated with wealth itself for millennia, but gratefully has been replaced by good old fiat money, despite recent and comedic efforts to the contrary. But, more relevant to the current post (from the topic of which I tend to digress [sic]) gold has become a symbol of marriage. And why not? Tons of its attributes make excellent symbols.

Gold is an extremely noble metal, meaning it reacts very little with anything, making it virtually impervious to tarnishing and rusting. Gold is precious, rare, valuable and unchanging. All of these make excellent idealized symbols of love, hinting at eternal fidelity. It shows financial stability(or used to, before the days of buying things on credit) and a willingness to sacrifice. Spending that much money on something with no practical application shows a certain elevation from the mundane. Yet, wherein lies the symbolism of something that lots of money can buy and then requires no maintenance afterward? Gold is indeed noble, but I think for a wedding band a more romantic metal would be appropriate: copper.

Ah, copper. Bright red and highly reactive, this metal embodies passion. Copper conducts heat and electricity better than any other metal, symbolizing complete and total connection. In a world where marriages break apart because of lack of communication, wouldn't the metal that carries the communication of the world be appropriate? Copper is more ductile than almost any metal, it can stretch and bend large amounts without breaking. Unlike gold, copper is pretty cheap money-wise, but expensive in terms of maintenance. It needs to be polished often, a constant reminder that young love is cheap, but requires diligence to maintain the shine. Alternatively, you can let it oxidize to produce the shades of blue, green and black that make it popular in architecture for its timeless feel, a patina unique to each ring, representative that love must change in mature, adapting to circumstances without compromising structural integrity. This green oxidation will stain the skin of the wearer (a friend of mine who wears a copper ring recently told me she actually likes the way it looks). Now, there is some symbolism, a wedding ring you can't take off, a love that marks you.

And don't get me started on titanium.

Tudjuk, mit jelent, balszél, ha fúj...

Focus. It seems to very often be the great divisor between success and failure. It's no wonder so many religions stress the need to improve oneself with the promise of untold blessings. When my mind and heart are aligned with my own desires and with God's will, it permeates to all aspects of my life. It is such a subtle twitch of the antennae that allows the Spirit to channel so purely through me. In the rush of reality that is life, I tend to fall off track. It takes a concerted effort, more time in the Scriptures, more time in prayer, to find my center again. Academically, this is much the same process: small changes that bring huge results. These changes really only involve focus, setting aside distraction, anxiety, and apathy. When things work out, I am amazed by what I can do. The reverse is also true, when I'm off my game, life can be an uphill slog.

List of things that count as comedic gold

1) Prenatal twin humor. Recently partially ruined by some movie about a twin that died in the womb. ("I should have absorbed you when I had the chance!")

2) Platypuses.

3) Beefalo.

4) Improper pluralization.

5) Childhood diseases. (OK, so not really.)

6) Ichthyologists and anything related to their craft. (Had to be there.)

7) Batman. (Think of a mundane task. E.G, gardening. Now picture Batman doing it in full costume. Funny, right? Now try surfing, taxes, toilet papering a house and 2nd grade show and tell. My work here is done.)

8) Canada.

A látszat csal

Intuition is the art by which we leap to an answer without actually examining it. Often time we employ intuition simply to get started in the right direction, and then the rest of our analytic process is just book-keeping. Unfortunately, humanity is generally moronic, particularly in the realm of understanding the physical world around us. Heavier things would, intuitively, fall faster than small ones. We know that it takes more work to hold up an orange than a grape, ergo, it must fall faster as well, and we can safely be assured of our understanding and leave the fruit in the bowl. Intuition!

Luckily for mankind, a bizarre and thoroughly inhuman subspecies, known as the pure scientist, or the "nerd" in modern vernacular, has evolved completely devoid of any common sense or intuition, and occasionally overcomes such hurtles with his pernicious curiosity. Luckily, these men and women are rarely heeded and mankind may persist in that luxurious state of being correct. Amazingly, Galileo, the nerd first responsible for proving the humanity of his day "wrong" and then passing on his belief to subsequent generations concerning the rate of falling objects of various sizes, turns out to be wrong. Later we find that the orange does indeed plummet toward the Earth infinitesimally faster than the grape, due to its larger mass. Practical factors, i.e. the fact that the Earth is so large that the relative sizes of the orange and grape are inconsequential, obscured this fact. We don't often hear of any of the old Aristotelian philosophers writing "I-told-you-so" sort of articles, even though they were right, because they weren't, not really. They were wrong because their thinking did not let us learn more and did not let us use our knowledge. Intuition deceives most effectively sometimes by pointing us in the right direction.

So it is with people. Sometimes. Intuitively. We have in our mind the image of what a good person may be, or, more generally, we construct an archetype for an agglomerate of a number of desirable traits we are currently pursuing, and then strive to emulate said halcyon ideal. Yet, in the practical world, solutions are not so intuitive.

I think often of one of my favorite imperfect families, one that breaks all the rules. People that don't know them would hardly think of them as an ideal Christian family because they break all of those intuitive rules. Houses should be clean, dads shouldn't cuss, children shouldn't be allowed to run around naked and nice people shouldn't be cynical. They are perfect, they are whole. They are bound by a love that cannot be shaken by man or Hell, and they share that imperfect perfect love with those around them. From the threshold it becomes apparent to the sensitive observer, that this is a home where the smiles are real and the arguments are not. Happiness, it seems, must be a practical science, one that is horrifically non-intuitive.

In finding my own way, I try to combine intuition and experimentation, to apply my ideals to the examples around me, adding, rejecting and modifying as I need to. This paragraph sure needs a conclusion, I've decided.

The hidden world around me

As I sat down to the computer today something odd prompted me to blog: an elaterid beetle. I know, my boss would be proud that a beetle inspired me to do anything, but that's not the point. More commonly known as click beetles, elaterids in America are usually about 3/4 inches long and pretty skinny with a hard, brown exoskeleton. So, not a huge bug, but three times the size of a lady bug. They get their name because when you flip them over on their back they will dramatically arch their backs with an audible "click" and flip over, so naturally a favorite toy for kids. When I first found out about them I thought to myself, "Interesting bug, it's a shame they only have them here in Utah!" But yet, I picked one off of my keyboard a few minutes ago to watch it flip here in Schnecksville, PA. They not only live here, but apparently come inside houses sometimes. Why had I never seen them before? Because I wasn't looking. I'm sure I did see them, maybe noted their odd shape, and then forgot them. When I went back to Hungary last summer, back when I started this blog, I had a load of similar experiences. I was always wondering why so many fascinating bugs popped up even though I never went out of my way to find them. How much of the world is hiding right in front of my eyes? What do I see in people but fail to note? What crosses my path that I fail to look for? The more I learn about the world, them more the world lets me learn from it, the more I will see and know. I learned a little bit about insects and suddenly I see them everywhere. I learn a little about Hungarian morphology and suddenly I see it everywhere. What else will I stumble across in my lifetime?

When so much is left undone

I am the king of buyer's regret. I'll debate long and hard about a decision, make it, and then forever second guess myself. It's a rare treat when I make a hard decision and it just feels right, like when I went to Hungary last summer. After I bought the ticket (and not a moment before), I knew it was the right thing to do. Even when tons came up and I was tempted to recant, I stuck with it, sacrificing quite a bit and changing my life based on that good feeling. Sometimes I feel pretty good a about decision, but the question "What might have been?" is always there in my thoughts. I recently stood at a very significant crossroads and made a difficult decision. I stick by it, but I can't help but keep thinking about what might have been down the other path, and whether or not I could still go back and change my mind...

Az igazi

In the past year and a half or so I contracted what I call the "Provo virus." It spreads viciously, being contagious and effecting behavior before any recognizable symptoms. It's major effect on the mind is a constant and abiding obsession with marriage. Ignorance and misinformation abound concerning this disease, some even denying that it exists, and scientific knowledge on its cure or even prevention are woefully inadequate. An unsuspecting victim can contract it in ignorance and suffer the consequences the rest of his life. The flash point for this pandemic was, of course, Provo, but it spread rapidly throughout the international Mormon community, albeit on a smaller scale due to less than ideal incubation conditions. I have this virus. After a casual conversation with a member of the opposite sex my mind can stray to our potential marital compatibility, and I realized that the majority of those around me were doing the same. I toyed with various ideas for wedding colors while not even dating anyone. My ideal for an eternal companion became skinnier, blonder and more the daughter of a dentist. Slowly it sapped the meaning from my friendships, indeed, even of the meaning of the word friend to me. Luckily I spotted the symptoms in time to prevent it from spiraling out of control, and I managed to salvage a few friendships and precious little of my vestigial sanity, locking the virus into lurking remission.
Still, as any good Mormon, marriage is still the ultimate goal of my dating, but I haven't lost sight of the significance of having fun in the mean time or the importance of marrying the right person, as opposed to just a person. This of course begs the question: who is the right person? I generally find that my taste in girls bounces around like a squirrel in a bird cage. My current girlfriend and my previous one could not be more different individuals if I had planned it (and it wasn't the sort of break-up where I would have :P). All my crushes in between also seemed to represent cartoonish opposites. Part of my problem, I think, is that I love people. People in general fascinate me, all their flaws and idiosyncrasies combined with all their strengths and individuality. And people, like metals, cars, and races in an RTS game all come with their own pluses and minuses, their intrinsic value obscured by the sheer variety of attributes. Indeed, intrinsic value becomes somewhat moot when compatibility becomes the main concern.
This post was a vain attempt to force my mind to some kind of a conclusion, an epiphany about myself and world that would force me to a descision. Unfortunately (or, more aptly, the greatest fortune ever bestowed to sentient life) it remains just that, a descision, a matter of taste and preference as oppsed to simple optimization. So, if I want to get married some day, I might as well make up my freaking mind about something.

Stress and Strain

I generally consider myself a lazy person, but lately I've been doubting myself. When I am extremely tired or just tired of work, I am a lot less effective at doing my homework, especially writing and complex math. I'm pretty sure it takes twice the time on a Saturday to do a math assignment for me. Rather than waste my time, I'd rather relax, sleep, read, play video games, or talk with friends, releasing that residual strain in me so I can be more effective when I start to do homework. My motivation seems to be more frustration than lazinessGranted, this philosophy has gotten me into trouble, like when due dates are coming and I have to force my pampered self to work when I don't want to and am very inefficient. Right now is one of those frustrating times, when my work is obviously not up to par and I should leave it for tomorrow, but I have to finish it. I guess it's just a sign that the end of the semester is here and I need a vacation...

Smash

Camaraderie is often associated with a common interest, something that binds two friends together that isn't necessarily essential to there friendship, but often the primer. Surprisingly, something as mundane as video games can be that common interest. In high school, I hung out with a wide variety of people, we had intellectual conversations, did interesting things together, etc. When I came to BYU I socially regressed drastically. All I did was hang out with a bunch of dudes and play video games, I rarely left campus:not exactly a recipe for social fulfillment. But, we got tired of video games (eventually), started to talk, got to be friends, and we can't get rid of each other to this very day. I live with some of these friends now, and needless to say our relationship has deepened considerably since our Halo matches, but when we gather in numbers the venue is rarely in question. It way the same way last winter semester with my roommates, Keith and Adam. Adam loves sports with a passion, I don't; common ground didn't exactly just sprout up. Keith is a masters student in English literature and rather reserved; we tried talking philosophy, music, literature and politics, but succeeded only in having good conversations. When I discovered Keith owned a Gamecube and a Wii, suddenly things changed. Suddenly we four (Mike, a roommate at the time, my MTC companion formerly, and a good friend currently, was the fourth) had a common interest, Super Smash Brothers (first Melee, then Brawl), a way to pit our egos against each other and oh, what chaos ensued! Friendly competition and a love of the game proved effective catalysts in our friendship, speeding up a process that might not have happened before we all moved out. To this day I still talk about books with Keith, life in general with Adam and we're still friends (though we don't see each other too often), but last Saturday we got together and Smashed, and it was awesome. So here's to you video game makers of the world, may we never grow to old to play!

Psst...there's a whole in your ethics, your character is showing!

I feel my true self is exposed whenever powerful influences in my life become misaligned and turned against each other. Often times the pressures (which I believe are all inherently internal; even if they are direct reactions to external factors, the nature of the pressure always depends on our internal character) that influence our decisions are themselves neutral, capable of both good and bad, just as fire can sustain or destroy life. C.S. Lewis uses the examples of maternal love, patriotism, and sexual desire to illustrate his point. Patriotism and maternal love are often times lumped in the "good" category of instincts (well, patriotism used to be, now it has fallen somewhat out of favor), but should either lead to unfair discrimination they could accomplish much evil. How many jingoist attempted genocides has the world seen in only the last few decades? How often do we see maternal love unduly protect a child from the consequences of his actions or unfairly side with its own, even when in the wrong? Sexual desire is similarly dichotomous in nature, it is the driving pressure behind both rape and of the family. The more I consider all of these moral considerations, the more I think of it all as a kind of vector analysis, each of these "pressures" representing very different force fields. Thus our true natures are complicated indeed. Let's say the ideal is for our decisions, represented by a particle being bounced around by all these conflicting forces, to remain within certain bounds, higher moral norms we establish for ourselves. We have no direct control over the particle, only over the fields that govern it, and only gradually. Sometimes we set unrealistic and contradictory bounds, and we find it impossible to remain within them, simply because such a combination of fields does not exist. Sometimes we find our particle does more damage and less good by staying within what we think is acceptable. In these cases our moral boundaries need to change, which can occur suddenly (like conversion to a new faith) or slowly (like desensitization). More often the not, however, the problem lies simply with the fact that our nature, or rather something less intrinsic, like let's say our disposition, contradicts our morals in some cases. I recently experienced this, my particle flew out of its cozy little circle. I discovered that my tendency to stick with my friends, support them and allow myself to be influenced by them can sometimes crush some of my morals I thought we absolute. Well, crush is the wrong word, again I'll resort to higher math to try to explain myself: they set me going so fast that my decisions escape the restoring force that would have kept me in the safe zone. Pulling back to the safe zone will be hard enough, but more importantly I need to change so it doesn't happen again. However, this safety will influence my decisions in non-divergent systems as well. A part of me tells me these changes must be pure good and a part of me tells me it is a sacrifice for the greater good. My relationships with others, with friends and family, will be the source of my greatest happiness, but if I allow them to be the hear-all-end-all of my life, I will find myself careening off to infinity, ultimately losing them because I valued the means too much and my friends too little.

Nerdy T-Shirts

In my formative years, 6th grade, I think, I purchased a shirt, one of the nerdiest I have ever owned. It's black with the periodic table of elements emblazoned on it in proud neon colors. When I bought it I did so with wisdom beyond my years, realizing this shirt would not be cool to wear until much later in life, and I basically wore the thing three times until college where now it serves as my laundry shirt. Like the strip of red tape at the end of a roll of receipt paper that lets you know when it's about to run out, the shirt means that all of my other shirts are dirty. Usually when people call me on the nerdiness of my shirt I try to pass it off as an obscure indy rock band. "What, you don't like the Elements? You should hear their new album, Combustion!" Lately, however, I've been getting so many comments on the awesomeness I know it to posses, that I've decided to put the shirt into regular circulation. Atomic weight of argon? I can tell you that.

Jó barátok és a magyar vendéglátás

I owe a lot to my friend Rutai Géza. I stayed at his house and he fed me every day, despite the fact I told him I planned on feeding myself. Hungarian hospitality is syonomous with food. Even the word for invite also means to treat someone to food, and the word for resuraunt comes from the word guest. Géza was divorced not to long ago and gets a disability pension for a soccer-related heart condition, so he's recently delved intot he world of cooking. He is an amazing chef and makes good tradional magyar kaja. His chicken soups are full of things Americans don't even feed to their cats anymore and he cuts up all his vegetables from scratch. Starting a dish without a chunk of lard would be unthinkable. He loves distinctly Hungarian ingredients: mák, túró, and paprika. Unlike most Hungarian food, however, he makes everything spicy. From chicken noodle soup, to cucumber salad, everythng tastes better with a little spicy green pepper in it. He is an incredibly patient and humble man, a die-hard soccer fan, and one of the kindest people I've ever met. I consider it a privledge to be his friend.

Softie

You'd think a butcher wouldn't have any trouble slaughtering a pig, and you'd think that someone that mounts bugs for his his part-time job wouldn't bat an eye at dumping some rare specimens in alcohol, but I've found I just can't do it sometimes. I caught an awesome-sized beetle on the side of the road the other day (probably about 3 inches long, I'll post a picture if I ever get around to it) and kept it in my room till I could buy alcohol to kill it. The thing just tried so hard to get out that after a couple days I didn't have the heart to kill it, and let it go after a lot of internal delimna (after all, I came here expecting to catch bugs, didn't I?). Then yesterday I saw the coolest bug I have ever seen alive with my on two eyes, a massive male stag beetle, maybe five inches long, of that at least half a massive set of pincers, we're talking a genuine monster of a bug (my pictures didn't turn out great because I was on the landscape setting) and I didn't even have the heart to catch it. Seriously, this thing was monstrous. Even now, I feel sorry for the cserebogárs I caught today. Maybe I'm not cut out for this job...

-Rugó

Jó utat!

My journey has begun! I don't recommend a 12 hour over-night stay in London's Heathrow Airport, though, the airport closes and they kick you out into the street (well, the lobby place where you normally check your bags). I slept on a nice wooden bench with another guy bound for a 5 o'clock flight. I've found traveling to be much easier if you can sleep on a plane as well, the jet-lag wasn't such a big deal because I got plenty of rest on the plane. I'm staying with friend Kókány Gábor, an awesome church member I taught as a greenie. He has a wife, Mensáros Nóra, and a little one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Dominika, who happens to be adorable. He also has Skype, which makes my girlfriend very happy. I discovered today that my international student ID doesn't work for train tickets; I was trying to go to an old companion's wedding in Szombathely, but because 2nd class was full and I got no discount, it would have cost me 5000 forint, which I can't afford to pay, thanks to the weak dollar (it's about 160 forint per dollar these days). I spent the day instead getting myself a phone, cruising around Margit Sziget with Horváth János and then having paprikás krumpli and palacsintas at his house. I went to a YSA activity and met a ton of youth and missionaries I knew, and a ton I didn't (I've only been gone 6 months and already so many faces I don't know...). I'm excited for tomorrow, I've got tons to do!

-Rugó

U.I. Also, I have run into 2 old investigators since I've been here rather randomly, Sándor János, an Adventist theology student who was more interested in comparison and converting us, and Zeng, a Chinese guy more interested in learning English than hearing what we have to say. It was an interesting confirmation that I'm supposed to be here, a portent that I will yet have such encounters, and leaves me with the question, what does God want me to do with them?