Some interesting things about Berkeley:
- One spot in town, over the course of a day, can feature an informal mathematical forum in the early afternoon, a nut peddling idealism in the evening, a Darfur rally at night, and a sleeping homeless person in the wee morning hours. The town is really just the template for several almost-nonintersecting towns that follow daily migratory patterns.
- No one who grows up here will have any real idea what "weather" means.
- The indie coffee shops tend to cluster around the north side of campus, but the local trendy cafés offer much more pop-hippie idealism (USDA Organic, Certified Fair Trade, etc.).
Very curiously, it turns out that my advisor is one of the most rational, sensible, firm-grasp-on-reality people in the world of serious research mathematics.
Holy fuck, someone just asked for a "tall" mocha. Where's
Dora when you need her?!
. . . Oh yeah, i'm at
Tully's. Trendy but conscientious, and in this respect well identified with their morning playlist. Never before have i been asked, in response to my signature order, "Plain or vanilla soymilk?".