I had a good weekend. I went to Shabbat at the Hillel, because they said that you didn't have to be Jewish. I was still the only non-Jewish person there, but it's the thought that counts. I met a lot of really nice people and learned a lot about Shabbat and whether not doing things is more passive or active than remembering things. I also went to some services-- they recommended I go to the service that was only singing. Jews are a pretty excellent bunch for singing and dancing, and everyone got into the swing with the clapping and the dancing about and the praising God in Hebrew and all that. It was transliterated in the hymnal so I could follow along. Surprisingly (though perhaps it shouldn't have been) a lot of the songs were very similar to our prayers, so I felt like I was back home in my church only singing better hymns in a key that a normal person could actually handle. It was a special Israeli Shabbat this week so we had Israeli food and challah. It was very doughy and delicious. I had an excellent time, I might go back (perhaps I will become like the boy in Life of Pi who was regularly going to three different religious services a week).

I spent the rest of the weekend going to a formal and the office Christmas party. On Sunday I spent all day playing Javanese gamelan until our concert at 5pm. We screwed up pretty badly a couple of times, but we pretended like we knew what we were doing and since people didn't know what to expect I don't think they noticed too much. A bunch of my friends came. :D I let them play the bonang after the concert and they all seemed very appreciative of the strange and wonderful Javanese sound. Afterwards I went to Zebo's orchestra concert. Tonight I went to my friend Lish's Greek chorus concert. It was in a huge church with a huge balcony but the fire marshall wouldn't let anyone sit up there, so everyone was crammed standing up in the back and the aisles. The entire program was in Latin with a little bit of Greek, including the announcements, so you never really had any idea what was going on. We sang all of our favorite Christmas carols in Latin, which really got me in the Christmas spirit. Walking through the freezing, freezing cold also made me awake enough to finally do my fluid mechanics homework (and before 3 am, too!)

Today was the last day of fluid mechanics, so it is only right and salutary for me to post a fluid mechanics-y video:



As my prof said, this video is the one that makes you realize just how little we really know about fluid mechanics. Or in my words, "wtf? That's awesome!"

Dang, what is that circle-y thing?
» randomjunk on 2008-12-09 05:31:32

It's a bubble!
Holy crap. I think the fact that a DOLPHIN is doing that makes this a billion times more epic.

I thought I was cool because I could blow ring-shaped bubbles straight up.
» middaymoon on 2008-12-09 06:39:04

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