Proofs and Fried Chicken

Woke up late, had a quick breakfast.

We went to a little local hot spring bath, but it was closed on Mondays. So we went straight to the metro station and made the now familiar Xinbeitou -> Beitou -> Red Line trek, alighting near the Chiang-Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. We walked straight from the station onto a giant plaza. On one side was the monumental hall for the great revolutionary general and first president of Taiwan, Chiang Kai-Shek. Facing it, a beautiful blue and white series of arches topped with an ornate roof. Winnie explained that these arches were analogous to the entrance arches at the Daoist temples we had seen—they marked the boundary between the outside world and the sacred shrine inside.

On the other two sides were two grand theaters. We sat on the stairs of one to drink our water, since it was forbidden to drink on the skytrains, and chow down on some rice crackers. While we ate, we had a really interesting conversation about the future of mathematics. Winnie wondered whether there would be another renaissance in mathematics, comparable to roughly the 1800s with Cauchy and Gauss and the formal foundations of calculus and linear algebra (I don’t know enough history to know how localized the renaissance was, but I would roughly say that before this period, formal mathematics had gotten to geometry and algebra 2 (study of polynomials) and afterwards, it had probability and calculus and linear algebra and group theory and so on…

I was somewhat pessimistic because the simplest and most powerful ideas are usually discovered first. (I have something of the sense that the simplicity of the ideas is lost on future generations after rounds of pedagogical telephone games.) But on the other hand, I’d seen lots of different sources that pointed to the need for a new kind of mathematical thinking in large systems with strong coupling between parts (i.e. the hardest ™ problems). Naturally I brought up cellular automata, a throwback to when Winnie and I had found we’d both read “A New Kind of Science” by Stephen Wolfram, the inventor of Mathematica, nearly four years ago. I was surprised how much I remembered from that reading. Remembering the quote on Winnie’s dorm door from Gerard t’Hooft, the Nobel-prize-winning theorist who had given a talk at the UW a while ago, I recalled a long paper t’Hooft had written on the potential to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of cellular automata (unfortunately one of those ruled-out local hidden variable theories). We talked about that for a while. The sun was actually pleasant (boy, I’m gonna freeze when I get back). We sat on the warm stones drinking green milk tea from little milk cartons and crunching on rice crisps.

We got up excitedly talking (maybe we’ll make a little journal club!) and took some pictures by the arches. Then we set out across the vast square towards the memorial hall. At this point, we really felt the baking oppression of the hot sun. We goofed off on our way across the square, taking selfies. Finally we arrived at the monument, a huge marble structure with beautifully ornamented roofs. The changing of the guard (over the statue of the enthroned general/statesman) was just beginning. We watched the whole ceremony—the marching, slapping guns against the floor, yelling salute. The synchrony between the guards was quite impressive. There was no music and no conductor and no glancing to the sides. At the end, a dude came over and wiped the statue-like guard’s face with a handkerchief while the man stared straight ahead impassively.

We took a few minutes to stare up at the beautiful wood ceiling above and admire the statue. Then we walked back across the baking hot plaza, this time with an umbrella. We checked out some breakdancers outside by the theater, drank some weird “apple milk” from a vending machine, and got back on the metro.

We got off near Winnie’s grandma’s house and stopped for some fried chicken and bubble tea at street stands. AHHH the fried chicken!! It was probably the best fried chicken I’ve ever had. It was very much like the Taiwanese popcorn chicken at Oasis on the Ave, but piping, piping hot (everything is served piping hot here) and with the most delicious spice mix on the breading. It also helped that the hot, spicy chicken went perfectly with our black tea ice cream float :D

We got to Winnie’s grandma’s apartment and waited in the air conditioned office. Some of Winnie’s aunts brought in some more sweet drinks and these incredible, also piping hot pastries which are basically sesame bagel dough wrapped around a peppery meat pie filling. We ate those contentedly and continued the conversation from earlier. Winnie’s uncle brought me a gift (!), a quite expensive looking pottery mug in the Tang three-color style.

Winnie really wanted to take a nap so I tried to do the same in the spacious living room, but I couldn’t. Ended up reading more Way of Kings. Watched a little bit of TV, which looked basically like American TV, i.e., blecch! After a long nap on Winnie’s part, we ate noodles in peanut sauce and fried rice at the enormous round table :D I heard a bit more of the story of Winnie’s parents and them moving back and forth. Winnie’s dad moved to the states for college, then back to Taiwan at his dad’s wish to work, then to Canada for Winnie and JJ’s education (where he at first had to commute to the States without a work visa), then back to Taiwan to care for his parents. Truly a man dedicated to his family!

On the way back home, Winnie and I worked on a proof that the ratio of successive Fibonacci terms approached the golden ratio. (Earlier I’d remembered an old interpretation of Fibonacci growth in terms of interest with delayed reinvestment, which gave some fun context.) We picked up some chicken, and it was as I bit into that delicious chicken that I came up with the final piece for the proof.

We arrived home. It was our last evening together. Winnie and me goofed off, finished our weird Miyazaki movie, looked at Winnie’s baby pics, packed up my stuff. It was pretty late when we decided to hit the hay.