Three things marked this morning: a mathematical Eureka, a hug, and a discovery. The mathematical thought is directly related to yesterday's post on fluid dynamics so I just added it to that entry as an update. The hug I will write more on lower down. I will start with the discovery.

I came to campus a bit earlier today than I usually would, because I needed to drop off my sax into my instrument locker in Woolworth (sectionals tonight). As I was walking back down to Fine, I passed a guy standing with a table of posters and pamphlets outside of Frist. That itself is an usual enough occurrence. Outside of Frist seems to be the favourite soap box of most political activists on campus. A scan of one of the posters yielded the following words in big letters

...Katrina ... Racist ... Discrimination ... Support ...

So I figured, yet another fundraising group for Hurricane Katrina's victims. How nice of humanity.

Wrong!

I read the poster next to it. It was in simplified Chinese, and roughly translates to this:

Stop the Japanese-American imperial-capitalist encroachment on the rights of the Chinese and Koreans ...

I was like, what the fuck does this have to do with Katrina?

... long-live communism. Long-live Maoism.

huh? So I went back and re-read the first poster, in smaller fonts above the large words of Katrina and Racist, it read

The capitalist agenda is what caused the disaster Katrina, and it is those Racist beliefs...

I was shocked. Here, in the small drizzle of rain on a Thursday morning, there were commies holding a protest outside of Frist. Shaking my head and moving on was all I could do.

Now, the promised "hug".

So I was bringing my sax up to Woolworth. I was on the lawn in front of the building. There was a girl looking dazed and confused. So, naturally, being helpful, I walked up to her. And she said to me:

Excuse me, can I get a hug?

I blinked. And I said,

Sure.

And I gave her one. Turns out (d'oh) it was for a psych experiment, and she gave me a short questionnaire to fill out, besides Age and Sex, it asked two questions

1. What was your first impression after being approached and asked for a hug?
2. Why did you do what you did?

(I paraphrased. I can't remember exactly how those questions were asked.) On the questionnaire I sort of gave some BS answer (not because I was evil, or that I felt cheated, but because it started to rain and I want to get indoors), something like "Everybody deserves a hug when they feel they need one" and "I believe in the good of humanity."

But it got me thinking, why did I behave the way I did? And what was that blink about?

Here's what I think:

1. I blinked because she asked me for something I was not expecting. I was expecting her to ask me for directions because she was looking dazed and confused (on hindsight, if I were her first experiment subject, I can see how she would look dazed and confused: imagine getting an assignment in class where you need to go up to random people and ask them to hug you and ask them how they felt about that).
2. I blinked because she was hot. (Sorry S! I am trying to re-evaluate my subconscious judgment at that split moment, and so I will be as candid as possible. And I am pretty sure that the fact she was good looking played a bit, albeit subconsciously, into my thought process. I mean, if it were a random bum stinking of alcohol in the street, I probably won't have agreed so easily. Then again, if it were a random Princeton student, male or female, sketchy or not, as long as he/she was "clean", I would probably have given the hug.) I think that is why the gender was noted on the questionnaire.... maybe guys are more susceptible to giving hugs to random person if said person is female and hot?
3. Five years ago I would've shied away from her. But now I would give the hug. Why? To a certain extent, it must have to do with having a girlfriend. Now that I am a lot more used to physical intimacy than when I was younger (especially since I was brought up in Taiwan, an environment where extreme social conservatism is prevalent).
4. And the funny thing is, deep down, during that bat of eyelids, I half-expected it to be a psych experiment or one of those "caught-on-TV" things. Exposure to popular media as well as experience at a University for a whole four years did make me lose much of my wide-eyed naivete.

I am sure that that are more things to think about. But I should run to class soon.