Revision as of 01:53, 12 July 2012

Hello!!

Hey, I am Brandon Tran. I'm currently a course 18 sophomore. As Vlad notes, my case of severe mental retardation is particularly noteworthy, as Mesako cannot go a day without calling me a retard. Enough so that I was Derplet, until Nathan Pinsker and Amol Aggarwal joined hall, evolving me/us into Derptrio.

Random Thing

Also at some point, when Damien Jiang said, "Holy carp", I added "on a stick!" and so Damien got really mad. I proceeded to look up if this was a thing, and found bowfishing. Arrows are basically sticks, so yeah, it's a thing. Anyways, I'm often now associated with carp, like for Secret Santa, I received many tasty fish-resembling snacks. Also I'm probably going to use Carp as my tag in Smash.

Non-Academic Things I enjoy

Manga!

In my free time, I read a lot of manga and have read or am in the process of reading Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Fairy Tail, Reborn, Beelzebub, History's Strongest, Liar Game, Prince of Tennis, New Prince of Tennis, Eyeshield 21, Slam Dunk, Gantz, Air Gear, Deathnote. I've watched FMA and Rurouni Kenshin.

Video Games

I play a lot of smash, maining Marth and trying to pick up Fox and Sheik. Leon gets mad when I play not-Marth though, and I don't really do so that much unless I'm getting annoyed at doing Marth-Sheik, which is impossible. I also use Fox when Vlad wants to play his Falco I guess. I guess I'm not really picking up Sheik; she's just easy to play so "picking" her up wouldn't require too much effort. There are too many things I can't do with Fox, though, like short hop double lasering with Y, shine out of shield, multishine, etc but I'm working on it! I guess I sometimes also play Falco/Falcon, but only when I'm really messing around, like when we do Free-For-All 7-stock Falcon on Yoshi's or Falco on FD, or 99 stock matches, since after a while my hands get tired and I just use C-stick to walk.

I also enjoy random RPGs or MMORPGs, although it's probably a bad idea to play these during the school year. I've probably played nearly every MMORPG at some point or another, though the only RPGs I've played are KOTOR and DAO.

Not Video Games

I also like playing random card/board games with hall, like Fish or Galaxy Trucker.

Things where I have to move?!

I've heard that moving is pretty hard, though I wouldn't know cuz I don't do it.

On a more serious note, though I'm pretty much a lazyass, I'm usually up for a game of Ultimate Frisbee. I guess I'll also play basketball if there are enough people who want to, maybe. I used to play competitively, for some definition of play and some definition of competitively. I guess I also go jogging, but that's because the doctor said I had to, and so I use it as my alone time to think.

Food

I also love food. It's one of the three main pleasures of life, besides math and smash. I'm always up for trying new cuisine or a new restaurant, or going to something like O'Sullivans for the nth time.

The only thing I don't like is Ethiopian food, and maybe Persian food, but anything else is fine. Alternatively, I could have just gone to shitty Ethiopian or Persian restaurants, so I guess I'd be up for even that. I joke that I'll eat anything that doesn't move, and maybe some things that do (I think I had a snail that moved once in Vietnam, not sure). This is pretty much true. I've eaten weird things. Motto: Eat first, ask later.

Classes Taken

• Fall 2011: 18.701, 8.09, 24.900, 7.012, knot theory seminar

• Spring 2012: 18.702, 18.901, 18.312, 18.783, 6.851, 21L.011

• Fall 2012: some subset of 18.905, 18.415, 18.405, 3.091, 14.01, Harvard Math 223a

I don't really know what math interests me yet, but I did a number theory REU over the summer and liked it a lot. I'm also interested in TCS though.

Feel free to ask me about anything: classes I've taken, life on hall, how to survive. I've already made tons of mistakes, so I'd be more than happy to share them so you don't do the same.