Newcastle for me was the perfect in between of my small home town and a big city.

It's
no London, but it's definitely not Hartlepool either.

The city has so much to offer and really does cater to all tastes. The thing that attracted
me (albeit a bit cliché) was the fact it was voted number 1 on a survey of which city was
best for student night life. That massively swayed my decision as I was looking for that
famed ‘university lifestyle’. However, even if that's not your style, there's pool halls, art
galleries, theatre, cinemas, shopping hubs, football, great links to Edinburgh and other
Northern powerhouses, etc. The list could honestly just keep going on.

On the education side of things, the two universities don't really have much of a closed
campus. It’s more of an integrated into the city kinda deal, but I'm a big fan of that.
having visited other universities like Warwick where the whole campus is secluded,
Newcastle offers a lively and ever-moving landscape to immerse yourself into. Both
universities have great accreditation and I found my course to be well run also.

Having lived there for three years, and also having just moved away - heartbreaking, by
the way - I would definitely recommend Newcastle to literally anyone as a place to study.
The people are friendly, the food is diverse and the city is breathtaking!

As I traveled many cities in the UK, I could say that Newcastle University has an awesome
location where you can follow all the activities and enjoy the campus. Besides the
University, the city is so live and has a good night life on condition you have good
choices. Plus, prices are so reasonable - particularly rents comparing to other cities. With
the Northumbria University students, the population is significantly younger than other
cities. It is a very good choice for students, but I am honestly not sure about living in
Newcastle for all life and I could say that the southern cities of England have more
diverse population whereas the variety of the population in Newcastle is lower.

Newcastle is one of the friendliest cities in the UK and you will love it from get go. The
people are very friendly, they boderline do not know the whole concept of space. They
will become your BFF’s from the time they meet you, which believe you me is brilliant. It
not only breaks the ice and makes you feel accepted but you also end up making life
long friends. Going out in the city is cheap, you can go out clubbing on a weekend with
£5 and come back with £4.50p in change. Tiger Tiger is one of the popular haunts for
students and but there are plenty more cheaper options if you are looking to save for
something big at the end of the month. The town is small so you will hardly require to
take the public transport as nearly everything is within walking distance, hence saving
money. Despite not getting the accent initially, you will love this city.

United States
December, I stepped out of my bed and walked to the nearest glass window. I wiped out
the moisture and looked out to see if it was still snowing. I ran out to my mail box
expecting a credit card which would help me sustain that month. I grabbed the whole
bunch of mails and ran back to my room. As I started looking out for “my precious”, a
mail from my professor grabbed my attention. I opened the cover with a fright. It has a
white paper written on it

“May alphabets accompany you, graphs guide you, all you need is LOVE.

See you there on sunrise.”

—I

Born in a country where decimal number system was first recorded, I always fancied that
the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things. But to some it is
obsession. Obsession takes you to such an extent that you follow it too long and
become its slave.

Back in India, I chose to do masters after no one chose me to love in my four composite
years of work. With high desperation to leave the country rather than colossal dreams, i
left my country and landed in dallas, the largest metropolitan area in south. It hardly
took time for me to realize that i am still in my country which is at the other part of the
world. Travelling foreign countries increases your interest in math, all of a sudden you
start multiplying every thing with a constant number which is the foreign currency rate.
Spending in dollars often speeds up your heart beat and the conversion makes it worse.

To control my heart beat i went around the campus in search of jobs that i could do. In
fact i applied for every job that they posted and yes, i was desperate.

In my college you can make a girlfriend easier than a campus job. But its one of those
days when my misfortunes rested and I got a call for an interview of an on-campus job
as a Teaching assistant from a math prof. His name is Iyengar. I got ready quickly and
rushed to the room of the professor. I was surprised to see only nine people standing in
front of me in the line which of course decrease my odds to 10%. To add more weight to
the calculation and lighten up my chances, couple of people joined in the line after me
and we threw a formal smile at each other.

It took less than four mins for every one to come out of the room. I saw people coming
out with blank and confident faces. This only happens when you answer all the questions
and you do not want to express that fact to the sheeps standing out. Its hard to put on a
poker face. If tension can sweat you, curiosity kills you. I could not resist myself to stop a
guy coming out of the room and asked him “What are the questions?”. He looked at me
as if i was trying to steal his pants and replied “What are you?”. Before i could think of
any answer he moved away.

Its hard to understand mathematicians, Mathematicians do not study objects, but

relations between objects. Thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so long
as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant: they are interested in
form only. I am sure that answering ‘what you really are’ do not serve the purpose. Time
ran faster than my thoughts and it was my turn to enter the room. I slowly walked into
the room, the professor probably in his sixties waved his hand indicating me to take a
chair. I sat in the chair and was expecting my resume or at least my name to be asked.
The professor gave a deep grin and with a look of tiredness he said “There are things
which seem simple to most men who have not studied Mathematics”. I gave a sheepish
smile at him trying to make out some thing from those lines.

After a brief moment of pause he asked me “What are you?”

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than
solving it. Probably it is the easiest question of my life that i knew before an interview
and here i am thinking of an unusual answer.

“There are things which seem simple to most men who have not studied Mathematics.” ..
words of his clearly states that the answer is not simple. I decided to break things up and
make every word of his count.

Thoughts are like waves in the ocean. They strike you continuously one at a time. All you
have to do is stand in front and take them. Here are the results of each wave striking
me….

Every alphabet has a number, should the answer be the numbers of the alphabets ‘y’ ‘o’
‘u’. That seemed to be simple. I bet 8 out of 10 people would get to that thought. May
be it needs more than simple counting..

Dividing and conquering a problem has always been my favorite way to approach a
solution. I decided to work on ‘y’ the 25th alphabet of English literature. But
mathematicians has always worked closely with Greek literature. All you see as variables
are alpha, beta, gamma, delta.

Here is the spark to the fire, Y is also called as Upsilon, the 20th letter of Greek alphabet.
But what is to do with Upsilon!All i know about Upsilon is that in the system of Greek
numerals it has value of 400. That could be one answer.

But it has to be connected to ‘o’ and ‘u’. Before i could think about the letter ‘O’ an old
memory stuck me. Remember Pythagoras the man we would never forget as long as we

remember triangles. Upsilon is also called as Pythagoras letter because Pythagoras used
it as an emblem of the path of virtue.

Considering 400 or Pythagoras as my answers to Y, i started to think about O.

The letter O is called omicron, the 15th letter in Greek alphabets. But going again after
Greek alphabets seemed redundant and more over i do not have any knowledge on
omicron, damn i am not a true mathematician.
I need to look into other options of what O could be. The other thing that came into my
mind with letter O is a circle. Yes, what if it is not representing a letter and it is
symbolizing a figure which obviously is a circle. All we studied about Pythagoras is his
triangles but to be a mathematician you got to know more about him.

Pythagoras is not only a mathematician, he let his brain crawl into music world. He
discovered pitch frequencies in musical instruments by vibrating different lengths of
string. He had defined what exactly an octave was, so he figured this was the next logical
step and created something that is now called the Pythagorean Circle, His circle is
divided up into 12 ‘stops’ like the numbers on a clock and represented each ‘stop’ with a
number and a letter.

The last wave that hit, drained me away. I have no brain cells left to work on the last
letter. i looked at the professor, He was not expecting an immediate answer. All he was
expecting is a right answer. My brain already took control of my body and tried to push
me out of both the room and the misery. Its like you have worked hard enough to reach
a thing and you do not know what to do with it.

The last letter left was ‘U’. My time was running out and i do not have any magical
thoughts about U. After getting off from the world of Pythagoras circle every thing
around looked round. All i could see in ‘U’ is an arc of circle!

I tried to wake up my drained out brain cells and now ‘U’ looked like a semi-circle! and I
could not make much from that.

But the last held dead cell suddenly rose to the occasion May be the professor wants me
to fill the Pythagoras circle. Which means he wants the number and letters of the other
half of the Pythagoras circle, After all ‘U’ is a half filled circle.

I whispered B2, F1, C0, G1, D2 the ‘stops’ of the Pythagorean circle. After a fraction of
pause the professor stood up from his seat and walked to the door. He peeped outside
the door and turned around. He looked at me and said you have 25% chance of getting
this position. I assume that the percentage is to do with the candidates that are left out.

“Is that a right answer?” I asked him with curiosity.

“hmm! At least u took some math out of it !” he said.

“The answer i told you was about Pythagorean Circle” I said with firm voice.

“Yes..! But all i asked you was the unit of measure used in that circle, Which is “cents” “!

probably the ‘U’ which i left out represents the unit of measurement and the question
sums up to “What are the units of measurement of the Pythagorean circle?”

Those were the longest four minutes i ever had in my life.

I leaped back from this old memory with the letter of professor in my hands. The lines
again did not seemed to be straight. If three words shook my brain away, these two lines
could take me a life to solve. The first thought i could get from the lines was it definitely
involved some maps which are graphs. I fell on to my bed and pleaded myself “No..Not
Again.. You cannot waste a whole winter vacation”.

But again,

“Obsession takes you to such an extent that you follow it too long and become its slave.”

I packed up my bag and the journey began…

— To be Continued…….