Today I remembered a thing from my first years of school (well, it must’ve been around grade 3, thus as a 10+-year-old, because I had just started learning English):
I was reading an Easter poem about daffodills (the yellow flower) and it went something like “up the hill, down the hill, I see an Easter daffodill” (I really don’t remember), then at one point there’s “I’m so happy, I’m so gay“. Well, gay was a new word to me and I didn’t have a dictionary of my own, so I marched to my mum and dad and asked “what does ‘gay’ mean?”. Well they ho’hummed and grh’hmmed for a moment and then started “well, it’s when two boys like each other…” I thought to myself “yeah, homosexual, I know *that*! But what does it mean in this poem?!”. I never got a proper answer from them (as I didn’t say my thoughts aloud) so I turned to the trusty dictionary and found out that ‘gay’ means ‘happy’ (eh, why the repetition…). I could’ve saved them a lot of blushing if I’d gone straight (no pun intended) to the dictionary…

What reminded me of this? My sister’s writing her first history essay and as I was in the same school I wrote the same thing back in my days. She asked me what my title had been and it included the species (or whatever) Homo Habilis. Oh how many giggles in the classroom all those stages of human evolution have produced through the years… Usually among guys. Oh, wait. Guys don’t giggle.

@ 1:31 (well, technically it’s Sunday, but I don’t bother starting the new day yet)
I have another language-related thing. A rule of thumb, actually. You know there are two different ways (two *correct* ways) to spell the colour of elephants. You know the other is American and the other is British. But how do you know which is which? Well, the American word is ‘gray’ and the British (or English) is ‘grey’. I’m so proud of that revelation.

Another revelation, math related. You know the “problem” of rice and chess board? In a story someone convinced a person to pay (or award) them with rice so that the first square on the chessboard has 1 grain of rice, the second has 2, third has 4 etc. (a square has twice the amount of rice as the previous). The other day Dad told me that he had tried to count that with paper and pencil (when he was at school, or something) but had only got to around 50th square. Well, I tossed and turned in my bed that night and suddenly built up an equation from it. I’m not going to spoil it here in the open, but continue reading after you’ve pondered it over by yourself. And don’t tell me I must be stupid or something — it was a real epiphany! I hadn’t thought about the problem before although I had heard about it.

Well, let’s see. You have a chessboard with 64 squares ( 8 x 8 ).
1st square: 1 rice
(0+)1st: 1 rice ( = 2 1 – 1 )

2nd square: 2 rice
1st+2nd: 3 rice ( = 22 – 1 )

3rd square: 4 rice
1st+2nd+3rd: 7 rice ( = 23 – 1 )

4th square: 8 rice
1st+2nd+3rd+4th: 15 rice ( = 24 – 1 )

Thus nth square (added to all the rice before it) would make 2n – 1

The whole chessboard would have to carry 264 – 1 grains of rice, that’s 18 446 744 073 709 551 615. Can you pronounce that?