"we are men of honor. lies do not become us."

i never thought i'd encounter this sort of dilemma:

    i've been invited at least twice [1] to the same party, which will celebrate the thesis defense of a friendly acquaintance of mine.

    so i suppose that, as a personal matter of honor, i must attend the defense. usually, this wouldn't be so tricky of a decision, but there are two difficulties:

1. the defense begins at 9 am.
   
   yes: am, meaning ante meridiem or morning .. or as i prefer to call it: pre-noon. informally, it means either sleep-time or breakfast-time, or if i wake early, math-time.
   
   
2. the thesis concerns algebraic number theory and uses 'scary' words like p-adic cohomology.
   
   me, i'm just a poor analyst [2] who only knows a definition or two from basic (co)homology and can barely remember how to do any diagram-chasing!
   

[sighs]

it is a difficult thing, to struggle with matters of honor.


[1] once was through email, but that was a mass email to invite .. well, each and every math grad student. the two other times were the ph.d. candidate (who will defend) and one of the hosts/tenants of the house/party site.

[2] to this day, i don't quite know what to call myself, other than the broad umbrella term that is 'analyst.' i've met quasi-conformal geometers, geometric analysts, and geometric function theorists, but i don't know if i would call myself one of them.

let me prove a few more theorems and write a few more papers; then i will stake a claim! (: