Number Blunder

Numbers have a good way of manipulating and controlling my life’s direction.

I was writing an entry last week at 5:00 PM when a stark realization came into my mind: I still have something to do. I ended my keyboard monologue instantly and went to my room to meet up with my Calculus book. I was embarrassed to know that he (Calculus) missed me. To make up for the absences of each other, we talked about our own journey together. Memories of limits, differentiations, integrations, maxima and minima were automatically brought up. He even mentioned something about his twin brother, Analytical Geometry. He kept on talking and before I knew it, he had begun a long, sermon-like orientation about our newest goal together: transcendental functions. Then, my time came. It’s now my turn to answer his questions accurately. That’s my assignment, by the way. And then I closed him.

Halfway down the stairs, a sudden thought occurred to me: Analytical Chemistry. Like Calculus, she (Analytical Chemistry) is fond of seeing me. Although she‘s a new-found friend, both of us make subtle efforts to keep our tacit promise to meet regularly. Her life is dominated by numbers as well. We talked about gravimetry and precipitations. I also answered some of her problems, with the help of my calculator. In times of crises, friends must always help each other. I had managed to solve some before I quit. Not so long after, I bid good bye despite her reluctance.

I stared at the wall clock (without seeing the time), and saw something not-worth-seeing-but-worth-remembering: batteries. As far as I could remember, regular batteries carry 1.5 V. Ah…V. Wait… V! Voltage! You guessed it right. I spent another reunion. This time, my guest was Physics. It (Physics) made an abstract introduction about the electric fields of point charges. It was even grateful enough to tell me about Coulomb’s and Gauss’s Laws. With the help of my calculator, I caught a brief glimpse of what it‘s trying to say.

For the third time, I exited the confines of my room to go back to the computer and escape this incongruous, makeshift reality. But as soon as I sat, a disturbing phenomenon happened.

“Matulog ka na. May pasok ka na bukas. Kailangan mong bumangon ng alas-kwatro.” (Sleep now. You still have classes tomorrow. You need to wake up at 4:00 AM).

To cut the long story short, I didn’t finish my supposed-to-be blog entry. But I was still happy in knowing that I had, at least, survived my journey with numbers. I would not be able to see them again, at least for the night. I opened the door and was met by the voice of my brother:

“Kuya, pa’no nga ba ‘yung pagsosolve ng logarithm at natural exponent?” (How do you solve for logarithms and natural exponents?).

Ah, numbers!

P.S. Sorry, I don’t have the time to return comments nor exchange links. But keep all of those coming and I’ll try to give justice to them (return comments and links) as soon as possible. Thanks!