Nishant "Boss" Mohanchandra

Some bad people (probably smelly people) will theorize that I've only chosen Nishant because the man just went out of his way to get me a MilkyWay Bar at Midnight. "To hell with you," I say to these men. "My love for chocolate has nothing to do with why I believe Nishant Mohanchandra is worthy of praise!"

A weak defense, you say?

Well, I present to you the following image:

"...sup?"

Yeah, you feel pretty bad about your accusations now, don't you? As you can see above, Nishant is a man who wears glasses. When not staring down an eagle (though, granted, it was blinded) Nishant stares down lines of code in front of a computer screen. I'll spare you the detail of his love for the machine, as NYUAD Snapshots already elaborates greatly on that point.

Rather than that, as his roommate during our Summer in New York I'd like to address a side of Nishant his Snapshot doesn't comment much upon: his calm demeanor and pacifist conversation. Even when in the middle of typical Freshmen rage/whine-fests, he hesitates to pass any judgment without consideration, and even when he does, stays away from absolutes. Finding a person who Nishant actively hates or at least strongly dislikes is a feat for the patient, the persistent or the crazy.

"Hakuna Matata"

This Summer, Nishant is applying his cool-headedness and code-masterfulness at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences' Computer Science Department working on an interactive experience for the Museum of Jewish Heritage using creating a data-structure to allow museums to display text messages from their visitors in real time. This structure will afterwards be implemented on other museums, not just in the US, but stretching as far as Vienna. This is a heavy job for a freshman, but, despite the occasional wall, Nishant has given it his best. Wouldn't you call someone who takes on this project mad?

“A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it.

It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe

and move bits of it about.”

-Douglas Adams

Eric "TI-87" Johnson

Last night my heart-rate reached realms that it should never reach without being aided by the gates of hell or the throes of passion. What is usually considered to be merely a can of Vanilla-Flavored Root Beer transmogrified before my eyes into a recipient filled with nothing other than hate for all that is good and electronic, by virtue of me tipping it over my laptop. My reaction to the spillage was much akin to that of a careless father hitting his child's head against the ceiling while throwing him in the air. I was scared, confused, guilt-ridden and somehow convinced that picking it up in the air, shaking it and speaking in a calming voice would make everything better. Diverging from the cracked-baby analogy I then proceeded to lay the laptop on a thin bed of rice and try to remember which god did the whole Apple Products thing. This rumination was short-lived, and I soon started wishing there was someone nearby who could help. I was in dire need of receiving advice, being "calmed the fuck down" or at least panicked-with in loud indoor-inappropriate voices. Eric Johnson has always been a prime candidate for delivering those three.

"Juan, what have you done and where is your living room."

I present to you the above picture, not so that you know what the namesake of God Guitarrist Eric Johnson looks like, but in hopes that, despite having been digitalized and resized, you are able to perceive what lies beyond that skull. It is not merely a brain, it is a receptacle for physics, used for the common good. As a token of proof to the positive externalities this Gandalf-The-White Mater bestows upon its surroundings, I would offer up the events that led to the collective passability of NYUAD Semester 2 Physics Final. The very memory shakes my being, as every electron in my body cowers in shame at having even their most intimate properties questioned and examined so fiercely. As you can assume from my previous post, I was braced for disaster.

However, there was hope. Using nothing but a pair of whiteboard markers, a study room with whiteboard walls and all the physics he could master, Eric was able to fashion a room affectionally referred to as Physics Mecca. Along the walls lied every principle of electromagnetism and relativity which we had learned throughout the semester, and we all undertook our pilgrimage to answer the long-debated question "fucking magnets, how do they work." The room - he - delivered.

To end the description here would already give you an idea to why I found him worthy of mention, yet somehow this man has found a way to incorporate an incredible music taste, saxophone virtuosity and the practice of "sporting," which is still a mystery to me, into his hypothetical Mad Person Resume. Though I've seen each of these or a combination thereof in many different people, he is outstanding because he does not hesitate to share, whether it is his knowledge, good humor, music or secret stash of bacon. Eric Johnson never says a commonplace thing, but burns, like redheads often do, from all that's contained in his head.

“People who don't Think probably don't have Brains;

rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.”
-Winnie the Pooh

Nick "Based" Scoulios

If I were holding my thumb and forefinger very, very close to each other, you might be able to get an idea of how little I understood about physics before arriving at NYUAD. For those of you who are short on the whole imagineering mindset, that means: embarrassingly little.

Nick, as one of the NYU Washington Square Seniors, tasked with the catalysis of this new University, would be the one I'd occasionally turn to whenever I found myself unable to create more space between my fingers by myself. Not only was he helpful (and able to explain circuits to the pathetically low level in which I was operating) but also was quite skillful at using the hand-symbol I use to represent my Physics-Class shortcomings for other purposes:

A little Clue: He's got the smallest beard of the lot.

Nick Scoulios was both my equivalent to Physics Yahoo! Answers and a companion in meditation. When I say that he was "skillful" at what he did, I might be a bit hard to understand, unless they are suddenly levitating and understanding the very strings that hold the universe together, there are very few ways in which you could prove that someone can properly meditate (and even then those last two could easily be accomplished with enough knowledge of Quantum Levitation and String Theory). How "skillful" Nick was, I have gathered not only due to the consistency with which he pursued understanding more about himself and the world, but by the way in which he was able to draw other people to him, defuse situations and make the hair in the back of my neck stand up if he felt like it.

The suave man with the shades may be one of the hardest mad people to describe, for he is one of those people you just have to meet, but that just makes him even more worthy of the title. I hope to one day be able to reach people like this man, for he isn't just Searching for the Mad Ones - he attracts them.

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water.

Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup,

you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle,

you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.

Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
-Bruce Lee

János "Vroom" Kun

Second on my list of people who I will misguidedly end up embarrassing publicly (there's people reading this right?) is János Kun.

János is to automobiles what a budding 16-year old is to the world of online pornography. That is, he is shamelessly obsessed and does not hesitate to share his in-depth knowledge with his friends (Double entendres on "in-depth" and "sharing with friends" are 98% unintended and I mostly apologize).

Since meeting this future engineer, I've redefined what it is to have a passion for what you want to do. For him, anything about a car, even the process of learning what makes them tick (or bang, I'm not sure what the official car-noise onomatopoeia is) is completely fulfilling.

The pictures above show frames from a video János presented for NYUAD's Open Mic Night, in which he logged the evening he spent driving around the Yas Marina Circuit.

I would be hard-pushed to decide whether we were more excited at seeing big metal machines going really really fast (a source for entertainment regardless of nationality) or touched at how much we could tell it meant to him, to be able to be inside such a majestic machine (and, as I said, drive it really really fast).

I have no doubt in my mind that, despite the amount of misplaced pessimism that is synonymous with János Kun, his passion and ability to have those close to him love him like a brother will make him one of the people who make NYUAD the place it is. For his internal-combustion burning passion, his ability to brighten up (when plushed against the right kind of leather seats), and the ability to keep his direction in life regardless of the everyday potholes of college education, I believe János Kun is truly mad.

And preemptively to his predicted response:
"Hahaha, Dude Juan, you are such an idiot cut it out with the car references."

I will when you will buddy. I will when you will.

“A driver is a king on a vinyl bucket-seat throne,

changing direction with the turn of a wheel,

changing the climate with a flick of the button,

changing the music with the switch of a dial.”

-Andrew H. Malcolm

Florencia "Nature" Schlamp

After much pondering (something that I have the luxury of doing at much greater lengths now that I am in the beautiful land of Summer Break) I have realized one of the main barriers between me and writing in a blog is how unbearably boring I find it to think that other people might enjoy listening to me whine about how my classes are hard/not hard enough/too early/too late/life-consuming. Why would someone reading a blog titled "Searching for the Mad Ones" care for such trifle narrative? Isn't the point of the searching, to find these Mad Ones? Well, rhetorical device, you once again ask the right question and to that I believe I found the right answer. I hereby offer thou, the hauntingly attractive reader, a log of the mad ones that I've met along the way. Hopefully, in all your wisdom and ruggedly good looks you will forgive my lack of writing. Otherwise, I will continue kissing your metaphorical hindquarters (seriously, did you do something to your hair, you're looking great).

First up, a woman who might fit more under the label of "Crazy Ones" but mad nonetheless: Florencia Schlamp.

As you can see this is not the kind of person you approach with plans as dull as sitting near a fireplace sipping cognac and laughing at the lower/middle/higher classes and their folly/folly/folly. No, this is a woman who is well endowed with whatever organ secretes adventure, evidenced most prominently by the explosion of stress one can witness when she is deprived of the outside world to attend to her studies.

Florencia is studying to become a Bio major at the moment at NYUAD, working with scholar-of-action extraordinaire, Professor John Burt, a marine biologist who looks exactly like you'd expect a marine biologist to look:

Sharks are trained to punch this man in the nose in case of attack.

Overall, you might say the evidence for Florencia's madness is her love for nature (seriously people, we did not fight ourselves into houses to go back into the wild) but it is the passion with which she talks about what she loves that makes me consider her mad. We both arrived at NYUAD as tightly-wound balls of stress trying to survive workloads that would knock out a male elephant for hours. She's gotten much better at handling this and me. For being mad to live life to its fullest, mad to talk at any time or mad to save the nature we're trying so hard to get rid of, Florencia Schlamp is proof that I've started to find Mad Ones.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”

-Helen Keller