Being in New Zealand, I am looking for the one big memento of the year. And naturally tattoos come to mind. Here, tattoos are not (necessarily) a sign of a an evening with too much drink, but are a an integral part of the Maori culture, and have been adopted by pakeha (those of European descent: New Zealand almost uniquely takes an indigenous term as a non-pejorative term for the later arriving group) as a sign of national pride. Of course, not just any tattoo would work. It would have to reflect my core values, my aspirations, the real me. So it would have to be operations research oriented. Now if I were a queueing person, I could just get Little’s Law (L= l w) (the little l being lambda), but I am not. I suppose I could get a two dimensional polytope with some objective lines put in. If I was more active in COIN-OR, their logo would look pretty nice, and I think my friend Robin would probably approve (she probably has one already!). Or with a skilled enough artist, perhaps one of Bob Bosch’s wonderful TSP arts: perhaps George Dantzig as TSP covering my back. But none of this feels right.
There is inspiration (some of it quite scary) from the rest of science in this wonderful post from the Loom. But there is also a horror story or two about.
What you should do is go check out some of the tattoo websites. Usually there are sections or forums with people there that will design tattoos. My brother is into this stuff and he was showing me how people would send in a few ideas or images or symbols to the artist and they would make a tattoo that would suit you. Of coarse you do have to pay them but sometimes its exactly what someone needs to make up their mind on a tattoo.
Beware getting a tatoo when drunk abroad.
A man was on my local news recently having done just that in Thailand and thought it looked fantastic and arty until he visited his local chinese take away and the lady couldn’t stop laughing.
She then explained what the ancient looking text said and it was not what he asked for at all.
I think it was along the lines of “I am a complete….”
He had to then have it painfully removed!!!!
Just thought I would pass on that warning to any revellers to keep in mind.
The same in Japan. Tattoos, or Horimono, is considered a form of art that few master and can produce to the level of a Horimono master. Originally, and some still do this, the tattoos are applied with sharpened bamboo sticks!
You could try “pi”. I don’t know if that is too ordinary for you though.
http://www.videoservicecorp.com/images/pi.jpg
-tod