Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

So, I just finished David Sedaris' collection of essays. It was a delightfully funny book, at times dark, but full of amazing insights and observations as well as capturing the absurdity and familiarity that comes with being part of any family. Admittedly, the Sedaris family sounds more interesting than most, but there is still something rather accessible about the way they argue, share, avoid and/or confront one another. If you want a look into the South, plus a glimpse at being slightly different when trying to fit in there, I highly recommend this book. Not to mention, if you ever felt awkward or out of place in your youth or otherwise, you realize you are not alone by reading the remarkably honest personal stories he is willing to share.

Plus, the title reminds me, I really need to get a pair of corduroy pants if I am to fit in as a professor next year.

Baptism by Fire.

So, if the Columbia web-site is correct, I am teaching a graduate course on numerical analysis during the Fall semester. Now, this may be a good thing in general, but given that it is my first course to run on my own, it is a bit intimidating. Not to mention, the last thing I would call myself is a numerical analyst. However, as I took a similar course that was taught rather well, hopefully I can draw on that experience and those references to begin designing something worthwhile this summer. Still, in the immortal words of Wile E. Coyote ... Yikes!

Food Poisoning.

So, for the last 6 hours I have been suffering the rather ignoble consequences of choosing to eat something. What exactly it was, I cannot say. But to that particular piece of organic material, I must submit defeat. You have bested me this evening.

Reflections on life in Paris.

After an exhausting, yet amazing, two weeks in Paris, I find myself back home alone in my familiar, comfortable, tiny apartment in Bonn. My last morning in Paris I had coffee with my postdoc supervisor at Columbia, grabbed a sandwich at a Lebanese place around the corner from the IHP and sat one last time on the steps of the Pantheon looking out at the Eiffel Tower in the distance. This was how I had eaten many a lunch over the last two weeks, often surrounded by friends and colleagues. As I sat there alone watching a group of family and friends gathering together to celebrate a wedding happening at the courthouse across the plaza, I had an empty feeling in my stomach from recognizing I would not see many of the people I had spent the last two weeks with again for some time. Having been surrounded by old friends for two weeks, it was a bit difficult to swallow how lonely I felt at that moment.

So, my time in Paris was spent mostly at the institute starting and completing various projects, discussing various aspects of interesting projects with old friends and new acquaintances, writing and editing various drafts, giving talks, etc.. However, I also had the chance to do some wandering around the fifth district looking for good cheese and wine to have with dinner, trying various meals at some great restaurants including delicious French and Moroccan food, strolling through the delightfully cool Paris evenings both with collections of people and completely alone, enjoying some Armagnac with a small group of friends and basically getting as much life as I could out of those few moments I was not in the office working on math. The evenings and meals were mostly beautiful, the scenery and general atmosphere breathtaking and the people (myself excluded) looking incredibly stylish as one might expect.

In general, it was all rather overwhelming and in truth coming home was a bit of a relief. I slept most of Saturday night and quite a bit on Sunday with a little work interspersed between naps. It was nice to be home and able to relax. However, now that I have recovered a bit, it is kind of sad to be removed from the experience and so far from so many old friends. Fortunately, my good friends in Bonn were free for dinner and a nice long walk Sunday night, which was a pleasant way to wind down the weekend.

This two weeks coming to a close for me means my time in Europe is winding down. It has been a rather long year, and this feels truly like my home. I have felt this sinking feeling of leaving behind something so familiar and comfortable, as well as a great anticipation for a new set of challenges and projects, plus the chance to actually restart my life. A chance to reconnect to my wife, play with my dog at night, cook dinner, host friends and generally live the family life I miss and have always dreamed of having. I know this life will not come easily at first given the two years I have spent on hiatus from it. Plus, I know a large part of me will miss the solitude, the time to think and write, the trips to Spain and Paris. However, maybe being settled will give me the time and money to actually have a hobby again, find a part of myself connecting to something outside of my head and my job.

It is done.

Well, I would not say it was an overwhelming success, but my talk inspired a great deal of questions, clarified a number of issues about the work in my mind and taught me that I think from now on I will work on giving blackboard talks instead of using slides. Admittedly, I went big giving a blackboard talk on new work, which was probably too risky. Hopefully there are those out there who measure success with degree of difficulty factored in to their assessment.

Zero Hour.

Tomorrow I go in front of the firing squad for my talk. My hope is that it will go well. I am off to my apartment to toss and turn all night. At least it will be over in 10 hours.

Oh, and Paris is still beautiful. I must stay here longer some day. Here are a few pics of the last week and a half.

The entrance to the Institute where I am working.

Yours truly.

The title of the workshop.

The whole gang.

A shot of the Luxembourg gardens.

Looking the other way.

The Fete de la Musique!

My Paris running crew ... AKA Le Grand Hommes.

The Eiffel Tower in the distance.

One more tower shot.

Garlic O'Plenty

Tonight I had a late meeting, so around 7 PM I left my office to run over to a friend's house for dinner. I arrived shortly before he returned from the market with some beautiful tomatoes, garlic, basil, onion, zucchini and pasta. It turned out, I assisted him in the cooking process. As I spent the evening chopping, tasting, experimenting, adjusting and tweaking, it occurred to me just how much I actually miss cooking ... both for myself and for others. Feeding people used to be a major part of my evening plans, but for the last two years I have hardly had the chance to cook for anyone. In the last year, I have hardly done any real cooking at all since I only have a hot plate and a mini fridge. Anyway, the tastes of good wine and garlic are still lingering on my tongue, plus cooking with the windows open to enjoy the beautiful evening air was a great pleasure. My how I love Paris in the summer.

Some Paris Pics.

So, this weekend I have settled into my small studio apartment, had two pretty good dinners, been shopping in the local markets, walked through the Museum D'Orsay, worked and caught up with several old friends.

The museum was truly amazing, but going by myself was rather lonely. First of all, art is usually designed to connect to some base human emotion, ranging from desire to disgust, and sometimes perhaps combinations thereof. I actually quite like discussing and sharing how someone else's response to various pieces might differ or enhance my own. Second of all, the main population of museum patrons in Paris during the month of June and vacationing families and couples.

Here are some pics from a few of those experiences. Tomorrow I am off to actually get my office and become an official IHP visitor. Perhaps a few more pictures will be included.

My apartment at the Villa Louis Pasteur.

The courtyard below my window.

Various views around dusk from the window of my apartment.


Scenes from my walk to the Museum D'Orsay. The highlights are of course the Seine, part of the Louvre, the Institute of France, the big clock at the museum and the Pantheon.

The seemingly very famous and rather ornate clock inside the Museum.

Some (but definitely all) of the both widely known and perhaps slightly obscure pieces I found particularly striking.

A few shots from the open air veranda at the Museum.

I have arrived.

Well, I made it safe and sound to Paris and even have quite a comfortable little studio to live in for the next 2 weeks. In quintessential French fashion, I even get the traditional fold down bed. Hopefully I will get the chance to meet up with a few people for dinner tonight and get some rest for tomorrow when hopefully I will see the Museum D'Orsay in the morning, work in the afternoon and meet some people for dinner around 5 PM. Then the real fun begins.

Off to Paris.

Well, I leave for Paris in the morning. It will be nice to get a lot of work done and see the host of analysts who will be in town. Hopefully, it will go well, but at least I get to see some old friends, eat some French food and check out the Museum D'Orsay.

A Dirty Job

Well, though I am not proud it has taken me this long, I finally finished the comedic novel "A Dirty Job" by Christopher Moore. This book was a humorous and thoughtful look at death and dying, told through the story of a hapless thrift shop owner who the universe ends up choosing to become a purveyor of items that contain the souls of those who treasured them during their lifetimes. Along the way he is forced to battle mythical creatures, raise a daughter and avoid run ins with the police as he attempts to steal items from the recently departed. Anyway, it was set in San Francisco, so filled with all sorts of nostalgic references to places I have been and at times made me laugh, though rarely out loud. All told, it was an enjoyable piece of humorous fiction with some witty one liners and an interesting topic. It perhaps transitioned me from the state of great depression and anguish my string of weighty novels had put me in, but just to be sure I am starting a David Sedaris collection of essays next. Of course, I have heard most of these stories on This American Life, but there are a few new stories to me and of course I have mostly only heard excerpts anyway. After Sedaris ... who knows? However, I have a whole shelf of weighty literature waiting for the return of the serious scholar in me.

Exhaustion and Editing

I think in all of this business the thing I enjoy the least is editing papers. Once a result has been essentially mapped out, it is ridiculously painful poring over every section of a draft looking for gaps in the arguments, logical inconsistencies, oversimplifications and typos. Currently, I have two long results (one describing certain types of solutions with for nonlinear Schroedinger equations with double well potentials and the other analyzing soliton stability in quartic KdV equations) with both of my postdoc advisors at this stage, meaning of course most of my time is spent staring at these drafts. It is my great hope to have both these items finished, submitted and off my desk by the end of the summer along with a few smaller projects that are totally doable in finite time, but of course we shall see if this occurs. Oh, dare to dream that these projects would come to conclusion. Actually, both projects leave a lot of room for deeper exploration into the topics and the methods, but it is the exploration I really enjoy. Figuring out how to approach a problem and discussing the ideas with your colleagues are the real joys of mathematics to me, whereas reading my own poor writing over and over again does not particularly hold my interest. Oh well, my hope is that it will be over soon, as well as this fit of exhaustion I am feeling due to struggling to get a good night's sleep as summer rapidly approached. Now, I am far more used to the sun though, so I am sleeping far better, which will hopefully pay off at work as well.

Hopefully, I can get a certain portion of the edits, additions and corrections done on my KdV project because it is what I have chosen to speak about at the workshop. In fact, I will speak about the linear part and my collaborator will speak about the nonlinear part, which is the first time I have ever attempted such a tag team event. My hope is that it will be a thorough coverage of the result and interest the audience enough to hold their attention for two hours, but only time will tell I suppose. Since this will be a joint effort, I would also like to get a first draft of my talk down on paper to coordinate with my collaborator who will not arrive in Paris until right before the workshop, which is still a week and a half away.

I am off to the Insitut Henri Poincare Saturday morning and look forward to what I gather will be an incredibly intense work schedule there. Of the over 100 people registered to be at the workshop I have ongoing collaborations or hints thereof with 7 of them. This sort of intensity is actually quite useful in short bursts and of course, projects move along much faster with all parties in the same location. Not to mention, several of my colleagues also share a love of French coffee, wine, bread and cheese, so there are other attractions to spending two weeks doing math in the heart of downtown just a stone's throw away from the Seine. Part of me wishes my train was leaving tomorrow, but of course then how would I get all this editing done and a first draft of my talk written?!?!

My Trip To Belgium.

Well, this weekend my friends M, H and I saw Bruges and Brussels, ate waffles, Flemish stew, mussels, fries, and chocolate, drank strong, rich beer and coffee, saw some historic sites including a church with a Michelangelo sculpture and all in all had a great time with some good friends. We even found a few alcoves in the park, and even though we knew we were awake, it felt like we were in a dream. Hopefully the photos tell the story.

A typical canal bridge in @#$%ing Bruges.

The clock attached to the bell tower as viewed from the canal.

One of the canal boats.

The player piano component to the bell tower.

Very cool clock works.

The Church of the Holy Blood ... do I haveta?

The Bruges City Hall ... even more beautiful on the inside where unfortunately photos were not allowed.

The oldest bridge in Bruges.

A nice fountain near a line of taverns and the train station.

Up close and personal with the clock.

The view of some canals from the bell tower.

One more canal view.

More internal clockworks. I wish I had time to apprentice with a clock maker.

A typical Flemmish brick building with colorful red doors.

Some beautiful flowers along the canals.

One of the largest canals on the way to see some "alcoves" in the park.

Park and canal together.

The lock building controlling some of the canals.

A pleasant courtyard view at what used to be a hospital. I could definitely heal here provided I had not been treated with Medeival methods.

More courtyard.

Some monks who were either sick and needed comforting or helping the sick and needing comforting.

A view of some delicious Belgian chocolates.

A moment of silence for the mussels lost in the production of this photo.

A clock at the Church of the Ends of the World in Brussels.

The Brussels City Hall in the main plaza.

A bigger view of the City Hall.

One more clock.

Yours truly in front of the most famous statue in Brussels ... a little boy relieving himself.