The Thin-Soled Traveler

Insomnia.

2009-12-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

I am feeling restless tonight. The semester is finally over, the holidays are around the corner and somehow I cannot sleep. The truth is I did not accomplish everything I wanted to this semester. Two of my three big projects are still teetering on the precipice of submission (though I did receive a positive review of another article that made my day earlier this week), I did not blog or take photos in any way as diligently as I did before this semester, and I cannot say my personal relationships benefited with anyone from the last 4 months of my life. I miss everyone but did not say so nearly often nor sincerely enough. Too often I found myself bogged down in my own stresses too look up and simply enjoy something. My thoughts strayed to the negative more than the positive. I essentially gave up writing, rarely talked to or seen friends and family, hardly cooked anything interesting or original ... basically I feel like I have been in neutral. The transition back to the states, back into marriage, back to Columbia, back to everything that is both the same and yet somehow very different to what I left behind so long ago has been much harder for me to cope with than I imagined.

Professionally, I would say I have been focused because at least there I have seen results. I have traveled for work to give talks, started some fascinating projects, applied for tenure track jobs, finished a paper, nearly finished three others, found some tricks along the way to solve some other projects, learned something about quantization, reviewed several papers and taught a graduate course. However, as a scientist each little victory always seems to be shrouded by the mushroom cloud of repeated failures. I know it is the name of the game in my profession to constantly go head to head with ideas that may or may not actually work, but the devastation starts to wear on you ... especially when you work in a basement, never see the sun, do not get health insurance and pay New York rent.

Personally, I just feel a void. I feel distant from everyone around me for some reason. Despite a desperate desire to connect, it seems like I am always fumbling around the right words, struggling to find the energy to reach out or just flat out avoiding interacting with people ... blogging included. I worry that having been truly alone for so much of the past 2 years, maybe it is my natural state and I just really do not know how to handle real, up close and personal relationships. I get the feeling that even my dog knows she does not get as much of me as there is to offer. Perhaps despite my willingness to communicate openly about everything with those around me, I am guarded, distracted or tuned out in other ways? Honestly, having felt isolated since my early childhood, maybe there is just no other way for me to function?

One joy I seem to find these days is in playing with the few kids I have the pleasure of knowing. However, to be honest, I have been woefully neglectful of my god-daughter, nephew, young cousins, baby cousins and the kids of friends I also treasure. However, what little time I do get to see them or learn about them makes me happier than I have felt otherwise. Honestly, a baby smiled at me in the Subway the other day and I felt some kind of crazy emotional surge. I think a lot of that feeling is that I truly love teaching and in particular watching someone learn. Sadly, my course this year really did not satisfy that need. With only two students, too little time to cover the material properly and it being my first real course to manage, many things felt lacking about the experience. I sincerely hope my students learned something but cannot say I came away feeling confident and renewed. Usually teaching takes stress out of a semester because I know I am doing something beneficial or have a particular student I came away feeling benefited from having had me as an instructor. I am teaching a larger course with a more reasonable time frame next semester, so maybe I can get some of the old verve back from transmitting knowledge. I may also get the chance to work in the discovering science room at the American Museum of Natural History soon, which could be a lot of fun and hopefully help fill the teaching void as well. Plus, I will be at NYU most of the semester, meaning my surroundings will be a lot more desirable as well.

In any case, this is completely rambling and incomprehensible but the long and short of it is that I hope to keep writing. I am not sure New Years Resolutions work, though I do know this ... in 2010 I need more emotional nourishment than I have had in 2009. When I think of the earth shattering events of this past decade, it is astonishing to me what I have borne witness to in the course of my adult life ... both from a global and personal perspective. But with horrific acts of terrorism, wars waging for the unforeseeable future, millions of citizens unable to afford basic health care, our educational system in extreme peril, global poverty and disease, near economic collapse, a culture of greed and consumption that has led to a lack of investments in our future from the top management of our corporations looking only 2 or 3 years out to maximize current profits down to the individual family member unwilling to invest in technology, infrastructure, education or anything else that would bring our local economies back, the sharply rising wealth gap, environmental dangers, prejudice and discrimination against homosexuals being built into our laws, the suppression of democracy in Iran, hurricanes, tsunamis, illiteracy, intolerance, human trafficking, religious extremism, scientific ethics violations that breach the public trust in something I love, an uncertain future for professional journalism, etc ... I need to feel like a force for good out there in this world. What my place is in it, I do not really yet know, but I would like to do something to make just one of these situations better in my lifetime. Any ideas out there?

Pride and Prejudice

2009-12-19T05:21:00.001-08:00

Just finished it ... very funny.

Thanksgiving.

2009-11-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

After making three loaves of buttermilk bread for our various festivities on Wednesday night, I went out to see an old friend I rarely get to see these days. I rarely get to see him because he lives in restaurant New York ... where night is day and day is night. In any case, it was good to see him, despite being incredibly exhausted when I woke up the next morning for my first New York Thanksgiving.

First, we went to a pot luck with a rather eclectic group, where for the first time in my life people actually gave me business cards. It was a pretty good time with a copious amount of food and nice people. The bread received a rather warm reception and the conversation flowed pretty easily given that some people there were aspiring Broadway stars, some MBA's and quants, some lonely churchgoers with nowhere else to be and well ... me. All of us crammed into a somewhat warm New York apartment and ate well more than is humanly natural.

Second, we went over to have dinner with some old friends, their parents, their 2 year old son, as well as their son's playground friend and his family. My friends were cooking so much food they had commandeered the stove in a common room of their building to assist in the preparations. Now, ideally, this meal would have started at 4, putting us home right at 6:30 or so when I expected my friends from LA to arrive at our apartment after their transcontinental flight. However, this was not to be. Everyone ran a bit late but fortuitously my friends and their family had prepared SO much food, my friends were able to come from the airport and join us for a Thanksgiving meal. The turkey was perfectly cooked (though the hosts declared it too dry), the sweet potatoes were marshmallow free and delicious, there were homemade cinnamon biscuits, crisp green beans and fresh, tart, homemade cranberry sauce. This delicious meal was then capped off by the presentation of the largest apple pie I have ever seen in my life. It was big enough to feed an army. Even though everyone had a fairly large piece, less than half of it was gone. All this delicious food was enjoyed while the kids chased each other around, played with Mindy, made music and tried on fireman outfits to the general delight of parents, grandparents and guests alike. It was a great meal, but we were all exhausted and before it was too late grabbed a cab home for the four of us ... plus Mindy of course.

Upon arriving home our friends surprised us with a new version of Scene-It, which we gladly cracked open and played several rounds of while our stomachs began to slowly forgive us (or at least I felt this way) for the day of overindulgence. It was a lot of fun and my personal record was 5-1 for the night. Though sadly I felt I had no real astonishing answers or flashes of brilliant, insightful recall. I pretty much got lucky. But, I will take it as this morning I am not nearly as lucky, since I am sitting in my office waiting for a collaborator to be free in order to discuss a project we need to have submitted within a week or two. I hate abandoning my friends for a morning, but this does need to get done so hopefully it will pay off in the end. In any case, he is about to be free, so I should wrap up. In any case, that was Thanksgiving for me this year.

AMNH

2009-11-25T18:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it is in. My application to volunteer at the Natural History Museum is in. We shall see if it works out, but hopefully this will give me a way to get out of the house and do something worthwhile.

Catching Up on Photos...

2009-11-25T17:52:00.001-08:00

These photos go back to my last night in Germany with a very old friend, attending the US Open including a Williams Sisters match and my trip to Austin where I saw my cousin D. Sadly I have been bad about taking my camera with me these days, but hopefully I will be able to steal some photos from Amber to document other experiences I have had. In any case, on this night before Thanksgiving, I wanted to try to catch up and bring myself back to keeping up with documenting my adventures.

Austin:

The US Open:

Last Night In Bonn with Anne:

Everyman

2009-11-25T17:42:00.000-08:00

While my second loaf of buttermilk bread is coming together, I figured I would write about the book I just finished, namely Everyman by Phillip Roth. This is my first Roth novel, and he is certainly gifted at concisely capturing the emotions one feels in various parts of their life. Death is the central theme here, and the character relives his greatest triumphs and tragedies, moments of extreme virility and tremendous frailty. It is a life both well led and full of hurtful acts and regrets. Though this man was perhaps too old for me to fully understand his reaction to things like the terrorist acts of 9/11 and a loss of one's former perceived glory, but it was a captivating perspective on death and dying. As I think about death more than I care to admit, I did appreciate the read and particularly will come back to this book for the words to express the way I am feeling when I eventually lose those I love.

For Shame.

2009-11-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

So, although it is not reflected here, I have been in the mood to write quite a bit lately but often just too tired or distracted to do so. To that end, I want to try to start posting stories more often (hopefully daily) and get back in the routine of the actually recording my thoughts. If anyone out there who actually reads this blog would do their best to prod me along in this, I might need it.

A Prayer for Owen Meany.

2009-11-24T05:03:00.000-08:00

I just finished this book by John Irving, which surprisingly I really enjoyed. I say surprisingly because having started this book before and put it aside out of boredom, it was more out of desperation I picked it up off my shelf again for my subway reading selection. However, this time around I found it incredibly endearing, funny and particularly true to the experience of being a young boy. Some of the things that happened to John Wheelwright as he became an adult seemed a bit far fetched, particularly his difficulty in meeting women. I do not know why it struck me as so unrealistic, but perhaps it is because I myself feel like a Joseph much of the time but was able to at least find one woman who was interested in me. Also, the character of Hester was a bit hard for me to find believable. Throughout the book, I was unable to get a clear picture of her in my head, which to me means the character was a bit ill-formed. However, some of the characters seemed all too real. I felt far more afraid of the similarities I saw between myself and Lewis Merrill, the individual whose constant feelings of doubt, fear and guilt drive him to weakness and ineffectiveness both personally and professionally.

I am making too much of the faults and dark themes of this book, since really it is one of the funniest, most hopeful books I have read in a rather long time. It actually made me laugh out loud regularly and molded some incredibly lovable characters in Owen, Tabby, Dan, the Grandmother, the cousins and even the town players. In the end, this was really a fantastic tale of friendship and loss.

Also, as an English teacher, Wheelwright also comments that the true wit of an author is lost on the young, who are all driven only by plot and action. It shames me to say, this statement applies directly to me. It has taken age and experience to find the joy in subtle observations about life, society and relationships buried in pages of detailed descriptions. In any case, I am glad I read this book as an adult, as I would not have appreciated it any earlier.

Quick Question...

2009-11-05T19:54:00.001-08:00

Does drinking mint tea while winding down after editing papers all evening count as a new hobby? I am hoping so, because then I am well on my way to being more well-rounded.

In One Week.

2009-10-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

I am already getting very excited about my cousin from Berkeley coming to check out the Columbia and Yale Engineering schools next week. First of all, have just lost her second grandparent in one year, I want to see how she is and spend some time with her. Second of all, I really hope she comes our way for college. Her parents were especially generous to me in graduate school, but besides returning the favor, I just think it would be great fun to have her in New York. I teach in the same school she would attend, so we could have lunch once in a while, Amber and I could treat her and her friends to some non-college food from time to time, once in a while we could catch a show, plus she could come over to enjoy some regular home life and do laundry. It would be nice to get to be there for her the way her parents were for me. Plus, we miss her and her family terribly after the years we spent together in Berkeley, so having her close would keep them close too. Of course, she needs to pick the school that will give her the best chance for success, but hopefully that will be relatively near us ... if not in the same building. Ha.

Austin City Limits.

2009-10-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

So, last night I arrived safely in Austin and stayed at my cousin D's house right in the heart of downtown. Unfortunately she has to travel for work today, so I only get to hang out with her for one night. It was also nice to meet her Beagle named Barney, who I had never had the pleasure of knowing until last night when we shared a bit of my late dinner.

Speaking of which, if you will allow me to digress ... if a flight goes from 7:00 PM until 11:00 PM, give us something more than some tiny pretzels. I had thought I saw Continental adds saying they still served food on flights, but I must have been wrong. Oh, and also, if you are someone who puts on an eye cover and brings 2 fluffy pillows to sleep on for an entire flight ... get a window seat. Some people on the interior might need a kleenex or glass of water at some point people.

But I digress. Today I will have breakfast with my cousin, then hang out at the UT math department before giving my talk at 3:30 PM. Then, tonight I get to have some good Austin Mexican food with some friends and colleagues before heading to Waco in the morning. Plus, I have my camera and hope to take some good photos of the city to post sometime soon.

It seems I will have an old friend and true Cretan to keep me company on my drive, which I will certainly appreciate given that I have not really driven a car very much over the last 2 years and there will be many insane college students heading to the OU-Texas game on the same road. Speaking of which, I was thinking of thanking the organizers for inviting me so deep into enemy territory to give a talk, but feel like the joke could work better. Any suggestions?

Regarding my budding illness, I still feel fine physically, but definitely have some nasty stuff happening in my sinuses. This worries me a bit about visiting my great aunt in Dallas, who is undergoing chemo. I do not want her to get sick with her weakened immune system. I will have to play it by ear I suppose, but hopefully the warmer, drier air here will help clear out my problem. Of course, that could be the medical practices from the Makioka Sisters talking.

The Makioka Sisters.

2009-10-15T05:24:00.000-07:00

So, I started this book just a bit before I left Germany and shamefully it has taken me this long to get through this 500+ page slog of a novel. On the plus side, it definitely gave me a glimpse into some very traditional aspects of Japanese culture (I particularly enjoyed the haikus written or quoted throughout) and particularly portrayed interestingly how regular citizens in the Axis felt leading up to World War II. However, though at times I liked the characters, I had a hard time connecting with them deeply. For instance, just after we found out Taeko had escaped the massive flood, I put the book down for 3 or 4 days without really being bothered by how she had survived that whole time. Perhaps this is a cultural issue, perhaps it is a class issue, perhaps it is a generational issue, but the problems they felt most difficult in their lives were a challenge to care about towards the end. In truth, if there had been one more miai gone wrong, I would have just not finished the book. Still, I did appreciate the insight into another culture, which is why a friend recommended it in the first place, so in that regard it was a success. But come on, can we at least agree the ending is rather unsatisfying. After all that, Taeko's baby dies and we do not even see Yukiko through being married?? I was both glad it was over and a bit angry we did not get at least to know if all the failed attempts had been worth it at finding a successful match. Not to mention, the war was just escalating and transitioning into the way it impacted the family and Japan as a whole would be a rather fascinating sequel.

Well Howdy.

2009-10-14T11:46:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I hop on a plane for my first trip of the semester. Tomorrow I give a talk at UT-Austin, then head to Waco for an AMS Session. Though I have never been to either place, I am really only looking forward to visiting Austin. However, I will have a few good friends to see since I am close enough to home to know a relatively large number of people. To look presentable, I got a haircut today from a somewhat overpriced, though competent and talkative Brazilian man on the upper west side. My life as it stands is completely dominated by work. On top of my usual load of work, this weekend I had a collaborator in town and talked in depth about some rather complex mathematics for 4 days in a row. I learned something new about the Quantum Hall Effect and some Riemannian Geometry. As a result, I am exhausted, slightly ill and nervous about making a good impression during my talk tomorrow. In any case ... wish me luck.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Emily!!!

Time.

2009-10-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

If I am honest, it is hard to believe I have been back in the US for an entire month. I miss everyone and my life in Europe terribly, though hopefully I'll have a semblance of that here soon as well. There has been so much going on around me, the last several weeks have all blurred together. To be honest, I have a hard time distinguishing the chronological order of several events. Now that I am settled once more, time seems to be progressing linearly again, which is a great relief. However, it was one of my favorite parts of Slaughterhouse 5 when the protagonist described his ability to travel through the time dimension of his life and becoming accustomed to seeing in 4 dimensions. In any case, in all this time, I have reacquainted myself with my surroundings, made love to my wife, argued with my wife, walked my dog, actually made a few dinners, had a few beers, sent in my passport for renewal, begun teaching, given two research talks, established a routine, set up a home office, had a paper accepted, made serious headway on two drafts near completion, started thinking and discussing seriously a few exciting new projects, begun the process of learning some mathematical biology, figured out how to use a cell phone again, missed using German and strolled longingly passed a Brooks Brothers in search of a new umbrella. This weekend I will host my first visitor of the semester and next week I make my first trip to a conference. Needless to say, it has been a full month and seems to be a full year ahead of me. I will be sending out some job applications to see if I can get a permanent position this year, which is both exciting and overwhelming. All I can do through all this is try to keep my head above water, get some work done and try to become the man I hope to be by 30, which may be here before I know it at this pace.

On a side note, an opportunity has arisen to go see The Marriage of Figaro at the Met with an old friend for her 30th birthday in November, which makes me incredibly excited. With all the poverty and podcasting in my life the last couple years, there has not been nearly enough music.

Hello Again.

2009-10-03T11:42:00.001-07:00

Well, the internet has finally arrived at Marzuola Manor here in New York, so I will start writing new posts here very soon, hopefully tonight in fact. So much has happened in the last month I am a bit intimidated at finding where to start. Unfortunately, the last month has been quite a blur, but writing about it should help me find some clarity. However, I cannot start right now, as I am off to continue writing lecture material for my class.

Talk to you soon.

A Quick Note During Lunch

2009-09-23T09:21:00.001-07:00

So, I have neither died nor given up on writing, it has just been a rather busy three weeks and my house still lacks a reliable internet connection. However, within two weeks at least one of those issues will be resolved so I can once again wind down my evenings by penning some of my random musings and telling stories of things that at least interested me when they happened.

Number 9 Dream

2009-09-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

I finished this somewhat existentialist, somewhat stream of consciousness, somewhat violent action romp, somewhat mystery, somewhat romance, somewhat coming of age novel last night on the subway going to meet up with two good friends from New York. I definitely enjoyed this novel, the rich imagery and deep personal insights, clever stories within the story and intricately structured dream worlds, though I was a bit nonplussed with the non-ending if you will. Of course, it was befitting the theme and did leave me thinking quite a bit, I suppose I am just in the mood for resolution right now. Still, I could not put this book down this week and highly recommend it especially as subway reading. The novel is crafted in these small, occasionally slightly disjoint sections, meaning it is perfect for people who sit down to read in short bursts.

Another aspect of this novel is that despite being set in a bustling Tokyo and a damp, rural Kyushu, the author is not Japanese. I found much in common with the way the main character perceived the world around him and his experiences within that world, but wonder if this qualifies as branching away from my Eurocentric literary perspective. It seemed to capture some aspects of the Japanese literature and culture I have had a bit of interaction with to this point, but I am somewhat fascinated by an outsider taking an insider's view of another culture. I would like to know both the outsider's perspective on the experience as well as an insider's response. Sadly, I have neither, but did enjoy the read.

Update.

2009-09-05T06:51:00.001-07:00

Well, I am here in New York at an internet cafe (OK ... a Starbucks but I am not proud of it), trying to readjust to life back on the grid, write some lectures for my class starting September 10th, get my head back into doing calculations, edits and writing for research, figure out how to be married again, dealing with the sudden lack of time and abundance of obligations I feel, learn how to use a cell phone again and generally figuring out how to re-enter my real life that seems to be made for a person similar to me but not quite the same anymore. Right now, I have no internet connection at home, but eventually will be posting more regularly I hope about this transition and all the struggles and joys that come with it.

My Departure.

2009-08-31T02:23:00.000-07:00

After arriving home from my last dinner, I finished packing the last few items I could until I had actually showered and dressed the next morning. I checked e-mail, generally fidgeted with certain items and basically expended whatever nervous energy I had. Around 1 AM or so, I finally fell into a deep sleep and was actually rather rudely awakened by my alarm clock at 5:30 AM. After eating the last two granola bars I had in my apartment for breakfast, I showered, dressed, packed my toothbrush and checked my itinerary one last time. As the pre-arranged time I had agreed to meet my friend generous enough to take me to the airport approached, I carried my largest bag downstairs with the last bag of trash. When I came in I pulled the rest of my things out in the hall and dropped my keys for the last time in the wicker bowl on top of the microwave I have dropped them in all year. After one last glance to make sure I had everything important, I cracked the window to let out the moisture from my shower knowing the cleaning woman arriving at noon would also appreciate the room being slightly cool. Convinced I had everything I could take with me, I shut the door knowing I had no chance to open it again.

After carrying all my bags downstairs to the curb, I waited a few minutes for my friend to arrive then helped him cram my three bags into his rather tiny Volkswagen. Still, miraculously it all fit and we were off to the airport. We chatted as we had every Friday or Saturday night since I came to Germany, neither of us really acknowledging how different our lives will be in just a few weeks. Me of course in New York, him taking a new position as well. We departed with a casual goodbye, though I think we both understood the year behind us had been too full for our friendship to be considered casual.

After dragging my bags up to the Lufthansa counter, there was a problem. My flight from Philadelphia to New York had changed times and numbers, so they had to verify that I was still booked all the way home before they could check my baggage. In their rather efficient, German way, they were very polite and helpful, informing me we would have to wait until the US Airways office opened to settle the issue. Well, twenty minutes later, I had been booked, paid the extraordinary fee for my third bag and was walking towards my gate. Out of habit, I walked towards the gate I always leave from at Cologne-Bonn Flughafen, only to realize I had gone into the wrong terminal. So, after a much needed stop at my usual coffee place and my last full interaction in German, I went towards passport control.

There, they told me it was in the system that my wallet had been stolen. Yes, I said, many months before but it was returned to me by the city of Nantes. Well, in that case, she wanted to photocopy my license, my passport and file a report so it could be removed from the computer. As my flight left in ten minutes, I was a bit apprehensive, but I acquiesced, as after all after the year I had enjoyed here, what right did I have to refuse a German bureaucrat some paperwork to do??

After finally resolving the wallet problem, I was allowed to continue to my gate where I rode the bus to the plane with three British women who were returning from some sort of ladies weekend and giving each other a hard time about how much money the spent. It was nice to simply hear English spoken around me and to finally be on my way. The flight from Cologne to London was easy and featured an impressively smooth landing, my last Apfelschorle, an easy Monday crossword and a short nap just to name a few highlights. Deplaning I was struck by the strange feeling of having all the signs around me written in English. Though the voices had been somewhat comforting and pleasant, the paradigm shift made me rather aware I was really leaving Germany. A wave of regret for the lack of German I had learned in my time there rolled over me, knowing I had squandered an excellent opportunity to actually become bilingual.

Then, tragedy struck. The last year has stripped me of and given me many things, and through all those times I had a sturdy umbrella by my side. It was my trademark, a companion of sorts, and really the one thing I wanted to take with me from Europe to New York. Last time I came through Heathrow, they had hassled me about it, but it would not fit in my luggage so I figured I had to try to carry it with me. This time I made almost all the way through the flight transfer stations before at security the last woman refused me. The first woman had been kind enough to see the sadness in my eyes at having it confiscated, so she put it through to see if the woman at the end of the line would accept it. Of course, that woman saw it, immediately pulled it off the belt and told me a smaller umbrella would be allowed but that she was keeping this one. Well, what could I say to her? She looked at me cold and unfeeling. I acknowledged to myself that part of me knew this would happen, but I had come so far and hated to leave it behind. However, I shrugged my shoulders, nodded and moved down the line. It seems I will be leaving Europe exactly as I came. One last act reminding me that my life here as I know it was coming to an end.

After yet one further delay requiring another call to US Airways because the woman handling my transfer was not happy that one of my boarding passes said E-ticket and one said flight coupon required and unwilling to accept the Lufthansa issued boarding card for the flight as said coupon, and I was back in the Heathrow Terminal I last saw 9 months ago. Without thinking, I realized I had sat down on the very bench I had slept on during that long night on my way to my cousin's wedding. And here I sit at a free internet terminal, collecting my thoughts and the remaining items I need to write about the last few days. Though there are surly US customs agents, much heavy lifting, long flights, a long layover and a somewhat emotional reunion ahead of me, it feels like I am almost there. My flight will board in an hour and somehow, after all of this, I will be headed home.

So Long and Thanks for All the Pig.

2009-08-31T02:14:00.001-07:00

It need to write a post summing up my time in Deutschland and this title loosely borrowed from Douglas Adams seemed a fitting tribute. So, as I find time, I will be uploading bits and pieces of this post, which will also be recorded for poserity in a beautiful book a friend of mine gave me for Christmas. So, here goes:

Dear Germany,

Ideas to Expand On:

Things I Loved: Trains, Walks, Urban Design, Institutes, Coffee, Ice Cream, the Rhine, Friday Night Beer, Biergartens, Cabbage, Travel, Learning something of a new language, Reading, Music, Cobblestones, Holidays, Alps, Chocolate, West Germany, Berlin, Good Friends, Local Schnapps.

Things that were Hard: Formalism, Pronouncing 'ch' as 'sch', switching the 'y' and 'z' on the keyboard, Loneliness, some remnants of cultural superiority, dealing with a recent tragic past, Bavaria, Local Schnapps.

More to come,

JLM

My Last Day.

2009-08-31T02:12:00.002-07:00

My last morning in Germany was spent mostly feeling that Schnapps should be a controlled substance. However, I managed to recover early enough to make it for one last lunch and afternoon with my host and his family. We ate, dodged and trapped wasps, went on a bike ride, had some cake and said goodbye. Despite the communication barrier, I think his kids (especially the youngest) really did enjoy my company. A handshake was of course the proper German goodbye, but it was unsatisfying in a way. They simply said they wished I could come again next week, which was more than enough to express how they were really feeling.

On my last night I met up somewhat randomly with an old friend from high school and have my last Jaegerschnitzel before leaving Bonn. This is the kind of friend where no matter how little you have talked in the past months or years, you always pick up right where you left off last time you saw each other. It was lovely to see her, drink a final beer (however painfully after the night before) with some close friends and fill my stomach with some hearty German fare for the last time in a while. It was subdued, relaxed, reflective. A perfect way to cap off the year and ease my nerves before going home to pack.

The Farewell Fete.

2009-08-31T02:12:00.001-07:00

So, on Saturday night of my last weekend I accompanied some friends to a party to really celebrate the end of a term and a birthday. Fortunately, it also doubled quite nicely as a farewell get together. After arriving, we talked, enjoyed the beautiful weather out on their balcony and grilled copious amounts of meat on their barbeque, then ate and drank heartily. Early in the night we simply laughed and told some stories, mostly small talk. After it got dark though, the local Schnapps came out and we started really reminiscing about the last year. The Schnapps was interesting, sweet with a somewhat grassy flavor. Also, it was incredibly strong. It was a fitting way to depart, forging deeper friendships and reflecting on the struggles and successes of the past year. Plus, the local Schnapps claimed plenty of my brain cells in the name of Deutschland. In any case, my friends saw the time and dragged me out the door, then we caught the last tram to the train station. After orating for I really do not know how long about how much I love the violin, the train arrived and it was time to say goodbye. A quick hug and a wave goodbye was all I had as the doors slammed and they were whisked away to Cologne. I stumbled home and hobbled to bed. The last full night of sleep I would have in Bonn and the last time I would see my friends before departing. I was drunk, sad, and also happy ... until the next morning when I was mostly just sad. Ha.

Auf Wiedersehen.

2009-08-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it appears my time here in Germany has actually come to an end. A friend of mine will be picking me up to take me to the airport here in just about half an hour. In a little less than 24 hours I should be in my new home in New York. Sadly my apartment here looks not much different with all my things packed, but hopefully my absence will be felt in other ways. To everyone here in Europe, I will miss you all. To my family and friends in the US, I'll be home soon. So, off I go.

My Last Day of Work.

2009-08-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

Today will be my last official day as a postdoc here in Bonn. The year has been very hard for me in many ways, but professionally it was rather satisfying. Besides the department (namely my advisor) making my move to Germany fairly simple by providing me with housing and support, the resources and the facilities of the department are second to none. Because of all the activity here, of course the seminar schedule is constantly filled with interesting speakers such as Curtis McMullen and Edward Witten. The new building is rather spectacular actually, and the relevant groups are all placed close together. For me, this mostly means I have easy access to my fellow caffeine starved postdocs to grab them for a late afternoon coffee and discussion.

Somewhat miraculously, during a conversation over coffee in my second week here, my advisor happened to think he could answer a very hard question if I might actually be able to answer a slightly easier one. Well, in the end, it turned out to of course be far more complicated, but with a fair amount of work and a few helpful discussions with colleagues, we are now sitting here with a draft over 60 pages long incredibly near completion after just this one year's time. It is amazing how it came together and really would not have had it not been for some very key insights from my advisor. However, I am glad it did and look forward to getting it out there.

To be fair to Columbia, I am rather lucky to have both postdoc advisors I have had to this point. Though it can be exhausting some days, they have both been extremely generous with their time and each day involves at the very least having a coffee together to talk about our projects and other interesting mathematical concepts. This process will pick back up at Columbia next week where the coffee is a bit more expensive, but at least it is closer to the office. This way, my legs can get a bit of a rest.

In addition to my time in my group alone, with there being the separate HIM, during my first months I met some new colleagues with whom I became fast friends. From them, I have started trying to learn a few things about water waves as well as vortices in micromagnetics and other applications of the Calculus of Variations, a subject I have always liked. As I will be housed in a fairly applied department the next two years, getting some very physical projects going would be a nice development.

In no uncertain terms one can claim this year has been rather successful for me professionally. I am quite glad I came and feel rather lucky to have had the experience of living and working with the friends and collaborators I have met here. To be honest, the idea of going home seems so appealing and overwhelming, it has not really occurred to me that this is my last day to go to work in this department. It disappoints me to be leaving in many ways, but sadness is not the correct word right now. I have made some very good friends who I know I will miss terribly and have started a few interesting lines of research I do not want to lose momentum on studying as always happens a bit in long distance collaborations. However, I am very aware that those friends are organizing workshops I will attend within months really and of course know I will continue working with them on asking and answering interesting questions as long as they let me.

I guess all I can say is it is hard to leave a place that has come to feel like a bit of home for a period of time, where the people and department have made you feel so welcome and given you opportunities you never dreamed of having, where colleagues turned into both good friends and collaborators with great ease, and where something you love is studied with great intensity and passion. However, ahead of me lies moving back in with my wife, trying to reconnect, starting to teach, new and interesting challenges personally and mathematically, as well as the knowledge that maybe all the craziness that comes with a life of constant flux will finally dissipate if I can find someone willing to hire me permanently in two years. In short, though leaving my life here behind is hard to do, getting on the plane on Monday holds the promise of a future as yet unknown but one with great possibility.

My Literary Travels.

2009-08-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

So, besides traveling a great deal actual places this last two years, I have also taken many a literary journey. Some of those have been mentioned in the blog already, but just so I do not forget the other (non-math related) books I have read, I figured I would attempt to record them here in chronological order:

The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
The Body Artist by Dom DeLillo
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Last One In by Nicholas Kulish
White Noise by Dom DeLillo
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
I Am America ... And So Can You by Stephen Colbert
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Iliad by Homer
The Big U by Neal Stephenson
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
Zodiac by Neal Stephenson
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose
Brsingr by Christopher Paolini
Discoveries by Alan Lightman
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
This Way For The Gas by Thadeus Borowski
Herzog by Saul Bellow
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Making Up For Lost Time.

2009-08-24T17:14:00.000-07:00

Since I only started this blog about 7 months ago, I figured it would be useful to go back and post some of the pictures I have taken from previous trips as a way to catch up. This week is going to get rather busy rather fast, so this seemed like a cheap way to keep some posts going as well. So, here is my first installment from way back in late November of 2008...

So, this weekend I took a train down to a town called Garmisch-Partenkirchen to meet my old friend ES (nee P) and her family. It was a great time exploring around and playing with their kids. We stayed in a US Military hotel called the Edelweiss (C is an officer and pilot in the Navy), so it was a little like sleeping in America and visiting Germany and Austria during the day. Of course, it was nice to turn on ESPN to check the score of the OU game Sunday morning. Ha. I had to bum off E and C within the gates of the hotel because they only took dollars!! Their daughter's names are K (3 years old) and P (5 months old). It was nice to see an old friend and play many games with her daughter. Today, we drove into Munich and though it was a bit nerve wracking finding my train station, I wound up running to the platform with just 1 minute to spare!!! Anyway, hopefully the pictures will tell the story but it was a great visit.

E with K (who is smiling!) after getting back in the car following our trip to Innsbruck, Austria. I of course left my camera in the car but Innsbruck was not terribly exciting, even though it has been home to two Winter Olympics. However, K got to ride both a real pony and a carousel pony, so it was still a success even though it was wet, cold and hazy all day! Chris also showed some mad skills handing the car on ice driving us all around.

The carousel, Christmas market and the mist covering the mountains as we left Innsbruck.

The view from our hotel room at the Edelweiss. There were two beds and a fold out couch for the five of us, but only one shower. So, we all slept comfortably but had some time to get going in the mornings.

C, E and K posing in our room with P hiding on the bed amongst her blankets. :) The day in Innsbruck was so hazy we came back to the hotel. C and I took K and P to the pool while E visited the spa.

Here is a clear view from the hotel.

On Sunday, we headed up to what we understood was the tallest peak in Germany or the Zugspitze. As we left I could not avoid this shot since it looks like the quintessential Alp.

E and K getting bundled up for the trip to the top. Fortunately they have a gondola, we were not preparing for a major hike. :)

P in her polar bear suit will make you friends instantly anywhere in the world.

C with his girls waiting for the train to the gondola.

E and me waiting for the train also. As you can see, I was on blanket duty.

E, C and P enjoying the view as we go up the mountain.

P seems to be wondering just what is in store for her on this trip.

A view from the point where you get off the train.

Some easy ski slopes with a rather interesting system of lifts.

K peering out the bottom window of the gondola up to the peak.

Mountains in the distance.

More gondola pics. I believe that is E's hand also getting the same photo.

Yours truly on the gondola.

The view from the top is pretty spectacular.

An amazing mountain lake visible from the peak.

Another lake shot.

Yet another.

What can I say ... I like lakes.

Here I am at the peak. It was -20 degrees C (~ -4 degrees F), so we quickly went in for lunch and warm drinks.

P going local.

E and K at lunch. After this, we went and had hot drinks and awesome chocolate cake before leaving the peak.

Everyone watching our new view from the larger gondola that goes ALL the way down the mountain.

P has to be the most laid back baby in history. Certainly the most laid back polar bear.

E on the gondola.

C and P warming up and resting after our trip to the top.

Scenes from our morning in Munich. This happened to be a nice building near where we parked.

Though it is being renovated, this is the rather impressive Frauenkirchen. I would have shots from inside but Mass was going on while we were there so I did not get to take any.

One of many gratuitous clock shots.

Crazy old tombstone.

Busy Munich area.

The Glockenspiel!!

More Glockenspiel aka another clock shot.

The moving pieces of the Glockenspiel.

The actual Munich town hall building.

This building was obviously really amazing to me. However, Bavaria was kind of an odd place. I liked it, but I think I like Western Germany a bit more.

E and I are both into clock shots.

Managed to get two clocks in this shot of old town Munich.

K really liked the fountain.

E and K posing by the fountain.

One more clock.

Extreme close up!!

The front of a museum.

A War Monument.

K enjoying a giant Christmas tree before we high tailed it back to the car and got to the Munich-Pasing train station just in time.

The Order of the Stick.

2009-08-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

My friends M&H invited over for one last marathon gaming session here in Bonn on Saturday, where we played a pseudo role-playing game based on a comic satirizing role playing games called the Order of the Stick. Well, the game, despite being remarkably complicated is really a good deal of fun, but it was mostly nice to have to time to spend one more afternoon with my friends. They have been my rock solid Friday night companions for all my time here, took me to Bruges and have become rather good friends I must say. Certainly my time here would have been rather empty without them. M and I have been chatting about vortices in micromagnetics, so hopefully a project will come out of it that allows me to visit again in the near future. They, their crazy games and always interesting conversations will be deeply missed across the pond.

Bizarro Me.

2009-08-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

So, I have a friend here who did his Ph.D. with my postdoc advisor and his postdoc with my Ph.D. advisor. He spent the last year in California while his wife was back in Germany, while I spent the last year in Germany apart from my wife in North Carolina. My wife is an MBA, his wife is a Ph.D. in economics. He has about a 45 minute commute to the office in Bonn, I will have about 45 minutes to Columbia. It is rather strange how parallel our lives have become.

Well, we have had the pleasure of knowing each other in grad school because our advisors work together often, in organizing a conference together and now living in the same country the last two months. It has been a real joy to have a good friend here who has been living this same life, just to have coffee, talk about life or math, and simply to laugh at things we both have become fans of in an attempt to distract ourselves the last two years (both of us are big Flight of the Conchords fans for instance). Plus, we have started working on a really cool project looking at Strichartz estimates on domains with corners, which has been a lot of fun to discuss.

In any case, tonight I was able to have a nice dinner at their house before the movie since they very generously were donating a box to pack all my books. It was only this past weekend they were finally able to move in together, just one week before my grand experience ends. They seemed so relieved and happy to simply have their lives back in order, it gave me hope for experiencing the same thing soon. However, there is a tinge of sadness in that I only wish they had been here for more of the year. I immensely enjoy their company and will miss out of the chance to get to know them better since they are really just getting settled as I have one foot out the door.

Inglourious Basterds.

2009-08-24T15:58:00.001-07:00

Tonight I went to see the new Tarantino film in Cologne with several people from the department and their friends. It was interesting watching this film both because I believe it is my first time to see a film prior to hearing it reviewed on Filmspotting in the last 18 months and of course because I saw with an entirely German audience in a small arthouse theater.

I should preface my comments by saying that though I have found his dialogue witty and his film making beautiful, I have never been a huge Tarantino fan. So, when I had read reviews telling me to expect him to trivialize the Holocaust, I was certainly wary. Certainly his previous movies have pushed the limits of decency in many ways, so this I knew would be a slippery slope.

Now, though I believe there will be many who do not understand my reaction, I absolutely loved this movie. It actually really made me come to realize just what makes Tarantino so brilliant.

First of all, he made the blood thirsty Americans out for revenge as violent and repugnant as the Nazis. I do believe he certainly made the anti-Nazi cause out to be more just, but they were no more human than the other side in their actions. Or at least I suppose I should they no more embodied what most people would define as humanity. However, I think that showing mankind is extremely capable of such things is the strongest aspect of the film. One of the first lines in the film is that the main SS Colonel we follow through the film utters is that he knows what human beings are capable of doing when they have given up their dignity. This applies to all sides. Not to give away too much, but most characters in fact find themselves on both predator and prey at one point or another ... even seemingly the most innocent and beautiful of them all.

Second of all, he of course makes the violence both poetically beautiful and horrifyingly gory at the same time. It is a testament to his skills as a director that he can make his shots so glamorously romanticize the very violence with which he is simultaneously shocking us. In fact, I used to think he was somewhat gratuitously violent, though I now feel he is just facetiously (and brilliantly mind you) showing us exactly what we as a society crave in such a way that it must be facetious. He shows us that the violence is a part of all of us, and if we want to look at it, he will show us the worst of which we are capable in the most beautiful way possible.

Third, I would like to talk about the role the cinema plays in this film. Now, I personally found it rather poignant to be in a theater surrounded by people laughing at ridiculous violence and in the end watching Hitler and Goebbels sitting in a theater laughing at ridiculous violence. The power of film and how it both shapes and is shaped by society played a very prominent role in the backstory that leads of course to the dramatic conclusion. It is no secret Tarantino is a student of film, which comes through here in more ways than his mastery of cinematography. In any case, I feel the film within the film is introduced in a completely innovative way here and is executed masterfully.

Fourth, something must be said about Brad Pitt's performance, which I actually think is really quite amazing here. His character is of course a bit over the top and ridiculous, but somehow never feels that way as you watch him.

Lastly, the film has been criticized as not really weaving together a consistent narrative, as well as for perhaps allowing one of the greatest evils perpetrated by man was trivialized by the dynamism and charisma of the SS Colonel previously mentioned. However, I have to totally disagree. To the first, I thought the chapters actually converged beautifully to this insane but incredibly interesting revisionist history that occurs. As for the second, I never once found the character there to be sympathetic, and he was only engaging in that he rather adeptly played the role of this conniving, beguiling individual. Never once however did I like him and had to actually question my own self deeply for taking a small comfort in how the film ends.

Anyway, I say go see this movie. I believe if you let it, what you see will leave you thinking long after you have left the theater.

Mustache Managed.

2009-08-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

OK, so Thursday night I shaved the mustache. It was still funny, but the odd truth is both having it and maintaining it require a certain amount of confidence and vanity that I am just not capable of long term. So, I did not quite make it until the end of my stay, but it was kind of fun while it lasted. Plus, there were at least a few great jokes told about it in my presence, so I think it is safe to say it accomplished the goal of bringing a little more joy to the universe during its brief existence.

A Short Tally.

2009-08-23T15:18:00.000-07:00

On the train from Leiden I began trying to put the last 27 months in context for myself. It occurred to me that since graduating from Berkeley in May 2007, I have:

Been in over 65 cities with over 45 of them new to me including but not limited to Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland, Jackson Hole, Gardener (MT), Rapid City (SD), Omaha, St. Louis, Lexington (KY), Durham, Winston-Salem, Chapel Hill, Auckland, Sydney, Canberra, Shannon (Ireland), Baltimore, DC, New York City, Philadelphia, Newark, Boston, Rochester (NY), Albuquerque, LA, Ponca City, Norman, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Fort Myers (FL), St. Petersburg (FL), Cincinnati, Bonn, Cologne, Essen, Dusseldorf, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Munich, Heidelberg, Berlin, Hamburg, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Dachau, Catania, Caltagirone, Siracusa, Bilbao, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Bruges, Brussels, Tybee Island (GA), Savannah (GA), Prague, Banff, Calgary and Leiden;

Spent time in 13 countries including the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Ireland, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands;

Set foot in 30 US States including California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Massachussetts, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, New Mexico;

AND

Traveled a total of more than 70,000 miles.

Here are some awards I could give out, though certainly all the places (or at least the people I was with in them) listed have left a noteworthy impression on me:

Places I would most like to live someday: Berlin and Paris.
Best food: Shawnee, Norman, SF, NYC, Paris, Bilbao, Nice, Waiheke Island, Canberra and somewhat surprisingly Prague.
Best places to collaborate: MSRI and IHP.
Best coffee, bread and cheese: Anywhere in France.
Best honey and fruit: New Zealand.
Best Cathedrals: Cologne, Paris.
Best buildings: Paris, Prague, Berlin, Leiden.
Best alcoves: Bruges.
Best bridges: SF, Sydney and Bilbao.
Best games: Bonn.
Best rivers: Bonn, Bilbao, Prague, Banff, Tahlequah.
Best place to paddle down the river: Tahlequah with Bob Coozie River Tours.
Best museums: SF, NYC.
Best cheap live jazz: NYC and Paris.
Best birds: Canberra hands down.
Best place to have distant family and collaborators: Berkeley, Nice.
Best pickpocketing story ever: Nantes.
Best place to wear a black wool tux for a summer wedding: Tulsa.
Best beach wedding: Fort Myers.
Best place to catch up with old friends: Garmisch.
Best place for Christmas Kolache: Catania.
Best place for Lamb and Scene-It: Venice Beach.
Best academic setting: Bonn, Chapel Hill, Heidelberg and Leiden.
Best view of the Mediterranean: Siracusa.
Best gourmet popsicles: Durham.
Best scenery: Yellowstone, Banff, Prague, Paris, Sydney.
Best places to drink Guinness after your plane catches fire: Shannon.
Best sky: Ponca City.
Best model ships: Hamburg.

It has been an amazing ride, but I am so ready to have a home again and spend less time feeling like I am in flux in one way or another.

A Goodbye Dinner.

2009-08-23T14:58:00.001-07:00

Last night I had my last dinner with my sponsor here, his wife and their four sons. Since they knew I was here alone, they have basically treated me like part of the family. Throughout the year, I was invited to holidays, played games with the children, helped with projects around the house, assisted with cooking and even at times simply joined them a regular dinner guest. Such generosity was rather welcome in a place where I felt so lonely at times. They will certainly be missed as part of my life, but I also know they will always be a big part of my life from here onward. Hopefully I will manage seeing them once a year or so, but even if not they will remain important to me for all they did to help me survive here.

My first day when I was carrying everything I would own here in Germany for the most part and spoke hardly any of the language, my sponsor met me, guided me through signing all my paperwork to get my apartment, helped me move my things here, took me to a grocery store for some basic food items and finally left me to simply pass out due to exhaustion. I was under such stress at the time moving here alone, it is just impossible to imagine how I would have done these things without him. At the same time, his family was finally joining him here in Bonn, so they were leaving behind their old schools and home to start a whole new life. Perhaps the fact that we were all in uncharted territory somehow made it easier to understand and support one another through the transition. After all, shortly after arriving I was invited along with the family to a concert or a dinner here and there, eventually gaining acceptance with the four boys who span the ages of 7 to 14 by agreeing to play games early and often.

As a parting gift they gave me the Michael Ende book "Momo" and an old book about German schools in German, which should be great fun to read. I am especially looking forward to "Momo" since I love "The Never Ending Story" and cannot wait to continue improving my German through reading what is considered by most Germans to be a better book actually. I gave them two puzzles, one of the New York landscape and one a map of old Berlin, which hopefully they can enjoy as a family. It is hard to find something meaningful for six people I must confess.

It was strange saying goodbye knowing how long it might be until I see them again, yet knowing I have another week of work before leaving. Somehow it does not yet really seem possible I am moving, yet feels remarkably like it is time simply to go home.

A Short Leap to Leiden.

2009-08-23T03:09:00.000-07:00

Warning: The photos below include a picture of a shirtless mathematician. Such images may not be suitable for children or the weak of heart.

After waiting 357 days in West Germany, I finally had the chance to make a trip to see my old friend who is now at the University of Leiden, albeit a short one. Since it is only a few hours train ride, it was really rather ridiculous we had not seen each other before, but somehow our schedules never quite matched up. I arrived at 9 PM on Friday night and came home around noon on Saturday for my last dinner with the family of my sponsor here. The trip to Leiden was amazing. Saturday night we went into the town itself, which is full of Dutch, traditional brick architecture with a rather rich academic history. Over a few Belgian beers I caught up with my friend and met another friend of his from the department there. Of course, both of them are number theorists, so we had to give each other a hard time for not holding our particular areas against each other. If you were a mathematician, you would understand the humor. After a great night, we biked our way home, only to wake up a few hours later and head to the North Sea. I actually got to see where what is called the Rhine trickles into the North Sea. On our way back to the train station we went by a fish stand that was just opening up and starting to cook up some of the freshest fish I have ever eaten. My host guaranteed me we had crammed as many Dutch activities into 15 hours as possible. My only comment is that a place like Leiden is hard not to fall in love with for someone like me. You can bike in around the campus, the canals and all the way easily to the sea. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

There is a speck in the distance that is me wading through the outlet of the Rhine.

That is me standing on the sand bar between the North Sea and the Rhine ... wearing some very European swim trunks loaned to me by my host R.

A before shot of me about to cross the great and dangerous Rhine River, seen here behind me. I am thinking of selling my skin color to Home Depot as a new shade called "math white."

Me with the Rhine and the dam that keeps it to a trickle.

Me with the North Sea in the background.

The Rhine by itself.

The traditional dunes of the Netherlands that keep the water at bay.

More dunes.

And yet more dunes.

Approaching the dam on my bike, which explains the finger in the shot.

The last two bikes in Leiden after we shut down the place Friday night.

My old friend R.

Bricks!

A cool door.

The canal by the bar.

My one gratuitous clock shot.

A bit of Leiden by night upon arriving in the city center.

Last Stop for Groceries.

2009-08-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I stopped off for what will likely be my last set of groceries in Germany. It is really amazing how affordable food here is, well amazing and fortunate really. With all the walking I did here, it was good to have easy accessibility to cheap energy. Plus, the winter was rather cold and far longer than any winter I have experienced before, so I really could not get enough energy during that time. My eating habits will certainly change as I adapt to having a real kitchen again, considering the likes and tastes of someone else in my food choices, as well as readjusting to New York food prices. Today I also dealt with finalizing some issues regarding moving out of my apartment and keeping my bank account here functional. Monday I finished doing the last loads of three hour loads of laundry I will likely do in the crazy European machines in the basement of my apartment complex.

In short, my time here is limited. For some reason I am not that nervous yet. I feel them brewing, but the expected feelings of some degree of both sadness and joy along with overwhelming anxiety and relief to be starting my life again just have not really come yet. Part of it is that I feel there is so much to do between trying to wrap up the KdV project here, getting ready to start teaching at Columbia and tying up other mathematical, social and administrative loose ends here that I do feel generally kind of numb. Another problem is that I am just physically wiped out from the trip to Canada last week. I am exhausted from the jet lag and stiff from the hours spent crammed on an airplane. This discomfort has been exacerbated by the continued high temperatures and humidity here in Germany. The magnitude of what awaits me in 12 days time will certainly sink in shortly however, and to be honest I will enjoy it. It seems to me that feeling so isolated and lonely tends to reduce both my capacity for effectively interacting with others as well as for feeling things as deeply.

The other issue is that my emotions are so incredibly mixed about leaving here, that maybe all my feelings are just canceling each other out. On one hand, my wife and dog have moved into an apartment where our big, comfortable welcoming bed, my grandfather's desk, and several bookcases full of my books beckon me home. The shrinking time change will let me catch back up with too many neglected friends and family members I have missed terribly this last year. My friends in New York and NSF sponsor at Columbia are waiting for me to get back and resume living well and working hard there. Several collaborators are close by and there are so many interesting questions I want to tackle in the next two years, it feels like I should start as soon as possible. Plus, the niches, eccentricities and possibilities of New York I have yet to explore seem to be looming on the horizon, just begging me to come back and explore.

On the other hand, the mathematical resources here in Germany are amazing, the work I have done is incredibly rewarding and challenging, and the department seems to actually kind of enjoy having me here. The solitude of this lifestyle is difficult at times but gives me the time to think deeply about a lot of things I just do not often have time for otherwise. This kind of life consisting mostly of intellectual satisfaction is something I easily settle into since it is how I lived most of my youth. I do not claim it brings out the best in me or gives me the most joy I have known, but it is familiar, comfortable and personally rewarding. The friends I have here certainly mean a great deal to me for providing me some degree of companionship and comfort during this year and though it has, in the grand scheme of life, only been rather short time, I find it rather hard to believe it will be a long while before I see them again after I leave. There seems to have been sadly little time to spend together really. Not to mention, this place has been a complete adventure to me. Sure, I could not afford to travel as much as would have been nice, but every time I left the city I went somewhere new, learned or re-learned a bit of a different language, saw places I never knew of or imagined and met some great people.

If someday I had the chance to come back here, I would definitely consider it, especially if it meant more time to spend in Berlin. However, I want to go home so badly I can barely concentrate. It is a quite a tumultuous way to feel I must confess.

Stephen Colbert is a Freaking Genius.

2009-08-18T17:49:00.001-07:00

So, I cannot sleep tonight due to jet lag and am catching up on last week's episodes of the Colbert Report. Oh, to be so clever and funny.

Stache Status Update.

2009-08-17T14:47:00.000-07:00

So, the 'stache is coming along pretty well I think, but I'll let the audience be the judge. Two weeks of magnificent growth left. By the way, this is how I look listening to a podcast and doing laundry while completely jet lagged, just in case people were wondering what that might look like.

Moments.

2009-08-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

The show Radiolab from WNYC has been doing a week's worth of podcasts regarding our scientific understanding of death and all the notions of what it truly entails. The last part of this was a simple four minute video of small moments that make up what many of us might associate with a lifetime.

The meaning of all this nonsense we experience here on Earth has been pressing on my mind a bit lately. On one hand, a woman who in her relatively long life I have known only to show kindness and generosity recently received a rather grim diagnosis and may be gone within a year. On the other hand, I am aware there are several new lives coming into being in the next year, which given the individuals I know becoming parents will provide endless possibilities for joy and growth in my life and the world at large.

There is of course the question of what defines a life well-led when it all comes down to it. The very same podcast included a couple readings from the book "Sum" by David Eagleman, which suggests various ways of looking at the afterlife. In one particular version, your life is relived, but now instead of the normal sequence of events, things get re-organized by activity and those events happen in sequence. So, for example you might spend 8 months sitting in the bathroom or a month flossing. Eagleman is a Neuroscientist and in my mind is trying to make us think more about what constitutes a life and less about the actual events that transpire when we die. However, sadly, I think a great deal of my time would be spent alone, on this futon or another semi-comfortable digesting some huge amount of science, news or pop culture while waiting for something to happen in my life.

The truth is that I love discovering something new about the world mathematically, figuring out something about the world I had not previously understood through reading an article or novel, as well as simply hearing something I think will make people laugh. However, to me all of those experiences for me are enriched when you are able to share them with someone. In fact, most of them turn out to be pretty meaningless until you are able to share them with someone. This blog helps, though in many ways it is an artificial form of sharing. The feedback comes in the form of comments, much later, rather than an engaging conversation when the issue is fresh in your mind. This past year has given me a lot of time alone, which hopefully will help me shape who I am in the future in a better way. However, I look forward to a time my life revolves around others who need me around so that the moments I want to experience again happen far more frequently.

Movieplane-a-palooza.

2009-08-16T09:25:00.001-07:00

Movies I watched on planes this week:

Star Trek - Entertaining and awesome action sequences. Though I have never really gotten into the series, the movies have always been entertaining and this one definitely lived up to expectations.

I Love You, Man - Hilarious and better constructed than I imagined. I found this movie to be funnier and cleverer than I had expected from the reviews.

Monsters Vs. Aliens - The story felt a bit contrived but the characters are funny and of course the animation is amazing.

Duplicity - The surprise ending was a nice touch, and it was a mildly entertaining popcorn flick. Take a date.

Sunshine Cleaning - Amy Adams being Amy Adams, Alan Arkin being Alan Arkin and Emily Blunt showing a bit of her range. An enjoyable enough movie with a nice look at family and fulfillment.

Adventureland - A great coming of age film.

Anvil!: The Story of Anvil - Canadian hair band still doing their thing and trying to make it big ... need I say more?

Sometimes you need to believe in magic.

2009-08-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

So, I just finished re-reading Harry Potter 6 and 7. For some reason, these books really appeal to something deep within me. I always go back to re-read them when I am feeling alone and overwhelmed. They always make me feel a bit better about the world in general and yet a little sad when I once again reach the end of the story. Perhaps it is the implicit message that friendship and bravery can overcome great adversity, perhaps it reminds me of the hopefulness and possibility of youth, or perhaps it is simply that I wish I had a wand, got to perform magic and went to a school in a building that had living pictures and changing staircases. I think it is also likely that I feel like I got to spend precious little time with my best friends and mentors in life and enjoy living vicariously through watching these kids grow up together and learn from those around them for seven years. Re-reading them is actually really worth it for me because I have come to realize that I missed out on a number of rich descriptions and important subtleties that occurred during scenes where a lot was happening in a mad dash to find out what happens at the end. Anyway, they really are great books and I look forward very much to watching my kids read them at some point in the quite distant future and hoping they take as much joy in them as I do.

Franny and Zooey.

2009-08-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

I finished this little literary gem today on the train from Frankfurt. The story is actually tied to the first story from Nine Stories, which I fortunately read earlier this year. The dialogue in this story despite happening between individuals with rather different experiences than mine somehow feels very organic and honest. The events that transpire are really rather limited, but the book captures the strained, though immensely deep, relationships between these family members who are trying to keep it together in a world that seems to have a hard time understanding them and their experiences. So much is conveyed in each word and reaction, Salinger is truly a master.

Banff Pics.

2009-08-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

So, I am about to get on the shuttle to Calgary for my last night in Canada. The workshop was quite nice and my talk was well received. Plus, I was surrounded by several friends and colleagues who I really enjoyed seeing. Either before or after meals, I was able to take a short hike to some great places. It is hard to describe the beauty of this place, but hopefully the pictures do it a slight bit of justice. Tomorrow I fly back to Montreal with a fairly long stopover. There is a small chance I will get to visit Old Montreal, which is supposed to be beautiful. In any case, now that my stay here is over, it will be nice to get back to Germany and focus on wrapping up my projects there, getting packed up, saying proper goodbyes to my friends from the past year and any other small orders of business moving to another continent can involve.

Some general shots of the amazing scenery I saw on many of my walks with a couple small cameos by friends, colleagues, conference organizers and elk. These include Tunnel Mountain, Sulfur Mountain, and the Bow River.

Me at the top of Tunnel Mountain Trail.

My advisor representing well his philosophy that life is good.

Some shots from the top of the Tunnel Mountain trail.

The incredible facilities provided for us here in Banff.

The Vancouver Airport.

2009-08-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

So, Vancouver International is one of those truly awesome airports that offers free Wi-Fi. Hence, I am sitting here in the airport checking e-mail, wishing there was a way to get to Calgary, a bed and a shower any faster. Still, I have always liked the Vancouver airport. My wife and I were on our honeymoon here exactly six years ago and really fell in love with the city. Since then, I have flown through here several times and always have good memories of that time. It is a bit painful to be within a few hours of my sister, nephew and cousins without getting to see and call them, especially since I think my cousins are actually in Victoria today.

My flight is not to leave for another hour and a half, but I am off to kill some more time and maybe to stave off the greasy Italian in me with another pseudo-sink bath. Ah, the joys of low budget international travel.

Oh Canada.

2009-08-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I am shortly off for my grand week long trip to Banff. Surely it is gorgeous there this time of year and the meeting promises to be a good one, but I could live without this trip since I am taking another jump across the pond in 3 weeks.

Today is also the wedding day of my good friends D and D, who really helped me survive my first few months in Bonn. And when I say survive I mean both in the sense that they were good friends with whom I could spend time during a very lonely transition period AND in that they physically bought me a winter hat because I was not properly equipped to deal with the cold when it arrived here in full force. I wish I could be there with them today but unfortunately will be landing in Vancouver around the time they are breaking the glass. Hopefully they have a great day and enjoy seeing most of their good friends and family.

A Strange Realization.

2009-08-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today I stopped off for just a few groceries to get me through the weekend before leaving for Banff. I realized while strolling down my street with my grocery bag past the doenner kebab guy who always gives me a friendly nod and the little ice cream place packed with people that I have a real neighborhood here that I have really been a part of for the past year. It is strange to imagine that I am leaving in just a few weeks and will no longer be part of this place. Hopefully I will find a community in New York as well, but I know my time here is coming to an end and will miss the familiar places and routines I have formed here.

Project Tuva.

2009-08-07T08:02:00.000-07:00

So, I finished watching the last part of the last from the series of seven expository lectures given by Richard Feynman at Cornell in 1967. In the end, I did not learn any new physics per se, but he did give very concise, intuitive explanations of many important phenomena and helped put many discoveries into historical perspective. As it seems Feynman was a rather opinionated fellow, he frames many things in the world in the context of his physical understanding, which I also greatly enjoyed. Anyway, if you still have not checked them out from my earlier post, I highly recommend doing so. At the very least if you ever concern yourself with good strategies for connecting an audience to the material when lecturing, Feynman's style is certainly one to study.

Haunted by an Old Life.

2009-08-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

So, beyond actually having to fend off a rather tenacious asthma attack that just keeps lurking about for the past week, I have had two further strange experiences that have hearkened back to my old days out OU. First of all, while looking for a reference book I wanted for my class yesterday, I randomly came upon a new book that was co-authored by one of my old professors named Noel Brady.

Today I went to Max Planck Institute for the first time to hear a rather impressive talk by Edward Witten, Fields Medal winner and mathematician/physicist extraordinaire. The talk was about quantization on arbitrary symplectic manifolds, which is related to things I do, but the techniques came from and were applied to rather abstract topological and geometrical problems whose notation alone just totally flummoxes me. Still, it was an interesting talk and hopefully I got something out of it.

Shortly after the talk, I grabbed a bit of coffee and discussed some questions with a new acquaintance, then wandered towards the exit where I paused over the directory to see if anyone else I knew from Berkeley happened to be at the MPI. As I stared at the wall I heard a rather familiar voice behind me and turned around to discover my old professor from OU named Ara Basmajian, who is now at CUNY. Anyway, we caught up a bit and will likely meet for lunch tomorrow. It is indeed a rather small world.

Bookworm.

2009-08-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

I have always loved books and want to have an immense library in my home eventually. So, it is with great excitement and an overwhelming sense of gratitude to both professors and both postdocs who mentored me most at Berkeley that I say two of the papers I was lucky enough to collaborate on during graduate school (one on soliton scattering and one on local smoothing/Strichartz estimates) have found their way into the new book entitled Introduction to Nonlinear Dispersive Equations by F. Linares and G. Ponce. Perhaps I should be over such things, but to appear in the bibliography of a textbook feels pretty darn pretty exciting to me. It never really occurred to me that such a thing was possible, but somehow I was fortunate enough to be able to work on some really interesting projects during graduate school with several people much smarter than me. Hopefully we will continue to see further development of expository and introductory material in this field, and if I continue to be graced with generous collaborators and interesting projects, maybe those works can also be part of them.

Peer Review and Likey What Amounts to An Incomprehensible Rant.

2009-08-05T15:14:00.001-07:00

Today I read an article in the New York Times that details a series of papers published in peer reviewed medical journals that had been ghost written for researchers by pharmaceutical companies wishing to advance their treatment options. Such a story to me indicates that A. we need health care reform desperately to incentivize our system more effectively and fairly and B. the scientific review process should not be taken lightly. Personally, I would much rather have a reviewer who questions something they do not understand and insists that I explain to them why it is true over a reviewer that gives something a cursory glance and approves it without really analyzing the data or results. It is likely pervasive throughout many fields that some referees are a bit lax or simply not terribly demanding, but I truly feel if something is unclear to a referee they should force the author to justify it. This means referees run the risk of looking foolish, but is it not better to clarify a point at the risk of possibly asking a dumb question than to allow a work that is not rigorous or justified to appear in the scientific literature? Anyway, hopefully this incident will make medical reviewers more cautious especially when looking at articles that recommend treatments provided by particularly powerful, wealthy companies.

It is not a bad thing to have an innovative company that makes much needed medicines for a wide array of diseases, but your management should accept that the product will stand on its own merit and the scientific process should not be jeopardized for increased profits. Such tactics do not simply weaken the health care system, but also the public's trust in the science and treatments produced by their scientists and physicians. Healthy skepticism is something scientists believe in greatly, but outright refusal to listen is never a
good thing.

Decisions to do such things speak to the culture of greed and the difficulties our nation faces in having all their industries currently controlled by people who are far more familiar with finance and balance sheets than the actual products companies produce. Such thinking often encourages focussing on rather short term gains with current products over long term investments in real development of new technologies and ideas. This has manifested itself in a US economy whose gains over the past 20 years have been largely fictional, while the cost of living increases have been all too real.

Speaking of health care reform, a friend and I here in Germany have been discussing the merits and drawbacks of the American system versus the German system. Both of us agree that wealthy nations should provide a basic standard of care for all their citizens and that the incentive structure in the US is totally wrong, but we also feel the German system could benefit from more private innovation and influence.

The notion of an optimal health care system is a difficult problem without question, and one I do believe we need to solve sometime soon. It seems to be necessary that every American should have to pay something into the system for some kind of basic universal coverage, but that those that can affordmore should be able to have it. Innovation comes at a cost unfortunately, and hence tragically will simply not be available to everyone in its early stages. This is a hard thing to admit but one must accept in a functioning economy that wealth acts as an important incentive and comes with certain advantages we simply cannot realistically extend to all and expect to see real progress.

However, in the name of fiscal conservatism our country constantly sees resistance to putting money into education, a healthy food supply, preventative health care measures, efficient and effective alternative energies, and smart infrastructure for all cities. We then seem to expect to have an advanced workforce, cheap energy, healthy people and viable local economies. There is a cost to living well in a society, a cost I fear we continue to put off because it might mean redefining our notion of luxury and wealth. How can one instigate a societal shift in what kinds of services, products and expenses are worthwhile?

Scatterbrained.

2009-08-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

So, I have gone back and looked at some of the posts and even simple e-mails I have written over the past couple of weeks and found more ridiculous mistakes in spelling and usage than I care to admit. My mind has truly gone haywire it seems. Perhaps it is due to the fact that I do not feel I have still really slept a full eight hours since summer began in Bonn, my day is spent mostly speaking somewhat deliberately to non-native English speakers or in German for the last year, which has likely impacted my language skills, or of course simply that my mind has drifted away from me for a short period of time. Likely it is all of the above to be fair. In any case, I hope it passes soon, because I despise feeling inarticulate.

A New York State of Mind.

2009-08-04T09:45:00.001-07:00

Now that I have a place waiting for me in New York City, know the class I will teach in the Fall and am growing rather weary of looking at the 59 page (so far) draft on KdV equations that has come into being during my time here, I feel it is safe to say I am more than ready to get on the plane home. It is a constant strain to stay focused and attentive to the projects I am working on without drifting to thoughts of walking through the door to see our new apartment, seeing my wife, collapsing in exhaustion as my dog goes a bit crazy, officially unpacking somewhere, sitting at my old desk, seeing the shelves full of all my books, figuring out my commute, setting up my office at Columbia, and so on. It does not help that I know I have so many things to look forward to when I get home, such as meeting up with old friends at favorite places, making dinner for my family, going to the US Open, seeing old friends and family who will be visiting during the month and getting set up to actually have a position/office for more than a year.

However, I do not want to become a temporarily lame duck mathematician during my last few weeks. Having some collaborators around next week in Canada will help to focus on a few specific projects, but right now it is challenging to avoid just phoning it in for a bit. Unfortunately of course, there is a great deal to do here mathematically, administratively and personally before I leave, but surely I will find a way to fit in everything essential.

Another thing weighing on my mind right now is my course. Before I start structuring the course and designing the lectures, I would like to have the material organized clearly in my mind. As I have never taught the material before, this takes both time and research. There are subtle hints of this process beginning, but given that I step in front of my students in a month, I wish the progress were coming along a bit faster. Though, I know things will come together there shortly, especially now that I believe I have figured out the way I want to start the course.

Other than that, there are a project I am trying to get out the door to the publisher, two big projects I would like submitted, a project for which I would like a first draft finalized and three or four new things I am really just starting that are rather interesting but will require some time to let the ideas jumble around my brain before settling in somewhere with vague understanding. My collaborators on these projects have been a bit busy of late, which means there has been little time to discuss those things jumbling around, which I find essential in getting them to actually settle somewhere useful. In the end, what will be will be and after this last two years I figure I can accept that even though perhaps I should have a less passive attitude towars the whole thing.

The truth of the matter is that very little has gone as planned the last two years. Very few instances indeed did not turn out to be close to the worst case scenario I imagined when presented with all the possible outcomes. Through that Dickensian (or Snicketian if you will) series of unfortunate events, things have kept on moving forward somehow, so though I continue to use what energy I have left to scramble onward, I am aware the current of time will drag me and those things in my life forward as well. Maybe I have been swimming to hard against the current, I do not know. The truth of the matter is that I see some kind of land in the distance and feel happy to coast until I find myself tossed upon the shore, whether it be rocky and inhospitable; sandy, fertile and warm; or somewhere in between. Man, that turned into a far more involved metaphor than I had intended.

The Internets.

2009-08-03T15:33:00.001-07:00

I learned this evening that someone I have never met but listen to every week and respect greatly may actually look at my blog. Though of course I put all this stuff out here knowing it is publicly accessible, I never imagined people whose actual professional content I really enjoy might look at my random, crappy, often redundant musings about math, books, movies and most often loneliness. Anyway, the world is really quite an amazingly small place in general, but even more so with globalization and technological advancements in communication. Still, this was a rather exciting, albeit somewhat intimidating realization.

Speaking of communication technology, next week I will actually be traveling a ridiculous number of miles to attend a conference in Banff where mathematicians in nonlinear dispersive equations are going to interact with (hopefully at least a few) optical engineers to share knowledge, discuss open questions we may know answers to, models they might want studied and certain behaviors they might like explained theoretically. It should be rather exciting, albeit incredibly exhausting, to be there and hopefully find some problems with real cutting edge applications. On the other hand, it will undoubtedly be exciting because I will get to work on finishing my NLS paper with one of the organizers and get a lot done on my spectral theory project with one of the participants. In any case, it is a beautiful area with great soup and the center there always provides a great working environment, so if I can stay awake it will certainly be worth the trip.

Six Years.

2009-08-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

So, Saturday was my sixth wedding anniversary. It is hard to say we did not celebrate in some sense since in July we went to both Berlin and Hamburg, but it was the third year in a row this date passed without actually being together. Literally, half our wedding anniversaries have been spent apart from one another. Being in Prague was a great experience and it would be a perfect place to take someone to celebrate a momentous occasion together, but sadly my wife was sitting in our house trying to piece together our lives in a probably overfull apartment without my help. This task must have been rather challenging and overwhelming, though I have no idea because today she also started back to full time work for the first time in two years. She did an internship last summer for several months, but somehow, to me at least, there is rather a difference between a summer program centered around recruiting you and walking through the buildings of Wall Street into a building where they are hoping to see what you are made of. Anyway, so many changes happened so fast over a rather important weekend and I was on a different continent. There is only one month of this madness left for me now and though I do not know what kind of life and marriage awaits me at this point, just getting on with my life and being there for those I love will be a welcome change.

Prague on Foot.

2009-08-03T01:28:00.001-07:00

So, Prague was certainly a trip that lived up the name of this blog. My friend J and I covered the Old Town, Jewish Quarter, Little Quarter, Prague Castle and New Quarter in our day and a half ... all on foot. Climbing the hill to Prague Castle not once, not twice, but three times was pretty exhausting but in the end worth it. We had a great dinner at a restaurant called David, though all our meals were quite good. Of course, steadied by the adventurous spirit of J and the power of my moustache, we went to the most traditional Czech Beer Hall we could find, mostly filled with locals, which our guidebook said was only for the brave. I had long wanted to see the Astronomical Clock as will not surprise anyone who has ever seen any of my photos from Europe. All I can say is that it is worth it. Local legend says that the artist was blinded by the town so he would never be able to repeat such a work of art anywhere else. I would not have believed it until we saw the torture chambers in the Castle. Much of the city is beautifully preserved (or renovated) and is rather worth a visit. Hopefully you will enjoy the (many) pictures below.

A little Military-Industrial-Complex graffiti.

The State Opera building.

The National Museum.

In the park near the Modern Art Museum.

The National Theater.

The Charles Bridge over the river Vltava and part of the city from the National Theater.

The Prague Castle in the distance.

The bridge near the National Theater.

An attempt to capture the beauty of Prague at night from the Castle. Not much justice is done here, but it is the best I could do. This was our third trip up the hill.

An attempt at the TV tower at night.

One of the unnaturally large glasses in which our night cap was served.

The other unnaturally large glass (and J).

The mosaic on the side of St. Vitus' Cathedral inside the Palace Walls. This was our second trip up the hill.

St. Vitus' near dusk.

The balcony made famous by the Velvet Revolution, which Tupac got kicked out of because his rhymes were weak.

The clock on St. Vitus' Cathedral.

The city during the day from the castle.

St. Nicholas' Cathedral (and a clock of course).

The Castle Gardens.

The ceiling of St. Thomas' Cathedral.

Some modern art, an island in the river and a beautiful summer day.

Modern Art or Kitsch? You be the judge.

The Charles Bridge with the Castle in the background.

The small break in the river.

One of the many synagogues in the Jewish Quarter.

Another synagogue.

The Cubist Houses were unsurprisingly a somewhat anticlimactic stop on the walking tour.

Either the New Old Synagogue or the Old New Synagogue.

J in front of his favorite part of Prague, the hill to the Castle.

Another bridge.

A ceiling in St. George's Basilica inside the Palace. This was on our first trip up the hill. J paid 500 Korunas for two tickets to three items, meaning we saw all three in detail. :)

One of the many overlooks at the Castle.

What I thought was a rather nice wall.

The primary hall in the Castle.

Up close with the Cathedral Clock.

The Golden Lane, which is supposed to be a well-preserved Medieval street mostly consists of kitchy shops and memorials to torture. Ah, the Dark Ages really were the good ole days.

The back of St. Vitus'.

St. George's.

An impressive door.

The entrance to the palace.

The impressive carved stones in the buildings around the Castle (or the Prazny hrad in my nearly flawless Czech).

Clock close-up.

The Castle on the hill.

The hill overlooking Prague with the TV tower in the distance.

The river.

The Castle from the bridge.

The Music Hall.

Highlights from walking through the Old Quarter.

Photographic evidence I have seen the clock. It really is breathtaking.

Enjoy.

Various interesting facades around Prague.

A skilled navigator.

A nice window.

Jon in the Bethlehem Square.

My first clock.

Eastern European Camouflage.

2009-07-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

So, two developments to report. Tomorrow morning I am off for a weekend in Prague with a good friend from grad school and for the trip am sporting a new moustache I decided to grow for fun my last month of living alone here in Germany. It is amazing how many people here have really great moustaches, so hopefully it will help me assimilate further into German culture before I leave. If anything, it makes people laugh all the time when they see me, which is a plus.

Meine Geburtstag.

2009-07-28T15:07:00.001-07:00

Well, in Germany it is officially my birthday. Though I get to spend tomorrow night with a great group of friends, I certainly miss home tonight. There are many stories I would like to tell about people I would love to be near, the places I would like to be near them, and things we could do there, but tonight I am too tired and cannot find the words.

I thought turning 29 would leave me feeling a sense of loss for my youth and disappointment in all that I have failed to do at this point. However, for tonight at least, looking back instead leaves me honestly feeling pretty satisfied with all the joys, pains, laughter, discoveries, victories, failures, surprises, adventures and challenges I have experienced with those who have been willing along the way to this point. Hopefully the next 29 years will be even richer.

Unbelievable.

2009-07-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

I just had to make a brief note about just how perfect a day it is here in Bonn. The sky is bright blue with a few wispy, white clouds, the sun is warm but the air is not hot, and there is just a bit more than a slight breeze. Of course, I did just have a giant cup of coffee, so my rather positive take on the world could simply be due to that particularly magical concoction.

The Lost Continent

2009-07-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

I just finished Bill Bryson's chronicle about a road trip in his somewhat recently past father's Chevelle through much of the continental United States. As a child, his father had loaded them into the car and driven them all over the US each summer for some sort of legendary family road trip vacation to quite often obscure and inexpensive places.

Largely, it was a clever, slightly sardonic take on many places I have either been to or lived in during my life, which either helped me see them in a new light or resonated quite strongly with my own perceptions. At the time he made his observations, he was an American born in the Midwest, living in England and in his early 30's. Perhaps our somewhat common experiences led us to draw similar conclusions about many places in the lower 48. Though there were times when perhaps it was just a bit too snarky, I must confess he also casually makes rather poignant observations about poverty, health care, consumerism, regional differences and the slow progression of American small towns into the same collection of chain restaurants and hotels. It would less impressive if the book were not written over 20 years ago.

Throughout his trip, sometimes there were places I wish he would have visited in his journey but more often than not he informed me of some obscure piece of Americana I myself missed while flying through a town on the highway. Anyway, if you love a good road trip (as I most certainly do), this is a good read for a taste of much of the American experience. Largely the people and regions are treated rather fairly, though a bit condescendingly at times. Mostly though, the language he uses to describe each road he drives down, small town he pulls into, random historical place he visits, natural attraction or diner he eats his fried chicken dinners at is all rather richly crafted, which I found surprising for someone I imagined more as a humorist. The effect is that you feel yourself rather easily being shuttled down the road sharing his experiences and can really see and feel yourself on this scattered road trip towards personal discovery.

It is finally over.

2009-07-24T17:35:00.001-07:00

So, even though I have not taught for the last two years, the semester end still marks a time when schedules relax, campus quiets down and pressure subsides. It is a good time for a great deal of free thinking and organization of ideas. Anyway, the semester finally ended here in Germany today, though having it go on this long has been tortuous for someone like myself who has not been in school past mid-May since I was 14 years old living in Southern CA where school went until late June. It was a great semester, but I like the quiet halls and streets of a University suddenly abandoned by all the students who usually buzz about with tremendous energy. It is like a giant organism finally coming to rest after a long period of stressed activity. The rest for me as a tiny component in the organism is welcome and long overdue. These two years have been amazing in many ways, but trying and exhausting nonetheless. My time here is now limited to about five weeks, which hopefully I can enjoy to their fullest. I will miss my work, life and friends here very much I believe, though I am ready to lay my head down on my own pillow and fall into the deep slumber you only find possible at home.

A Filmspotting Birthday.

2009-07-24T12:48:00.001-07:00

So, tonight I followed my usual Friday night ritual of settling in to listen to Filmspotting, one of my favorite podcasts. Much to my surprise, my friend G had donated to them for me as a birthday present, which they announced this week. It was a great gift and a fantastic cause since they are an artistic and a publicly broadcast film show. Anyway, thanks G, you really made my birthday week already.

HP6.

2009-07-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

So, on Amber's last night we had the German delicacy known as spaghetti ice cream, then went to see the new Harry Potter. Since we arrived a bit early for the show, we grabbed a little Haribo candy and popcorn, which it turns out they sugar rather than salt here in Germany. Anyway, we found our assigned seats after being displaced by someone who had purchased the choice seats we had chosen to occupy and settled in for the show.

Though of course I do love all things Potter, I must say I expected more from this movie. I did enjoy it, but not as much as the movies for HP3 and HP5. It was better than HP4, though with some of the same problems. It did however make me want to see the next two movies even more and slightly satisfied my appetite for new Potter material. As Matty from Filmspotting really enjoyed it, I definitely need to see it again since the anticipation and expectations set up by the last movie and the delayed release may have impacted my first viewing experience. In any case, I will definitely be re-reading the 6th book sometime soon to jog my memory about a lot of the plot subtleties and tiny details lost in translation to the big screen.

Ich bin ein Berliner (alternative Title: Achtung Baby).

2009-07-24T11:20:00.002-07:00

Berlin was an amazing. First of all, it was great to see my old friend M and meet some of her students. Secondly, not only does the city feel vibrant, thriving and young, it has this astounding history, great modern and classical architecture, interesting museums, and fantastic food. Plus, it never sleeps. On Saturday night, I got to see a colleague, have a pleasant dinner at a restaurant called Weinstein and enjoy a Berlin micro-brewed beer. Amber got to attend the Snow Patrol (sorry C) and U2 concert with M, which seemed pretty amazing in the Olympic Stadium outside the city. The weather was a bit iffy when we arrived Friday night, but it turned into a beautiful weekend with just a little rain here and there. The only thing lacking was the time we had to spend there. I could easily stay in that city for many weeks at a time.

A piece of graffiti art by apparently noted artist Alias.

My colleague MH after our meal at Weinstein. The wine was from Austria and surprisingly nice.

These bricks trace where the wall stood throughout the city.

The bricks as we traveled through the city on a bus.

Photos of the small section of the wall that remains standing.

The Brandenburg Gate.

Amber, my dear friend M and new friend B.

One more shot of the gate.

East Berlin Walk.

East Berlin Don't Walk.

I love these guys.

A collection of shots from in and around the Bundestag.

The Spree and the Parliamentary Library.

A wall by the Bundestag in honor of Poland.

The Monument to Victory, with a rather interesting history.

The major government building with a large glass dome.

Several angles of the experience in the Holocaust Memorial.

The rather famous Humboldt University in Berlin.

A collection of amazing buildings we saw in Berlin whose history I sadly do not recall right now but will have to look up in time.

E and M suggesting it may be time for lunch and coffee.

Amber near the Potsdamer Platz.

Gratuitous Clock Shots.

Some East German architecture.

This plaza has a French Church on the left, a German Church on the right and the Philharmonic Hall in the center.

Shots of the reconstructed Check Point Charlie.

It is official ... I can count.

2009-07-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

So, after a year and a half, I finally heard back on a combinatorics paper I wrote with my undergraduate advisor at OU. Essentially, we give an algorithm for counting a certain type of sets of integers. In fact, it is a development of my undergraduate thesis, which after grad school we finally decided to finish. Though they wanted a few changes, it will be accepted. It is rather exciting to publish in a different field, be done with the project and have a a journal specifically devoted to counting accept that you in fact can do it. This one is for you Count von Count.

Hamburg and Pickled Herring.

2009-07-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

So, Hamburg was certainly an interesting city. Though we found it to be far more popular with German tourists than with those from other countries, it had an amazing harbor and a really long, interesting history. Sadly, the ballet was sold out and cold rain fell most of the trip, but we found a way to do some good exploring. The art museum was very nice, there were some decent small coffee/pastry shops, the bus tour we took to get out of the rain was a bit shady but oriented us nicely in the city, the harbor impressive on our boat tour, the churches not under construction were beautiful, the old harbor city had a great feel and happened to be hosting the Stand Up Paddling World Cup, the Brahms museum though small was pleasant, plus the Hamburg history museum had some fantastic model ships. In addition, I was brave enough to try a filet of pickled Herring, practiced my German a bit, and had a very nice dinner Saturday night with some interesting modern German cuisine. Amber tried to learn stick at a car museum and greatly diminished the Hamburg hot chocolate supply. Hopefully the pictures will fill in some of the gaps in the story.

Amber learning to master Formula One racing provided I can always be at this angle moving the gear shift.

The thrill of the open road ... inside a car museum in Hamburg.

The Church of St. Nicolai was bombed during the war and now serves as a monument to all who lost their lives in the conflict.

Me in the old Harbor City part of town.

The canal without me...we've got to find Doc Brown!

Some of the participants in the Jever SUP Cup, or Stand Up Paddling Cup. During an endurance race one competitor rowed to the edge, borrowed a lounge chair and a beer from a spectator, then finished the race in a far more luxurious fashion.

Walking through the crowds and food stands at the SUP Cup with all the Hamburg construction in the background. Part of the Harbor City area is being rebuilt, and the project is one of the largest construction undertaking in Germany.

Amber at the Brahms Museum Plaza in front of a Clarinet store.

The Brahms museum. Though it is a small house and his birthplace had been destroyed in the war, they had many interesting things including concert announcements of his from the day with many other prominent musicians such as the Schumanns who lived in Bonn late in life.

Amber not wanting her picture taken in the dirty train station near the Hamburg "Festival of Love" that was happening that weekend. In case you wonder what a festival of love is like, imagine a number of middle-aged, drunk Germans in bell bottoms and you pretty much have it.

Several shots of the skyline as seen from the tower at St. Michael's Cathedral.

Me looking more devil may care than intended in front of the tower.

Amber and the tower at St. Michael's.

The old harbor city in the background. A fire started here in 1842 that burned pretty much the entire city.

One of the restored ships serves as a floating museum of sorts.

St. Michael's Tower from the river.

A ship being repaired in dry dock.

Bridge over the River Elbe.

The tugboats from a different angle.

The crazy star wars looking trucks that zip back and forth around the harbor delivering and picking up containers.

The large cranes for loading and unloading containers.

A tugboat close-up.

A long line of tugboats!

An interesting building shaped like a ship near Altona.

Amber pretending she is sitting on a glamorous yacht.

Prepared for launch.

A Surprise Visit.

2009-07-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

So, a couple weeks ago I randomly found out my friend C would be making a surprise visit to Bonn. He is a pilot for the Navy and some Portuguese Admiral needed to be in the area, so Amber and I showed him around a bit, ate dinner with him in Cologne and forced him to sleep on our futon even though he is much too tall for it and the government would have bought him a hotel room. In any case, it was a really nice visit, good to catch up and at least since I am an expatriate this year I got to save the government some money.

C with the infamous futon.

A Brief Update Before I Am Off to Berlin.

2009-07-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

So, the trip to Hamburg last weekend was nice and work has been rather busy the last two weeks, but this morning we leave to meet an old friend in Berlin. Personally, I have been wanting to visit this city for pretty much the whole year and am rather excited to finally be going. Soon, I will post pictures and posts from both trips, but for now if you have time and like physics, check out the link

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/

which is a series of lectures by Richard Feynman. I learned of them from Terry Tao's blog and am quite enamored with them.

The Next Two Weeks.

2009-07-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

So, besides having a visitor, trying to get a lot of work done, and Amber arriving, we are also going on two trips to Hamburg and Berlin. I am not sure how much I will get to write during that time, but hopefully updates will come every so often. Anyway, it will be a busy period but hopefully somewhat productive both personally and professionally.

The Birthday Girl.

2009-07-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

So, Mindy turns 4 today. Perhaps it makes me an idiot that I know her birthday, but I miss my dog and wish I had been able to be there for her over the last two years. The sad truth is that I have missed a large part of her life and will see less puppy left in her when I finally get to live with her again. Anyway, I hope she does something enjoyable, gets a few nice new toys and eats well today, but also I simply hope she along with everyone else I love out there with whom I get precious little time know I am thinking of them often and wishing I could be there for more of the little changes and realizations that come together to make up a lifetime.

Happy 4th of July.

2009-07-03T23:24:00.001-07:00

So, here I am on the morning of the 4th of July in Germany. It is nice to have a friend here from the states who will grab a burger with me later this afternoon, but all in all it is somewhat lonely. Though I am not really that wild about fire works, I always love the relaxed nature of everyone on this national summer holiday. Since July is a big month of birthdays in my family, usually we would all be together and start with an early trip to the lake, come home to cook some of my grandfather's recently caught fish with corn, potatoes and watermelon, then spend the afternoon surrounded by family and friends at our pool.

Last year I was in New York and walked with friends to the East River for their son's first fire works show. His response was pretty priceless as he was truly in awe and of course I treasure all the moments I had with them during my first year in New York, but still I miss my family on this day. It is all in all one of my favorite holidays for some reason. Perhaps because it represents the peak of summer when a lot of long summer nights seem ahead of me and usually the stresses of a semester are pretty far behind me.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a Happy 4th of July and enjoys time spent in the sun with a large collection of family and/or friends.

I May Be a Wizard.

2009-07-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

So, I have been carrying my umbrella (not as nice as my first one but of decent quality) with me everywhere I go because the weather forecast has been calling for rain. Mostly, each day it has simply been oppressively sunny and humid without the hint of a storm. The temperatures were not terribly high, but the air felt incredibly thick and heavy. In hopes of avoiding some ridicule, I left the umbrella behind when we went to lunch. While grabbing a quick coffee afterward, the atmosphere finally let go of the vast amounts of moisture it had been unstably hoarding for over a week and a beautiful, powerful thunderstorm began raining down huge drops of water and hail. Since my guest was speaking in 20 minutes, we all had to run back to the math building. As soon as my hand touched the umbrella to walk him to the seminar room in a different part of campus, the rain stopped.

I mean, I am not saying I am Thor or anything like that, but maybe a distant, distant cousin. The other possibility is that perhaps my umbrella is magic, but in any case I think I can control the weather.

This is a much more remarkable skill in my mind than the last magical talent I acquired ... causing every stoplight in Norman to turn red as I approached. I really spent two years without a green light in that city, so eventually I found every street that only had stop signs or could optimize my route to hit the fewest stoplights over a given distance.

Stopping or preventing the rain seems much better since perhaps it will snag me an invite to a few summer picnics this year. Of course, I will be made fun of for having an umbrella on a beautiful, sunny, summer afternoon.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

2009-06-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-30T14:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-25T15:17:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-06-23T15:07:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-14T15:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-13T06:48:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-06-12T17:05:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-10T10:07:00.001-07:00

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

2009-06-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

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.

I swear I did not know about this...

2009-06-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

I am off soon to Belgium this morning but last night watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which was beautiful. Anyway, thinking I recognized the clockmaker as Casey Jones from the old Ninja Turtles movie I saw as a 10 year old kid (I was right by the way), I went to good ole imdb.com to check and stumbled across the link

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114172/

which according to the plot summary is actually pretty darn close to the idea in my post. It is too bad there are no original ideas these days. Ha. I will have to ponder this while drinking delicious beer, eating tasty mussels with fries and tasting rich chocolate in @#$%ing Bruges.

A New Chapter

2009-06-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

Well, despite the fact that I have been too busy this week for it really to sink in, everything has been moved, the car sold and my wife has officially left North Carolina as of today. Tonight I feel so overwhelmed and apprehensive about the future, both immediate and long term, that it is hard for me even to explain where my mind is from one moment to the next. Things will settle down eventually, but I suppose it just registered with me that my life is once again about to change drastically. For now, I just have to do my best to shut down the fears and anxiety in my head, focus on getting a lot done in Paris and trying to get the most out of this summer I have in Germany. Still, I can see something drastically different coming up over the horizon and have no idea how to feel or deal with it at this time.

By the way...

2009-06-04T16:45:00.001-07:00

How has there not been a terrible action movie called Power of Attorney? I am imagining maybe an unassuming district attorney/former Army Ranger who winds up trapped in a brutal firefight with the mob to save his kidnapped wife/girlfriend they took to keep him from trying one of their henchmen. All we need now is casting and a director.

Power of Attorney 2: To Beuel and Back

2009-06-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

So, those happy few of you who follow this blog are aware I have been attempting to make it clear to the officials at the DMV that I am fine with selling my eight year old car back in the US. This week, on attempt number two, I had to wait out a German Federal holiday, wait for an Apostille who needs 24 hours to staple one form to another, find a place that will actually ship next day air, make my way to a fairly removed UPS facility across the Rhein and mail my package.

After this journey, much to my amazement I found myself paying less money for the one day delivery than I had paid DHL for a two day delivery the previous week. Suddenly, things seemed like they were finally going my way. As I began my journey back to my office from the shipping depot in Beuel, I had an extra spring in my step feeling proud of the efficiency and service provided by a true 'Merican company. As I walked, it felt so nice to be free of the burden of said document and my heart was bursting with patriotic pride. It seemed to me nothing could go wrong.

Then today happened. After nervously checking the UPS tracking site at regular intervals all morning during breaks from editing a paper I am working on with my sponsor here about a KdV equation, finally something showed that there had been a failed delivery at 10:11 AM. I called my wife, who had been sitting at home with the apartment owner all morning waiting for the delivery. I asked her to call the company, which she did and proceeded to verify the address, the recipients, and the phone number for delivery. Believe me, after last week, I was not missing any more 4's. The agent she talked to refused to call the driver directly and said we would just have to wait for tomorrow's delivery. So, I called the company again and actually found a rather friendly individual named Ricardo who told me all I had to do was request a "same day will call" service, which would allow the package to be picked up this evening.

So, I continued to edit and attempted to function all day just steaming at the thought of this package not being delivered and being terrified that despite double checking, I had somehow mislabeled the package. Anyway, after several traded phone calls, the will call service was arranged and Amber finally picked up the package this evening around 6:30 PM Eastern.

Needless to say, she asked for an explanation why the delivery had failed. Apparently the driver, rather than going to the address on the package, had seen an apartment complex of the same name as the road and simply assumed it went there. Upon being unable to find the correct apartment number, despite the fact that there was clearly NOT an apartment number on the address, he merely assumed it was mislabeled and went on instead of actually looking for the correct street address. So, though it is also needless to say, my patriotic pride was somewhat abated by the incident. In the end, you get what you pay for I suppose. True, DHL may take a little bit longer out of the gate, but at least their drivers are literate and education costs money.

However, the bottom line is that Amber has the form, which was actually provided by the DMV this time to avoid any further difficulties. The meeting is for 9 AM tomorrow. I cannot wait to see just what goes wrong this time. Any bets from those of you out there?

My only solace is that this weekend I am hitching a ride with some friends to Belgium. Hopefully, the inordinately strong beer, rich chocolate and delicious fries will help my rage subside. Plus, I am really pulling for Roger Federer to win the French Open this weekend. It is the only one he has never won, and I for one hate to see someone come so close to something great and missing by a hair. Hopefully his luck will fare better than mine.

Just Another Day.

2009-06-02T12:46:00.001-07:00

So, my wife turned 29 today. She said it seemed like just another day. For me, it is another significant day spent apart. By the time this whole experiment is over, I will have missed three anniversaries, two of her birthdays, three of my birthdays, three of Mindy's birthdays, plus several holidays including but not limited to Christmas, Thanksgiving, 4th of July, Easter, and Valentine's Day, etc.

Since she spent all yesterday packing all of our things to move into storage for the summer, perhaps she appreciated that today simply allowed her time to rest. However, I personally am tired of missing the big days, the little days and everything in between. Sometimes you just want the chance to be there for someone when it matters and when it does not necessarily. Looking back on this time, I would certainly appreciate more of both.

Speaking of packing up our whole apartment, it is rather odd to know while I finish my next three months in Europe, my whole house will have moved to some location in New York City, where I will actually be living again in September. To be honest, I want to be emotional that a particular chapter in our lives is over, though I guess three months feels far from over. In addition, my life has been so transient this last two years anyway, it is hard to feel connected to that particular apartment, this particular move and even this particular moment in time.

Hopefully in the morning I will get my form signed by the Apostille and to UPS in order to arrive Thursday morning to facilitate the selling of our car. This has been such a hassle, I have not really considered the implications of the form actually working. Saying goodbye to a past life used to be hard, but change has become such a dominant force in my life, honestly I believe none of this will really register until I have a home again.

Anyway, if we communicated about such things, my wife might be feeling a bit more stress about her whole life moving in a new direction and being on the front lines of such change. However, we do not really talk about such things, so her 29th birthday has come and gone without much fanfare or celebration, with our whole life together packed up in a truck and the next two months wildly unplanned and open. For me, I would be happy simply to share in this time of uncertainty and freedom, to be there to help shoulder some of the load, calm down the dog, and take the time to get to know each other again ... whatever that might mean.

The Sun.

2009-06-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight, just a quick note about how crazy it is living this far north. I realize Scandinavians would scoff at my protest, but these summer days are killing me. By the time I am tired after the sun sets after 10, I sleep what feels like a few hours before my room is filled with light even with the curtains drawn. As I wake up to a fully lit room to see just what time it has become daylight, I am lucky if I have made it past 5 AM. Anyway, I have not slept more than 5-6 hours continuously, which used to not be a problem at all for me but now definitely takes a toll. Still, the days are beautiful here and rarely too warm, so I should not complain about such pleasant summer weather. Still, the sun here is crazy.

On a lighter note, just as it was interesting to watch the sun go through the sky differently in the Southern Hemisphere when I visited Australia, it is similarly interesting to observe the low angle the sun takes here. It is enjoyable to observe the differences and wonder if I would have been able to understand Earth's orientation towards the sun had I been born in an earlier era. Doubtful I would have been intelligent enough to consider the full dynamical system that would make such observations plausible.

Let's Go Bowling.

2009-05-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

So, on top of having two big projects to finish, preparations for other start up projects and probably the most important talk of my life to prepare before I leave for Paris in two weeks, we have been trying to sell our car.

Unfortunately, the car is partly in my name, meaning I have to relent my power of attorney regarding this particular issue. I first found out our car was being sold pretty much exactly one week ago. Had a I found out one week and a few hours ago, I could have simply taken the power of attorney form as it was to the American Consulate in Nice, had it notarized and been on my way. However, as it stood, I had to figure out how to print the form after being refused by my friendly French hotel manager, search the Nice airport unsuccessfully for a way to verify documents, figure out from the University what was the necessary process in Germany legally, find a German notary, get that seal approved by a German Apostille and overnight the resulting three page form, which was all done by Tuesday morning. Now, all of this added many hours of exhausting walking around, which on top of the shoveling dirt for my postdoc advisor left me pretty much wiped out.

The only positive thing was that the form arrived by Thursday, seemed to be sufficient and finally I was able to relax. Of course, upon going to the DMV today, my wife was informed that because in transcribing the VIN number onto my form I had forgotten one 4 in the number, the form was completely invalid even though there is only one Black 2001 Ford Escape registered to me as an owner with the obvious VIN number I had tried to include. They literally refused to transfer the title. Of course, I found this out near 5 PM here on the weekend where Monday is a German Federal holiday. So, I was able to actually get the form notarized, but it may take until Wednesday for another Apostille and yet again another overnight attempt with DHL, whose speed was not terribly impressive for the 51 Euros I paid them to expedite the process.

I feel out of sorts ... tired of being so far from home, exhausted from the hassles of living apart from my life, on edge from the levels of stress I have about my job and future, and despondent from the loneliness of being here by myself. I am just worn incredibly thin right now. Who knows how I would feel if there would have been a DMV official with a soul today, but really that may be asking just too much since bureaucracy stamps the soul out of anyone who deals with it, let alone someone who works in it. Let's just hope I can pull some semblance of myself together to get at least my two major projects finished and talk prepared for my two weeks in Paris surrounded by practically everyone in my field, including several collaborators, my former Ph.D. advisor, both current postdoc advisors and a host of colleagues who in the very near future could decide whether or not I get another job.

As the man says, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you.

A look back...my first week in the States.

2009-05-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, I wanted to actually recall the events of my first week in Berkeley. Sadly, I left my camera in Durham during that week, so there are no pictures to accompany this post.

After the wonderful dinner and time spent catching up with my cousins, I slept rather soundly in my cousin J's bed (without the dog the first night ... it took me a few to crack). After all the travel and the workshop, I was pretty exhausted, so I slept rather soundly under the amazingly warm comforter through the amazingly cold Berkeley night. The next morning I roused early with the family, watched everyone eat breakfast, flip through the paper, shower and head off to school and work before making my way to campus for a meeting my Ph.D. advisor and a former post-doc at Berkeley who was in town for the workshop to discuss a project we want to work on involving quasilinear Schroedinger equations.

My cousins have completely remodeled their kitchen and added a brand new downstairs bathroom with a somewhat psychedelic sea shell like tile in the shower and the most amazing shower head in history. Needless to say, I was exceptionally clean by the time I forced myself out of the warm shower and onward up the hill to campus I had climbed so many times before as a graduate student. Due partially to all the walking I have done the last two years and partially to the cool weather, the climb did not leave me nearly as sweaty as it used to, so I was in a pleasant mood when I arrived at campus.

Most of my mornings were essentially identical to this, with the addition of getting up early enough and taking the dog for a walk so there would be no trace of evidence he had slept with me the previous night. The talks in the mornings were rather productive, lunch with the group always enjoyable, in the afternoons I got some other projects out the door, the evenings I had dinner and/or beer with my cousins or other old friends/colleagues, some of whom were soon to graduate and one who had just gotten engaged. All told, it was a hectic and enjoyable week full of math during the day and catching up with a little math once in a while in the evenings.

Two events though stand out. The first was Wednesday night when I went with a couple grad students and another post-doc to have a traditional Ukrainian dinner at a friend's house. Unfortunately, my friend M was out of town, but his wife N made quite a spread with homemade Borscht and potato dumplings. The whole meal was delicious and the company became even more enjoyable as the wine and ice cold vodka disappeared. It is my goal to along with the honorary Cretan citizenship I have been granted to one day get honorary Ukrainian citizenship, so hopefully this dinner added to my chances.

The next night was the last one I had in Berkeley. Because my young cousins had been busy all week with school and swimming, we worked out that I could dodge out of work by around 3 PM to pick them up by around 3:30 PM or so after school and take them to the California Academy of Science since we all wanted to see it.

First of all, it was the first day all week it actually rained, and it did so with vigor. As a caveat, I had been ridiculed all week by my colleagues and dealt with hassles at airports in order to carry a rather decent umbrella because the weather report had predicted rain during the week of my visit. Let's just say I was vindicated by that storm.

I met my somewhat drenched cousins outside the school and we headed into San Francisco. Along the way, we talked about their days and the kinds of things we hoped to see at the museum, but mostly it was a rather easy drive that took us right to the museum, where we arrived at 4:15 PM. It was rather clear on the web-site that the museum closed at 5 PM, so we thought we had a good shot at sprinting through to at least get a feel for the exhibits. However, the web-site had failed to mention that it was impossible to enter the museum after 4 PM unless you were a member.

At least the outside of the museum looked nice, and rather than accept defeat, we decided it would be fun to go to a bakery we all loved back in the East Bay for a snack and some more time. As we left the museum, we wound up sitting in the worst bridge traffic any of us had seen for some time due to the rain, meaning at 7:30 PM we finally just left the road and parked near Union Square to eat some tomato soup and chilli at a Boudin's in the Macy's basement. In the end, my cousins actually wound up really enjoying their meals, the three of us exchanged stories, opinions and ideas for many more hours than I had anticipated AND we found out the older of my two cousin's L had managed to pull off a 31 on her ACT. I was so proud of her and just enjoyed getting to know both of them again immensely. These were two people I watched grow up for 5 years of graduate school and being so far from them for the last two years was rather difficult actually.

Even though we were rather unsuccessful at everything we attempted to do that night, it wound up being one of the best of my trip because I had the chance to get reacquainted with two people I really love. After finally managing to get back across the bridge around 10 or so, we went back home, where I spent a little time with the whole family before heading off to say goodbye one last time to my friend C.

The next morning I was off for the great MBA graduation adventure of 2009, though of course my flight was delayed and diverted into Dallas due to a nasty storm and several tornadoes, but at least I was able to grab some Mexican food with my cousin M, a welcome surprise. It is so rare I get to see her these days and for a time we had dinner together with our grandparents once a week. Anyway, she plied me with fish tacos and a strong margarita and dumped me back at the airport in plenty of time to go standby on what turned into the last flight out due to continued storms. My actual flight wound up just being cancelled that night, which of course meant my baggage did not arrive until the next morning. Of course, I could not have had a trip go by without some crazy air travel story, so it was fitting this happened and rather fortuitous it happened in Dallas where I have a close relative.

The Ignorant End of a Shovel.

2009-05-25T14:25:00.000-07:00

Rather unexpectedly due to some conflict with neighbors over a dumpster, my postdoc advisor asked me to come to his house this evening to help with something. From the deck incident earlier, I was prepared for it to be a fairly labor intensive job. It turned out we were moving a couple giant piles of dirt. The only complication was that as the U-Bahn to their house rose from the underground portion of the track, I realized a horrendous thunderstorm had begun after I had popped into the train station. So, we really were moving two large piles of mud eventually. Anyway, the job got done and as my grandfather says, sometimes it is good to be on the ignorant end of a shovel.

Photos from the Hike in Theoule

2009-05-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

My colleague CG who invited me to Nice took me on a hike Thursday because it was a holiday in Nice. Though I did not really know what I was getting into, the five hour walk was rather nice, it ended with a cold beer by the water, and involved a dip in the Mediterranean before getting back on the train. See the pictures attached.

A peak of reddish, volcanic rocks in the distance.

CG sporting his hat from this years at ANU.

A view of the sea near Theoule.

Another view of the sea.

An actual picture of me in Europe!!

A closer view of the red rocks.

Getting near the top of our walk.

The haze made it hard to see the snowy Alps in the background.

Another view from one of the peaks we crossed.

The sea.

The beach had smaller rocks than those in Nice, but rocks nonetheless.

The sea from a distance.

Almost to the pub.

The bay.

Family Photos.

2009-05-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

So, Wednesday night I met up with many members of my family in Nice for a delicious and gigantic dinner of various quiches, an assortment of local meats, sweet tomatoes, cheese and homemade apple tarte. The photos do not do the dinner justice, but hopefully you enjoy.

The relatives telling stories around the table.

The amazing spread.

Uncle "Fulvio" laying down some knowledge.

All the relatives gathered around the table.

One more shot of everyone together.

Everyone enjoying the delicious dessert.

The young cousins posing together.

J taking photos of his granddaughter.

Listening intently to stories.

Saying Goodbye to a Loyal, Old Friend

2009-05-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from Nice and finally settling in after having a delicious dinner last night at one of my favorite breweries with an old friend in Germany on business. Tonight, I get the joy of working and doing laundry for the week. Then, I have to head to bed early because tomorrow morning I set off on a great adventure to get a document notarized and sent back to the US in order to finalize the sale of our car. It has been eight years of service by this trusty vehicle. Though there were occasionally hard times and dollars spent in upkeep, it has served me well. All told it drove me across North America three and a half times, moved countless of my friends, collected a number of parking tickets during the rather stressful time of finishing my thesis, and took us anywhere we needed to go throughout the better part of our driving lives. Right now, I am mostly focused on completing the transaction, so the thought of losing the car is kind of deeply repressed. Plus, living without a car for the last two years makes it hard to feel the nostalgia I know will wash over me when I realize it is truly gone. So, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the Manimal for the many years of dedicated service to my small family, including the hours of joy spent driving on road trips, the memories obtained both on the way and at many destinations, surviving my wife speeding to school many times a day for two years and for teaching Mindy to love the open road.

A pit-stop while driving across the country.

Navigator Mindy.

Amber cruising down the road.

One last night.

2009-05-22T08:34:00.001-07:00

So, my time in France is limited at this point. I will have one last dinner with my extended family, then leave out tomorrow around noon. They are all such kind, warm people and would make the trip worth it to any part of the world. However, it will also be rather difficult to part with the shimmering, blue Mediterranean, beautiful weather, delicious local food, amazing coffee with sugar that always comes in cubes and light, refreshing wine to cool you down on a warm afternoon. However, for someone like me, perhaps it is best to simply know that such a lifestyle exists but not be the one to live it all the time. That way, the joy of such an experience can be truly savored on those rare occasions such pleasures are available to you.

Nice Family Reunion.

2009-05-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

So, my internet connection in the hotel is a bit slow, meaning pictures will have to come later, but last night I had a lovely family dinner with my relatives in Nice and the friend who invited me here named C. There was as required at any Marzuola gathering more delicious food than one could possibly consume, a great deal of laughter and a generous amount of wine. Seeing those I had met almost 9 years ago was enjoyable, especially since they had some pictures I had not seen to remind me of just how great a time that truly was. Plus, I met some new relatives who had been on holiday last time I visited.

Today, since the University is closed, C and I will be headed for a hike and possibly a swim just up the coast from nice in a place with supposedly beautiful red colored stones, white beaches and the deep blue of the Mediterranean. Should be a lovely place to talk about math.

Nice is nice.

2009-05-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

So, I am here enjoying the amazing food and beautiful weather in Nice. My talk on billiard problems is later this afternoon in front of one of the world experts, which is of course a bit unnerving. However, later tonight I get to have dinner with the French wing of my family, which should be a rather lovely experience given what happened when I first met them 9 years ago. I will post more about the food and wine later hopefully with pictures. For now, I just wanted to post a brief update.

A Happy Anniversary.

2009-05-16T14:23:00.000-07:00

A year ago this weekend, my friends G & J tied the knot. This was an occasion of great joy for me because I care for these two people very much, know they care for each other in a way that will last a lifetime and at the time the memory of Amber's father's passing was very fresh in our minds so a celebration of life was greatly needed. In the end, Amber arrived from China in time for the rehearsal dinner, where we ate, danced, laughed and had a fantastic time enjoying this happy event. I am posting here some pictures from a year ago in recognition of that time.

J, G and myself grooving after the beachfront ceremony.

Me with the bride.

They allowed us one non-serious picture.

Amber and me on the beach. There are actually dolphins swimming in the background if you have CSI-like image enhancement capabilities.

When you need the best groomsmen available, you call Team Ramrod.

Amber enjoying the reception and trying to stay awake despite the jet lag.
G being G.

G really being G.