Hong Kong Trip III

The timing for the trip to Shenzhen when my host was there last week left a gap of a few days until the start of the workshop in Hong Kong I came for. It's the 2017 Engineering and Computational Mathematics Conference (link). I was OK with that since I have never been to Hong Kong before, so took the time to look around a bit. I was told that shopping was great here, but I haven't seen anything yet that I want that is not cheaper in Vancouver. Maybe I am just a typical straight man, uninterested in shopping. After giving up on shopping, I took the subway a couple of places to some outdoor venues to stretch my legs, since I can barely do that in my hotel room. The first was Victoria Park on Sunday. There were a few quiet spots where I first went, but other areas were full of religious groups of various types (mostly muslim women). There was some variety in how seriously they were taking the religion in the groups, and also some variety in how much fun they were having, with surprisingly little correlation. It's all in the group dynamic. I wish I knew the recipe for how to tilt that to the positive. The only thing I do know is that free food helps. There were interesting trees and a pedestrian overpass to the harbour that gave a good view.

The next day's trip was to Victoria Peak (another Victoria, but since I was born in the city of that same name, I thought it was a bonus). The plan was to take the tram up to the top, but when I got there it was a three hour line-up. I don't have the temperament to wait three hours for anything in the hot sun, unless life were at stake. Anyway, without a cell phone (my provider, Freedom formerly Wind, does not have a partner in Hong Kong or China) how would I entertain myself that long? There was a path leading up alongside the tram cables so I thought I would try hiking up, at least far enough to get a view.

  

How hard could it be? I got some good advice along the way. One guy said he had given up trying to find his way because he did not have cell phone coverage in Hong Kong (d'oh!). Another woman gave the helpful advice "turn right not left at the road". It was in fact helpful advice, but not at the next road, but at the one after that. There were some informative signs to help guide the way:

At some point I did feel like I was making some progress. The view below looked promising, but in the other direction was another building with about thirty floors left to the top.

I did get some actually helpful advice from some construction workers at one of the mountainside estates. I think they were worried about me: when I exercise in the heat I turn a bright red colour that is apparently quite alarming. I did eventually make it to the top. I am not the guy that needs to finish something at any cost, but I do like closure, and the view made the work all worthwhile. I am pretty stiff today, though, not used to that much climbing in the heat.

Hong Kong/Shenzhen Trip II

Seeing Hong Kong and Shenzhen for the first time and learning a (very little) bit about them does make you think. There are a bunch of things I am trying to put in perspective, here is a first attempt.

Hong Kong has a population of 7 million concentrated in a very small area. Shenzhen has 22 million, spread out a little bit more, but still: that is more than half the population of Canada and more that twice the number of Bulgarians world-wide. I am not trained to think as a social scientist, but even my eyes are opened to new perspectives during this visit.

One obvious thing here in Hong Kong to notice is just how they have managed the urban density. In terms of transportation, there are layers on layers of roads, railways and pedestrian walkways:

With human population being concentrated more and more in urban environments, I guess we will all see more of this kind of infrastructure in our own cities (there are a few equivalent things in Vancouver already). I do look at the space taken up by roads for individual cars and think we would be better off with more public transportation. Maybe shared use of autonomous vehicles will be the transition to take us there.

The South University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen has a beautiful campus. It is very self-contained and quiet, with lots of green space around it. There are hills covered in Lichee trees. There is urban development very near. Apartments there apparently run $2 million for 100 square meters. It puts it into perspective why property in Vancouver seems like such a bargain to them.

I thought it was interesting that the campus was closed to the general population (there are guard posts at the entrances and a small police/army presence on campus in general). Now, it is not security like the Technion in Israel that has a serious fence around the whole campus and gate security that search vehicles: you could sneak into SUSTech through the forest if you really wanted to. The people I talked to put it in perspective: there are 22 million people nearby who would love to take a light rail trip and be in a quiet, green space. If all of them could just come in, it would be a security nightmare for university equipment and would diminish the academic environment. As a related fact, I learned that you can only buy property in Zurich if you are a Swiss citizen. Of course, I have benefitted from lifestyle protectionism like this in my life, but with my left leaning hat on, I wish we (as a global society) would spend more time and energy making life good for everyone rather than protecting our own little class advantages.

Chinese communism is interesting, but I can't say that I have worked it out. There were some of the things you would usually expect from that ideology: lots of people employed at the university in jobs that involved standing around, waiting to be needed. On the other hand, there is the free market economy in view right from campus. While I was there, there was a lot of respect given to Deng Xiaoping, the leader who initiated the economic growth in Shenzhen in 1992 (as well as being responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre). That is another interesting perspective: Shenzhen went from basically nothing to 22 million and a high tech economic powerhouse in 25 years. Deng's famous quote is "I don't care if the cat is black or white. If it catches mice, it is a good cat."

It is not at all clear to me how Communist regimes can be dictatorships. It seems counter to the whole ideology of building a communal society that works as well as possible for everyone. Chairman Mao does not seem like a good choice as dictator. He did have some memorable quotes, like "Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy." As an academic, another especially memorable one is "to read too many books is harmful." He closed down all universities between 1966, only to be reopened after his death in 1976. At a workshop banquet I went to last night (which was great, and it was for a workshop I hadn't even attended) it was explained that there is a missing decade of Chinese academics because of this. The same guy sitting next to  me predicted that the Central Government would take over complete control of Hong Kong in ten years. That's interesting...

Hong Kong/Shenzhen Trip I

I am in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks in the middle of the trip. It is a work thing, with a conference in Hong Kong that starts on Wednesday. There was an opportunity to visit the new South University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) across border nearby in Shenzhen, and that is what brought me over last week. SUSTech is well funded and looking for international collaboration: they have an arrangement with UBC Engineering on joint supervision of graduate students. I was in Hong Kong for one night, staying at the Best Western Grand Hotel. The rooms are quite small, with a foot and a half perimeter around the bed, no chair no desk. I am learning to type on my laptop while sitting in bed. Great view, though:

Yes, that is bamboo they are using for scaffolding 27 floors up. The next day I went off to Shenzhen. They sent a driver to pick me up at the Hong Kong Hotel and that was the start of pretty serious hosting: all my meals were provided with company, including a banquet after my talk; my accommodations on campus were paid for (and the room was spacious with not only two chairs and a desk but even a small sofa); the next day a whole group took me to the Shenzhen Museum, picture below:

While at the museum I was approached by a couple with their camera. I thought at first they wanted me to take their picture together, but in fact the husband wanted to take a picture of me with his wife. I hope it had a simple explanation, like that I was the first Caucasian person they had seen in person, and not that I am now financially responsible for their children. 

The hospitality was great but a bit intimidating. If it is a contest, they will win for sure. There is no way I can manage to host in a similar way if they come to UBC. Someone I talked to about this said that part of it is that we can expect them to know English and so it is easier for them to get around on their own. Clearly not fair, but I did get the benefit of it this trip. 

A driver took me back across the border, not all the way back to my hotel but to the border crossing and I took the train onwards from there. It was manageable, but it sure made me glad not to have had to make it all the way to SUSTech on my own. I am back in the Best Western Grand, with a new view waiting for the workshop to start, doing a little touristing during the day and catching up on work e-mail at night. 

If I die here it will probably be an elevator accident in the hotel. I would ask that everyone I love please try to get along at the funeral, play my funeral play-list, and drink copiously at the expense of my estate. 

Double Recommendation: Urbanears Earphones and Firefly Electronics

I bought a pair of earphones about a year ago. They were relatively expensive, just over $100. I have come to the opinion that it is OK to spend extra money on things that you use all the time. I was constantly using earphones with a microphone to call people while I was out of town, and to listen to podcasts when I was on transit. I bought them at a shop on South Granville that specialized in earphones. I could not find them online so I think they have gone out of business or this would have been a triple recommendation.

Notice the somewhat incongruous jack in the picture above. From frequent use, the connection to the earphones was partially broken (no sound in the right channel). I had thought I might fix this myself, even borrowed a soldering iron from a friend, but then I (thankfully) found a local place that would fix it for me: FireFly Electronics in Harbour Centre mall. They charged $40, so not cheap, but still less than the original cost, and I like repairing more than replacing on principle. Why I like these headphones, for phone calls especially, is that they don't completely block the ears, so you can hear external noise and your own voice sounds more natural as you speak.  

Visiting my Dad in Kamloops

I rented a car and took the highway up to Kamloops to see my old father (90 years old and still going strong!). If you look back a few posts you'll see the great view he has in his place in Aberdeen in winterscape. Below is the scene in Spring:

I never get tired of that view. He asked me to take some pictures of him to use advertising his books (kindle format) on Amazon.

He is the old guy. For the one on the left, I suggested he look intellectual. I can't exactly recommend his books, but you can check him out on Amazon (he is Anthony Robinson, long story why we have different last names). 

Quotes and Epitaphs 2017

These are mostly not quotes from 2017. It is a list I update every year or so with anything that seems amusing or insightful to me from any era.

Quotes

"There is nothing more appealing than a hot woman with grey hair riding a bicycle. Hot needs no explanation, grey hair means she might be old enough for me to date, and if she cycles we have something in common already," Anonymous.

"No, no es una fresa, es un tomate," Spanish phrase from Duolingo, a language learning app on my phone. I wonder at someone that can't tell the difference between a strawberry and a tomato. Here's some other good ones: "Soy un caballo. Hablo ingles"; "No, no soy el capitan, soy el rey".

"Comics are a singularly effective medium for conveying cognitive dissonance," Jay Edidin, co-host of the podcast, Jay and Miles Xplain the Xmen.

"Brian, I know you only exercise to lose weight, but you should really do some free weight training as well. After all, men your age tend to lose muscle mass. Anyway, with all that extra weight you are carrying, you should be building up your strength," Clint Sello, my helpful friend.

"Brian, some of your pottery designs are not bad. Maybe you should get someone with talent to make them for you," Trent Doiron, another helpful friend.

"People who try opening their relationship because their current monogamous one is failing, are doing no one any favours. If your boat is leaking, that's a bad time to say, 'Hey, I've always wanted to try waterskiing,' " Travis Smith.  

"So much of what is love, is fish love." - Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski. This seems like an odd comment, but it is part of a thoughtful discussion you can find a video of online (google "fish love").

"If you don't like the work you are doing, look for a new job," Dr. Deborah Mielewski, Senior Technical Leader on Materials Sustainability, Ford.

"You aren't having a mid-life crisis. It's a three-quarters-life crisis," 'Young Dave' Muraki. 

"Asymptotics is the mathematics of wishful thinking," Lawrence Evens, Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley, while giving a lecture to the UBC Mathematics department.

"It's a one-dimensional problem, how hard can it be?," Huaxiong Huang, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, about a problem we are still working on ten years later (but we do understand some aspects of it now, mostly thanks to Lloyd Bridge who was a student and worked on the problem for his PhD thesis).

"Let's have a child to save our marriage," my parents. I was a failure from the very beginning. 

"In case it wasn't perfectly clear, I actually expect you to do some work on this project," Rachel Kuske, Professor of Mathematics at UBC, then head of the department, directed towards me in regards to a Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative project I had a teaching release to do.

"It would have been nice to be asked instead of told, even though the question would clearly have had only one right answer," Carl Ollivier-Gooch, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UBC. 

"My people have been lost. Scattered to the winds. But I will survive. As long as you buy something." Vidar the Collector, Vendor in Bastion's Keep.

"I would rather solve the real problem approximately than an approximate problem exactly," Roger Donaldson, CEO of Midvale Applied Mathematics, Inc.

"Mathematics and Marijuana don't mix," Anonymous. So true!

"Smoke a fatty for Rebagliati," Anonymous. Ross Rebagliati won a gold medal for snowboarding in the 1998 Olympics. He had the medal briefly taken from him when he tested positive for THC in a drug test after the event. The medal was later returned to him after officials realized that Marijuana could not be considered a performance enhancing drug (unless napping became an olympic sport).

taller.

a little

stands 

on it

with a bike

A hill 

Anonymous. Graffiti on the bike route on University Avenue coming into UBC.  

"Unless you get over your depression I am going to leave you," Anonymous. I am sure this helped the spouse to put a smile on their face. 

[on Microsoft Word] "... the procrustean dictates of its grammar checker would merely be funny if the ploddingly sophomoric business writing style it mandates were not so widespread," Charles Stross.

"I think this might be the best patch ever," Maggie the Jackcat, who published a fan site for the MMORPG, Asheron's Call.

"I floop the pig," Jake the Dog, a character of the cartoon, Adventure Time, in the Card Wars episode. You really have to watch that episode if you ever have played Magic the Gathering.

"The only top mathematicians we can hire in our department are assholes that nobody else wants," Anonymous.

"I'll never have a 50th wedding anniversary, but I have had two 25's," Dorothy Robinson, my stepmother. 

Here are two quotes taken from Chemical Engineering articles from the 80s that sum up my research philosophy. Unfortunately, I lost track of the citation details.

"The scale up from the laboratory could proceed more efficiently if a predictive mathematical model was available to guide quantitatively the work and aid in the correlation and extrapolation of experimental data."

"The mathematical modelling of physical and chemical systems is used extensively throughout science, engineering, and applied mathematics. A wide spectrum of models is expressed as partial differential equations, one of the most widely used forms of mathematics in science and engineering."

Family Expressions with Explanations

"Don't get your shirt in a knot" (don't get needlessly upset).

"That's like kissing your sister" (not an encouragement to incest, rather a description of something that is just not as exciting as you expect it to be, like decaffeinated coffee). 

"Do a dipsy-doodle" (an erratic trajectory, usually a circular motion in a motorized vehicle)

"Something to dip your spoon into," (a second dessert). 

Epitaphs for Brian Wetton

"Brian Wetton was a pioneering leader in his field who shaped a generation of scientists around the world. He was loved by family and friends. He was also devilishly handsome." [this is how I'd like it to read]. 

"Brian Wetton really enjoyed his own humour and his fashion 'sense'. Tests were too hard." [more realistic].

Advice to Students

I have this on my professional web page:

1. Remember to sleep
2. Remember to eat (healthily)
3. Try to exercise at least three times a week
4. Make sure what you are studying is (mostly) interesting to you and has some challenge

I purposefully kept it a short list of what I thought were the key things to avoid diluting the message. There are other things I could have added:

• If you want to get the most out of your education, don't do recreational drugs or binge drink alcohol. 
• You are successful if you are happy. Adjust your expectations and/or your work habits to make this happen. 
• Balance working hard on the details and looking up at the big picture. 

I also have some advice on etiquette for e-mailing your instructors:

• Don't address them by their first name unless they have invited you to [I do]. Don't title them "Mr/Ms" (never use "Miss/Mrs" I hope that is clear) if they have a PhD, because then it should be "Dr". If you are in doubt, "Professor" always works. 
• Send the message from an e-mail address that is professional, not for example, "rudeboy69". 
• Do not use texting abbreviations such as "r u happy?". Use full sentences with appropriate punctuation and capitalization.  
• Include your student number.

Teaching Evaluation Comments 

I get a spectrum of comments, represented below. I think the new realizations for me this year are that my language is too sophisticated for many students (many are ESL and association with my ex-wife really upped my vocabulary) and that many students have trouble reading my handwriting. I have learned just this year that script writing is not taught any more even in local BC schools. Anyway, those are the most obvious things to work on next year.

• Prof Wetton is a perfect professor, and I think there is nothing he can improve.
• Brian Wetton is a wonderful human being who made me love linear algebra.
• This man is one of the most passionate mathematicians ever and should be commended for it due to his constant use of humour. However, sometimes the humour did make certain parts more difficult to understand.
• OK. I can see that he is passionate about math, but that doesn't always translate to good teaching or inspiration.
• Dr. Wetton had a lot of wit in class, and overall was a fairly humorous man. Unfortunately he is not effective at communicating the course material in a way such that students can actually understand. His pedagogy is unique, but is likely more suitable for higher level students. First years need a lot of guidance when it comes to entering the academic world, guidance that Dr. Wetton was not entirely prepared to deliver. ["unique pedagogy"? Is that good? I don't think so...] 
• I'm sorry. Wetton was monotone and while sometime made funny jokes, he was hard to follow. He moved to fast and did the examples for us. I think I learned this course quite a bit through YouTube. Many people skipped Wetton's course and went to see the other prof's lectures. [Hey, comparing me to that award-winning, teaching-focussed instructor is not fair: she is amazing]. 

Double Recommendation: Herbal Teas and Donald's Market

I have trouble sleeping if I have caffein after noon, and coffee is especially bad. Tea does not give me so much trouble, but even so I prefer to drink herbal tea starting in the late afternoons. I have recently discovered two excellent herbal teas: Linden Flower and Elder Flower. These both have a really delicate flavour, distinct but with some common elements. I really recommend the Elder Flower in particular if you can find it. If you want something that is the opposite of delicate, you can also try Lavender.

 

I found them at Donald's Market in my old neighbourhood, Commercial Drive area in East Vancouver. There are two locations there: one on Commercial just North of Broadway and the other, larger, outlet on Hastings just West of Nanaimo. I see from their site they have outlets in Port Coquitlam and New West now. They have a good selection of produce at reasonable prices, including organics (but remember local is more important than organic, you can google "local vs organic" if you want to see the arguments and decide for yourself). More importantly, they have a nice selection of dry goods that are different than you find in most chain supermarkets, including these teas from Hungary. It is a fun place to shop. 

The Irish Taxpayer paid for me to go to Barcelona

OK, it does seem unlikely, but this actually happened. A colleague of mine (a former PhD student) works in Ireland now as a research associate at the University of Limerick in Ireland. He applied for a a grant from a programme there that promotes the development of an international research collaboration. He approached me and a colleague of ours in Barcelona to participate. We have mathematical skills with some common ground but also some differences, and had worked together productively before. The topic was the development of nano-scale models of some of the electrochemistry in Lithium-ion batteries, which I am interested in. We started looking through the literature and discussing ideas by e-mail, but part of the mandate of the grant was to organize a face to face meeting. He chose Barcelona as the venue. A friend of his was working as a post-doctoral fellow there that was included in the project; the senior colleague there was the only one with young children so harder for him to travel; there is an institute there that provided us with office space; and, well, Barcelona is quite nice.

We met at the Universitat Autonoma Barcelona, which is in a suburb. I had spent some time there in the past, one two month visit during my last sabbatical year and another month in a Fall term that was free of teaching. The first one was one of the first long trips I took away from the family, when I thought the kids were old enough and I also thought that time away might reset my failing marriage. The latter thought was a bit of a Hail Mary and, as you probably know, was not successful. Below are pictures of the campus, including the residence I stayed in on my longer trips. This time, I was in the campus hotel, with a very nice buffet breakfast every day.

We actually worked pretty hard. I think the Irish taxpayer got their money's worth. We had a detour from the original focus we had in mind and made progress on the scaling of the macroscopic processes of these batteries that will give insight into when some simplified (reduced dimensional) models are appropriate, and also interesting: when they are not. I think this will make a nice publication that will help other researchers in the field and understanding the model better will lead to insight into how to implement computational simulations based on these models efficiently, which is a project I was interested in before I went. Here we are all puzzling over something together at the board:

    

It was not all work. My colleague (and friend) in Barcelona has us over to his place for a BBQ dinner in San Cugat, a small city near Barcelona where he lives with a great view. 

We ate and drank quite well. My former student and I had one of the best meals I can remember at a restaurant, La Taverna del Pla, near the old cathedral. We had another dinner as a group at the end of the week. That is my gin and tonic (or "gintonic" as they say there) you can see in the foreground on the left.