I have not found forgiveness but I did find a good playlist

Sometime last year I went back to therapy. I was still feeling resentment towards my ex-wife and wanted to get over it. My therapist was helpful as always, and her main message was that I had to find forgiveness to be able to move on. I still have not found forgiveness yet (maybe it fell down behind the couch cushions) but I did find a playlist I made soon after the separation. For many years I made playlists in format close to 80 minutes, the limit of what could be burned onto a CD. I do not have a CD player anymore, even on a computer, but I still have these playlists in electronic format. I listened to this playlist, "Breakup CD", on a recent trip to Toronto, driving around in a rental car, and was reminded that it was a particularly good one. The songs are meant to be played in order, and they hit many of the emotions triggered by a breakup: pain, anger, sadness, melancholy, acceptance, nostalgia, and resentment, but (I noticed) not forgiveness. The track list can be found below. 

I made another playlist around the same time, "New Love CD", with some good tunes but somehow lacking the same level of synergy in the Breakup CD. I remember not being convinced that would find new love, but in fact I did quite quickly after the separation and have since remarried. 

• Don't You Want Me (The Human League)
• Why (Annie Lennox)
• The Thrill Is Gone (Chet Baker)
• Let Me Go (Heaven 17)
• Babe I'm Gonna Leave You (Led Zeppelin)
• Baby Get Lost (Billie Holliday) 
• Just Came Back (Colin James) 
• Cubs in Five (Mountain Goats) 
• Tainted Love (Soft Cell) 
• Unhappy Birthday (The Smiths) 
• You Oughta Know (Alanis Morissette) 
• I Fall To Pieces (Patsy Cline) 
• Willow Weep For Me (Frank Sinatra) 
• My Old Friend The Blues (The Proclaimers) 
• I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor) 
• Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac) 
• They Can't Take That Away From Me (Ella Fitzgerald) 
• Adieu -- long version (Seatbelts)  

Three Circles Pottery and Paper: Groups of Three

I have begun making things in pottery and paper mache in groups of three, with related function and variations on a design theme. The idea began when I was thinking of ways to reduce the percentage of shipping costs for online sales (triple the sales price, no increase in shipping costs for three paper mache items that fit in the same box). Now, I find it interesting to think of what three things can be grouped together and how the designs can vary. 

Tea light holders were an easy start, as I always think you should light three at a time. You can see the idea of design variation here. 

Paper mache bowl sets were also straightforward. I am now working on paper mache salt shakers, sugar bowls, and vases (for dry flowers, or maybe I will try my hand at making them out of paper mache).

Some elliptical pink and white pottery bowls:

Few people read my blog, but if you are one and want to buy any of this stuff (and are not a current UBC student), let me know! My latest "product", funerary urns, does not seem like a good candidate for the groups of three idea...  

I am a Professional

Of course, I have been a professional academic for many years now, but the summer before last I made my debut as a professional craft maker. I was an "emerging artist" at a craft event at Britannia Community Centre (where I have some history). I actually sold a few things, but not enough to call it a success. My brand was Three Circles Pottery (and Paper). 

Since then I have become more interested in paper mache crafting, maybe because it is similar to pottery but I can do it at home and there are more options for decoration. My latest creation was a funerary urn (for ashes after cremation). I started with cardboard and my glue gun, then covered with office paper and decorated with tissue paper and acrylic paints. 

I have also made some bedside jewelry holders. Some have different numbers of beads for different compartments so you can find the right one in the dark, or when you can't find your glasses.

I made this double bowl for my sister to hold all of her craft stuff. There are some pictures of the process. These pieces just seem too light to me, so I add some coins to the base to make them a bit more stable. 

And then here is a mix of some other things I have made recently:

I am building up stock for another attempt at selling my work. I have looked into online sales (Etsy, Amazon Homemade, ...) but the whole process of having to bundle things up and mail them off seems like too much work. The platforms I mentioned also have very heavy fees (not unreasonable fees, but it would make it hard to make it worth my time). Ideally, I would be such a famous craftsman that people would commission me to make things for them. Second best would be to find a local retail store that was interested in putting them up for sale. The more likely scenario is that I try selling at a larger craft fair when I have some stock built up (but before my patient wife gets tired of the piles of paper mache in the apartment). 

Capilano Park

My first memories are from living in North Vancouver. My Dad and my much older sister would take me to nearby Capilano Park and we would hike, pick berries, and swim in Cable Pool (now closed off and the area only ever has people fishing). In turn, I took my kids there on weekends to wear them out. It is a temperate rain forest in a river valley, with a fish hatchery and a reservoir and dam at the top of the hill for variety. I went with Veronica a couple of weeks ago for a short hike.

Math 100 at UBC this year

Math 100 at UBC has been the first class in Differential Calculus for Science and Engineering students for many years. There used to be other flavours (Math 102 for Biological Sciences and Math 104 for Economics and Commerce). This year, all three flavours were rolled up into one class, Math 100, with 4500 total students. There is a team organizing this monster class:

I am a cog in this machine, described as either a minion or a lieutenant. I give two hour lectures twice in a row (same material) on Thursdays to 600 total students. I am giving the material with the economics flavoured application examples. Here is the larger of the two rooms I teach in:

This is definitely the largest room I have ever taught in. Teaching four hours straight is a bit difficult, but otherwise it is an easy assignment. There is an administrative team to handle all the student issues with section changes and any accommodations. This would be a huge job to do for 600 students and I am not efficient at it, so this new policy is a real winner. The course material has changed quite a bit since last year. We will fit in differential equations and partial derivatives somehow to the class. We will see how that goes, but so far so good. 

 

Netflix Korean Drama Recommendations

So many Korean dramas were watched during the COVID years, not all of them good. They have an interesting format: one season of 12-20 episodes (16 is typical). The single season format gives a different type of storytelling than multiple season media (even short British/cable seasons). 

My strong recommendation is for the science fiction series, Sisyphus. This a a tightly written, well acted show good to the last second. It involves time travel and they do not make any of the usual mistakes that lead to glaring inconsistencies: this plot fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. If I had three thumbs they would all be up for this show. 

Many of the dramas are romances, but often have an underlying social message or at least a socially relevant theme. I do not know whether they get government funding to do this, or whether the Korean public just expect this. Apparently, Korean TV does not include advertising, but there is some product placement written into the episodes. This is done anywhere from seamless to jarringly overt. One thing my daughter told me was that typically they are still filming when the first episodes come out and the plot may be altered based on viewer feedback (I would say this is not always a good thing). One other thing typical of the romance category is that near the end, a breakup is engineered between the main couple which is resolved in the last episode. This plot device can be done so clumsily that it ruins the whole plot for me. Some romance dramas I can recommend are:

• It's OK not to be OK, with social commentary on mental disability and illness. Some innovative filming in the first episodes (presumably before time and financial pressures forced them to be more conventional). Beautiful main couple. My only request would have been more Jae-soo. 
• Something in the Rain, with some pretty gritty social commentary on misogyny in the workplace. Lovely scenes at the end of episode three and beginning of episode four when the couple first gets together. The moral of the story is to not lie to protect your friends. 
• Search WWW, with social commentary on the role and responsibilities of social media. Strong friendship (and professional conflict) between a group of three women, as well as romance. 

If you are desperate for more romance, When the Camellia Blooms, Hometown Cha Cha, and Chocolate are "OK".  

In the light comedy class, I recommend Business Proposal, based on a webtoon. It is fluff, but I found it to be enjoyable fluff. 

The biggest disappointment was "The King: Eternal Monarch". It had parallel universes, a fantastic New Years speech, overall good first half, and fell completely flat in the second. 

Exciting East Lansing 2022

I just came back from a four week research trip to Michigan State University in East Lansing. If you know me or have read past posts of my blog, you know that I have visited there many times in the past. I have a long time collaborator and friend there, Keith Promislow. We have worked on a number of projects together. This year, we continued with our interest in sea ice modelling with two projects identified. One is the mathematical structure of macroscopic models of sea ice and their computational simulation. It turns out that even simplified models have complex mathematical structure. There is interesting behaviour where a moving boundary changes between implicit and explicit type. This work is a first step towards a more comprehensive, three dimensional computational model. The other sea ice project is a geometric one on the shape of brine inclusions. I brought a problem for Keith involving mathematical analysis of a structure from Machine Learning. 

I was in a long stay hotel as I have been for the last few visits. Also as usual, I rented a bicycle to get around. This time, I was able to try the scooters they have for rent on campus. I was keen to try these out, but they are not as fun as I thought they would be. You feel every little bump in the road with those small tires. 

The campus is quite beautiful and were some other interesting things to see this trip 

To keep myself out of trouble evenings and weekends there was the fancy movie theatre (Cinema C) at the local mall. As usual, the choice of movies of my taste was limited. I went for action movies: Thor (Love and Thunder) and Bullet Train. I cannot really recommend either, but the movie experience was enjoyable. I continued my paper mache hobby with some bowls and a jewelry holder. 

I reciprocated dinner invitations by hosting gin & tonic Monday happy hours. The group was very enjoyable, I wish they all lived in Vancouver. My only complaint about them was that at some point they refused to take more paper mache bowls... 

Good Albums

There is an art to making a good album. Historically, I would have meant a vinyl record with two sides with (standard format) content up to 27 minutes each.  Later I would have meant a one sided CD with up to 72 minutes of content. When I say album I mean either of these formats and also modern digital releases with 30-90 minutes of content -- with some caveats. A general criteria is that all the material  is from the same artist. What I mean by "good" is the following:

• All tracks are good. You don't feel like taking out a couple for other playlists and never playing the whole album.  
• The original order that the tracks are in is important. You never dream of playing the album on shuffle (shudder). 
• The album as a whole is better than the sum of its tracks. There is some synergy going on that you appreciate. 

I have a few albums I have in my collection I consider to be "good" and I list them below. Some of these are the few albums I collected as an early teenager (in vinyl). It is honestly hard to say whether the albums are really that good, or they were just imprinted on my teen brain (because when you only have six records as a teen, you listen to them a lot). A good album is not necessarily about good artists. My favorite band is arguably Yes (who I consider to be musically talented and innovative), but they have no good albums by my criteria. There is always at least one regrettable song on every Yes album. Old vinyl albums that have been re-issued on CD or digital formats suffer from a couple of issues. Firstly, there was pacing to the album that came from turning to the second side that is lost. I imagine that people that made good albums used this break consciously when they put the tracks together. Secondly, CD reissues often come with "bonus" content. These have to be deleted to have the good album experience that the creators intended.  

• Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill. 
• The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour. 
• The Beatles, Revolver. 
• The Beatles, Rubber Soul. 
• The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 
• The Cars, The Cars.
• Concrete Blond, Bloodletting. 
• David Bowie, Hunky Dory. 
• Evanescence, The Open Door. 
• Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. 
• Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand. 
• Franz Ferdinand, Tonight. 
• Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better. 
• Hoodoo Gurus, Mars Needs Guitars. 
• Hoodoo Gurus, Stoneage Romeos. 
• Interpol, Our Love to Admire. 
• Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene. 
• Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene 7-13. 
• Jethro Tull, Aqualung. 
• The Killers, Hot Fuss. 
• Magma, Mekanik Destruktiv Kommandoh. 
• Marina and the Diamonds, The Family Jewels. 
• Metric, Fantasies. 
• Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon. 
• The Pretenders, Learning to Crawl. 
• The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith. 
• Rufus Wainwright, Want One. 
• Sigur Ros, Takk. 
• Soundgarden, Superunknown. 
• Tom Waits, The Heart of Saturday Night. 
• The Tragically Hip, Fully Completely. 
• The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan. 

A few last thoughts:

• I have always had a preference for artists that write their own music. I had not realized the preference was that strong until I looked back at the list I made. 
• I have to listen to all these again to check which ones make the cut and if I have missed any other good ones in my collection. 
• The soundtrack from the first Shrek movie is great to listen to as an album, but misses the single Artist criteria. Also the soundtrack for High Fidelity. 
• The EP "The Tain" by the Decemberists would have been on my list, but it is too short. Also "Nine Black Poppies" by the Mountain Goats. 
• Vinyl enthusiasts are hipster wankers. Get a good quality digital recording and add a vinyl noise post-processor if that is the sound you really want. Feel free to invite me over to your place with the fancy new record player (which you probably call something else), bring me a gin and tonic, and prove me wrong. 
• I am not a music expert so you can safely disagree with any of my choices and opinions. 

All-Bulgaria Trip Part III

 As predicted, the last week in Bulgaria was a quiet one, mostly spent in Perushtitsa. Here is another view of the town from near Veronica's house: 

We visited the Red Church, ruins of an early (5th century) church nearby:

There was a nearby winery in the village of Ustina (less than a kilometer away) 

The wine we bought has Mavrut grapes, a local variety. At the end of the week I gave a talk at the University of Plovdiv Department of Mathematical Analysis. I was looking to see if there was some connection I could make since I may be spending more time in the area, especially when Veronica retires. The department members were a pleasant bunch and I got a nice lunch afterwards. I am not sure how big a scientific connection I got, but the Head of Department's sister lives in Victoria and went to the same high school and medical school as Veronica, so that was a connection. It is a small world. My final picture from the trip is from the local "Bulgarian" gin. As my gin group discovered, any London dry gin passed a certain quality does not make a difference. I saved a few lev drinking this perfectly acceptable product. 

We are back home now, working through jet lag. I can leave you with some additional details of the trip:

• I discovered the phone app game Eternium. It is a diablo-type game. There is a PC port through Steam now, which kind of ruins the point. Why not just play a diablo type computer game? The phone version has some innovative controls. 
• YouTube Music has a playlist called "undiscovered 70s progressive rock albums". I could not sign up in Bulgaria but I did as soon as I got back to Canada. I am currently listening to "Arachnoid" by Carlos Enrique Rodriguez Vera. Some of the albums on the list are so obscure that you cannot find reference on the internet. It's been a while since that happened. I should say that not all the music is good, but it's all stuff I have never heard in my favorite genre. 
• I became passable at reading Cyrillic. Not words but just sounding them out. Like the word that sounds like "supermarket" turned out to be exactly that. I did take Russian language in high school for two (?) years in the 70's so maybe that is in my brain somewhere. Bulgarian has one letter different that Russian, which I learned, and two they don't have (don't ask me which). 
• In Bulgaria you can buy melatonin pills with "Bulgarian herbs". These are ace for helping with jetlag. Unless you are related to me, I won't share. 

All-Bulgaria Trip Part II

Our first stop after Sofia was Kazanluk, a small city in a valley between two mountain ranges that divide the country North and South. We timed the visit for the Rose Festival there. Roses are harvested and distilled to rose oil (at a very small ratio of input to output) which is used in the perfume industry. It is a lucrative specialty product that has been produced in the region for a few centuries. Roses are a big theme there:

The pictures above are from a Rose tourist centre in the area. Left is an amphitheatre at the centre which was set up for big events. On the right is a old car from the Soviet era, a Moskvich. It was a blast from the past for Veronica. 

Veronica had a medical school friend, Darina, in the city, who took on an active role in our festival participation. We had VIP seats at a show in the city courtesy of her. Good show, and it included a drone light show at the end, my first time seeing that. She and her son, Georgi, were lovely people who were generous including me in the conversation (with Veronica translating as needed). 

Then it was on to Tarnovo, which had been the capital of the second Bulgarian empire (12th-14 century BC). In this transition, I was suffering from food poisoning. Enjoyment in the trip dropped a bit, but luckily I always travel with Imodium. Worst night I had quite vivid delirium dreams. You know, the kind that make no sense but seem so real you keep trying to work out what they mean. Bad day or two and a few more during which my stomach looked suspiciously at every thing I put in it. I did recover enough to get some sightseeing in Tarnovo (officially it is Veliko Tarnivo, "Great Tarnovo") which is pretty impressive. As you can see, if you live in Tarnovo you have to work pretty hard not to have a view.

The shot above shows the mix of well maintained buildings and ruins that is typical of everywhere in Bulgaria I have been. The country is not doing well economically and its population has decreased steadily since the end of Communism. Of course, it might just be that Bulgaria has been settled for so long they have reached a steady state of construction that Vancouver has not had time to get to yet.

After Tarnovo, we went on to Varna, a city on the Black Sea. On the first day, we drove North to see the edge of the Northern plains (similar transition from mountains to foothills to prairie East of the Rockies into Alberta) and Cape Kaliaka, which had been settled for millennia due to its geography that allowed for easy defense: narrow land access and steep cliffs to the sea. It was my first view of the Black Sea:

On the way back to Varna we had lunch a famous fish restaurant which was at the end of a dubiously steep one lane road (we parked at the top and walked down). 

Veronica had organized us some really excellent accommodation on the trip, but the fanciest place was the one in Varna. It was a big studio, which I would describe as a bachelor pad. Look, it even included a sexy woman:

A day on the beach in Varna and then on to Nesebar:

Nesebar is another defensible sea-side town that has been settled since ancient times. It is a peninsula (island with a causeway?) town with original buildings. It is a pleasant tourist area now. I would go back there to stay longer at this time of year, which is warm (for a Canadian with Finnish heritage) but not yet high tourist season. We were rained out on our last day and decided to come back to Perushtitsa and end the road trip a day early. 

End of the trip (part III) is a week in Perushtitsa. I am giving a talk tomorrow at the University of Plovdiv to see if there is any possibilities of collaboration.