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. 

All-Bulgaria Trip Part I

 I am three quarters of the way through a month long vacation in Bulgaria. My wife is from here originally (25 years ago) and she still owns the family house in her home town of Perushtitsa near the city of Plovdiv (second largest city in the country). It is my first time here on a trip that has been delayed for three years (one year because of family issues and the next two due to to COVID). I am glad to be able to be here finally and it has been great so far. It is a beautiful country with varied geography and the area has a reach history dating back seven millennium.  It is also enjoyable to see where my wife is from. 

My wife picked me up at Sofia airport when I arrived. She had been here a week already, concentrating on visiting her Bulgarian-only speaking friends and family. She had rented a car and had been "upgraded" to a larger vehicle due to lack of availability. This has happened to me before, and it never feels like an "upgrade" when you end up with a larger vehicle than you want. We later changed to a more manageable car, but the first was a huge old Daimler. Besides the difficulty navigating narrow European streets, it was a huge gas (well, diesel) hog. However, we managed the first few days with it. I should say that "we" really meant Veronica, who has been my driver, tour guide, and translator. I have said thank you a few times. Because of her I have been able to see parts of the country (and eaten some local food) that would have been hard without her local knowledge. 

On the day of my arrival, we made our way to Rila monastery and stayed at a nearby lodge.

The next day it was on to the family home in Perushtitsa, where we spent a few days hiking in the local hills and taking day trips on the bus to Plovdiv. Veronica's daughter and her children were there visiting their father/grandfather and we all spent some time together (both Veronica and I get along with her ex-husband, who is also a mathematician). Some picture of Perushtitsa below. It is a small town near the mountains. Veronica cannot go 5 meters without seeing someone she knows. I was introduced around and (I think) passed inspection. Views from our hikes:

Some of the local house architecture:

One of the hiking destinations is a local monument:

The all-Bulgaria road trip began in earnest. First stop was back to Sofia where we exchanged the car for something more manageable and fuel efficient. Some interesting architecture there and I was introduced to some more relatives. 

And the last shot: a nice G&T with a beautiful woman, it doesn't get better than that. Next post: the all-Bulgaria tour continues to Kazanlak, Tarnovo, Varna, and Neseber. 

 

 

Fifteen Pounds of COVID

These last years of COVID have been hard on all of us, mentally as well as physically. The severity of the issues COVID has brought and the impact vary a lot. I had a minor professional impact: I worked more from home and there were terms when I lectured online. My salary was not affected. I never tested positive but probably had it (omicron). I did not have any serious symptoms and claim vaccinations for the win. I got married two summers ago and it was a nice celebration with a small group on our terrace. Despite the fact that it should not have been a big deal for me, it has had a significant impact on my life. I underestimated the importance of the regular in person social events that helped to regulate my mental health. My signs of COVID "fatigue":

• many Korean dramas watched
• hours of playing old computer games 
• too much gin drinking
• the weight gain of the title 
• so few blog posts
• lack of commitment to online social groups

Those last two would help me find build the mental health I have been missing, but as a friend told me recently, "but that doesn't work when you don't have the energy to do the things that would help." This blog post, which I have been meaning to write for some time, might be the corner turning. I might as well get to it as COVID does not seem to be going anytime soon.  

Alien Light Bulb

There was a strange, faceted light bulb that we found in the basement storage room in our house in East Vancouver. The house was built in the early 1950s and we moved in in 2002 (ish). "We" here is old we, me and my ex-wife and the kids. The bulb was there and worked through all the time we owned the place, came with me after the separation, and was in a bedside lamp in our apartment. After all that time, I began to think it was some kind of special, eternal bulb, but it did burn out recently. If you look closely, it says it comes from Phillips in France, so it seems unlikely that it is alien technology after all.