Lightning and thunder and drum and bass

Blog posts remain half written and history becomes irrelevant. I've got a dozen minor stories from the last few weeks written up but they all seem rather parochial on re-reading them. A trip into the Alps a couple of weeks back with two friends, cycling through the forests and mountains was the highlight of the last few weeks. The weather has however been unseasonably bad and so good intentions to repeat the trip have fallen on soggy ground. The bad weather did at least bring one positive note which has been plenty of powerful storms. One of them came as I was safely at home and though the view from my window is mostly of trees and the block of flats the other side of the road, I carefully set up my camera with a 10mm wide angle lens and so was able to capture some of the lightening with long exposure takes:

Apart from this, the photography has been on hold for the moment, though I've found a shop who is keen on selling some of my work so I'll head out on a picture hunt this weekend for some more Munich scenery.

Work has been very busy and I really need a break, which thankfully is coming in about 3 weeks - I've got to the point where my attention span is seriously lacking and I have to lock myself up in a room somewhere, out of the way of any electronic devices in order to concentrate on reading. In the mean time I got a new paper out last week and have a new one due in the coming days. The one coming has been a big effort, of numerics and of understanding but in the end we're very happy with the result.

On the going out and having fun front I discovered a new place last night. Planning on spending a quiet night in I got a last minute text from a friend, suggesting we head to a drum and bass and dubstep event - This was not to be missed, and in the end it was as much fun as I'd hoped! I've been going out about once a weekend recently, last weekend to the tenth anniversary party of a magazine that a friend writes for - lots of good music, lots of fun, especially with the two Russians and one Ukrainian Couchsurfer who were staying at my place. Most of the events I've been going to are full of the pretty fashionable strata of the Munich scene, and frankly I can't keep up. I get the idea of fashion, and I'd hope that compared to the stereotype (not necessarily the reality) of a physicist I do just about ok. But I find myself questioning the meaning and motivation behind fashion frequently and frankly I find myself confused most of the time. A very fashionable friend lent me some of his clothes when, after a dinner party, I was considered not well-dressed enough to go out to the place we were heading (this wasn't as harsh a decision as it may sound - I just wasn't dressed right for the place we were going). I was given some great clothes and headed out. The result was that I got a fair few complements on my clothes - but this did nothing more than dissuade me. I was the same person as always, just with some different colours and cuts. I didn't see why I was deserving of a compliment, or, put another way, why I was supposed to be somehow 'better' than my normal self. Although I do understand it, the whole thing feels more or less meaningless when I try and analyse it and I end up frustrated with the seeming weight that is given to the different facets of those we meet. That said, yes, I'm human, and yes aesthetics are important to me too, I guess though that on the fashion front I just don't attach that much value, though I also, hypocritically, appreciate it when someone dresses well. Perhaps this is all a self-pitying statement trying to excuse my lack of fashion senses - who knows?!

Anyway, the whole point about the above schpeel is that the event last night was completely the opposite. At a drum and bass event nobody cares what you're wearing and this felt really refreshing. People are there to dance and have a good time and this lack of pressure is wonderfully refreshing. I'll continue to go to the more trendy places, as some of my good friends here are fashionable enough and kind enough to not only go there but to invite me along too, but it's nice to have found a good contrast to this part of the Munich scene as well.

Anyway, I have 1000 Chinese flashcards to catch up on, two papers to write and a dozen other tasks to finish before I can head to the gym - better get on with it!

Couchsurfing reaches one million!

<10 minutes to read - an advert for and some of my experiences within Couchsurfing.
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Couchsurfing has just reached a huge milestone. There are now a million members of this website and the numbers are still growing fast. Here's where they are:

I thought I'd take the chance to write a few words about this site, which has brought an amazing wealth of knowledge, opportunities and friendship for me from, and in, fantastic places around the world.

The purpose of couchsurfing is simple:

It is a platform by which those traveling to new places may find people there who are willing to share their space and/or their time with strangers, in order to bring local knowledge to outsiders and make both traveling and living in that place a richer experience.

There are no overall constraints on this in terms of time, reasons for traveling, or how much you would like to put into the system. Each person may apply their own constraints as to how often or the sort of people they would like to host, if any.

The way it works is also simple: You sign up and create a profile page with as few or as many details about yourself as you would like to share. With this system, the more information you give, the better, as trust is an important part of the way it all runs smoothly.

When you would like to travel somewhere, you search for people in that location through the site. You may search for people who have a spare place for you to stay, or simply those willing to go for a drink or show you around their city. You can search by language, interest, location, and more.

In Santiago de Compostela there are just over 200 people registered to the site, 100 of these are offering their couches (or spare beds, or simply floor-space).

You then write to whoever you want, telling them about your plans and what you are looking for, whether it be a place to sleep or simply some information about what's going on in their part of the world. On receiving such an e-mail you can then look on the senders profile and find out a little about the person who would like to come into your life, if only for a short time. My profile can be found here (I should probably think about changing the photo, but it seems to intrigue people, so it's stayed up for now).

The crucial point is that you will not only read what they have written, but also the references from every other person who they have met through the site - these references are what makes Couchsurfing sustainable. It's a network of referral and trust. This is not going to work 100% of the time, but then you make an informed choice every time you step outside the house. The references on the site make the informed choice that much more reliable, (Note that the positive feedback is 99.8%).

You may then simply write back and say you're too busy, or give any excuse you want, or you may agree, and offer them what they are requesting. Typically you'll then exchange a couple more e-mails to arrange the timing and where to meet and then make sure everything is on course a couple of days before their arrival.

So far in Santiago I've hosted more than 65 people, from around the world and from all walks of life imaginable. I've met lawyers, chefs, scientists, photographers, film makers, linguists and psychologists, bikers, goths and life-long travelers, Japanese, Korean, Estonian, Guatamalan and Brazilian, and so many more. Each person comes into your life for a few days, but the link that you build up, be it only over a few brief evenings, is truly amazing. Sometimes I may only get to spend half an hour chatting with the people, as I'm careful not to let this take preference over my research, but if I have a spare weekend, we can regularly spend days walking around the city, cooking together, or simply hanging out in a cafe.

For a vague idea, this is the map of the nationalities of surfers I've hosted in the last couple of years:

However, it's not about the number of countries, nor the nationalities, but the diversity of people you meet through this site. Here in Santiago a large proportion of the people I know, I have met through couchsurfing during the meetups which happen regularly (organised through one of the thousands of groups on the site).

I should note also at this point that hardened couchsurfers tend to become a little religious about the whole thing, and it can become rather cultlike in the devotion which members pay to it. However, I know that letting strangers into your house is not for everybody and I've met a fair few people who've been horrified by the idea. Fair enough, it takes all sorts.

I haven't surfed as much as I've hosted, though I've stayed with people in Korea, Japan, China, Portugal, France and Spain with this system, and every time seen so much more than would have been possible had I booked into a local hostel and wondered around on my own for a few days.

In Korea at the weekends while I was there last summer I had an immediate group of friends that I could explore the city with, and I'm still in contact with several of them on a regular basis. Going to Paris I ended up in a flat in the centre of the city, in the house of a designer and in Tokyo I met more locals in the two days I was couchsurfing than I did in the three weeks before that, staying in a hotel.

Anyway, I simply wanted to spread the word. If you have questions about the system then feel free to ask me, or simply go to the FAQ or Wiki and see if the answers you are looking for are there. It's not for everyone, but it's a great way to meet people from around the world and make traveling a much richer experience.

A little light coding

For coders only, I'm afraid.

Trawling through the Mathematica forum to try and fix a problem with a piece of code, I came across a fellow coder whose clever choice of variable names make my scripts look like true poetry. A lesson for us all!

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I'm knee deep in code of my own right now, attempting to finish off a couple of papers which are towards the bright end of the pipeline. I've had to be a rather unsociable host to my understanding couchsurfers this week. I've had some lovely meals with them, but otherwise had to leave them to their own devices. This week four Chinese guests, one from Guatamala, a Canadian, a German and a Japanese guy have been staying at my place. A real pity that such interesting characters are coming and going without me having a real chance to get to know them, but the current schedule simply isn't allowing for anything more than the occasionaly acknowledgement from behind my computer.

Anyway, back to it...

Arrival of spring

After what seems like unending months of rain, including hurricanes which have brought much distruction to the area, the sun has finally begun to push itself through the murky gloom of Atlantic weather fronts. The last few days have been sunny with a brisk chill, but today brought the first true rays of warmth to Santiago. I was supposed to have a Couchsurfer come to stay for the weekend, but in the end her plans changed. She had a little time in the morning before she had to leave the city so she came round to chat for a couple of hours. The flat was still in disarray after a hotpot meal I'd cooked last night for seven friends though the bulk of the cleaning had been finished before bed.

Anyway, with only a fleetingly short time to see the city we headed for the Alameda in the glorious morning sunshine and took a stroll roll to the point which I believe gives the most glorious view of the city. I took the opportunity to get a panorama of the basking buildings (click for much, much larger):

 

I've been working like crazy for the last few weeks, finishing most nights at around 2 am, and this was the first time in far too long where I could simply stop, for a few minutes, close my eyes and take in the warmth of Santiago. It was a wonderful, if brief, respite, and as we walked around the park and chatted I really did find myself winding down.

She then headed off for her future adventures and I returned to my routine once again - cafe, work and a few odds and ends of shopping to stop my flat falling apart.

Anyway, I've just about finished work for today and tomorrow holds some rather exciting adventures  which I'll write about in the evening, all being well. For now, I hope that the weather is as good where you are as it has been here.

AdS collective in Madrid

I've just returned from four fantastic days in Madrid. In fact it was only a last minute decision to attend the conference at all, but it has been well worth it. The topics and speakers were right on target for my current interests, and the discussions generated by the talks were constantly enlightening and provocative, without being aggressive (well, mostly).

I also had a chance to catch up with more friends, and meet more new people than I've been able to at any previous conference. As you travel more and more, and build up collaborations, such meetings simply turn into gatherings of friends. This, a far cry from the days, not so long ago, that I would go shyly into a room full of unknown faces and not have a chance to join in the discussions, whilst being bewildered by the talks. Anyway, three non-stop days, in the process of which a good number of new ideas have been generated and the fuses of older possibilities have been relit.

For now I have to get on with several projects in the next two weeks before another collaborator comes to visit at the beginning of March, so I'm going to try and fit in as much as possible in that time to see how far we can get with the current ideas which are taking shape.

Away from the conference, the time in the city itself was also excellent, as I couchsurfed with a great couple of local Madrilenios in Aleche, in the South West of the city. As well as myself and the two hosts there was a German erasmus student, plus a girl from the US and one from Finland staying on the various couches and mattresses around the house. One of my primary goals as a host is simply to make my guests feel at ease and at home, and the two guys putting us up were masters of this.

While I didn't have much time to socialise with everyone in the flat apart from cooking them a meal on Monday night I did have a bit of a tour of the centre of Madrid on Sunday afternoon. In the glorious Madrid sunshine we went to relax in Parque Retiro where hundreds of people soaked up the first few warm days of the year, while drummers bongoed and jugglers entertained everyone sitting out by the lake, getting ready for the week ahead!

Anyway, I come back tired but enthused and look forward to getting my teeth into these projects in the next couple of days.

Monte Pindo redux

This week has just been a little too busy for my liking, though with a visit from a researcher from Madrid who is working in a very similar area, it has been pretty productive too. I've only made it to the library at night a couple of times and next week I head off to a meeting in Gijon, so my schedule is going to have to be on hold until I return, at which point I hope that the pile of papers waiting to be read won't have multiplied too many times.

Anyway, I just got an e-mail from a Couchsurfing friend to say that the video he made on the day that a dozen of us went for a walk up Monte Pindo, on the stunning Galician coastline, has just been uploaded to youtube. The video captures beautifully the serenity of the scenes (though it misses our frantic scramble down in the dark!) - it also has a rather tranquil scene of me in photography mode creating this panorama (although I may simply be the greatest blot on the landscape in my movie history). Anyway, with many thanks to Voyta for these great memories of a day when we managed to get away from it all!

Porto in brief part I

Written Monday evening...

I arrived back from Porto at around 5.30 this morning after a three hour bus ride having failed to secure a ticket in time for the afternoon bus. I had to be in Santiago today to get a few admin tasks tended too, and consequently I'm feeling pretty tired.

However, Porto was truly wonderful. I spent Friday in the university and gave a talk in the afternoon, which was very enjoyable, even if the bulk of it was aimed at a minority of the audience. It's tough to give a specific research talk to a group who knows little about the generalities of your subject, so I gave a half hour introduction and then a half hour on the details of my last paper. After this I spent some time discussing with one of the researchers there about his recent work, and some possible extensions which I hope we will explore via email over the next few weeks.

I left the department in the evening and walked over to the Casa da Musica, a striking contemporary building, to meet my couchsurfing host. We met up and did a little shopping in preparation for an evening feast with around ten of us. I was exceedingly lucky with my host, who was not only a lot of fun, and a very generous human being, but she happens to have a degree in the science of wine and winemaking and works at one of the major Port makers in the city as a tour guide when she isn't making her own wine in her family's estate.

This meant that the weekend was a luxurious treat of learning and tasting some of the best wines of the region (produced in the Douro valley), as well as having a private tour of the port cellars and a tasting of a huge range of very very fine beverages.

In terms of gastronomy, Portugal never suffers from any subtlety in its foodstuffs, and on Saturday as I walked around in the town centre, I spotted a cafe offering Francesinhas. I'd heard of these but wasn't yet aware of what they were. Never, to be scared by the unknown I ordered one (the waiter asked me if I just wanted one, to which I nodded, not knowing whether this would be enough). This must truly be the king of high calorie lunches, designed for a hard days labour. A Francesinha, ironically given the title 'little French girl' is prepared by taking: steak, minced pork, fried egg, sausages, sliced ham and thick slices of cheese, and putting the whole thing between two or more slices of bread. You then take this and drown it in cheese, so the whole thing is covered and you have to dig to discover that this is a carnivores delight. Take your meat-drowning-in-cheese-feast and pour a thick and spicy tomato sauce over the top.

My guess is that this beast has around a 3000 calorie kick to it. Just in case you're not satisfied, it comes automatically with a plate of chips. Apparently by ordering it with a glass of water and not beer I may have caused some sort of gastronomic offense to the owners of the establishment!

Anyway, I finished my lunch, worrying slightly about heart palpitations and spent the next hour or so wondering the streets. Later I met up with a friend of my couchsurfing host and he took me on a tour of the city, describing much of the history and how it had evolved over the last few hundred years. His time studying architecture made this a fascinating insight into the city. During this time we went up the steeple of one of the old churches to get this wonderful view of the city (click for a huge version!):

We then headed over to the other side of the river to spend a glorious afternoon Port wine tasting with my host, trying everything from dry white ports, great with tonic, to 30 year old tawnys and a deep rubys.

The evening was spent at a chef's house, eating vegetarian cuisine which made me feel only slightly less guilty about the herd of animals which had been slaughtered for my lunch. The chef was also a tour guide for the Port cellars and so a fine selection followed the meal....do I see a theme emerging from this weekend?!

To be continued...

Porto seminar trip

Tomorrow I head for Porto, my first time in Portugal, to give a talk on Friday in front of what I understand will be a fairly interdisciplinary audience. I'm looking forward to the interaction with some more people in the nearby community, which is making a big effort at the moment to arrange a good number of small meetings to stoke collaborations.

The bus from here should take a little just a couple of hours, and I'll be staying near the department. This is going to be a short visit within the university this time, as things are rather busy here in Santiago, with several projects genuinely nearing completion (I feel I keep saying this, but projects in my experience always take longer in the final stages than expected). Saturday and a little of Sunday I'll have in the city, and will be Couchsurfing with a tour guide to the Port cellars. I've been promised a tour! I will also be meeting up with a journalist Couchsurfer who would like to know about physics and what us physicists actually get up to.

Things have been busy this end too with Couchsurfing and every night recently I've come home from work to find a host of people cooking up wonderful feasts in my kitchen - always a pleasure! In fact, as I type this I have two Australians and an Estonian cooking up a fish feast which is due to be ready about.....now.

Leaving Incheon

I have an intensely busy month coming up, with a Spanish course about to take over my lunchtimes and the usual number of projects on the go. Couchsurfing is on hold for a little bit too, though I did meet up with a Norwegian couchsurfer last week who contacted me wanted to know all about string theory. We spent an enjoyable couple of hours over a coffee chatting about all things high-energy.

Anyway, I'll post the last of my Korea photos for now, which aptly is the photo taken as I was waiting in Incheon airport for this summer's travel adventures to draw to a close.

Give and take

My research period here in Seoul is (officially) over now, having handed in my visiting researchers report on Friday afternoon. We now have a few calculations to be getting on with over the next couple of weeks which, as always, may or may not lead to anything. Whatever happens, my time here has been lively and enjoyable, spending dozens upon dozens of hours talking with my collaborators in the two departments I've been visiting.

I'm now here for another few days before heading back to Spain via two days in England (just the way the cheapest flights went). I'm now couchsurfing in the South of the city and, as always happens with Couchsurfing, meeting some wonderful people. My host is one of the most exceptional people I've met, having such a diverse range of talents and interests that surprises never stop and we seem to be constantly discovering shared passions. My host's friends who I've met over the last few days here are also a great group, many of whom are couchsurfers themselves and it's been great to get some insights into life in Seoul as seen by the expat community, which is made up predominantly of English teachers. I don't particularly chose to spend all my time with expats, figuring that time in a foreign country is best spent finding out about life from the local residents, but on this occasion it has simply worked out that way, and it's one of the most lively intelligent groups I've had the pleasure of meeting.

(In fact, during a train ride to work, I was informed by a perfectly friendly Korean student that the reason many of the younger people I met claimed not to speak English, when really they did, was because Korean people don't like foreigners. Rather shocked at this I probed a little further and he, very frankly, said that Koreans don't like things that are different and they would rather spend time with people who were the same than with people who were strange and foreign.

My experience with those Koreans I've met has never matched with this opinion, but it was an interesting moment of matter-of-fact conversation. There are indeed many idiocyncratic aspects to modern Korean society but in my brief time here, none of these has made me dislike the place at all. I've discovered a lot by speaking with the expats who teach one-on-one with young Korean adults who often open up to the teachers with very frank statements about marriage, work, love and social life.)

Anyway, spending time with the couchsurfers and their friends here has been great and I'm continually being surprised by the fact that not only are people not silenced when I tell them that I'm a theoretical physicist, but more often than not I'm met with gasps of astonishment, followed by a flurry of great questions. Explaining physics to people with a genuine interest is hugely enjoyable and I've spent a lot of time talking with very intelligent non-physicists about many many fascinating topics over the last few days. The 'oh my god, I never knew that. That just blows my mind' response makes talking with such people so enjoyable, and thankfully I've had a lot of opportunities to get such reactions.

Getting people interested in science is a real buzz!

A few more notes on Couchsurfing

The weekend rolls around but I still have some work that needs finishing for Monday. A few hours in a cafe tomorrow should do the trick.

Over the last few weeks, Couchsurfing has become a pretty big thing in my life, hosting as much as I can, and managing, I believe, to make it interfere very little with my work life. In the last few weeks I've hosted: Two Brazilians, two Latvians, eight Americans, an Israeli, a Spaniard, two Italians, an Austrian, a Czech, a Pole, three Germans, a Parisian, an Estonian, an Aussie, and a Brit (not including my family). And it's been fantastic.

If I'm busy with work I can leave them to do what they want, but coming home to chat with people from all around the world, to cook together, to go for a drink and to discover life from every corner of the Earth is just a fantastic thing to be able to do.

In fact I'm writing this spurred on by the last couchsurfer who came to stay (not including the three here at the moment). Kurt is originally from Germany, and arrived on his Harley Davidson having ridden from Portugal. I've never met anyone with so many stories and so much experience and chatting with Kurt in the evenings was eye opening and on frequent occasions jaw-dropping. A chef by training, this career has seen Kurt everywhere from Iran where he cooked for some time for the Shah, to oil rigs in the arctic circle, to the Munich Olympics, all the way up Everest where he was part of the 1982 Canadian expedition, Japan, all around South, Central and North America, India and Hong Kong to name but a few. He's hoping to make it down to Antarctica when he heads back to South America this summer as this is one of the few places he hasn't yet visited!

In fact what was particularly pleasing with Kurt, was that not only was I able to give him a place to stay for a few nights, but I tracked down some of his long lost friends using the power of Google. Within a few minutes we'd found two of his closest friends from the Everest expedition with whom he'd lost contact many years ago, and discovered that his best buddy from years of sailing around South and Central America was a real estate agent in the States where we were able to send a quick e-mail and rekindle the friendship. I really hope that he's able to revisit some of the amazing experiences with the people he was with at the time.

Kurt is currently couchsurfing around Europe and if by any chance he's in your neck of the woods I seriously suggest heading for a few drinks with him, or invite him into your house and cook a meal together.

I could write up a post about every couchsurfer who came to stay, the diversity of people coming to Santiago is pretty startling and I get to meet people from all walks of life, however, doing so would leave too little time to actually do stuff myself. I suggest you sign up yourself and get in the game of unconditional help. The more hosts the better!

Anyway, I just wanted to add a few more positive notes on Couchsurfing which I believe always needs more publicity. Currently I'm housing three pilgrims from the States who have just walked the Camino (one for two weeks and two for the last month). We're about to cook together, after which I will finish some work before we all head out for a drink.

Miscellaneous links for last week

I've had a chance to watch the first two parts of Sidney Coleman's legendary lecture course on QFT this weekend. Each is about an hour and a half long and although you won't learn much more of the fundamental physics than in any basic QFT book, the insights and thought patterns which come through from Sidney's wonderful lecture style are a superb addition to the current resources on the subject. The blackboard is not easy to read but the audio for the most part is very clear, even when Sidney is walking around, puffing on his cigarette. I would advise following along to the lecture notes which have been partly TeXed up here. (Thanks to theoreticalminimum for the reminder).

There have been a few other interesting posts this week in addition to the good news about the above lectures:

One of the most substantial posts came from Flip Tomato with a vast list of resources for anybody wanting to learn supersymmetry, from just about any level. I would probably add to this the book by Buchbinder and Kuzenco: Ideas and Methods of Supersymmetry and Supergravity: Or a Walk Through Superspace, though this is notation-heavy it's also very very thorough. I've never had to deal with this subject in anger but would probably turn to this book if I did.

Mark at Good Math, Bad Math is starting a series of posts on Game theory, which I'm looking forward to following. We were lucky to have John Nash come to Santiago back in November and a few members of the physics and maths department had a question and answer session with him the day before his public speech. It was fascinating to watch a man who usually shies away from the spotlight but has been so instrumental in developing whole new areas of mathematics with many many applications to the real world. He spoke a little about string theory (his sentences would move continuously from one subject to another, with carefully chosen words, but a seemingly chaotic sense of direction) and in fact one of his first published results (the Nash Embedding theorem) details the embedding of Riemannian surfaces into higher dimensional Euclidean space which seems to have some cute coincidences with the dimensions of string theory - he did point out that he didn't see anything deep in this apparent numerology.

The blogosphere has been going wild over the case of PZ Myers being expelled from a free showing of a film in which he was interviewed, under false pretenses. The pro-creationist film Expelled - No Intelligence Allowed (which has been given bad reviews on just about every facet), lived up to its title. The list of ironies is endless including the fact that Richard Dawkins, Myers' guest was not recognised and was allowed into the cinema. After the showing Dawkins asked why PZ had been ejected and was given a series of ridiculous answers. The story can be read from the first hand account here.
Note that Myers' first post on his expulsion has so far racked up around 1500 comments! See here a discussion between Myers and Dawkins after the event.

News that MIT and google are teeming up to search for Earth-like extrasolar planets is extremely exciting!

News from Slashdot of a new X-prize being offered for the design of ultra-energy efficient cars.

From science to food and Food for design had a short article a mysterious billionaire who has quickly become a world expert on the art of sous-vide - cooking meat in highly controlled conditions for extremely long periods of time. Khymos is a good place to start to learn about this culinary art form.

My friend and author of The Adventures of the Pisco Kid, Michael Standaert, has been writing about the situation in Tibet over at the Huffington post. Danwei has also linked to an interesting video of how easy it is to pull the wool over everybody's eyes. See also here for Michael's discussion of talk of boycotting the Olympics - I agree in large part with his sentiments on this one.

The online photographer discusses the rights of photographers in public spaces and includes a rather disturbing video from London.

And in some of the strangest news of the week (and I still don't know whether to believe this or not) it seems that the Eiffel tower is going to be added to for its 120th anniversary - Looking around on the web it seems to be for real!

Anyway, during a relatively productive week in a generally quiet office I've managed to squeeze in listening to a good deal of the Michel Thomas Spanish course in my walks around the town and to and from work. Perhaps not for everyone but I'm finding his teaching method perfect for me. On top of this, having an Israeli, a Spaniard, a Brazilian, an Italian and a Texan all couchsurfing this week has made for enjoyable after hours company in the flat and in the town.

Kevin Rudd's apology and a few tales of Aboriginal society

It's unlikely that I'd be writing this post if it wasn't for Couchsurfing and in particular the Couchsurfer who is currently staying with me. My Couchsurfer, Jada, is an Australian girl of Aboriginal descent who was brought up an Aboriginal community in Northern Australia. For her this week has been extremely important, historically, and I feel privileged to have spent so much time talking with her and finding out about the significance of this week's events in the grand scheme of the last century and more.

For those who didn't know, this week Kevin Rudd, Australia's Prime Minister made an official apology on behalf of the Australian government to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders for the stolen generations. The taking of children, mostly from mixed white and indigenous backgrounds, took place from the 1870s all the way up to the 1970s. The reasoning was that those with some white blood needed saving from the barbarous non-Christian influences (of the oldest continuous civilization on earth!). They were taken by law from their families and placed in the care of good Christians. The communities were ripped apart by this policy over a period of about a century. This was on top of the culture being already invaded by Western influences and the lack of rights to the indigenous peoples (they were not fully represented in the census until 1967, despite being sent to fight in the second world war - and not being counted back).

Jada, my Couchsurfer, has been directly affected by the policies of the last century. Jada's aunt and great grandmother were taken from their families, in the 1920s and 70s respectively and so this has had a direct influence on her life.

The apology has been met with mixed feeling, though I understand that in general it is seen very positively. Some people don't believe that such an apology was necessary and some believe that because it wasn't this government which implemented the policies, that it shouldn't be them that says sorry. The sincerity with which the apology was delivered was moving and frankly if it helps to mend the ruptures which have been caused, then claiming responsibility for being part of the system which has caused the last centuries tragedies seems valid. The similarities with the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa are not great but the idea of admissions of guilt and in particular the stories being told in the Australian media now appear to be engendering similar feelings of amity.

Having chatted with Jada over the last few days I've learnt many interesting things but clearly in such a short time I've heard just a fragment of what there is to know about this millenniums old culture. I'd love to be able to write down all the details which I've learnt but sadly I feel it's rather rude to have a guest around and then record them in an interview :-)

Since the British settlers arrived in Australia towards the end of the 18th century, more and more of the indigenous populations have been forced out of their natural way of living. I wondered how many people still live in the completely original way.

The answer is that of the 400 thousand or so Aborginal people, none lives as they would have done a couple of hundred years ago. Not a single one still lives off the land in the original nomadic lifestyle. The last nine literally walked out of the outback onto the streets of Alice Springs in 1984!...and that was it. No more! In fact Jada looked after one of the nine who walked out, a guy whose Western name is Thomas, . He didn't speak English then and he still doesn't today, though apparently he likes to take a Country and Western book around with him which he likes to look at from time to time. He's now an extremely well-renowned painter of Aboriginal art.

There's simply no incentive for the current generations to get back to the original way of life, which is not surprising. Not to say that life is easy for the communities.

One of the reasons that there has been mixed reaction in Australia to the apology is because there is some considerable resentment towards the Aboriginal people. In some occasions the social benefits they get are greater than non-Aboriginals and a large percentage of the Aboriginals that others see live in squalor and spend their days drinking.

(In some places there are laws about how much alcohol can be bought by Aboriginal people in a single day. On one occasion Jada went with a cousin into a shop to buy a bottle of wine. They left to get a bag and when they tried to come back in, her cousin was unable to reenter. Her cousin's skin was much darker than hers and so the rules dictated that she wasn't allowed back into the store until the next day. This isn't a story from 50 years ago - this is happening today, by law!)

Anyway, the resentment on one level is understandable. People say that the Aboriginal people should be helping themselves more and that if they sit around all day drinking, why should anyone else care? Well, a large factor is that if your culture has been disrupted after some 5000 years of continuity, your children are taken away, you're treated as a second class citizens, or worse, that it's not really surprising that things fall apart. For instance, for people who were born into a nomadic lifestyle the concept of money is simply not ingrained and when such communities have money, the idea of saving, rather than spending it on readily available alcohol just doesn't register.

The positive note seems to be that in the grand scheme of things the last 200 years is a blink and the last 50, though very serious, may not be irreparable. The deep pride which the Aboriginal people have for their culture should, in time be enough to get over the mess which has been caused by the muddled intrusion of one society on another.

We spoke a little about the religion. Jada is an actor by training as well as a musician and artist and paints the Aboriginal art (This has been coined the Dreamtime stories by European settlers) - the spoken and painted forms which allow the folklore to pass down through the generations - the culture has no written language. The lore dictates that Jada is not allowed to draw anything other than her Dreaming. Her particular Dreaming is called Caterpillar Dreaming and is related to a mountain range not far from Alice Springs, called the Macdonnal Ranges. She paints and repaints this Dreaming through her own interpretations and it's a vital part of the culture that these tales do not get lost.

The Dreamtime stories are a vital way in which the culture continues from generation to generation and if these are lost it would truly be a tragedy. The languages are already disappearing and even in cities with large Aboriginal communities, the options to learn the native languages are few and far between.

I've learned much more from Jada, about the superstitions, the funerals, the current and past situations and I certainly feel like I would like to find out more. It's a fascinating culture which has gone through serious upheavals in our lifetime. The future is looking brighter, but by no means easy and I hope that the extra attention which is being drawn to the current situation of the culture helps things to improve.

I don't wish to gush, but I am extremely grateful that Couchsurfing has helped me to meet so many fascinating people since I joined two years ago, and on this particular occasion to meet and talk with Jada over the last few days. If you are open minded and don't mind letting a stranger come into your house to share your city then I would highly advise joining up and meeting a lot of wonderful people!

Sitges and more

I've just returned from Barcelona where I was couchsurfing last night. The workshop in Sitges was very good and has given me a few things to think about. In particular I was interested in the discussion of calculating entanglement entropy using AdS/CFT plus a rather good talk on Kac-Moody algebras in supergravity which ties in with some reading I'm currently doing. My talk seemed to go down fine too, though I know that I spoke too quickly, something I have to pay more attention to in general.

The Couchsurfing was a lot of fun, though when I turned up in Barcelona at 6 in the evening, my host (who I'd never met) was out with friends in a bar and we didn't have a chance to go back to her flat to put down my bags. The night was enjoyable and I got to meet a lot of locals, from all walks of life (artists, directors, ex-physicists, Ibizan party animals and more besides). Today, I took some time to walk around Barcelona and have a lot of photos to process when I can.

I'll just post one photo for now. This was from the first night in Sitges, where the conference was being held. Sitges is known for the huge carnival which lasts several days. On the final night is a special ceremony on the beach, known as the burying of the sardine. After this there is a huge fireworks display over the church. This was the photo I took from the balcony of my hotel room:

Ancient and modern

I hope to talk in more detail about this weekend soon, having had a fascinating Couchsurfer staying at my place for a couple of days.

Today we went for lunch with another of Santiago's 20 or so active Couchsurfers for a delicious, traditional Galician meal. I was thoroughly impressed when our host bought out his Gallego water cooler, a device which is traditionally taken into the fields while working a hard day in the hot sun. The jug is made of a slightly porous material which lets the water slowly through where it evaporates and cools the contents.

What is more, Fara has written the equation for the rate of cooling of the water onto the outside of his vessel. This formula takes into account the humidity in the air, the surface area of water in contact with the container, the outside temperature, and the specific heat capacity of water.

Flash Slideshow

At some point I'll also post up a photo of the crutch converted into a flute but that will have to wait until a more reasonable hour...

Slowing down

Things have got marginally calmer though I still have work to do for Monday. I've been sitting in a cafe this afternoon doing some work and reading 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Braid' by Douglas Hofstatder, a wonderful book on mathematics, logic, information, music and art. Well worth a read if you're interested in the deep workings of logical systems but a fascinating read even if this has never grabbed you before.

I mentioned Nav, my couchsurfer in my previous post. It turns out that Nav is a rather fine photographer and he spent a good length of time on Thursday evening showing me the basics of using Photoshop, which I had never truly appreciated the power of. My own photography, in its limited capacity owes a lot to a friend and designer explaining a few simple rules. Nav explained a more extensive list of factors which go into making a fine photo. I can see that almost all of my photos fail on at least one of the six factors he mentioned (often more), meaning that very few of my photos are quite as good as I'd like. This is surely a matter of practice and with these new guidelines I look forward to seeing what I come up with.

Looking back through some of my photos I noticed this one, which I don't think I've posted before. Unfortunately, the close and blurry foreground detracts from the photo but I am pleased with the look in the child's eyes and the gesture. Yesterday I went for a cruise around the hutongs getting a few more local shots which still need to be seen to.

Non-stop

Things have been crazy this week. I had my first sit down meal since Monday this evening. This has been a combination of trying to fit in a lot of work (often till early in the morning) with some socialising.

I went to the airport this morning to pick up my new Couchsurfer, Nav, who's a very friendly Canadian guy making a four month trip back to his hometown in India. Today was his first day of travel and he's got an amazing trip ahead through Qinghai, Tibet and through to India. He's doing a course in neuroscience at York University in Toronto so we've spent the evening talking about string theory, neuroscience, radical atheism and South Park.

Tomorrow I hope that things will calm down for me and then I'll get back to writing something a bit more substantial.

Near misses

Things have been utterly non-stop recently. I haven't seen the inside of my flat for more than about 5 minutes this week while not sleeping or trying to forget about the day's events and attempting to sleep. This isn't to say that anything has been bad, just very busy. I'm finishing up some work which has to be done really very soon and have written a couple of long posts about how I got to be where I am now (not in the Darwinian sense) and a little background to what I do, or maybe why I do it.

In the mean time I've been helping friends move house and running round the city saying goodbye to people leaving Beijing, teaching, attempting to start learning Spanish and continuing with the Chinese. Tomorrow I go out of town for a party, back on Sunday, take a friend to the airport and then straight back to work. September is looking to be very full with three couchsurfers staying at my place for a continuous period of 10 days. Also we have the string cosmology conference coming up all month at the KITPC, which I'm very much looking forward to. (first week's lectures here).

Today as I ran out of the office and caught a cab to get to my friend's house to help her move house my blood began to boil as the Beijing roads mingled with my already high pressure state.

I usually spend my time in a state of calm chaos, but just occasionally it boils over - in fact in the UK it very very rarely happens but the bloody stupidity on the roads in China just got my goat today. I love cycling and I know that I'm not a very safe cyclist. This has improved since I learnt to drive and realised how much I must terrify drivers as I speed around as fast as possible. Anyway, with however many million non-driving cyclists on the roads in Beijing combined with 3 million cars all of whom think that they have the right to get from A to B faster than everyone else, cutting up all who are in their way and slowing the roads down for all, the situation is often unbearably frustrating.

After several near misses (both my driver's fault and that of others) he got out of the car and had a fight with another road hog - a full on slamming each other against the bonnet fight, red-faced arm waving and general macho nonsense. I was either going to laugh or cry as I waited in the car for the frivolities to end so I laughed at them and they split up and got back in their respective cars.

So, we continued to weave our way through the ever-honking traffic and an hour later had deposited more clothes than you can possibly imagine to their temporary residence. The taxi driver left and I went back to the office.

As we reached the traffic lights I saw something which I so often see here in Beijing. A cyclist somehow forgetting that there are two sides to a road. She looked left, seeing that there was a gap in the traffic and pulled out to cross the road. However, she seemed hypnotised by the lack of traffic on the left, presumably thinking this to be a good enough omen. As she got to the middle of the road without appearing to slow down I looked in horror as the speeding oncoming car didn't notice her behind the central bollard. She pulled out, still looking left as the car slammed on its break, turning the wheel as it did so. The car screamed to a halt, in a haze of tyre smoke centimeters from the girl on the bike, who just sat there, looking puzzled at the car.

The police driving the police car, which had been the offending missile, shouted at her as she sat in the middle of the road, still looking unperturbed but a little angry at being shouted at.

The police car sped off and she stayed, sat in the middle of the road as other cars honked at her to move. Normally I would have put this down to shock, but Beijing cyclists get into these situations so damned often that she just seemed annoyed at the whole affair and couldn't be bothered to move.

I'm writing this having let myself calm down a little. My heart has left my throat and my pulse has dropped below 200.

ok, rant over - it just winds me up no end and sometimes I need to vent.

Beijing jugglers

Through a series of rather strange coincidences and lucky geography I ended up having dinner with a Couchsurfer who was in Beijing for a couple of days last night. We chatted AI, computer science (his major) and traveling stories and then headed to a local bar for a quite drink outside. Both he and I are jugglers and I mentioned that somewhere within a couple of miles of where we were there was supposed to be a juggling club, though I knew no more details. As luck would have it, it was just 20 yards from the bar we were sat and so as soon as we saw clubs flying we escaped the rather quiet crowd to go and spend some time throwing things, catching things and (in my case more frequently) dropping things.

Having never joined a juggling club my progress has been rather slow and solitary. I've struggled to master five ball juggling for a few years now but within a few minutes of being at the club, one of the members pointed out a key fault and I doubled my catch rate almost immediately. With jugglers there looking confident with four clubs and doing lots of passing tricks I hope to come again and learn more from this friendly group. If anyone else wants to come along then lookup the Google group here.

Language exchange

The summer cold is disappearing, work is going in the right direction, a host of new Couchsurfers are about to turn up and things are as non-stop as ever.

In my not so spare, spare time I've been doing some audio recording work for a publishing company out here which produces teaching material for schools. I have, give or take, a reasonably 'standard' British-English accent and this is rather sought after out here where the majority of English speaking expats are from the US, Australia or Canada.

For a couple of early mornings over the last week I've spent around 3 hours sat in a recording studio reading at varying speeds from very, very slowly to a reasonably fast, but clearly annunciated, rate on a variety of topics from Sherlock Holmes to cross-species animals (I've learnt a great deal about zonies, ligers (the largest cats in the world) and wolphins) and from World domination by China in 2057 to the history of global discovery. I've read poems and taught unknown millions of Chinese children how to say 'I love you' in Indonesian, Spanish, French and a variety of other badly pronounced languages.

I'll try and find out just how many Chinese children will be speaking with my accent over the next few years and should be able to get hold of a set of the language courses when they are published.

It's been another interesting experience, although I've found that talking almost non-stop for two and a half hours, at a very slow pace, can be exhausting. This has also meant some very long days, but the pay that one can get to do this sort of work is hard to turn down when you spend most of your time on a local wage - not that a local wage is hard to live on when accommodation is heavily subsidised.

I read recently that Beijing is one of the most expensive cities in the world. I can only imagine that this is almost entirely down to the cost of housing, which can be extortionate. One could easily live on a dollar a day out here if it were necessary.

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Anyway, later today I'm picking up a Couchsurfer from Malaysia who will be staying at my flat until next week. Couchsurfers from the States, Russia and the UK will be staying over the next couple of months.

Chinese lessons are back on this evening after a short hiatus and though I've been steadily working through the audio courses, I need to find some hidden minutes to go through the characters. Spare minutes are hiding from me more and more these days.

...Mathematica has finished spitting out numbers, I'd better find out what it all means.