Cape Town Physicist

Cape Bling

2009-07-25T13:17:00.006+02:00

As I may have mentioned, Kristen and I just got engaged to be married. However, at the time of engagement, I decided that instead of buying a ring and presenting it to her, we would go together to pick out and purchase one (well, we'd pick it out together... the purchasing was still one-sided. And no, this was not purely a laziness issue... I thought it would be more romantic to do it together). In it's place I presented her with my ring that I wear every day - she'd bought it for my birthday several years ago, and I love it.

Thing models Alex's ring

Well, in the meantime, we searched around for a real diamond. After a few stops, we quickly decided on this jeweler in Cape Town, Hein. He was really helpful, not pressuring, and really informative, and he right away found us a gorgeous stone in our price range. He doesn't sell pre-made diamond rings - he buys the stones for you and then designs a setting for it. Anyway, the required time finally came and the ring was made, and it's beautiful - we love it. Very modern but timeless - it suits Kristen perfectly. It's hard to do justice to how sparkly it actually is by photograph, but here is our best effort.

Careful, or the sparkles will put out your eyes

A nerderific blast from the past

2009-07-13T11:54:00.002+02:00

Now I know I risk outing myself as having been a dork as a child (wipe that look of shock from your face), I recently ran across a website that sent me into paroxysms of memorial nerd-dom.

When I was a kid, I absolutely LOVED these books called the Lone-Wolf series, which were Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style books with the added benefit of hit-points (and a few other customizable skills your character could use). It even had the crappiest random number generator I'd ever seen (a low-tech(!) version of dice-rolling) - you closed your eyes and pointed your pencil at a grid of numbers.

The problem with these books was that even in the late 80s when I found them, they were basically out of print, so I was only ever able to find one or two of the books, though I always craved more. Well, apparently the creator of this fine series of books, Joe Dever, agreed in 2000 to completely open the rights to the books, and allowed the world community to publish the full works online at Project Aon. So now you can download or read the books online in XHTML for free! And there are shitloads of the books! I had no idea the series was so popular! So I've been obsessed with playing through these books for the past few weeks - they are some serious old school fun. Fans have even coded some nice character sheets to make it easier to keep track of your stuff, as well as... ACTUAL random number generators! How far technology has come...

Transkei travels

2009-07-01T16:23:00.008+02:00

So, in addition to proposing amongst the elephants, the main thrust of our adventure out to the Transkei was to visit our friends, Alex and Andy of Live Free or Braai Hard in Mount Frere, who are volunteering for Hlomelikusasa (a community-based organization focused on helping orphans around Mount Frere) and ASAP (African Solutions for African Problems - a meta-organization which helps teach community programs to become self-sufficient).

Classiest joint in town

They've been there for nearly a year now, and let me first just say how impressed I am with what they are doing, and the strength it must take to do it. I think these guys are amazing for taking the year to do this. Much kudos.

First of all, we had multiple warnings about driving after dark in the Transkei. For those who don't know, the Transkei was a "homeland" under the Apartheid government - a.k.a. the crappiest land they could find, where they forced as many black Africans to live as possible. Consequently, it is extremely poor and has shitloads of problems (which include massive AIDS, crime, corruption, and horrendous education). So we were kind of expecting bandits on the roads to come out after dark. What we found out is that this is NOT the main reason for the warning. Mostly you want to avoid driving in the dark because the highway is COVERED with livestock, and you REALLY don't want to run into a cow at 120 km/hr. Mystery solved.

Road Sheep

We made it out to them after driving 1500 km (~ 1000 miles) along the southern coast, and arrived in the afternoon on Friday. Our friends showed us around the town a bit before it got dark (i.e., we took a walk around the block - it's not a large town). We stayed the night in their surprisingly nice apartment, and the next morning, Andy, Alex, and their co-worker Boniswa took us on a visit to meet a village health worker (Mrs Zindani) and the orphans that she feeds.

Mrs. Zindani (pink), Boniswa (front), and kids

That was totally amazing. The kids were adorable, the teenagers were really cool and friendly, and the adults were incredibly friendly and welcoming. A representative of the village headman came and welcomed us with a really sweet speech and singing and dancing. It kind of sounds cheesy when I say it, but it really did feel like a big honor, and I felt suitably humble. It is possible that they thought we were there to donate money to Hlomelikusasa, even though our friends told them we weren't.

We couldn't get a better picture of him dancing, but he had moves!

We made some art with the kids, got fed a huge, delicious lunch, and chilled with the teenagers. It was really amazing. It also really made me want to learn Xhosa, cause it's really a cool language. But damn, those clicks are hard!

Elephants and diamonds

2009-07-01T09:51:00.007+02:00

Well, Kristen and I just got back from a week-long trip to the Eastern Cape/Transkei and back, to visit our friends Alex and Andy of potatoriot fame. We had an amazing time, though one part stands out in particular - the Blue Crane Farmstall in Heidelberg. Just kidding (although it was nice there). The big news is that Kristen and I got engaged! I proposed to her at Addo Elephant Park. It was very romantic. Yada yada yada. But let me not get ahead of myself...

We drove out to Addo, which is primarily an elephant reserve, and you can drive yourself around to watch the animals.

Charging out of the bush to say hi

The best part about the whole thing is that they charge foreigners R260 to enter, but they said we counted as locals since we've lived in SA for so long - so we only had to pay R50! Awesome! Also, it had been pouring rain all day until five minutes before we arrived, and then started back up again just as we were leaving - someone knew I had special needs.

We proceeded into the park, saw shitloads of elephants (man, they're so freaking cool), and eventually came to a place where you could get out of your car.

Is this a sign of danger to come?

That was where we climbed to the top of the lookout tower, I got down on one knee, and asked Kristen to marry me. I'd decided that it would be more fun for both of us if we chose rings together, so instead of presenting her with a pre-chosen engagement ring, I gave her the special ring that she'd bought me for my birthday two years ago - I wear it everyday, so I thought it'd be special. But now my finger feels empty, so I want it back! I'd better get her a nice diamond, then...

She said she was surprised...

Photos from a broad

2009-04-09T19:09:00.007+02:00

Herein I include some photos that we took while we were in Europe. And when I say "we," I mean, "KB." Which is why it took me so long to put them up on the web (not because she's slow, but because I am).

My first snow in ages! Welcome to Switzerland.

Even in winter, Amsterdam loves tulips. And so does KB.

Welcome to gay Paree.

The most delicious (and expensive) place on Earth.

Tell me - what's the big deal?

Eiffel in love with Paris.

Kristen Poulain in Montmartre

Ah oui, j'aime Paris.

What I miss most about Paris.

Mazel-tov!

2009-04-09T16:56:00.011+02:00

Last week, our friends Amanda and Jeff finally got married. They've been planning the wedding for several years now, but it finally finished, and they had a beautiful wedding. It was also really nice because a bunch of friends flew in (some from across SA, and some from across the world) and it was so nice to get to see them for a few days.

Christina and Steffan in from the States

Alex and Andy in from the Eastern Cape

One of the interesting things about the whole thing was that it was an orthodox Jewish wedding, which I'd never seen before. There were temple events to go to (where we got to sit and listen to Jeff be honored by reading from the Torah, and then we threw candy at him), there was a chuppah (arch made of lace under which they got married), and through it all there was a bunch of praying. At least that's what I thought it was, 'cause it was all in Hebrew and I didn't understand much. Ok, any. But still, it was interesting to see a culture that I'm not terribly familiar with. Especially cool was the Israeli dancing immediately after the wedding - I thought I was going to throw up after spinning around with Jeff, and I only had to do it for a few minutes - he was in there for nearly half an hour. Intense.

Cute kids aplenty - balloony-loon!!!!!

All-in-all, it was a pleasurable experience, but watching them plan the wedding, and watching Kristen get involved helping with the planning did not really encourage me to want a large wedding. Next time I get married, I'm definitely eloping - parents, you can come with us to the Justice of the Peace or whatever, but we ain't doin' no crazy wedding shenanigans! (I reserve the right to have my mind changed, forcefully).

The ladies look gorgeous...

Bride and groom.

Me, the Scotsman, and the Hasidic dude - can you tell which is which?

Wales is NOT in England...

2009-03-20T18:22:00.004+02:00

I learned at least one thing while I was in the UK. When Kristen and I got off the train from London to Swansea (Wales), we took a taxi to the B&B, and had quite a character for a cab driver. His first words to us were, "So where in Canada you from?" Of course, we politely informed him that we were American, though we could understand wanting to be careful (ever tried calling a Canadian "American"? Try it, results may vary). But he promptly told us that he knew that, he just always tries to piss people off, 'cause when he goes to the States, he always gets, "So Wales... where in England is that?" Big no-no, apparently. He also informed us, since it was a big Rugby weekend, that American Football is for pussies. So that's settled. The cab ride was only like 5 minutes, but this dude tried as hard as he could to piss us off. Didn't work - Kristen and I are imperturbable.

Anyway, after nearly a week spent in Paris, we took the train through the Chunnel from Paris to London. There I gave my talk to the physics group at King's College, London, which went quite well. We also got a chance to see some good friends from New York that had moved to London, who we hadn't seen in ages. That was really nice. We did a few things around town, including going to the British Museum (which is far and away the coolest museum I've ever been to) and walking around Soho and Chelsea and what-have-you. At some point, we took a train to Wales, where I gave a talk at Swansea University. Also went reasonably well. I can't say that Swansea was the most exciting town, though the people were friendly. Kristen felt right at home, too - apparently Swansea is bizarrely similar to the Bronx. No Italian food, though.

Now we're back in SA, finally having finished this month-long trip. It was totally exhausting, emotionally and physically, but overall I think it went really well. Highlights?

The winter school at CERN was really nice - I was especially impressed with the series of lectures given by Samir Mathur on black holes in string theory. Here's a link to his webpage, where he has a pdf giving an explanation and extensive list of questions regarding the topic. I really felt like it reaffirmed my hope for string theory as a physically interesting topic. There's been a lot of negative press lately, e.g., here and here, in the public media as well as with a lot of people in my department at UCT, and it's kind of gotten me down. I really felt like this work on black holes is so dramatic, it makes a significant case for string theory regardless of all the rest of the crap. I really want to give a series of seminars at UCT on the topic to give people a positive view of the subject at some point. If I do, maybe I'll give a summary here.
The visit to University of Amsterdam was really nice. The department is really a pleasure, the people are really nice, and I got some great feedback on my work there (which has significantly improved the research).
Paris was certainly the largest highlight. See previous blog entry.

My Summer Vacation

2009-03-01T19:18:00.001+02:00

On my summer vacation, I went to Paris for the first time. It was fabulous.

After my talk in Amsterdam, Kristen and I decided to take a break. I mean, conference in Geneva, working in the Netherlands... what a difficult life! So we took the TGV train from Amsterdam to Paris for a 4 day, 3 night vacation in the city. I have to say, I had my reservations - I have heard quite a bit about the rudeness of Parisians, and I wasn't sure what to expect. But, contrary to such prejudices, the French were probably the most polite people of the whole trip. Of course, it absolutely must have helped that I did try to use my rudimentary French throughout our stay there... but that was NOT a given, since it was entirely possible anyone would have been horrified by the massacre of their language. Regardless, as our time in Paris continued, more and more of the French I should have learned in Montreal (where I lived for five years) came back to me. And it was actually great fun to try and remember how to speak. And I like to think I impressed the hell out of Kristen (who doesn't speak a word).

What did I like best about the capital of France? Almost certainly the Latin Quarter and St. Germain. It's the area also on the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank of the Seine river, where the Sorbonne is located. So it was fairly student-y, and although the tourists had also found it (how dare they!), it was still a remarkably delightful place to just walk around. Which is what we mostly did for all the 4 days. We also saw most of the requisite tourist attractions, most notably the Louvre (I didn't get all the hoo-hah about the Mona Lisa), the Eiffel Tower (which was phenomenal), and the Notre Dame. We also took in the Musee D'Orsay (which was really a cool art museum located in an old train station) and the Sacre Coeur cathedral (which was unmanageably touristy - we had to hightail it out of there before one of us had a nervous breakdown). But most importantly, since we were staying in Montmartre, we managed to find the grocery store from Amelie. Kristen was certainly delighted.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with Paris. I would definitely go back there. Actually, I have the feeling that a large part of my enchantment with the city was just that I miss New York. Cape Town is a nice little city, but it's nothing like NYC - same with Geneva and Amsterdam. Paris was the first huge metropolitan city I've been in for a while, and it definitely made me slightly homesick. Although London doesn't quite do the same thing for me, so perhaps there's more to Paris than that...

Euroblog Part Deux

2009-02-18T20:55:00.002+02:00

I am still on my whirlwind trip through Europe. Kristen and I just spent a few days in Amsterdam after finishing up in Geneva, and I gave my first real external talk ever there. I was incredibly nervous beforehand, but Kristen made me practice a bunch of times before the actual day. For some reason, the practicing was much worse than the actual talk (and not just because practicing made it easier). But the talk at the University of Amsterdam went quite well. The only problem was that it was WAY too short. Like half the time it should have been. I was pretty embarrassed, but I think it was probably ok - no one minds when a talk is really short, and now I know I can add in a bunch more slides (I actually took out a significant number because I thought it was too long). I also have to say, one person in the audience asked a question which called the accuracy of my results into question, and I felt like I handled it pretty well. I think I rallied on the next slide and just continued on, after thanking him for the comment. Actually, I'm pretty sure he was right about what he said - it shouldn't invalidate our results, but I think it might actually lead to something more interesting than what we already have. Which means that I'll have to spend some of my vacation time in Paris figuring it out. But that's ok, it'll be cool if it comes out correctly.

Anyway, so I felt really good to have finished the first talk. Now we're in Paris in our TINY hotel room. But we're right smack in Montmarte in a really cool part of town, and I think we're going to really have fun. I've never been to Paris, so I'm really looking forward to this. I'm trying to break out my incredibly rusty francais, so we'll see if I can get people to talk to me. It never really worked in Montreal, but perhaps Parisians will abide my crappy french.

South African Lampoon's European Vacation

2009-02-15T18:59:00.001+02:00

The month of January came and went in a blur of post-Christmas/post-safari activity. The entire month was spent hunkering down and working to get some research accomplished and then a talk written for my upcoming...

TRIP TO EUROPE

... which is where I am, now. If January was a month spent in preparation, February is a month spent in travel. The Low-Down is this: I left on February 7th to fly to the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, for the CERN Winter School on Strings and Supergravity. After a week of this, I am next traveling to Amsterdam to give a talk on my recent paper at the University of Amsterdam. We're spending about 4 days there and then moving on to Paris. This part is not work - I'm going there just to spend some time in Paris, where I have never been. We're there for five days, and then taking the train under the English Channel to London, where I am scheduled to give a talk at King's College, London. After three days in London (by which I expect all my money will be gone), we're off to Swansea, in Wales, where I'll give a talk at Swansea University. Then most likely (this is still up in the air) we're going to go up to Edinburgh for a few days to see Scotland (which I've always wanted to see), and finally back to London to fly home to Cape Town. All told, we're going to be in Europe for about a month - we're getting back to CT on March 5th.

Oh, and by the way, when I say "we," I'm not using the royal "we" - I managed to convince Kristen to come with me and turn it into a fun European vacation. Ok, so it didn't actually take that much convincing, as she loves Europe and the artsy atmosphere. But honestly, it is a HUGE boon to me to have her with me, not ONLY because she makes the whole trip WAY more fun, but it is really nice to have some support, as these will really my first real external research talks - I've given a few talks at conferences, but only in postdoc or grad student sessions, and not as the main speaker. So I'm very nervous, and it is an enormous help to have her here to make sure I don't totally freak out.

So it's a week after the trip's beginning, and I'm now sitting in the Geneva airport, having spent the week in lectures at CERN. It was a really nice set of lectures, especially the four that we had by Samir Mathur on the Black Hole Information Paradox within String Theory. I found these really fascinating, and I have to say they kind of reinvigorated my hope in String Theory. After this is all done, I'd like to try and write an entry on the topic, since it's super interesting - I mean, who doesn't want to know more about black holes?

This trip here from SA was actually pretty hectic, as we flew through Doha, Qatar, and missed the one flight from Doha to Geneva (stupidly, our travel agent booked us to have a 40 minute layover there - which we expected to be tight, but it turned out our gate had closed even before we got off our first flight, which was on time!). So we had to catch the flight to Zurich, instead (6 hours later) and then another flight to Geneva. Annoying. And we're supposed to have the same thing on the way back, so we need to figure out how to deal with that.

Anyway, hopefully the trip and all the talks will go well. I'm excited about Paris and Edinburgh (the two places where I'm NOT doing work stuff). Hopefully I'll update a few more times during the trip to give my sense of Europe. Bon voyage!

Safari

2009-01-02T19:05:00.006+02:00

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but
I thought I'd start it off again on the New Year. And there's
definitely plenty of great stuff that I've been doing over the past few
weeks to blog about, so hopefully I'll be able to build up some
momentum and talk about what's going on here.

My family (Mom and Dad and Brother Scott) came to visit over the past
two weeks for the holidays. We really had a fantastic time,
and it seemed mainly dominated by food. It seemed like almost
every restaurant we went to had phenomenal food - here's a list of the
great places we ate, for anyone who visits Cape Town and wants a place
to eat:

Restaurants we loved

Five Flies

Mama Africa

Caveau

Barusso's Pizza

Riboville

Hussar's Grill (get the Warthog Ribs)

However, the most exciting thing we did was clearly the three-day
safari we went on in Kruger Park, way up north. So that's what I'll talk about
now.

Two days after my family arrived, the five of us (me, my family, and
Kristen) got on a plane to head up to Kruger. Of course, this was
not without a bit of disorganization from the Cape Town airport, which
was unable to cope with the fact that our flight has a different
schedule on the weekends than it does on Saturdays - hence, our plane
which was supposed to leave at 9 was listed on the airport monitors as
leaving at 10. There was confusion, which was eventually
sorted out after talking to several different airport employees, most of whom
did not give a shit. All of which is just to say that it was
a nice introduction to African disorganization for my family - TIA (This
Is Africa).

Regardless, we made it to Jock of the Bushveld,
a safari lodge situated about an hour inside Kruger. For
those who don't know, Kruger is an enormous piece of protected land
near the northern borders of South Africa. On it, all the wild animals
of the bush are allowed to roam free and do what they want, living the
lives they are meant to live (more or less). So there are
lions that hunt the zillion species of antelope (or whatever-the-hell else
they want - lions are pretty kick-ass, as I learned), elephants that
roam around and knock down shitloads of trees, buffalo that stink to
high heaven, and all sorts of other crazy animals. And people
are allowed inside with passes to travel along the roads and watch whatever
they can see. But please don't mess with the animals, 'cause
they will eat you. Kruger was made especially famous by the
awesome video of a baby buffalo being attacked by lions, which were
subsequently drubbed by almost every other predator in the wild.

Anyway, we got there in time to chill out for a minute before going on our
first expedition into the wild. We piled into the truck with
our awesome guide, JV, and set off. The first trip was not all
that great. After wandering around on the trails for about two
hours, we finally managed to see a couple of lone elephants from afar, which
was cool, but it was somewhat disappointing.

However, the next morning, after waking up at 5am, we set off again and
had an explosion of sightings. We immediately saw a lioness and her two
not-yet-grown sons walking along the road. Now, I have to
say, I was somewhat skeptical about the exciting-ness of lions before I came.
You always hear that they are the kings of the jungle and everything
(even though they don't live in the jungle, but in the bush), but I
just kind of figured it was media hype. But seeing those
lions, not even grown was definitely impressive - they walked right in front
of our car, looking at us with a look that said, "I am WAY cooler than
you, and I would eat the hell out of you if you even THOUGHT about
messing with me."

Unfortunately, those were the only lions we
saw on the trip, but they were pretty damn cool, and they were right up
close in front of us. We also proceeded to see a leopard in a
tree (a rare sighting because they are really solitary and shy), a
whole pack of wild dogs (rare because they are endangered), a pack (?)
of white rhinos, and a bunch of other cool littler animals (including
an injured honey badger, which was really mean looking). They
were all really cool, and I was reassured that we weren't doomed to
seeing nothing on this (fairly expensive) trip.

The best part was to come on the second, evening outing. We spent about two
hours driving slowly along a dried-up riverbed, with JV seeing tons of
tracks of exciting animals, but never seeing anything. I
could tell he was getting frustrated, and so were the rest of us.
By that point, I was pretty much decided that evening trips sucked, and
morning trips were the shit.

Finally, we headed out of the riverbed, and it seemed like we were headed home. Then JV noticed some fresh giraffe tracks (he was really amazing at
spotting things - I guess that's what being a ranger is all about) and
he quickly spun around and headed back the way we came, and out the other way. In about five seconds, we saw a whole bunch of giraffes eating leaves,
silhouted against the night sky. They're really gorgeous, and
the ladies loved it. So we were slightly mollified about seeing
nothing so far, and started heading down the track towards the main
road.

Suddenly, JV shut off the engine and the lights, and
shushed us to be quiet - there was a big herd of elephants straight
ahead on the road. There were about 3 adult females and 5
little kids, playing with each other and running around - real cute.
We stayed watching them for a few minutes, then started up the car and
inched along, expecting them to get out of the way. One of
the females puffed up her ears at us as if to tell us to get gone, and her
little baby did the same, which was super cute, but they quickly got
out of our way, and ran around behind us trumpeting. Finally,
we moved on a bit more... and right on the trail, directly in front of us
was a HUGE bull elephant, which massive tusks looming over us.
And he was NOT happy to see us. JV flashed the
light in his eyes to try and scare him away, but he was having none of it.
He puffed up his ears to make himself look bigger (and it worked, and made
him even more intimidating) and started to charge us!

He stopped after a couple of feet (mock charge), but my mom almost lost it
Of course JV had it under control, and revved the engine several
times while making little mock charges of his own. You could
even see the indecision in the eyes of the elephant before he decided he
didn't really know what we were, so he moved out of the way, still
facing us. Then JV gunned the engine and shot out of there -
as I looked back, I could see the bull behind us start to chase us away,
trumpeting. It was highly exciting. Whether or not we were
in any danger, it really brought home the fact that no matter if there
are roads built through Kruger, it really is still the wild, and that
elephant would not have hesitated to kill us. If we hadn't
been in the big ol' car, we DEFINITELY would have been toast.

So we spent a few more days there, and each outing was very exciting with
lots of animal sightings. We did manage to see the big five
(lion, elephant, leopard, rhino, and cape buffalo - the five most
dangerous animals to hunt on foot) and a whole shitload of other really
amazing creatures. All-in-all, it was a pretty incredible
experience, and I would highly recommend some form of safari to anyone
coming to Africa. Totally worth it.

A New Dawn

2008-09-04T20:38:00.002+02:00

The Day has come! Kristen has finally arrived in Cape Town! This is very exciting!

For those who don't know, Kristen is my New Yorker girlfriend. We've been dating long-distance for the past year, which has obviously been difficult, but it has also been a huge help to me while I've been away. But she's decided (or rather, we decided together) to quit her job in New York and move out to Cape Town with me. She's going to be doing volunteer work with a group called Help2Read (guess what they do). Of course, her MAIN occupation will be taking care of ME and keeping me in the lap of luxury.

But anyway, she's finally here, and our tiny apartment is now littered with luggage, clothes, and girly things. And books... LOTS of books... and considering I only have a tiny two shelf bookshelf which was already twice overflowing, this is going to be a problem... Anyway, she has her work cut out for her to make this place from a kickin' bachelor pad into a livable home. But the fact of her being here is going a long way towards that...

Photos from New York

2008-07-28T17:34:00.007+02:00

As stated previously, I am finally putting up pictures from my trip. Here are some snapshots from New York City.

Me with Kristen ad her mom. Aren't they adorable?

Me with Kristen's dad and grandpa. They were the sweetest hardcore Bronx-y dudes I ever met.

This is the movie under the Brooklyn Bridge. What a gorgeous scene!

Me and my mom at Coney Island. Coney is the bomb!

Picnic in the park. Don't forget the wine!

South Africa's most dangerous threat

2008-07-28T17:19:00.003+02:00

In a nice cap to my week (for other adventures, see the preceding post), my friend set his brother's face on fire.

Yes, he is ok, and no, it was not meant as a brotherly prank. I don't think. Or if it was, the guy really did a great job of feigning a guilty look afterwards.

After having a drink at the local Obs pub (Obs is Observatory, which is a hip/crime-ridden neighborhood) we were going to have a braai at my friend's house (he will remain mostly nameless, although probably anyone who knows him could figure it out - let's call them Bob and his brother James). So Bob and James go off to start the fire, and me and Julien stay to finish our drinks at the pub. Ten minutes later, we pitch up to Bob's place and are received with a frantic, "Alex, is your car nearby? We need to rush James to the hospital!"

"Holy Shit," says I, and race off to get my rental car, which I had luckily acquired that day. Thank God! Apparently what had happened was that Bob and James were lighting the braai and decided the fire needed a little help - in the form of methanol. Who could possibly predicted that such an innocuous idea could end with and explosion and a face caught on fire? Luckily, Bob has a fish pond in his back yard, and James leapt in and dunked his face. According to him later, he didn't even know what he was doing, just acted on instinct. Score one for instinct - otherwise he would have most definitely been seriously wounded. As it was, he had only 1st degree burns all over his face, which should heal without scarring. But holy crap, it was a scary drive to two different hospitals (the second one, of which no one knew the location, had a useless burns unit).

Probably the most inconveniencing thing was that James was leaving two days afterwards to travel back home, and his faced was wrapped up like King Tut. Would security give him a hard time? I haven't heard yet, but I'm going to place that one firmly in the "probably" category.

History repeats itself

2008-07-28T16:56:00.002+02:00

And you thought YOU had car issues...

The safest place I could park my car... let's see... the UCT parking lot you say? Well, I would beg to differ. Because that's precisely where my car was STOLEN! You heard/read me correctly - my car which was a replacement for a stolen car was STOLEN.

I don't know what else to say. I was speechless at the time. Twice my car was ripped off in one year. This seems to be somewhat of an achievement, even here in SA - everyone is really shocked. Well... let me rephrase that. It's not so much that they are shocked because it's hard to believe that could happen... such things are not irregular here. It was more that they had extreme sympathy. Which was nice, but didn't really help to get my car back.

And neither did the security workers at UCT. You'd think that they would be somewhat concerned that this shit is going down on campus (in fact, when I reported it to them, I got sympathy along with a "Damn, not another one," so I guess they're used to it). They even have cameras set up on all the exits for just such an occaision (one would think). However, the special investigator that they put on my case spent one day on it before sending me the following message by email

Dear Mr Hamilton

With regards to the incident of “Theft of motor vehicle”, which was reported on 23/07/2008, I wish to inform you that the investigation was concluded.

The investigation revealed:

Case was reported to the Rondebosch Police, the case was filed as undetected and the vehicle circulated on their network.
Our surveillance camera footage could not be viewed due to a technical error occurring during the upgrade of CCTV.
No leads and no suspects were obtained.

The docket would be reopened if the vehicle is recovered.

That's great - so helpful. Glad you guys really put the effort in on this one. The whole thing seems very suspicious to me - either she is straight out lying (either due to complicity in the crime, or more likely laziness) or it's a pretty incredible coincidence that the thief managed to steal my car EXACTLY when the CCTV camera was being upgraded.

All in all, I'm really not looking forward to buying ANOTHER freaking car...

Photos from Amsterdam

2008-07-16T14:30:00.011+02:00

So I figured I should finally put up some of the pictures we took on my trip through Europe. Here are a few which document my time in Amsterdam with Kristen.

This picture probably doesn't really do justice to the sheer number of bikes that crowd the streets of Amsterdam. Let me just say that absolutely EVERY surface was covered with at least as many parked bikes, plus a constant stream of bike traffic. There are really a SHITLOAD of bikes in Amsterdam.

Here I am in my cool new hat I bought there drinking a beer on the streets. Don't I look super European?

Just one picture of the beautiful canals that are all throughout the city. Probably the most impressive thing about Amsterdam.

The requisite picture of drug culture. I just got a kick out of the fact that it's called Rick's Cafe (cause I love Casablanca).

Me and Kristen - we had a blast!

Kennedy

2008-07-16T13:45:00.000+02:00

The final leg of my month-long trip is now coming to an end. I'm sitting in Kennedy airport (a.k.a. JFK) in New York, about to leave for Amsterdam (and then onwards to Cape Town). I've been here for a week and half, and it's been extremely enjoyable, although pretty hectically busy. The first half of the week included arriving on the Fourth of July and hearing the fireworks going from the cab ride back to Kristen's, meeting her dad and grandfather (he is an ADORABLE 80 year-old New York Italian dude with a strong accent and marbles in his mouth), met up with some of my NY friends, seeing her mom (whom I adore), and going to see Stand By Me being projected on the Brooklyn Bridge from a gorgeous new park on the East River.

Then, on the next Friday, my mom came to visit with us for the weekend, which was fantastic. She stayed with me and Kristen in her little Brooklyn apartment and put up with her allergies to share the space with KB's sweet kitty, Squee. We went for a phenomenal dinner at what is by far the best restaurant in Park Slope (and probably the best deal I've eaten at in all of NYC), Al Di La - an Italian restaurant with a long wait that's totally worth it. Then we spent Saturday afternoon at Coney Island! It was a classic New York treat! Especially considering it's the last summer Astroland (the amusement park at Coney) will be open, I think it was a great experience to have. We finally finished up with a concert in Prospect Park of Beth Orton, which we couldn't really see/hear, but we had a great picnic in the park. It was all really fun, and it was really nice to see my mom, as well as to have Kristen interact with her (they get along like gangbusters).

All-in-all, it was really nice to be in New York and see friends and family. It really reminded me, however, how much I miss New York. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying living in Cape Town, but being back in New York really got me reminiscent of how ALIVE the city is, and how cool it is to be in the middle of it. More and more, I see myself returning to NYC when my time in Africa is over. The only thing that spoiled the rosy image was the outrageous humidity which is pretty much non-existent in Cape Town. Oh, it was SO disgusting, it was unbearable to be out of the air conditioning for more than an hour.

Finally, I'm sad to be leaving the city, but I have to say I'm definitely glad to be finally returning home to Cape Town. After traveling for over a month, I'm pretty sick of living out of a suitcase, and I'm looking forward to being back in my own bed. But here's to traveling and seeing the world!

Schiphol

2008-07-07T18:16:00.001+02:00

Next stop on the string theory journey - Amsterdam. I've just (almost finished) my week and a half here in the Netherlands, and I'm sitting in Schiphol airport. I had a really nice time, but it's about time to be done with EuroStrings (a.k.a. Strings@Amsterdam). Not because it wasn't fun, but just because it was pretty tiring - sitting through 34 talks in one week will do that, I guess.

My Amsterdam adventure started last Wednesday with my arrival in the evening, excitement at how fun Amsterdam looked from the airport shuttle, and subsequent crushing disappointment that the hotel I had booked (based on conference recommendations) was not immediately in the city centre (note my Eurocentric spelling of center - how authentic!). In the end it turned out to be fine - it was quite close by tram/bus to the centre, and even not that bad by walking. Still, it would have been nice to be closer and not be forced to commute to the fun.

Anyway, Kristen arrived the next morning to meet me for some Amsterfun. I won't describe everything we ended up doing, but I'll list the highlights. The Van Gogh museum was awesome - really an ideal size for someone who burns out relatively quickly at art museums (should that be museei? for some reason that sounds better to me). Plus I love van Gogh. The city itself was just really beautiful - there are canals (gracht) everywhere, and it's just so appealing. Venice of the north, kind-of-thing. Most of the time we spent walking around just soaking up the city. There's also a great improv show called Boom Chicago, which was reasonably priced, and absolutely hilarious. I was rolling on the ground laughing, and I ended up giving myself a headache from the hilarity. One of the unintentional funny moments, though, was that there was a group of dutch people sitting right in front of us, and from the start it was clear that the humor was lost on them. They were dead silent and not laughing while the rest of the audience was cracking up. I don't know whether they were just really prudish, or whether the dutch sense of humor isn't up to standard (although there were a lot of other dutch people in the audience who were loving it), but they were just not enjoying the show. To the point where they just got up and left during the intermission. They left their ticket (which had their names on it) on the table, and I picked that up for a souvenir - a reminder of the dangers of taking yourself too seriously. I'm not sure exactly what danger I'm talking about, but I'm sure it's there.

Probably the most noticeable part of the Amsterdamian landscape (aside from the canals) were the bikes. They were absolutely EVERYWHERE. I thought I'd seen people riding bikes in NYC, or in Cambridge, or anywhere, but these guys REALLY take it seriously. The bike paths along the street were hardcore - there was almost nowhere that didn't have very explicit bike paths, as well as special stop lights specifically for bicyclists. These lights were actually somewhat difficult to get the hang of because they were set up differently than normal stop lights for cars (also because I'm incompetent I think - KB had no trouble understanding them). Apparently, with 750,000 people living in Amsterdam, there are over 1 million bikes - like I said, they take it very seriously. So in order to have a legitimate Amsterdam experience, Kristen and I HAD to rent bikes and tool around the city. And I have to say, it was totally worth it. It's so convenient that I never felt at odds with the vehicular traffic (as opposed to my brief attempts to bike in NYC, which included multiple life-flashing episodes). And we were able to see much more of the surrounding area than we would have otherwise. I heartily approve of the abundance of bicycles here.

After Kristen left on Monday, the strings meeting began. It was quite an enjoyable conference, with lots of interesting speakers, lots of nice people, and some very good talks. I would say my only complaint was that there were perhaps too many talks - with a few exceptions, each talk could only be half an hour, which for those of you who are not scientists, is really not enough time to give a decent amount of background for non-expert members of the audience (by non-expert I mean people who don't work on a specific topic within string theory - of course a certain amount of background must always be assumed, but there's so many topics in the field, and so varied and complicated, that unless you're working directly on some topic, you can't be an expert). So many of the talks that were not in my area of expertise were lost on me. But overall it was all very interesting.

I also managed to meet many nice and interesting people, which is really the point of these conferences, I think. It's all about networking, I think - which I generally hate. But it was made much easier with the addition of a little but of alcohol at the reception and dinner - social lubrication had it's intended effect. Perhaps the coolest moment for me was when I was talking at the final banquet to Vijay Balasubramanian (a leader in my field, who is a professor at U Penn, and ALSO happens to have a full professorship there in neuroscience - smart, busy guy). He was a speaker at the meeting (probably the best one) and of course I knew who he was anyway because he's so famous. But when I introduced myself as Alex Hamilton from University of Cape Town, he made two comments - one, he knows Jeff, so he made small talk about that and said to say hi, and two (which totally blew my mind) he knew who I was from work I'd done with my advisor, Dan Kabat. Wow - I mean, of course he would know Dan, who's relatively well known in the field. And I'm not even shocked that he knew about our work - people read papers that relate to their work, especially if they know the author (i.e., Dan). But I have no idea how he would not only pick up my name from that, let alone REMEMBER who I was and be able to place me from a random introduction. I was both extremely impressed with his memory and very honored that he would remember. It was a big moment in my academic career.

Anyway, that's enough about the conference. But let me just end with a comment on my general experience with Europe. DAMN, but it's expensive here. Of course, everyone knows that England, and especially London, is outrageous. But I found Amsterdam to also be unreasonable - even more expensive to go out in than NYC. All this time I have been under the impression that New York ranked somewhere high up on the list of expensive places. But this is apparently only true in the States. It appears to me that Europe in general is just over the top. Perhaps it is just because the Euro is so strong right now that it makes the dollar and the rand unspendable. But even the Europeans I met there seemed to think that Europe was becoming crazy, so who knows. All I know is that this trip is starting to break my bank. At least I can get the bulk of it reimbursed since it has been business traveling. But it's an important lesson to learn - Americans beware: your money is no longer good here.

Heathrow

2008-07-02T09:05:00.001+02:00

I am currently working my way through my worldwide string theory tour. Sitting in London, Heathrow airport, sunburnt and coughing, and ready to party.

Let me explain. I'm doing a bit of a whirlwind tour of the world, including
1) Visiting Cambridge for a week
2) Visiting Queen Mary, University of London for about a day
3) Meeting KB for a brief vacation in Amsterdam over a long weekend before
4) Attending a string theory conference in Amsterdam for a week
5) Finally, visiting NYC

and then back to Cape Town. It would seem to be a brilliant experience, and it's fine; I just don't really like traveling. Or being forced to talk to physicists. This may cast a shadow on my career.

Anyway, the trip to Cambridge went (mostly) very well. Unfortunately, due to a last minute talk she had to give in Germany, Amanda couldn't be there for most of the time, but she more than graciously allowed me to stay in her flat. And anyway, I suppose there could be a few other people worth talking to at the home of Stephen Hawking. So, indeed, I hung out and had drinks with Hawking's wheelchair engineer, Sam. I also talked a bit of physics with a few of the people there (mostly about how much I hate the Landscape of string theory - if you don't know what I mean, perhaps I'll discuss it at a later date, but probably not). The best parts were going out to the pubs and drinking English Ales. Damn it was good to drink decent beer again (SA beer is crap, due to the complete dominance of South African Breweries - South Africa's answer to Bud, and the second largest beer company in the world).

The worst part, however, was that I got sick. About halfway through the visit, I discovered that I must have caught something off of the plane on the way over, and I was put out of commission for about three days (my other theory was inspired by Robert Mugabe - the colonialist English bastards purposely infected me because I'm from Africa). It was most annoying.

I finally began to recover the day before I left, and my new friends at DAMPT took me out to a nearby town called Grantchester, which was gorgeous. We had tea at The Orchard - a famous tea house, previously patronized by such minds as Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Maynard Keynes, Crick and Watson, Alan Turing, and so on. I felt smarter immediately. We also spent about 8 hours sitting out at the local pub having lunch, dinner, and a number of beers. That day had been particularly beautiful, and we had been sitting in the sun the whole time. A few hours in, I started to worry that I might get burned, but the other two were possibly even whiter than me, and I figured that living in Africa for a year ought to count for something, so I ignored it. Rookie error - you hate to see it. Hence my current toastiness.

Anyway, after leaving Cambridge, I took the train down to London to visit Queen Mary's. I would say that part of the trip was a bit of a write off, as almost everyone happened to be out of town so there weren't many people to meet. Regardless, they were extremely friendly and gave me a desk in the visitors' room. But I also continued to feel unwell (not helped by the sunburn, I think) and so I didn't really get to take advantage of being in London. Which is probably for the best, because my strongest impression of England was this: it is BLOODY expensive! Even in Cambridge, going out to eat at a crappy chinese restaurant cost me nearly US $50. It's incredibly deceptive, because it's all written in foreign currency (pounds), but it still hurts. I actually don't think that London was much more expensive than Cambridge, though - the explanation to me was that it's because a lot of people live there and commute to London. So might as well charge them the same amount. But DAMN. I could not afford to live there. Puts New York City completely to shame (or redeems it, however you want to say it).

Anyway, so that's the current state of the system - I'm sitting in Heathrow now, waiting for my plane to Amsterdam. I'm very excited, never having been there, and I can't wait to see all the city has to offer. Hopefully I'll let you know how it goes.

Torture in Zim

2008-06-22T10:04:00.002+02:00

This NYTimes article on the torture of Zimbabweans was really telling, I thought. Quite graphic, but it really makes it clear that the run-off election coming up is a COMPLETE farce. Of course, this really isn't any different from Mugabe's historical inhumanities, but one could have hoped that this one would be different...

Greg `How'd he do that?' Siegman

2008-06-14T14:52:00.011+02:00

You know how some people somehow seem to meet absolutely everyone, without even trying? These same people tend to have coincidence after coincidence occur to them, leaving you scratching your head, thinking, "How could that possibly have happened?" Well, you've never met Greg Forbes Siegman, and that seems to be this guys' ENTIRE life.

Last week, I got an email from a good friend of mine back home (Abby), saying "You're going to be hearing from a guy named Greg Forbes Seigman who is from Chicago, who I know kind of through work." She said that she only knows him in passing, but that he seemed like a nice enough guy, and that he was going to be in Cape Town doing some kind of speaking tour this week. Maybe I'd like to get together with him or something, 'cause he's interested in meeting new people. This is what we like to call foreshadowing, because it is effectively the understatement of the year.

Ok, so I end up meeting up with this guy for dinner on Thursday night, with the idea to invite some friends since he likes to meet nice people. In the end I didn't end up bringing anyone, slightly worried that this might be a problem - maybe Greg wanted this to be lots of people, and I was depriving the evening of physicists (crucial for any serious get-together). It was not a problem. I showed up on time, and there were about 5 people there, so I thought, "Oh, ok, that should be enough people, I'm glad Greg brought some friends." Introductions were made, they all seemed nice, and I assumed they were all somehow associated with Greg's tour here. I was wrong on all counts (except them being nice).

All of the people at dinner were completely random. There was one couple who were finance business people. There was a community organizer. There was a woman from Kingwilliamstown (a town in the eastern cape) who worked as the popcorn lady at the cinema to support her three kids back home. There was the waiter from the townships that happened to serve Greg breakfast. There were several complete strangers he just started talking to on the street. And notably, there was no racial bias - there were just about as many black/coloured people as whites. In the end, there were probably 25-30 people who showed up for dinner, and no one knew anyone else (including Greg - he'd met them all within the past 3 days).

Finally, we headed off to dinner, took up 5 tables at the local Spur (something like a South African version of Applebeys), and everyone got to talking. The only rule was that you weren't allowed to sit next to anyone you already knew (a few people had come with friends). It was a great deal of fun, everyone was really nice, everyone was very respectful and kind. The amazing thing was the unity and comfortableness that people felt. Some people would say that such a thing would never work here. That maybe he could get together such different people so easily in the States, but South Africa just wasn't ready for it (which, to me, just shows ignorance of the level of segregation in the US - it feels to me like it's MORE integrated here, but that could just be because the percentage of black people is so much higher). But, in fact, it worked perfectly well - black people, white people, coloured people sat together and talked; rich, poor, and middle class were at the same table without feeling particularly uncomfortable. It really was pretty neat.

Anyway, the dinner was very enjoyable and interesting. After a while it broke up, and people started off home. I ended up walking back towards my car with Greg, and we decided to go get a drink (or rather, I got a drink and he had a sprite or something) - and this is where the coincidence stuff really kicked in. So we drove off to Long Street (the hip street downtown with all the bars) to find somewhere interesting. The first place we stopped in was a trendy lounge-type place. Greg immediately made friends with the bartender, and it turned out that this kid had gone to the high school whose principal was a friend of Greg's, and at whose house Greg was supposed to go to dinner. That was a funny enough coincidence. But we quickly left the lounge, cause it was kind of a cheesy atmosphere. We then went to a seedier-looking bar called Stones, which was sort of a pool bar. We stepped out onto the balcony, immediately made friends with the group that was sitting out there, and struck up a conversation (in that order - by the time Greg is actually talking to people, they already seem to be his best friend. I've never seen anything like it). The greatest thing was that those people had just been to dinner at the exactly same restaurant where we'd had our big extravaganza. And of course they remembered the big section of crazy people laughing and shouting and taking pictures (which was us, in case you couldn't figure it out). These people were also really nice, and we chatted and played pool with them for a few hours, before it was time for me to head home and go to bed (considering I was working the next day).

The list goes on. Suffice to say, Greg was an extremely interesting guy, and very unique in his approach to social interactions. He's got a huge heart, and I think is doing some great things for bringing people together. However, it all seems so chaotic, I still haven't managed to figure out exactly what those things are...

Blast from the Past

2008-06-07T15:12:00.003+02:00

Last week, in a fit of boredom, I was flipping through Facebook to see if I could glean any interesting information out of it.

Let me first of all say, that though I have nothing in particular against this particular networking site (or whatever you'd call it), in general I find it pretty useless. People generally put almost no relevant information on their profile (except their favorite books, movies, etc., which doesn't blow my mind anymore) so I can't learn what anyone is up to, and if I'm going to send an email, I'd rather send an email than write some nonsense on someone's Facebook page. I guess I shouldn't be too judgmental, seeing as it was really created for college kids to post their drunken photos on, and for that it seems to work quite well.

But whatever, this was not meant to be a diatribe against a college website. The point was that I actually DID manage to find something useful - somehow I stumbled upon a relatively large number of people from high school, with whom I've had no contact in 12 years. So I ended up becoming "friends" with them, as well as posting the URL to this blog. There were a number of subsequent visitors linking from Facebook, so I assume some people from Shaker now know what I'm up to. To those people, I greet you.

Anyway, the whole thing has made me very contemplative about how long it's been since graduating high school. And I wondered how much any of us have changed. Looking at the photographs on Facebook, most people looked virtually the same as I remembered them. I imagine I must look somewhat different, as I haven't had long hair since Sophomore year of University [(Un)fortunately, I have no pictures of that handy, so I can't post any on here, but needless to say, it doesn't seem as cool now as it must have then]. But more importantly, how much have people changed personality-wise? I feel like I have changed pretty significantly - I was extremely introverted in high school, but during my college years I gradually came out of my shell. I'd say I'm still fairly shy on the inside, but have learned to temper that by making an effort to be outgoing and friendly. It's definitely gotten easier over the years, too, to the point where people I know now are sometimes a little surprised that I say I used to be really shy. I guess it's not so surprising, either - with age comes maturity and a certain amount of growth of self-confidence.

But I'm also still much the same, I think. Still pretty nerdy, clearly still into academics, still have the same basic personality traits... so it'd be interesting to see how other people have changed and how they've stayed the same. How much of personality is developed early on, and how much does subsequent experience affect you? Maybe I'll just let the philosophers decide.

But anyone out there who I once knew, welcome to reading about my life...

Strangers in a Strange Land

2008-05-27T17:37:00.002+02:00

As many have no doubt become aware, there is a new crisis in South Africa which begun about two weeks ago. Seemingly (to me) out of nowhere, poor South Africans in Alexandra (a town near Joburg) started brutally attacking "foreigners" living there. The violence (which involved some truly inhuman attacks) quickly spread to townships in Johannesburg, to Durban, and most recently even to Cape Town (which is some 800 miles away). What seemed initially to be an isolated outburst of poverty-inspired anger has spread into a massive (inter)national crisis.

Let me be clear - I am in no (more than usual) danger. These attacks are focused upon poor Africans, mainly from Zimbabwe and Mozambique. They are being perpetrated by poor South Africans in the poverty-stricken townships on the outskirts of cities. They seem to be lashing out in anger because of the high (30%) unemployment rate and horrific crime. Of course, from what I can tell, these victims are just scapegoats - I've heard that only 1% of crime is caused by foreigners, and many of these people are taking semi-skilled jobs (in mines, vineyards, factories, etc.) which the majority of South Africans are unqualified for, or setting up their own businesses.

But these attacks are no joke. More than 40 people have died (some burned alive) and thousands upon thousands of people have been displaced. UCT is organizing relief efforts for people who have had to leave their homes here in Cape Town for fear of being attacked. A Kenyan friend of mine at the university was helping to organize people to stay in the basketball courts on campus. Another friend of mine who works in an educational institution in the townships says that one of the children in her school has had to leave because her family's shack was looted and burnt to the ground. And the violence continues.

And what is the South African government doing about all of this? Not much. Despite my lack of pre-knowledge on the issue, it seems that there was plenty of evidence that bad vibes were brewing. According to the BBC

There have been simmering tensions between South Africans and foreign nationals for some time, most notably in Cape Town where members of the local Somali community have been victimised over the past couple of years.
There has also been a continuing influx of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans, fleeing the political and economic crisis in their home country.

And speaking of Zimbabweans, many people are blaming much of the problem on President Mbeki, who refuses to allow refugee status to the more than 3 million Zimbabweans here (compared to 40 million total South Africans) who are fleeing the violence and repression of leader Robert Mugabe in their own country. Allowing them such status, even though it would let them put these people in refugee camps where they could have access to relief efforts and such, would imply that there is a problem in Zim. But of course, Mbeki and Mugabe are old buds, and he has continually refused to make any negative statements about the horrible repression of Mugabe. Which leads to even more negative attitude of the general South African population against people who would crowd into their country when there is nothing for them to be afraid of back home.

All in all, this is a most fucked-up situation.

Cosmology du vin

2008-05-24T18:37:00.002+02:00

Last week I took part in cosmology workshop organized jointly between some South African and Cambridge cosmologists, and I'd say it was quite successful. Of course, the fun was in no way hampered by the fact that it was held at this seriously posh new research institute in Stellenbosch - the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study (STIAS). In case you're unaware of Stellenbosch, it is the center of wine country surrounding Cape Town. There's something like 145 vineyards in Stellenbosch, and then multiple other areas surrounding it with other suitable wineries. So while the mornings of the conference were taken up with learning about cosmology (which is not my particular subject, but was interesting anyway cause they had good speakers), the afternoons were taken up with wine tastings. It was all made even better because one of the visiting Cambridgians is Malcolm Perry, a quite well known string theory dude. And being as Amanda is a postdoc with him, and he happens to be both wine steward for Trinity College AND a seriously cool guy, we had a blast going around trying different wines. He's one of those guys who knows a shitload about wine but is so completely unpretentious about it that you can ask him anything and you learn a great deal about wine. A good time was had by all.

In fact, we enjoyed it so much (and by we I mean Jeff) that we're now planning on having our OWN conference there in December, on string theory. Actually, we were planning on having this conference soon anyway, but trying to decide on a cool place to do it, and this STIAS conference center is just perfect. Totally lush, nice area, friendly people (sort of, although when someone mildly criticized the lunch they served, one of the servers got all up in their face). So it's on! Anyone out there who wants to fly on over to Cape Town for a good ol' fashioned String Theory conference, just let me know and I'll set it up. Of course, we're not paying for your damn ticket, so you'll have to pay for the $2000 flight, but... Oh, and also, it's just on AdS/CFT, so String Landscape researchers need not apply...

As farm subsidies increase, hell freezes over...

2008-05-16T22:23:00.006+02:00

This just in - I am in agreement with President George W. Bush. This is unheard of.

It has to do with US farm subsidies. Congress apparently just overwhelmingly voted for a $307 billion bill which is mainly meant to subsidize American farmers when prices for food is at an all time high. One might claim that this could drive down food prices, but in fact, this is exactly the problem. A major problem in Africa (as I learned from reading my excellent African history book, The State of Africa) is that African farming has been consistently underpriced by American farmers because of such subsidies, and has subsequently badly increased the level of poverty. As Martin Meredith says in my book,

Western surpluses produced at a fraction of their real cost are... dumped on African markets, undermining domestic producers. Simultaneously, African products face tariff barriers imposed by industrialized countries, effectively shutting them out of Western markets...

According to Oxfam, the trade losses associated with US farm subsidies that West Africa's eight main cotton exporters suffered outweighed the benefits they received from US aid.

I do think that the West needs to be playing an active role in helping developing countries. But I think it must be in a role that treats them as equal partners and helps them to become self-sufficient. Actively destroying their livelihoods in order to protect poor ol' American mega-farmers is NOT needed, even though it's been going on for years.

I'm particularly shocked by the whole thing because the bill is massively supported by both democrats and republicans, such that it is veto proof, even though Bush has threatened to veto it. Those who claim to stand for the underprivileged are screwing them, while Bush seems to be on the moral, but losing side...

My mind is blown.

Internet Commercialism Gone Wrong

2008-05-13T17:39:00.004+02:00

I found this blog entry from a physics website I sometimes read, called Musings. I admit to being somewhat confused.

I guess pubic lice is the next Britney's corn dog.

Odd.

Freedom in Africa

2008-04-28T11:49:00.002+02:00

This week has the most public holidays I've ever seen. Today (Monday) is "Freedom Day" to celebrate the end of apartheid. Then Thursday, May 1st, is Labour Day, which is apparently such an important holiday here that Friday is a continuation, another public holiday. Kinda weird, but who am I to complain? (Don't worry, though, Jeff - I'm working from home!)

But speaking of Freedom Day (and not to beat a dead horse, but...) here's an article I saw on the New York Times this morning. Not going into too much detail, the article is about the rising amount of violence being reported in Zimbabwe against those (mainly peasants) who supported the opposition party. There are roving gangs of government-supported youth thugs, as well as soldiers and police, beating and destroying the homes of people who were known to have been supporters of the MDC. Apparently, it's all part of "Operation Where-Did-You-Put-Your-X?" - a terror campaign to scare people away from voting in the probable upcoming run-off presidential election.

While South Africa is obviously not DIRECTLY to blame for this, it's leaders (specifically now President Mbeki) have completely refused to say a single negative word about Mugabe in public. While Mbeki claims to be using "quiet diplomacy" to try and help the situation, we can see how well that is working. There's just something the slightest bit hypocritical about proudly celebrating your own freedom while helping to prop up a neighbor's violent dictatorship (and no, the analogy with US foreign policy is not lost on me).

Faith in Zim-anity?

2008-04-27T11:15:00.009+02:00

Perhaps cynicism need not always win.

I had mentioned in a previous post that the election in Zimbabwe seemed to be on its way towards more dictatorship. They had had both presidential and parliamentary elections a month ago, and while the results from the presidential election had not (and still has not) been released, the parliamentary ones HAD been - and the results were in favor of the opposition party - the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - for the first time since independence in 1980. This seemed like great news, and possibly the beginning of the end for Mugabe's Zanu-PF ruling party. However, lo-and-behold, the government controlled Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) decided that 23 ridings needed a recount, most of those being seats lost to the MDC. As Zanu needed only 9 turnovers to retake parliament, and as the (corrupt) government had had the ballots in their custody for some time, the natural assuption (at least for both me and the MDC) was that Mugabe would have the ballot boxes stuffed, and rig the election.

However, the ZEC has been slowly releasing the recounts over the course of this past week, and it now seems that enough have been recounted to confirm the MDC parliamentary victory! Somehow, democracy has won the day, despite the repressive and corrupt government that's been in power for 30 years. Perhaps my faith in humanity can be restored...

Relatedly, there has recently been quite a bruhaha about a shipment of arms from China to Zimbabwe (where it has been claimed that the weapons would be used in suppressing Zim's own people during potential run-off elections), but through the protests of upstanding African citizens, its delivery to the oppressive Mugabean regime has at least been delayed, if not stopped altogether. Since Zim is a landlocked country, the Chinese ship, the An Yue Jiang, has to dock in another close-by African country and transport the arms overland. It was due to dock in South Africa, in Durban, but thanks to the conscientious organization of unionized dock workers who refused to unload them, and protests by human rights organizations and ordinary people, they were unsuccessful in transporting through South Africa. This specifically after the South African government had no response to the shipment - "government spokesman Themba Maseko said they could do nothing to stop a perfectly legal and properly documented transaction between two sovereign states." Not an unreasonable statement until you remember that the shipment had to be transported through your country. I'm no legal expert, but it seems pretty obvious to me that that puts you right in the middle of the transaction, with obvious ability to do something about it. A comment I found particularly interesting was made by the Secretary General of the Council of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Zwelinzima Vavi

Mr Vavi said much of the problem was rooted in the challenge that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) presented to the older political leaders who view themselves as standard-bearers of the liberation movements.
"It’s because of the fear that the MDC is led and supported by trade unions and civil society. They worry that initiative may just go on from one country to the next," he said.
"There’s paranoia and fear that suddenly the liberation movements are going to be coming under lots of pressure from these formations. That’s why there is this unwillingness to openly condemn what is wrong in Zimbabwe."

This doesn't seem like a crazy statement here - particularly, Thabo Mbeki, the president of SA, has been, and continues to be, seemingly unreasonably supporting Mugabe's regime, and the only reason I can suss out for this is because of revolutionary loyalty, since Zimbabwe under Mugabe played a very important role for the revolutionary ANC during apartheid in the 80s. He (and much of the ANC) doesn't seem to want to condemn an obviously horrific regime because they see them as old-school heroes, and don't want to give up the mantle of revolution.

In any case, country after country here has refused the Chinese ship access to their waters, and so it has been unable to dock and send in the weapons. It was seeming like a great success of popular righteousness, until the ship was finally allowed to dock in Angola. The Angolan government has said that they will not allow the unloading of weapons, only allowing transport of goods intended for Angola. However, Angola is a close ally of Mugabe, and it is not clear that they'll stick to their word.

Not the brightest bulb in the robot

2008-04-25T19:17:00.003+02:00

One thing that I've found particularly stupid/annoying about the constant "load shedding" power cuts (which have started up again full swing, after a brief period of full electricity) is the traffic. Absolutely no effort is made to keep the traffic lights active when a particular area gets shed, or indeed to make any acknowledgment of traffic difficulties at all. While slightly annoying, this is not really a problem at small intersections - of course you just treat a burned out light as a stop sign. Where it becomes an issue is at MAJOR intersections, with multiple entry points, in an already poorly designed set of roads. And by major, I mean the actual HIGHWAY right next to my house. It's an intersection of one huge traffic artery and a minor traffic artery, and when the power goes out, that's it. I've been remarkably impressed with the restraint that people show, but it backs traffic up something awful (especially at rush hour, which is when they have decided to shed the load in that area). Not to mention, I'm very curious about how much traffic accidents have increased due to this.

The thing that really boggles my mind is just that it's not like this is just a traffic light being burnt out - loading shedding is constantly happening all over the country, so for example, in Cape Town, at any particular time, there is one area where the lights are all out for two hours at a time. The whole thing is just crazy to me.

By the way, for those Americans who don't understand the title of this post, "robot" is how they say "traffic light" here. Too bad they aren't as cool as the Jetsons...

Will this help me get a job?

2008-04-24T09:54:00.003+02:00

All I can say is... wow. One of the more gruesome things I've heard of recently. Apparently there has been a significant increase in "ritual killings" in the country of Gabon, in Western Africa, preceding local elections. It is explained that

"These politicians drink the blood and eat the bodies of their victims. They do this as a ritual to keep themselves in power."

Now that is seriously twisted.

Rumble in Zimbabwe

2008-04-21T17:28:00.003+02:00

One thing I'm becoming more and more interested in as I stay here in Africa, is African politics, especially in Southern Africa (for obvious reasons). I've been trying to get a handle on the history of post-colonial Africa, more-or-less exclusively by reading this book "The State of Africa," by Martin Meredith. It's a great book, though it covers such an enormous subject that it's bound to be a little shallow. But considering I had zero knowledge before I started reading this, it's exactly what I needed. It covers the major events/coups/governments of pretty much every country in Africa since the 1950s, when Europe began to give up their games of colonialism and allow independence. Overall, I'd have to say it's pretty damned depressing. It pretty much reads as one psychotic, greedy, evil dictator after another. Some are less psychotic/greedy/evil than others, but suffice it to say that it is a relief to read about the countries which merely fail due to benevolent socialist intentions, rather than intentional massacres and looting.

Anyway, the upshot is that whatever the politics of the continent of Africa may be, they are certainly not boring. There's pretty much always some kind of crisis or tragedy going on somewhere, and it continues to be true in my tenure here. Aside from the constant war-torn tragedies of Darfur, DR Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc., in the 9 months I've been here there have already been several specific difficulties. In December - now, there was a massive crisis in Kenya (one of the most stable and strongest economies on the continent), which has subsequently settled down (at least for the present - everyone is hoping that the new shared government will be able to stave off more violence). South Africa has unveiled a large scale electricity crisis, a dire prophecy regarding the 2010 FIFA world cup here. And the current exciting piece of political turmoil is the election in Zimbabwe.

Ever since I've been here, I've been learning more and more about how shit has hit the fan in Zim over the past few years. The President/dictator for the past 28 years (since independence) is Robert Mugabe, who was a great revolutionary hero (and is still considered to be so in much of Africa). Apparently, he began his rule with much world optimism, and I think he was a not unreasonable leader for the first ten years or so. From what I can tell, problems began around the early 90s, when he became more and more disillusioned with the state of land reform in his country - much of the farm land, etc., continued to stay in the hands of the white, British farmers, or at least was not transferring quickly enough for Bob's taste. So he nationalized everything, took the land from the white farmers and gave it mainly to his political cronies, family, revolutionary buddies, etc. Subsequently, the food production, economy, public welfare, etc. plummeted. And rather than question the validity of his policies, he blamed (and continues to blame) the economic woes of Zimbabwe on a global, Western conspiracy. Of course, in addition to all of this, corruption became endemic, political freedoms are smashed (for the good of the country, of course), there was a continued attack on free business and industry, and life continued to get shittier and shittier.

When I arrived here in South Africa, it was immediately clear from talking to people and watching the news that there was a massive problem. There is enormous illegal immigration from Zim to SA, people trying to achieve refugee status with extremely low rate of acceptance by the government here. People were fleeing Zim like crazy to try to find work and send money back to their families. I remember soon after arriving here, I saw a sign down at the touristy waterfront for a boat trip, listed as costing US$30, ZAR 200 (south african rand), and one BILLION Zimbabwean dollars. That's how bad the inflation was/is - I think it is the highest level of inflation in the world now (this after being one of the best economies in Africa, earlier in Mugabe's rule).

Anyway, about 3 weeks ago, there was an election in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe (now 84 years old) was of course running, along with really only one opposition candidate - Morgan Tsvangirai. Elections are of course not even close to free and fair there - independent media is completely disallowed, constant threats are levied against the opposition, a history of political violence and intimidation stares any of Mugabe's political opponents directly in the face. Despite all of this, people are obviously EXTREMELY unhappy there, and as something like 1/3 of Zimbabwe's population lives outside of the country, often in some communication with those back home, people are able to get some reasonable outside information. So when the election resulted in

a) the first time an opposition party took majority in parliament (official) and
b) a clear majority vote in favor of Tsvangirai (unofficial, due to exit polls and posted results at individual polling stations)

there has been much hope aroused. However, true to form, Mugabe has refused to release official results for the Presidential race in over three weeks, and subsequently decided that there were "irregularities" at polling stations, calling for a "recount" of the parliamentary polls. Of course, his government has taken possession of the votes long ago, and it's pretty clear he plans to stuff the ballot boxes in his favor. Together with government-sponsored violence in opposition-held areas, over 400 arrests and a number of murders of MDC members (Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai's party), and the fact that Tsvangirai himself has been forced to flee the country, this has resulted in the current highly interesting political situation here in Southern Africa.

The other crazy thing is the South African governmental response. There is huge public outcry against Mugabe's shennanigans from the SA public. However, President Mbeki is old revolutionary friends with Bob, going way back. Throughout Mugabe's reign of terror over the past years, Mbeki has been conducting what he calls "quiet diplomacy." What exactly this entails, I'm unclear on, but what it clearly does NOT entail is any public denunciation of Mugabe whatsoever, or any real results involving political freedoms. Into this election situation, amidst international outrage at Mugabe, Mbeki has continued his "quiet diplomacy," leading to his recent famous statement that "there is no crisis in Zimbabwe." This has created a media furor here, increasing both the hilarity of the situation, and its sadness.

Multiple Stab Wounds

2008-04-20T11:21:00.009+02:00

PG-13 Warning: The following blog entry contains scenes of graphic violence, and parental guidance is suggested.

So, my friend Lisa was here in SA for several weeks, traveling around, seeing the sights, helping ease the dental pain of rural Natalians. She justifiedly decided to take a little sightseeing break and head down to the beachside town of Muizenberg (pronounced with a "mu" as in the greek letter) which is about half an hour from Cape Town. She got more of the South African experience than she bargained for...

After checking into her cutesy B&B with the very nice surfers/owners, she took a walk around town, checked out the beach, etc. etc., and was heading back to home base around 6pm (still light out). Climbing up the alley stairs to her apartment, she heard a beggar ask for money. After traveling for 3 months in Southeast Asia, she was relatively used to people asking for change, and wasn't particularly phased. She told the guy she didn't have any, at which point he pulled out a knife and threatened her. As world-traveled as Lisa is, I guess the little girl from rural Alberta wasn't used to such intimidation methods, and promptly screamed for help, partially without thinking, and partially with the idea that he would run when he realized people would start to come running. Not so. He attacked.

And by attacked, I mean he didn't hold back. He was serious with the stabbing, giving her three separate (and vicious-looking) stab-wounds in the arms - one in the upper left bicep, and two in the right forearm. That it WAS in the arms I think is testament to Lisa's a) ass/groin-kicking abilities and b) great luck - the arm wounds came from blocking the INTENDED neck/head wounds which would undoubtedly have been a hell of a lot more medically serious. After inflicting these wounds (and several other bruises from glancing blows) he ran off when her B&B owner came running out yelling that he'd called the police (more on the usefulness of that call later). Obviously, she was, at this point, rushed to the hospital, bleeding extremely profusely. Apparently this kind of thing is not incredibly common in this posh area of Muizenberg, because the hospital staff were all horrified, and she was immediately sent to the head of the queue. Stitched up and pain-killed, she was sent back to the B&B, where the owners were very sweet in trying to make her feel comfortable.

What Lisa described as one of the more frustrating aspects of the whole situation was the absolute incompetence of the SA police force. Multiple calls to the station down the road garnered no results the night of the assault, and they eventually had to wait until the next day to get the cops to come (they said they couldn't find the flat, despite exact directions and an address). When they finally did arrive (after much yelling over the phone at the unreasonably defensive officer in charge), the cops were totally useless. They made no effort to get the story (Lisa had to offer it to them independently), they took no notes (even as to the location of the attack, description of the attacker, etc.), and after the whole interview was concluded, the statement they asked her to sign was along the lines of

Lisa M. [they didn't even bother to include her surname] was attacked on Sunday, April 13th. We explained to her the forms she has to fill out to file a report.

If the whole thing weren't so appalling, it clearly would have been hilarious...

Anyway, the long and the short of the situation is that she came out of it alright. The most worrying thing was that she didn't have full range of motion with her right thumb (leading to multiple jokes about the usefulness of opposable thumbs), but otherwise she was pretty ok, even a surprising lack of frazzledness. She came back to Cape Town to stay with me for another few days, and left for Australia on Thursday. She made attempts to seem as pathetic as possible to the airline check-in crew to try to get bumped to business-class, but apparently with no success. I guess these kind of attacks are old hat for South Africans...

Crazy Town

2008-04-14T17:12:00.008+02:00

It's been quite a while since I've put up any posts, and my excuse is that it's been pretty crazytown here for the past month or so. I'm gonna try and give a broad outline of the things that have been going on to keep me so busy, but I get bored easily, so it might get abbreviated.

A friend of mine (Janius Tsang) from McGill came to Cape Town about a month ago for a conference in anesthesiology (sp? never mind, spell checkers rock). I only got to hang out with her once, but it was really nice to catch up, as I hadn't seen her in probably at least five years. We went down to Camps Bay and had sundowners (cocktails as you watch the sun go down over the ocean - not bad). Funny how people you haven't seen in years can still be your friends. Well, I guess it's not that funny, just pretty cool.

Then Kristen came to visit for a week and a half in mid-March. That was just fantastic. We had a really nice time exploring and relaxing and everything. The time obviously seemed to go by way too quickly, but it just made me more anxious for her to move here in the winter... I mean summer... errrr... late July. Anyway, for those of you who don't know yet, she's moving here around then, hopefully on a volunteer visa. As she has been working virtually non-stop for the past 7 years, sometimes two jobs, she is definitely getting a little tired of doing what she's doing (online advertising management). So she's saving up money, ditching the ol' rat race, and moving to Cape Town to do some volunteer teaching in the townships (Khayalitcha) and spend time writing. And good for her! But damn, I probably should have taken more advantage of
her big bucks job while I could...

Very soon after she left events occurred that were of a much less pleasant nature. Sheina Weltman, the mother of a very close friend of mine in Cape Town, Amanda (my boss Jeff's fiancee), had a sudden and completely unexpected heart attack. After five days of stabilization in the hospital, she passed away with her family at her side. They have all been extremely sweet and kind to me since I've come to SA, and I've felt just terrible for them for the past few weeks. They sat shiva for her for a week, and I tried to come to the mourning prayers most nights, to show my support for them and to do whatever I could. Obviously there isn't much that anyone can do in such a situation, but at least I was able to take Jeff's classes for the week so he could take care of her. They are all still suffering, and I just wish I could do more to help/distract/comfort/whatever them.

During that time, ANOTHER friend of mine from university, Lisa, came to visit. She has been traveling the world (well, Southeast Asia) for the past 2-3 months with her friend, Muffy, and finally split up with her to come to SA. She met her mom in Jo-burg and then went to KZN (KwaZulu-Natal, a province of SA where the city of Durban is) to do some volunteer dentistry. Even though neither she nor her mom are dentists. Whatever. But they did that in some rural town for a week, which sounded pretty interesting. Then they both flew down to Cape Town, and met up with me for some wild times. We first went to the Cape Wine Country over last weekend - to Franschoek. It was really cool (and by cool I mean totally sweet). We drove out there in the Midge, went to three different wine farms (each of which were delicious and fun, with mostly wacky owners, especially Hildegard), ate dinner at a really phenomenal restaurant (le Bon Vivant) where we got a five-course meal with matching wines for a pretty unreasonably cheap price (especially for pretty much the most ritsy/touristy area of Cape Town), and ended up randomly staying at this great B&B/villa overlooking the mountains. Fantastic.

After that, Lisa and her mom continued to potter around Cape Town together for a few days before Linda (Lisa's mom) headed back to Alberta, at which point Lisa came to crash on the kick-ass leopard-print couch of my apartment. We did a bunch of cool shit over the next few evenings and then went to the town of Langebaan, about 150 km north of Cape Town. There they have a cool lagoon with crazy wind and a crazy restaurant that serves ten courses of fish on the beach, listening to a (hammered) guitarist sing songs and harass the clientèle. Such harassed people included me and Lisa, which was particularly funny as he
a) insisted on speaking Afrikaans to me, even after I told him I speak none
b) singing intently at our table while staring intensely into my eyes
c) convincing a larger and larger cross-section of the clientèle that we were Afrikaans, until seemingly no one believed us (including the owner, who had previously been speaking to us in English)
d) finally settled on hitting on the quintuple of 20-something blond Dutch chicks, whom he regaled with a stunning rendition of "Barbie Girl."
Fun was had by all.

In Loving Memory of Sheina Weltman

2008-04-14T16:57:00.004+02:00

Very recently, the mother of one of my closest friends, Amanda, passed away completely unexpectedly from a massive heart attack. Sheina lived in Cape Town, and she was one of the sweetest people I've met. She was instantly extraordinarily welcoming and friendly to me when I arrived in SA, and really treated me as part of her large and friendly family. She was very intelligent, and it was always a pleasure to have any conversation with her, on any number of topics. Not to mention that she was extremely open minded, and would listen to whatever you had to say.

It's totally unbelievable that this could have happened so quickly out of the blue, and I feel just terrible for my friend and her poor family. My heart goes out to all of them, and my best wishes to them on getting through this incredibly difficult time. Sheina was a wonderful woman, and she lives on in the hearts and minds of everyone who ever met her.

In Loving Memory
Sheina Weltman
1941-2008

Look at my Striped Shirt

2008-03-02T12:28:00.001+02:00

People you love to hate...

So true...

End of Days

2008-02-21T22:09:00.003+02:00

As most of you are probably aware, the world should be ending any day now. How can I be sure? Well, it's been a long time since I went to Sunday School, but I'm sure there was a rhyme something like, "The world is ending, this I know; cause the bible tells me so..." Clearly all you have to do is look in the bible, and it will tell you (the technical term is "prophesize") how and when it's going to happen. But just because it doesn't always happen that way is no reason not to believe us...

In any event, in case you were not aware of all the signs of the coming apocalypse, here are a few to digest. Clearly not for the faint of heart...

Global travel: Apparently, Daniel 12:4 tells us that "many shall run to and fro." This is a clear reference to the fact that there are lots of airplanes and train travel all over the world. Get out your crucifixes, cause like the great prophets, the Monkees said, "Take the last train to Clarksville..." (emphasis added)

Traffic Accidents: Not unrelated - Nahum clearly stated that the dominance of car accidents will lead directly to a Satanic uprising. This would be far more disturbing than the current anti-drunk driving ads would lead you to believe.

Knowledge will be increased: This should surprise no one - the fact that there is more and more knowledge being had by scientists and lay people alike CANNOT be good for ANY good Christian.

Debit card of the Beast; or PIN code 666: I have to say, this is my personal favorite (ahem, I mean most dire warning). In the most holy of texts (Revelation 13:15-18) it is clearly laid out that the coming of the end will be heralded by a cashless society. So it is CLEARLY no coincidence that right NOW, of all times, debit cards are becoming more and more prevalent. The buying and selling of souls has never been easier for the Devil, and they'll just take the money straight out of his account. And here is a direct quote from the website I've been referencing, in case you've been too lazy/sane to link to them:

"That may seem like pretty stiff punishment for simply accepting a Mark that allows you to buy groceries. However, this prophecy indicates that receiving the "Mark of the Beast" is not merely an economic decision, but also implies acceptance and worship of the Satan-possessed Anti-Christ, and a pledge of allegiance to his anti-God global regime."

You HAVE been warned...

Kofi goes to Africa

2008-02-13T10:25:00.002+02:00

Welcome to Kenya, and the world, Kofi Annan:

[N]

2008-02-11T23:13:00.000+02:00

Man, I'm full of news this week. But no time for that! I'm busy playing [N]. Damn this game is addictive... very reminiscent of Jardinians... damn, I mean Jardinains. Damn! There's a Jardinains2!

Sobering thoughts

2008-02-11T19:19:00.000+02:00

I went out with some friends on Friday night, including two dudes from Kenya - one that has been at UCT for a while, and one that has just arrived (though he has lived in SA for seven years). Anyway, we had a really great time, but this post is not about that (despite its beginnings).

Specifically, this is just to comment on the fact that what you read is true - Kenya is really fucked up. My friend, Bob, was just there for a little over a month, trying to get his wife and children out of there. Specifically because he and his wife are of different ethnicities, though, it was dangerous for them to be together, I think - the ethnic fighting is horrendous. The two dudes who we were drinking with on Friday were also from different tribes, and they said if they were living there, they would be fighting right now.

I don't know, it's just that news from across the world feels so detached from reality, and I sometimes wonder how widespread is the violence that gets reported. For example, a recent graduate student here is from Sudan, but from the capital - Khartoum - as opposed to Darfur, which is what you constantly hear about in the news. And according to him, though the situation is indeed dire in Darfur, Khartoum is really not particularly bad, which I was surprised to hear. This I contrast with information from my Kenya - Bob is from the capital, Nairobi, and he says that Nairobi is also significantly screwed, as in it was dangerous for him to go out. Although it does sound like outside of the cities are even worse - he told me that you just can't drive between cities right now, because chances are almost 100% that you will be stopped by wandering rioters (who will naturally be of a rival ethnic group) who will drag you out of your car and kill you. Full stop. That is fucked up. This is the country which was completely unique in Eastern Africa (and fairly unique in all Africa) in being amazingly stable for the past 40 years - with one of the best and most stable economies in all of Africa.

So this is dedicated to my best wishes for Bob's family, that they will be able to move here quickly and safely. Not to mention just the hope that the violence subsides quickly and peace soon restored.

Healthy body, Clean car

2008-02-09T18:46:00.000+02:00

I just recently started really making an effort to get into shape. I joined a gym, I'm going almost every day, and I'm really working on eating healthily. It's been about two weeks since I joined the gym, and I'm already feeling tons better - waking up easier and happier in the morning, and my muscles are beefing while my gut is shrinking. It's great! I'm a total convert. Hopefully I can keep it up, though... my track record is less than spectacular...

Anyway, it's so funny, outside the gym there are always a ton of guys wanting to wash your car. As soon as you drive along the road, they're waving you over, brandishing buckets and soap. The guard in the parking lot is even in on it, I think - there's always one dude who's washing cars IN the parking lot, and the guard helps him to get customers. Finally, my car was filthy, so I got it washed the other day, and it looks sparkling now. But it was never dirty before I joined the gym, and I can't help but think that these washing dudes wait until no one is looking and throw dirt on your car so that next time you'll want it washed...

National Traffic Day

2008-02-08T11:29:00.000+02:00

Christ, what normally is a five minute drive, today took me an hour. The traffic was absolutely unbelievable. I think it may have something to do with the opening of Parliament or something - they completely blocked off the Towards-the-city-center highway, and it led to traffic being blocked up all the way to my driveway - I literally pulled out and had to stop in traffic while the tail end of my car was still in the driveway. Really goes to show how much we rely on public infrastructure. Sheesh, what a fragile world...

Rollerblades, Basketball... I'm lovin' it

2008-02-07T18:14:00.000+02:00

We had a speaker come and give a talk yesterday - Patrick Dorey, from University of Durham - and the talk was extremely interesting; it was actually on a subject upon which I "work", namely integrable systems. However, incidentally, in the course of his talk, he mentioned how the subject related to a famous problem in mathematics called "the McNugget Problem."

McDonald's (used to) serve McNuggets (R) in only three sizes - 6, 9, and 20. The question then naturally arises as to whether you can order ANY number of nuggets (quickly answered in the negative - try to order 3 McNuggets) and if not, precisely which numbers are disallowed?

It turns out that, because the three numbers are relatively prime (i.e., the only number by which you can divide all three numbers is 1), if you want a large enough number of McNuggets, you will eventually be accommodated. Turns out, the largest "McNugget number" is 43 - you will unfortunately be unable to order 43 McNuggets, but ANY number higher than that, and you're golden (arches). The other McNugget numbers are:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25, 28, 31, 34, and 37.

Of course, McDonald's (partially) realized the error of their weighs, and have expanded the options. McNuggets now come in 4,6, and 10 piece boxes, and if you include the Chicken Selects (R) Premium Breast Strips (offered in 3 and 5 piece sets) you can now get any number of chicken pieces other than 1 and 2. But dang-it, I only WANT 2!

Mathematical absurdities

2008-01-26T16:23:00.000+02:00

So right now I'm thinking about the summation of divergent sums. What do I mean by that? Well, say I wanted to add up some numbers:

1+2+3+...+N

That should give me some answer, right? e.g., if N=4 then I'd have

1+2+3+4=10.

Not so bad, right? In fact, it's not hard to show (if you are good at math) that you can find the general answer

1+2+3+...+N=N*(N+1)/2

Which works for the above example because 4*(4+1)/2=10.

Obviously, the higher you count, the bigger the answer is going to be, right? But what if I wanted to never stop... in other words, what if I wanted to count all the way to infinity. "Ha ha!" you say! Such an idea is absurd! But No! You can do it! And the answer is... -1/12. That's right - I said negative one-twelfth. I know! It sounds dumb. But mathematicians and physicists have a way of doing it so that that's what you get. It's called analytic continuation of the Riemann Zeta Function. (by the way, Wikipedia is my best friend) And they use it in all seriousness! It's a majorly important part of string theory. And before you let this turn you off of string theory, it is also the method by which one calculates a completely standard, uncontroversial, physically tested (and true) phenomenon called the Casimir Effect. And this Riemann guy was a seriously important, revered mathematician of the 19th century, and his function is apparently one of the most important objects in pure mathematics.

Anyway, this is just what I've been thinking about lately. Now you know. And knowing...

Kudu sausage looks like turds

2008-01-20T19:51:00.000+02:00

The Powers that Be

2008-01-20T17:07:00.000+02:00

It's interesting when things happen here to remind me that I am actually living in a (first world city in a) fairly third world country.

Due to foreseen (but somehow incompetently overlooked by the government) increases in the economy of South Africa since '94, the demand for electricity has skyrocketed. So much so, in fact, that the supply created by the electricity company, Eskom, is really no longer sufficient. So we've been having daily "load shedding" at random points during the day. Suddenly, the electricity will just go off for two hours at a time, and they are basically cycling this effect across the city. What's worse is that they're hilariously inconsistent in telling the public when it's going to happen. I've heard rumors that this is not supposed to last - that by next week they should stop the load shedding, but I have a hard time seeing how that's possible. I guess they're using this stoppage time to store up more electricity... but the problem is only going to get worse as time goes on.

Obviously people are pissed off, most vociferously, businesses - I've heard reports of millions to billions of dollars already having been lost. The stupidest thing is that, like I said before, Eskom knew this was going to happen for the past 15 years, and they apparently kept telling the government about it, but really to no avail. So they didn't do anything until 10 freaking years later, when they finally told Eskom in 2004 to go ahead and build another power station. But that obviously takes years to do, and it sounds like it'll be at LEAST five years until it's completed, during which time demand will continue to grow, and the whole deal will just get more screwed up.

The one thing it has taught me, though, over the past week - having a laptop is a major advantage over a desktop, since the battery will keep the power cuts from destroying my system...

USA, I'm ok!

2008-01-19T18:14:00.001+02:00

Well, I'm back from vacation in Cleveland and NYC. Had a great time, but it is also nice to be back. Here are some pictures of Christmas 2007.

Here's Alex and Kristen's stockings before (and after) Xmas

Kristen and Squee, in front of the Krismas tree

Laurence the anime character

My African present to Scott and Dad. I thought it was cool

If I owned a business

2008-01-18T10:25:00.000+02:00

These would be my motivational posters

Vehicular relief

2007-12-17T15:53:00.000+02:00

Wow. I didn't realize how stressed I was about this whole car thing until it was done. And as soon as it was, I just had this mad desire to drive as far as I could and enjoy the car. So on Saturday, I did. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and I just picked up and drove... I went down to Fishhoek, and then up over Chapman's peak and around the mountain. It was about a 2 hour drive... and man, it always surprises me how amazingly beautiful the peninsula is. Here are a few pictures I managed to get along the way.

At the end of the drive, I ended up downtown, and did some mad Xmas shopping. I usually HATE shopping, and leave it 'til the last moment, but I figured that wasn't really acceptable this time - I had to bring in some African stuffs. So I went crazy and bought a bunch of presents, including some for me and my apartment - check the little skinny African dudes.

Adventures with KB

2007-12-12T17:50:00.001+02:00

Ok, let me return to my vacation week. I'll try to only include the interesting bits (but not TOO interesting), and considering my atrocious memory, things may be out of order a bit. But frankly, why do you give a damn?

So another neat thing we did was go to this restaurant, Mama Africa, down on Long Street. It was really cool - they have all kinds of delicious African animals for eating, like crocodile kebabs, snake, springbok, kudu, ostrich, etc. Yum. I strongly suggest the croc. They also had a really cool jazz band playing in the background, tunes like "somewhere over the rainbow" and "swing low." Nice.

We went to the cable car which takes you up the mountain... but unfortunately the wind was too strong and it was closed. There were still some pretty spectacular views, though. So we went down to Camp's Bay instead, which is pretty fantastic (NB: somehow in this whole week we managed to really not get sunburned at all, and I even got a bit of a tan. This is very out of character for me).

At some point we went to this really kick-ass restaurant called Pigalle, which has delicious seafood, and a full-on brass band that you get up and dance to. Really neat place, and outstandingly reasonably priced. Food really is much cheaper here than in NYC... go figure...

We also went to this wine farm which is literally 10 minutes from my house - Groot Constantia. It's one of the oldest wineries in the Cape, and the tasting was really fun. Great wines, too.

Finally, one of the best experiences while Kristen was here was going to the Kirstenbosch Summer Concert. During the summer, Kirstenbosch (the enormous botanical gardens which is a five minute walk from my house) has weekly concerts out on a beautiful lawn overlooking the city, every Sunday. Luckily, the very first one happened to begin the day before KB had to leave, so we pitched up and got to see it. I can't even remember who the singer was (some dude who was touted as "South Africa's Bob Dylan" - lots of folky songs, lots of stuff about oppression and poverty, and a few happy songs, too. But he was really good) but it didn't matter. The whole experience was just such a nice completion to the visit.

Takin' it to the Midge

2007-12-12T17:43:00.000+02:00

Huzzah! I finally did it! I got another car! I can now stop driving around the crappy rental I've been driving (which was very cheap, considering, but when you have it for a month, it still adds up). And so I present to you...

THE MIDGE
Now my main goal is not to have THIS one stolen. To that end, I have had many suggestions, and they have almost all involved the Club. I may take that into consideration, although this guy came equipped with a gear lock - a nifty device that locks the car into reverse so that hopefully no one will steal it. Unfortunately, you must park with your backside to a wall or something, otherwise potential thieves can just reverse it all the way to their waiting van. So maybe I should consider getting a club...

KB in the Cape

2007-12-08T19:10:00.001+02:00

So, I know that it's been two weeks since my vacation with Kristen ended, and I know it is inexcusable that I have yet to put up pictures of penguins and baboons. But in my defense... screw you, I'll do what I want.

And now I want to begin the journey of documenting that journey.

So, Kristen arrived in Cape Town International Airport, and much rejoicing was had (although it took a freaking hour to get through customs and whatnot - I was beginning to think that she'd missed her connection in London, which was entirely possible considering she had like 5 minutes between flights).
First day, not a hell of a lot was done, except we did go grocery shopping and take a really nice drive out to Hout Bay, where they have the best fish & chips in the world. It was shockingly cold, though, and that was annoying. But it did make the waves look stunning in the grey light of twilight, and that made it ok.

Friday, we did some touring of downtown Cape Town, including the cool Greenmarket Square, where there are tons of little stalls with people selling cutesy little jewelry, scarves, African bowls, and salad spoons. Then we went to Renee's birthday party at night, which was really fun, and a great way for Kristen to meet all my Africa friends (she had a great time).

And then... what everyone is waiting for - Saturday we drove down to Cape Point, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. Truly, it was spectacular, and these photos really don't do justice to the awe that the views from the Point inspire.

Cape Point is like a big nature reserve kind of thing, so you have to drive for probably 20 minutes once entering the reserve until you get to the actual point (which is right next to the Cape of Good Hope). Anyway, on the drive out, we were driving along a mostly deserted road, and noticed ahead a line of cars stretching ahead of us. We were shocked that there should be a traffic jam way out there, and there may have been some swearing from the driver. Upon closer inspection, we first saw that the cars were actually pulled over to the side of the road, and then spotted my very first ACTUAL yard monkey...

Baboons! They roam the countryside, looking for people to mug for food. Seriously. Apparently (and I have heard several people give stories about this) if you have food and they catch you, then will bare their (enormous and sharp) teeth at you and make threatening motions. Honestly, I've heard bad things about the crime in Cape Town, so I wouldn't give them any reason to attack...

BTW, if these pictures look a little weird, it's because the car window is up - we were certainly not letting them anywhere near our snacks!

And the greatest thing of all - Penguins! Boulders Beach is right near Cape Point, and that is where the South African penguins hang out. So we stopped off (somehow acquiring several cutesy little penguin souvenirs) and took a looksee.

Kristen thought they were incredibly cute. I thought they looked a bit mangy. I will admit that there was one cute situation, where two penguins lay sleeping with their little beaks touching...
That's enough for now. We obviously did plenty more in the time she was here, but I'll continue that just now.

He never gets tired of that joke...

2007-11-27T17:40:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm back from my two week virtual vacation. My girlfriend, Kristen, came to visit from New York, and we had a great time while I was totally offline. I will discuss (with visual aids) the fun time we had at length (out of the gutter, you dirty minds!), but not in this post - here I must describe the car I just looked at.

As you may recall, my POS car was stolen almost a month ago. It continues to be stolen, and I continue to have no car (caveat: I have rented a really cheap hire car, so not to worry that I have no mode of transport). So today I went to test drive this old beamer down on campus. The car seemed pretty cool, although it's pretty old, but that pales in comparison to the dude's name:

Luke Lee Skywalker.

I shit you not. The guy even showed me his passport, which he had ready, I assume because no one ever believes him.

The force is strong with this one...

Political virus

2007-11-08T09:47:00.000+02:00

Now this is seriously screwed up. Thabo Mbeki, the president of SA - a country with one of the highest (if not the highest) concentration of AIDS suffers - has not, and continues not to, believe in the AIDS virus. More specifically, he does not believe that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, and is particularly against the drugs that have been created to combat the symptoms. "...from the reading he had done ... it was unclear what the cause of the Aids epidemic was." If I were to spend a day or two reading over the evidence, I'm sure I wouldn't be 100% sure of anything either - the science is non-trivial, but that doesn't mean that it's not right! Please! As it says at the end of the article, his Minister of Health (who, by the way, has also quite recently been in a huge scandal because her drunken, thieving past) also doesn't believe in the HIV/AIDS link, and has suggested beetroot as a cure for AIDS symptoms. Seriously? The freaking Minister of Health?!? And notably, the Deputy Minister of Health was just recently fired on trumped up corruption charges, but from what I can tell, it was really because she disagreed with Mbeki's viewpoints.

Ok, this is old news - Mbeki has been known for years to hold this belief. And world outrage at it has forced him to publicly disavow such statements. But, at least according to this book by Mark Gevisser, he still privately very much thinks the same way. If it weren't so f*@&ed up, it would be funny...

And by the way, from what I understand about the main presidential challenger for the upcoming election (in December), Jacob Zuma, he is far, far worse, on many issues. I've already met at least one very proud South African dude who's said that if Zuma gets elected, he's leaving the country.

Welcome to enlightened Africa...

Full circle, or: So you thought no one wanted my car?

2007-11-05T14:55:00.002+02:00

Well, it's finally happened - crime has struck our idyllic village of Cape Town, ZA - my beautiful, angelic car was stolen last night. I was out in Observatory (a neighborhood - quite sketchy, apparently - near UCT) having dinner with some people from the department, and welcoming our new postdoc. Actually, it was an extremely enjoyable and engaging dinner, filled with discussions of why religion should be stamped out vs. why religion is an ok thing. I wonder who brought that up...

Anyway, after dinner, we all piled out of the restaurant laughing and joking in a jovial mood, I went to open the door to my car, and low and behold, it's just empty air. No car to be seen anywhere. Shit. So we called the police, they came and took down my car details, and told me I had to take my vehicle registration papers to the cop shop (actually, they seemed shocked and annoyed that I didn't have them on me), but they said I could do it the next day. And man, I just wanted to get home and crash. Annoyed. So I get a ride back to Jeff and Amanda's place (since I'm still puppysitting) and come to the realization that I had left the keys to their house in the car. Double shit. Luckily Amanda's mom, Sheina (who was supposed to leave that day for England) was home, and she let me in and gave me a spare set of keys. Ugh. So I got in, was slobbered on by the puppy, and had a few whiskey's with Sheina before heading to bed.

Actually, at the time, I was really more amused and gratified than depressed. For those dedicated CTP followers, you'll know what a pain in my ass this car has been, and this is an opportunity to get the insurance (yes, it is insured) and start over with a new(er) car. But I woke up this morning feeling pretty shitty about the whole thing, which I guess is understandable.

The funny thing was when the cops came to take down my details. They were writing down stuff, and this car dude comes running over and tells them that the dudes who stole my car just mugged some lady down the street and was running away. He was yelling at them that they must go off and chase these dudes. The cops were just like, "yeah yeah, we need to take this guys info first," and waved him away. Five minutes later, they finished writing "white 1993 Citigolf" and slllllooooooooowwwwlllllly drove away to chase after these guys. Of course, before they left, they were threatening to throw the car dude in jail because he hadn't protected my car properly. Funnily enough, they didn't catch the dudes.

Xela

2007-11-05T14:39:00.000+02:00

So finally, I got to go to a Halloween party! Saturday, my friend Renee tells me that a friend of a friend of a friend (etc.) is having an Elagently Dead party, and do I want to come. It was TOTALLY a kick-ass party! I dressed up as... well, basically something dead in talcum powder and eyeliner

(oh yeah, and I accidentally shaved my head - actually, prior to even knowing about the party, but it worked out quite well). Anyway, so we go to this party, where neither of us know anyone (and the one person she did know left quite quickly). However, everyone was super friendly, and most people were dressed up really well - including Louis IV and Marie Antoinette, vampire chick, Julius Cesar (with a band-aid on his back), Gomez and Morticia Addam, and Death.

And let me tell you, Death was by FAR the hit of the party. Because he came in completely covered, and no one knew who he was (there was a lot of, "hey, do you know who's friend he is?"). And he was dead silent (ha ha) the whole time. People would try to talk to him, or mess with his scythe (which was NOT made of plastic) and he would just stare at you from behind his masked hood. Every once in a while, he would glide away without saying anything. People totally started to get creeped out, which eventually led to a cornucopia of screaming (mostly from vampire chick) and general freaking out. Seriously, this dude didn't say anything or drink anything (much more difficult) for HOURS. At one point, he completely disappeared for ages, and everyone was totally flipping out about where he'd gone. Then one girl went looking for him in someone's bedroom closet, ripping it open to see (he wasn't there) and then turned to come back and looked behind the door she'd just gone through, and screamed her head off (he WAS there). It was awesome.

In the end, it turned out that Death was someone that the apartment dwellers vaguely knew, and they'd hired him to come to the party and freak people out. It was absolutely brilliant.

Back to school...

2007-11-05T14:30:00.000+02:00

... to prove to Mishka that I'm no fool...

So I started puppysitting this weekend for Jeff, since he is out of town for about a week and a half. I gotta tell you, it's not easy... puppies are a lot of work and energy. And they do not like to do what you tell them. So I took her to puppy class. Which was quite fun, and Jan - the trainer - is totally a doggy genius.

However, while I had been so proud of myself for remembering all the tools of the doggy training trade, the one thing I DID forget was the leash. And that's essential, especially with all those other dogs around that get her so excited that she's constantly trying to play. So what to do, I asked myself. Jan had no extra leash, so I could either go home... or use my belt! Genius! And it worked quite well as a leash, too. Where it failed was continuing to work as a belt, and as my jeans were a size too big or so, they were having a hell of a time staying on my ass. Which turned out to be quite amusing for most of the class, and only slightly embarrassing for me. There did happen to be a super hot chick there with a rottweiler who was surely chuckling at my expense (the hotchick, not the rottweiler - I don't think he gave a damn), but it was all in good fun. I don't think I'll forget the leash next time, though...

Screw you, creationist

2007-11-03T10:29:00.000+02:00

I just have to include this brilliant quote of Dawkins mocking the attitude of "Intelligent Design" proponents: "Dear Scientist, don't work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries, for we can use them. Don't squander precious ignorance by researching it away."

So freaking true.

Ding-dong, trick-or-treat!

2007-11-01T13:25:00.000+02:00

Last night, I went with Jeff to take Amanda's niece and nephew (Kayla and Jaimie) trick-or-treating. Let me tell you - they are something else, those kids. Kayla was a witch (but, as Jeff said, what did was she dressed as for Halloween?) and Jaimie was a skeleton. Let me first just say that they are adorable kids. And as a skeleton, Jaime was running around with all sorts of toys that had nothing to do with skeletons (fake saw, hammer, and drill). Adorable.

Anyway, they were probably the WORST trick-or-treaters I've ever seen. We rushed by house after house, not stopping at any of them, even the ones that had Halloween balloons out, so you knew they were open for business. Jeff and I kept trying to get the kids to stop and ring some doorbells, but Kayla HAD to get to her friend's house for trick-or-treating, which was like 6 blocks away, straight up the mountain. On the way, we finally stop at one house where they were outside handing out candy, they grabbed a piece of candy and continued walking. "So how much further is your friend's house, Kayla?" "That was it." So all that rushing about, ignoring the bountiful houses along the way, and she didn't even say a word, or spend more than a minute at the house. Weird! [We found out later, when we got the kids back home, that this "friend" of Kayla's one someone she'd had a HUGE blowout fight with the day before. So it seems like this was more of a military reconnaissance mission than visiting a friend.]

By far the most amusing part of the night was when we stopped at one house from which some other trick-or-treaters were emerging. As we pitch up to the doorway, out pops the mom and dad, along with two kids who are absolutely BUTT naked. And we're not talking 1 year olds here - the boy had to be at least 7 or so - old enough to have some shame, for goodness sake! Anyway, this kid was even the one holding the bowl of candy, with his ding-dong dangling right over the prizes! Kayla and Jaime had to reach into the bowl and actually avoid this kids weiner! It was the oddest thing. Especially with the kid's dad standing right there making comments like, "Make sure you don't whizz in the candy bowl!" and "Hey kids, why don't you grab that nice pink lollipop." Bizzaro.

Anyway, we were wandering around the neighborhood for close to an hour, and the kids got a woefully small amount of loot. They really didn't even seem particularly excited about getting candy, or being dressed up, or interacting with other Halloweeners. I swear, when I was a kid, Halloween was probably my favorite holiday. My impression is that it's not really that huge a tradition here - Jeff said he never did it when he was growing up (they just a braai instead). Too bad, then - what a waste of a good opportunity for candy-greediness!

3... 2... 1... BRAAI!

2007-10-29T09:43:00.000+02:00

So it seems the braai season has begun in earnest [interesting linguistic side note: my spell check was not recognizing the word "braai," and it was suggesting words like "braise." Now I can see how "braai" could possibly relate to English]. I went to two braais this weekend, as well as a homebrewer's homebrew contest, and generally ate a wealth of meat (would you say there was a plethora of meat?).

The Homebrewers club, called the "South Yeasters" (in reference to the famous wind which blows through Cape Town around this time called the "Southeaster"), had an Ale-Oween party this past Friday. I managed to hook up with these guys because I want to start brewing again while I'm here, and I was looking for some local resources on the internet. Anyway, they invited me to this party, and it turned out it was a contest for people in the club to try out their beers. So there were 9 entries, and after a down home meal of goulash and bread, they introduced the entries one by one, and passed around bottle after bottle of homebrew. Some of them were quite delicious, and some were pretty terrible. But all-in-all, it was good fun - at least after the beer started flowing and the people became a little less uptight. The problem, you see, was that I was sitting with these two IT people who made the website for the group, and they were not the most socially well-adapted people (computer nerds not social? who knew?). But after a few beers, they got to be a little less quiet, which was nice, and I was also able to get up and walk around and talk to the more interesting people. Actually, it was interesting to note the makeup of the club. It was heavily dominated by Afrikaners, who were much more interesting and fun than the English people who were there. What this says about the different groups of people as a whole, I don't want to venture to guess, but it seemed like a good microcosm to study, if only because they tend to come with alcohol...

So, on Saturday, friends of mine (Chris and Viv) had a little braai at their house in Observatory (an area of Cape Town which is near the UCT housing that I lived in for my first month here). They also invited their neighbors, who were a complete riot. The dude, Warrick, was one of those people who never stops talking, but in a really entertaining way. He wasn't obnoxiously dominating the conversation, and it was relatively easy to jump in and say something, but there was never a moment of silence with him around - uncomfortable or otherwise. He and his girlfriend are both white South Africans, from Zululand, and we had some really interesting conversations - from the dangers of crocs and lions, to the role of poverty in crime, to the path towards healing the country of racism. Totally fascinating.

Finally, after spending much of Sunday morning/afternoon recovering from that, Jeff had a small braai at his house Sunday evening. It was a small affair, but totally delicious - let me tell you that I'm a complete convert to smoking meat on the braai, and not just BBQing it...

Mac-a-licious

2007-10-29T09:36:00.000+02:00

Dude, I just got a cool new toy! With money from a postdoc grant that Jeff got for me, I was able to buy a brand new blackbook (black Macbook - thanks to Amanda for the name). Damn, is it sexy! It even comes equipped with a built in webcam, which totally rocks - I was able to videoconference (shudder... I mean Skype-video) with Kristen this weekend and see my little friend Squee! What a cutie! And, I got the machine just in time to be able to get a free copy of the new Mac OS X - Leopard. I have to take the laptop into the Apple store sometime this week to get them to load it on, but it looks pretty damn cool. And for you anti-apple people out there (I'm looking at you, Scott) - screw you! My Windows machine has been pissing me off royally by constantly crashing. I don't need that! Plus, I just find the Mac interface to be so much nicer - friendlier and cuter, too!

Into the wild blue... highway

2007-10-25T18:36:00.000+02:00

Awesome! I was just driving along the highway, looked to the left... and there, just grazing along on the grass next to the road, were a pack of zebras and wildebeasts! I shit you not!

Remembering the past

2007-10-24T23:44:00.000+02:00

Jeez, I've just been re-reading phdcomics - I am SO glad I'm out of grad school...

A Tuesday of note (or: Admitting your aggression towards the DMV and Intelligent Design)

2007-10-24T10:57:00.000+02:00

Though some of you might envy the fast-paced lifestyle of a theoretical physicist, you may be surprised to learn that it generally involves quite a lot of sitting around - not yesterday. I barely had a chance to glaze over in front of my computer at all! Let me describe some of the more interesting experiences.

First, let me say that after fully two months of owning my now-famous POS car, as of yesterday I had yet to have transferred the registration from the old owner to me. The dude who owned it has been almost constantly out of the country, and there have been continuing issues with getting proof from his bank that he'd paid the car off and could sell it (despite the damn thing being 15 years old). Anyway, I finally got the proof yesterday, and I needed to rush to the DMV immediately to transfer registration, because the dude was going out of town again in a few days, and I wanted to get it taken care of in case there were problems. Obviously, the actual act of being at the DMV was boring as hell, and took three hours of my life, which I will never get back. However, what I did find interesting was observing the people around me waiting. Wow, there was SO much aggro! (this guy does a great stand up act about this) You could really feel the negative vibes coming off of people, and all around me there was constant muttering about how angry they were and how unfair it all was, and how they should open another freaking window, etc. You constantly feel like everyone behind you is going to leap in front of you in the queue, so there is this tenseness where you kind of feel like you have to defend your position. One sweet little old lady behind me, who was totally smiley and nice when she first got in line, kept trying to edge in front of me, and was close to boiling over by the time we got to the head - and I really thought she was going to make a scene. Frankly, it was all this anger surrounding me that stressed me out about being there, more than anything else. It really gets under your skin - I don't like the feeling. And actually, when I did finally get to the counter, the woman who helped me was extremely nice, helpful, sweet, and friendly (I definitely did not expect this). Clearly, these people are trying as best they can to get to everyone, and it would just be a more pleasant (well, less unpleasant) experience if everyone would just chill out. But I guess that is not going to happen - so next time, I'm taking my steel-toed boots so I can stomp on anyone who gets in my way.

The other thing I wanted to say something about was the Intelligent Design meeting that the Student Y held in our building yesterday. Now, the Lord knows (and will probably strike me down because of it) that I'm not a fan of ID. But if they want to go off and have little discussion groups and talk about how science is nonsense, then I'm not going to get involved (actually, that may or may not be true... depending on my mood, sometimes it really pisses me off, and I have to jump in where I'm not wanted). However, what really got me was that not only was the title of the meeting, "The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design," but they had to have it in the Applied Maths department (MY science building!) in order to try and prop up their "scientific" credibility. And let me put it bluntly - this shit is NOT science. Question evolution? Or any scientific theory for that matter? No problem! That's what science is really all about - skepticism and questioning. However, the higher goal of science is to replace ignorance with knowledge, and hopefully some kind of understanding. These people want to replace understanding with ignorance. To them, the answer is - if I don't immediately understand something, let me replace it with GOD. Anyway, let me not start ranting about it, because I don't have the time right now (maybe later). My point was that it pissed me off that they decided to use MY building for their own nefarious ends (mwahahahaha). So I put the word out to all the people I know here at UCT, and asked them to join me in attending this lecture, to try and rebuff their nonsense. We actually got a fairly good science contingent together - we easily made up at least half of the attendees. The whole thing was somewhat disappointing, though, because the majority of the meeting was just the presentation of a propagandic movie on ID. Then at the end, they had a "scientist" from UCT (well, an anatomist from the med school, which is not the same thing) get up and talk about how people could be "theists" as well as scientists, and that clearly evolution works on "microscales," but it is only in the large jumps that they want to invoke God, because there evolution doesn't work. Without any actual reasoning to show WHY it doesn't work, other than that he can't imagine how it does. And then there were five minutes left for people to ask questions (read: fight with the creationists). Me and Jeff totally dominated this part of the discussion, but the guy had to run off to perform some kind of experiment or something, so they had to cut it off. It was very disappointing, because during the stupid movie I got myself all pumped up on things I wanted to say, and then was left with no outlet. Actually, there were a couple of interesting discussions that took place immediately afterwards amongst the scientists, but the religious dudes took off very quickly, with promises of a return next year (classes are over this week, so they will have to wait until the students come back from vacation). Anyway, like I said, quite disappointing. There was creationist blood in the water, but nothing of any substance to feed on...

Springboks rule!

2007-10-22T17:22:00.000+02:00

Huzzah! The world cup of rugby has finally come to a satisfying end, with the South African Springboks pretty convincingly beating England (who cares what their team name is - they lost). My apologies to sensitive viewers:
Rugby has been a fun sport to learn about the past few weeks. Every time I say this, I nearly get lynched by any nearby rugby fans, but it really is quite similar to American football. It's actually quite interesting to see, like evolution, where the games branch off from each other. Rugby has touchdowns just like football, but they're called "tries," and you get 5 points for a try, plus 2 points for the extra kick. You can also score by having a penalty kick, where you get 3 points (this is the only form of scoring that occurred during the final game of the world cup... pretty lame). Also, there is an egg-shaped ball that people throw to each other. And you have to jump on the dude with the ball and beat the crap out of them - only with less padding in rugby. Actually, those are probably the only similarities... everything else is fairly different. One might say it's sort of a cross between football and soccer. But overall, it is quite a fun sport to watch - especially when you've got beer(s) in your hand(s).

Oh, one other thing which I noticed [blogger warning: the following is complete speculation, and is not even supported by reference to Wikipedia or anything - believe at your own risk]. They don't have downs in rugby like they do in football, but every once in a while, the play stops (for reasons that I never really picked up in my short introduction to rugby) and they line up and wait for the ball to be thrown to them. This is called a scrum (pretty much whenever they all get in a big violent huddle with the other team, that's called a scrum, I think). Either I heard this somewhere, or completely made it up, but the line at which they wait for the ball is called the "line of scrummage." To me, this bore an obvious resemblance to football's "line of scrimmage," which is the line where a new down starts. I thought I was pretty clever for noticing this similarity, but the truth of my revelation remains to be seen, by anyone not too lazy to look it up.

Finger lickin' good

2007-10-18T13:33:00.000+02:00

There's a funny thing that goes on here on campus every Thursday. The main campus right outside the math building gets totally taken over by a crazy party in the afternoon, and people go totally ape-$*@%. Usually there is some sort of sponsorship by a big company, they set up DJ's, entertainment, give away free stuff, etc. Last week it was Nivea (and the Nivea dance troupe), today it is KFC.

The main steps get totally overrun. It is a total trip to see all these kids yelling and screaming every time the announcer yells into the mike, "Does anyone out there love KFC!?!" As I write this, I can hear the crowd lovin' it (sorry McDonalds). They even had a contest to see who could eat the special "colonel burger", fries, and coke that they're currently pushing.

Who says consumerism is dead?

A sad day

2007-10-17T11:04:00.000+02:00

Well, today is a sad day. After having my friend Amanda here for the first two and a half months of my stay, she has finally left the country to seek her fortune as a postdoc at the prestigious Cambridge University. Good for her, but it was really nice having her here, and she will be missed. Of course, she's coming back here for a conference (read: to celebrate American Thanksgiving with me) within a month and a half, so I'll see her soon. I don't envy her, though - I hate traveling, and she'll have to do a lot of it in the future. Luckily, she's an excellent traveler, as evidenced by her near constant world jaunts while in grad school in NYC...

Those cheeky monkeys

2007-10-17T09:33:00.001+02:00

This just in - yard monkeys are lying bastards...

The Yogic Mind

2007-10-16T21:11:00.000+02:00

Is it true? Has he gone off the deep end? What's the deal with all this vegetarian food?!?

I've just returned from my first yoga experience. Man! It totally rocked! The local Hari Krishna monastery hosts a bi-weekly power yoga class. I have always (well, after knowing some hippie-dippie friends in New York - you know who you are, Kristen ;) wanted to try yoga, and so when my new potential friend in the math department mentioned that she does yoga at her gym, but that there is a local one that she's been meaning to try, and maybe we could all go together... well, I decided to make a run-on sentence. Also, to try out the yoga. And dude, it was totally physically strenuous, but fun! Lots of stretchies, but lots of balancing actions that made your legs want to buckle. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but it was cool. By far the coolest part was at the end, though, when we lay down on our backs, the teacher turned out the lights, and tried to hypnotize us into relaxing. Man, it worked, I was so chilled out. And afterwards, they provided a delish vegetarian meal to enhance my soul, complete with the Hari Krishna monk who came out to sit with us and chat, discussing everything from black holes (that was from me) to Intelligent Design (which I also pontificated about... hmmm, maybe I dominated the whole conversation...). Anyway, the monk was really cool, and his comment about how he's been chased out of every local mall and banned by the security guards was quite entertaining. All-in-all, the experience was a trip, and very pleasurable - I'll definitely check out yoga again. One comment, though - upon finding out that I was to start yoga this evening, a friend forwarded me this article - and it was dead on. There were definitely a significant number of hot (bendy) chicks, as well as a sleazy dude who immediately started hitting on them and making them uncomfortable (no, not me... I was too busy sweating to make anyone uncomfortable).

No such thing as free parking

2007-10-11T13:23:00.000+02:00

A few thoughts on some minor oddities (read: differences from America) in Cape Town.

Parking: You have to pay for parking everywhere. It's not much, usually a couple of rand (maybe 50 cents US) but in every parking lot, along the side of every road, everywhere you go, there are dudes there who collect money from you to watch your car. I think it's more of a way to find employment for people than anything else, 'cause anytime I ask someone about it, they always give that as the biggest reason for it. The really odd thing is that I think this started here as an unofficial process - people would hang out in parking lots and watch to make sure your car is not stolen, and then ask for a few rand compensation. Eventually, the bigger malls, establishments, etc. stepped in and made it official, gave them neon jackets to identify them as employed by the mall, and you were required to get a ticket from these dudes. But still, a lot of places just have unofficial guys hanging out watching your car whom you're expected to tip. It's not a bad idea in principle, either, especially with the crime level what it is (although frankly, I still haven't seen much crime since I've been here), but I can't figure out how these guys got the general public to trust them to watch their cars! It does seem to work quite well, though. And makes parking in parking lots a little easier, 'cause these guys are there to point you to empty spaces.

Quitters never win

2007-10-05T19:04:00.000+02:00

So first of all, before I go off on another rant (I won't, I swear), let me inform you of the the talk that I gave here at UCT last week. I've finally managed to get it up on the web. There is a link to both the pdf of my slides and a podcast of me giving the talk. For some reason, I have been unable to get the podcast to download properly in Firefox, but it works in Internet Explorer, I don't know why. Anyway, if you want to hear about the latest paper that me, Jeff, and his student Andy are coming out with, feel free to look there. If you don't understand it, you'll probably be in good company with the rest of the people in the cosmology group here, who are not string theorists. We're so misunderstood...

So, on to the rant. No, not really. But after the bender I went on last weekend, I decided to quit smoking (which I had started up again here, having been somewhat stressed about beginning in a new country, etc.). Very noble cause. But it is really unnecessarily stressful! I've quit smoking millions of times, and have never had the difficulties I've gotten here. First of all, it's just been plain stressful. All week, I've been on edge, have had trouble concentrating, and have had trouble sleeping and been extra tired. But then I've also been feeling kind of sick, with a cough and sore throat, and I'm starting to imagine that maybe it has something to do with quitting smoking. Both of these symptoms only come up when I'm lying down to go to sleep. Last night I was up half the night coughing up gross phlegm, but then as soon as I got up this morning, not a cough to be found. Maybe I'm totally talking out of my ass, but I think it's all the gunk that built up in my lungs which is now deciding it doesn't want to be there. I suppose that's a good thing. In fact, I'm quite grateful. I just would like a chance to get to sleep...

Speaking of the drink-fest of last Friday (which I wrote about), I have just returned from having the second official beer o'clock of the UCT Gravity and Cosmology Group - quite the success! And this time it didn't turn into a night of excess (in case you are wondering, it's only 7:30pm - the group outing having begun at the hour of 4:30... look, we don't work ourselves to death in Cape Town...). Even more of a success. And all thanks to me - I had to work my ass off to get these people together to go out for a drink, but everyone seemed to have a good time, and I think it is good for the group to relax together, and good for me to have a chance to meet people and make friends here. So raise your glass, and begin the weekend...

Crazy weekend

2007-10-01T08:57:00.000+02:00

Wow, this was some weekend. I had a great time (mostly) and took a ton of pictures, so here goes...

Friday, I began what will hopefully become a weekly occurrence with my research group, some of whom are shown to the left (Therese, Emma, and Kishore) - beer o'clock. There is an awesome little faculty pub type of thing on campus that serves good beer and has a nice atmosphere - it has a little outside garden and a fireplace (though I think the time for fireplaces has come and gone - spring has sprung). Anyway, it was very fun, and successful. After most people had gone home, six of us (Therese, Kishore, Emma, Chris, Viv, and myself) decided to head back to Kishore and Emma's place to continue the party. I brought Jack (Daniels). We had a great time, and I got to know all four of them much better, which was great. Needless to say, however, after staying up 'til 6-freaking-am, I had the worst hangover I've had in years. After waking up at 2pm and dragging my sorry ass home, I went back to sleep until 11pm, got up for a couple of hours, and then went back to sleep until 8 in the morning. So to summarize: Friday night was a blast, Saturday was a complete write-off.

That being said, Sunday was amazing. Having slept for a good 24 hours, Jeff and Amanda called me up to see if I wanted to go to Hout Bay beach with them. I was keen. An hour later, we, Jeff's mom, and sweet little Mishka were on this beautiful beach throwing the miniature American football around and sniffing all the other dogs butts (well, not all of us were throwing the football).

Above: Mishka.

Right: Arrival at the beach - how's that for a kick-ass beach view?

Below: Jeff and Mishka - notice the bizzaro castle in the background.

After cavorting around for a while, we piled back into the car and drove over to `Fish on the Rocks,' the best fish and chips place in South Africa. To be honest, they were phenomenal fish and chips. They then bought a whole fresh fish from the fresh fish market, we drove home through the unbelievable mountain/coast views and had a killer fish-braai. Hey man, THIS is the South Africa I want to remember! A good time was most definitely had by all, especially Mishka, who was TOTALLY exhausted by all the physical and emotional activities of the day...

View from an office...

2007-09-26T08:58:00.000+02:00

Just wanted y'all to see some pics of the view I have directly from my desk. It's pretty spectacular. One's in the morning and one's in the evening - I love the mist over the city. By the way, this is looking east off of campus. Though you can't see it, my apartment is south of here. I should try and find a decent map of the city to pinpoint locations of key areas for the viewers at home...

There is more good news. This past weekend was a historic Cape Town weekend in that it was the first one where I didn't have car issues. Let's all give a warm round of applause to God for allowing my car to live one more week.

I also had a great spring kickoff braai at Amanda and Jeff's place on Monday. We braaied up some delicious beer soaked ribs and some boerwors sausages. Mmmm... too bad we didn't have any ostrich (which is my new obsession), but there will definitely be plenty of time for that in the coming months. It is also extremely relieving to note that, as the weather gets nicer and warmer, it is NOT getting humider (is that not a word? my spell check doesn't think so...). Sitting in the sun gets pretty hot, but moving to the shade makes it immediately pleasant and cool. This may seem trivial to some people, but I have never lived anywhere that WASN'T grossly humid when the heat came... I like...

National Braai Day

2007-09-21T16:34:00.001+02:00

Long weekends and random holidays seem to sneak up on me without any warning. A few weeks ago, there was National Women's Day (which I fully support) and now this weekend is another official holiday. Apparently, Monday is National Braai Day. For those of you not from South Africa, "to braai" is equivalent with "to BBQ." So everyone fires up their braai this weekend and cooks up some ostrich steaks. Delish! After intense research and insightful investigative reporting, I discovered that it is ALSO National Heritage Day, which perhaps makes it a bit more believable as a holiday. However, you would never know this - TV, radio, and all people make no mention of such lofty goals as heritage acknowledgment. In fact, I even heard on the radio that you can SMS a certain number and they will send you back an estimate of how many people are braaing on Monday. Let's celebrate!

Oh, in other news, let me put up some photos of my new apartment. Observe and revel in the (fake? who knows!) leopard-skin couch... And next to it, check out the (working) skeleton of a radio. It actually produces great sound, but I haven't yet figured out how to change the channel...

Are you kidding me?!

2007-09-17T15:45:00.000+02:00

Seriously? This weekend, after a bout of intense sickness (everyone has an opinion on food poisoning vs. flu - I think it was 24-hour flu) on the Friday/Saturday, my pleasant Sunday drive around the neighborhood was cut short by my clutch giving out. Yep, my car broke down AGAIN - second time in the three weeks since I bought the damn thing. This is ridiculous. And it's costing me a little over $200 to replace the clutch kit - parts + labo(u)r (this time I checked with several people who are in the know, and I don't think I'm getting scammed). Damn you, God of Car Failure! I never asked for this...

Happy New Year!

2007-09-13T09:51:00.000+02:00

I had a wonderful dinner last night at Amanda's sister's house, out in beautiful Sea Point (basically, it's right downtown, but is next the the ocean, with fantastic waves). It was Rosh Hashanah, and so it was a big family affair, with running screaming kids and everything - quite nice, I haven't been around that much family in a long time.

It's really been a huge help that my friends Amanda and Jeff are here (Amanda being one of my close friends from Columbia, and Jeff, her fiancee, being my boss). Just the fact of them being close by, and sort of looking out for me has really helped me keep the loneliness at bay. Not to mention that at any disaster (read: car trouble) Jeff gets a call and helps me out of a jam. But also, Amanda's whole family lives here, and has been really welcoming and sweet, totally trying to make me feel like family. Her mother is adorable (and also lives in the house adjoining theirs - an awkward situation in the making, having your mother/mother-in-law floating around all the time), her sister is really sweet (and a fantastic cook) and her brother and his wife have been really friendly and nice. Definitely has made a big difference.

Actually, everyone here seems to be so freaking nice! Maybe it's just the coming from New York, but somehow I'm always surprised at how friendly everyone here is. Always offering to help, offering to take me out, and just plain being pleasant. Bizarre, non?

Go Boks!

2007-09-10T11:29:00.000+02:00

Woo hoo! World Cup Rugby, 2007 started this weekend! I got to see my first ever couple of rugby
games... pretty cool. Similar to football (American) but slightly more dangerous... actually, I had expected it to be really vicious, but due to such rules as "no tackling above the shoulders," you don't really get the same bone-crunching violence as in the NFL. However, these guys don't wear all that wussy padding...

Even the US is getting into the game! Somehow we got into the world cup, don't ask me how... probably in the same way that Japan did. And boy, did Japan get demolished. Typical scores tend to be similar to football, around 20-30's by the end. The Japan-Aussie game on Saturday ended up being 3-91. Brutal. But America ended up holding its own pretty decently against England - I think it was 26-10 or something. Not bad, considering everyone considered us to be total losers, and England is championship material.

Anyway, I always find that watching the local sports is a great way to have fun and bond with new people. And I had great fun watching the South Africa-Samoa game yesterday with some new friends. The South African Springboks ended up convincingly defeating Samoa, but man, some of those Islanders are HUGE. Quite a fun experience. I'm just looking forward to the South Africa-USA game at the end of the month... I'm gonna talk so much kuk...

Cricket season is coming up soon... but I don't know if I have the strength to sit through one of those games...

The Price of Ignorance

2007-09-07T09:10:00.000+02:00

Well, truly I have accelerated my stay in Cape Town - a job, a car, an apartment - and now I've been ripped off by a car mechanic! Well done, I say! Now all I have to do is get myself mugged, and I'll have accomplished far more here than I ever did in NYC!

Only one week after having bought my beautiful car (who doesn't have a name yet, so I'm accepting ideas now), it died. Going up a hill, all of the sudden, the engine just stopped, and wouldn't start again. Luckily, even though I was on a fairly busy road, I stopped right next to a place where I could squeeze into half a parking space, so I managed not to get hit by traffic. Had to call a tow truck (luckily I had ALSO just had roadside assistance put onto my car insurance) who took it to a nearby garage. The mechanic told me that the carburetor was totally blocked up, and that this was caused by an absolutely filthy fuel tank. So I told him to go ahead and fix both of these things, and it ended up costing a significant amount of money, especially relative to the price of the car. When I asked around, people who knew a little about cars seemed to think that I was getting overcharged. And when I talked to the guy who sold me the car, he freaked out - it sounded like his head exploded, and he said I'd definitely been taken, there was no way that it should ever have cost that much. So my seeming consensus is that I've been scammed.

The whole thing is just so damned frustrating... I'm not used to being so COMPLETELY ignorant of something which is so expensive. I mean, the guy could have told me that a vicious strain of the yard monkey virus had gotten into my fuel tank and gunked up my engine, and the whole engine needed replacing. How would I have known the difference? (other than the fact that there has been a conspicuous LACK of yard monkeys so far... but maybe they've been hiding in the tank!) It really makes you feel incredibly helpless... very frustrating. I think it's made worse by the fact of my American accent - I guess they hear "foreigner" and their eyes turn to dollar signs... er, Rand signs... (and who can blame them? I mean, have you HEARD "Hot Blooded"?!) How I miss the halcyon days of the New York Subway, where having a car is absolutely crazytown. And the only time I ever came close to being robbed was when I got sucker punched randomly on the Upper West Side...

Anyway, I'm not really all that bitter about it. I mean, it's only money, and I can consider it a learning experience. One of my office mates, who's been here for 5 years told me he got similarly ripped off in the car department when he got here, but worse. It must be some kind of initiation into owning a car or something. So this shouldn't add to my reputation for being a curmudgeon... it's just one more amusing anecdote from the land of the penguins...

I also have to say that I really appreciate all the comments people have been posting here. It really makes me feel connected to know that my friends are still out there, reading whatever nonsense I have to say... thanks guys - it definitely helps battle the feelings of isolation. I think that's a good part of why I've been adapting so well...

On the Move

2007-09-03T09:42:00.000+02:00

Well, I finally did it - I got a car! And it's awesome! It may be a little on the oldish side (it's only from 1993... it's not like I hadn't been born yet!) but it's in great condition. And it drives really well. So far, I love it. It did take a little getting used to... it has a choke, which I have to use for the first few kilometers, apparently. And the clutch is way higher than I'm used to. Man, the first time I drove it, I must have stalled once every mile or so. Certainly every time I stopped the car. But after the first drive, I've gotten much more used to it, and I'm becoming a superb driver! Driving on the left is actually surprisingly easy, though... by far the hardest thing is the rearview mirror, which is totally not in the spot I keep expecting it to be, and it's pointing in a weird direction. I haven't really gotten used to that, yet. But it's all comin' together...

Speaking of driving, though, I had quite a shock this morning driving to work. As I was putt-putting along the highway, this dude on a motorbike scooted between the two lanes of (annoyingly heavy) traffic. When he was about three car lengths ahead of me, someone went to change lanes, and smacked directly into the guy, and he went flying off of his bike onto the side of the road! It was really dramatic and scary. I don't know if the guy was alright or not, even - when I passed where it had happened, there were people all around him, but he was lying straight out on the side of the road, not moving. At least he had a helmet on, but still... holy shit. If I had been thinking of riding a motorcycle, that convinced me that it's not a good idea... so easy to get absolutely knocked to hell - the traffic was barely moving even! I think it was mainly the motorbike dude's own momentum which screwed him - the knocking car was changing lanes from a dead stop. Jeez.

In other news, I also moved house this weekend. I moved from this dormitory style apartment complex called Forest Hill to this add on apartment belonging to this really sweet old landlord, John. It's a little smaller, but way cozier and cheaper (old place: R3000 ~ $400, new place: R2000 ~ $300). And it has a KICK-ASS backyard! Totally going to be doing some braaiing (South African BBQing) when the weather gets nicer. So I'm slowly getting myself acclimated to living here in Cape Town... actually, I think I'm accomplishing this pretty fast - a car, an apartment, a job, and I've only been here one month! Not bad, I say...

Alex's Work (I)

2007-08-20T12:46:00.000+02:00

Since without a car I haven't been able to see that much of Cape Town, and because people have asked me about it any number of times in the past, I have decided to try and give some kind of explanation of what I'm working on right now. I think what I'll try to do is give it in several parts, to break up the monotony a bit.

Maybe let me start broadly. I work on String Theory. Traditionally, this area of research has been focused on string theory being the so-called "Theory of Everything," (TOE). What this grand statement means is NOT that if I understand string theory, then I can predict everything in the world. Rather, string theory is meant to be the ultimate reductionist theory (meaning smallest, most fundamental - i.e., originally atoms were the fundamental things, then we discovered protons and neutrons as more fundamental, then quarks are still more fundamental, etc.). String theory says that ALL the forces of nature - Electromagnetism, Strong Force (holding protons/neutrons together), Weak Force (making nuclear decay happen) and Gravity, each of which traditionally needs to be treated separately - come from ONE theory which describes how each of them work. This is great, and is really interesting, but it has been going on for almost 30 years, and it still hasn't come out quite right. In fact, right now, there is controversy over this research direction, made public in books by Peter Woit and Lee Smolin. They both have valid points that I agree with, but I think they miss some of the overall picture. Although perhaps that isn't fair of me, as I haven't read either of their books. Someday...

However, this is not the direction that I'm working in. It is definitely related very strongly, but the focus of it is not so much placed on having string theory being the TOE, but rather on using string theory to say interesting things about OTHER subjects. This goes under the broad category of "the Anti de-Sitter Space/Conformal Field Theory Correspondence," or as it is referred to, the

AdS/CFT Correspondence

So, what is this correspondence, you ask? Excellent question! It's a little like Voodoo. Start with two, a priori TOTALLY unconncected theories (here string theory in AdS space vs. what is known as a conformal field theory).

(Side note: What do I mean when I say "you have such-and-such a theory"? A theory is a set of rules that tell you how objects move around. So, for example, one theory is electromagnetism - there are charged things around, and there are rules as to how they move when you apply electricity to them. There are more technical definitions of what makes something a theory rather than BS, but this is good enough for what I mean.)

Ok, so back to the two unconnected theories. The analogy is to Voodoo, where you have a voodoo doll that you can stick pins in. And just like with Voodoo, these things shouldn't have anything to do with one another, but it turns out that everything you do to one of the things (say stick a pin in the doll) corresponds exactly to doing a similar thing to the other (equivalent to sticking a sword in the person, or whatever). AdS/CFT is very similar - every object in one theory has a corresponding object in the "dual" theory. And if the rules of theory A tell you that object A should move just so, then it will happen that the rules of theory B tell you that... yep, object B should move in just the same way.

Ok, so this is really vague and weird, so what do you actually mean, Alex? Let me be a bit more specific. What do I mean when I say "string theory in AdS space"? Just that it involves the strings of String Theory are moving around in a particular gravity set up (AdS space is just the name of the particular gravity set up). So just like you can imagine strings moving under the gravitational influence of the sun, say, you can imagine strings moving under the influence of gravity in some other set up. Obviously, this satisfies what I said about theories - there are objects, and there are rules.

Ok, so what do I mean by "conformal field theory"? Basically this is referring to a set of rules like nuclear physics has, involving quarks, gluons, and other elementary particles that we can do experiments on. So in this theory, there are objects (quarks, gluons, etc.) and there are the rules that tell you how they move about.

So why do we care? There are essentially two reasons why this is cool:

The nuclear physics stuff happens in the normal number of spacetime dimensions - there are three spatial dimensions and one time. The string theory stuff all happens, however, in ten dimensions (meaning that strings can move not only up/down, right/left, forward/backwards, but also in six other directions!). And somehow, these two theories must be totally equivalent. In particular, if the string moves in one of these other crazy directions, what would that look like in the nuclear theory, where things can only move in the normal three? This is cool, and is a generally very interesting area of physics called "holography" (like holograms, which look like they have more dimensions than they actually do (three rather than two).
In this AdS/CFT, in general, we know how to calculate the rules in one of the theories, but not in the second. So this duality is potentially really useful to be able to tell us the answer to rules that we otherwise DON'T KNOW HOW TO CALCULATE! That is also cool.

So, this is the broad outline of what I'm doing. Maybe next time I'll go into a bit more detail about what exactly I'm calculating in one of these theories. Let me know if any of this stuff is understandable/interesting.

Yard Monkeys spotted

2007-08-17T08:34:00.001+02:00

Beautiful Campus

2007-08-16T18:17:00.000+02:00

Ok, now I want to put up some prettier pictures - of campus and of where I live. So here is where I live...

Then here are some cool pictures of what campus looks like - see Table Mountain behind the building? It's like a straight up hike up the mountain to get up to campus - really a good workout.

In the picture to the right here, off in the distance is NOT Table Mountain - that's facing east, into another cool mountain range, I don't know what it's called.

And here is my favorite one - the fog just on the horizon, overlooking the city - how cool is that?

I have to say, I'm ashamed that I really don't have any pictures of wild animals yet (with the possible exception of Mishka). My only excuse is that every time I took one, the yard monkeys would steal my camera and erase it - they are seriously shy for such evil creatures. But fear not - I just today heard about two things which might ease your pain in the future.

I found out where the penguins live. So as soon as I close the deal on this damn car, I'm there.
I heard about a documentary called "Air Jaws," about FLYING SHARKS, which happen only off the coast of Cape Town and Australia. And apparently, we have about 140 sightings a year, compared to 5 a year in Australia. So things should get interesting soon...

&$*# the Yard Monkeys!

2007-08-16T16:33:00.000+02:00

Alex: 1
Yard Monkeys:... 3 weeks

I finally got access to my photos. So I can now begin uploading these bastards and quiet down the restless masses.

So, welcome to Cape Town!

This was just when I arrived, and was being driven in from the airport.

And here is my first view of Table Mountain. It's raining and nasty, but the mountain looks pretty majestic, and it's true what they say - it really is covered in clouds...

For the first few days, I stayed with Amanda and Jeff (Jeff being my new boss). The most important member of that household, however, was the new puppy, Mishka. They had just bought here, and she was 8 weeks old - she's now like 10 or 11. And boy, she is seriously bitey. But also tres cute - hopefully the bity-ness can be cured by training...

On to UCT. First, I'll show you what I see all day - my temporary office, in all its glory. They will be moving me next door next week (it's been next week every week I've been here), but right now, that's me in the corner with the laptop.

The More Things Change...

2007-08-16T08:43:00.001+02:00

Not everything is different here in Africa - Americans are still snotty bastards, banks still screw you at every opportunity, and Windows... well, let's not go there...

I was leaving my apartment yesterday (sorry, my flat) and ran into this American woman in the elevator. There was some sort of police siren shenanigans going on all through the morning, and she made some comment to me about it, inciting conversation - nice and friendly, right? Well, when I asked what it was, she started to get all snooty and rude, like, "I can't believe you Americans - never pay attention to anything going on outside the States." According to her, it was probably some demo because of internal strife in the government or something - she was absolutely appalled that I didn't know that the Internal Finance Minister was just fired. She was slightly mollified when I mentioned that I had just arrived here, and didn't yet know all the political situation. Of course, the real answer had nothing to do with any governmental issues - the traffic police were on an illegal strike, and were blocking the HELL out of downtown traffic yesterday morning. Man, the line of traffic (luckily going the opposite direction to my shuttle bus) snaked off as far as I could see. Stupid Americans...

What is really snaking my sneakers right now is the bank - the Standard Bank
of South Africa Limited has decided to put me through who knows how much useless security tests or something before they'll allow me a checking account. I opened the damn account two weeks ago, they told me it would take three days, and they STILL haven't approved it. Even after telling me on Monday that they would expedite the situation so that I could buy my car, incompetence and laziness rule. But frankly, this is nothing new to me in the banking world - I take pride in having always hated banks with every fiber of my being. Nice to have the comforts of home...

And actually, I don't even want to get into my current issues with Windows... Let's just leave it at that, shall we?

By the way, I just want everyone to know that I really appreciate all the comments - makes me feel well connected to the continent back home. And I swear I will put up photos soon - but what am I supposed to do when the yard monkeys swiped my USB cable upon arrival?

Weathering the winter

2007-08-14T09:44:00.000+02:00

The rumors are true - even though it's summer in the real world (i.e., the Northern Hemisphere), it's winter down here. However, you'd barely know it - the average temperature seems to be something like 15 - 20 degrees Celsius (~ 60 - 70 degrees Fahrenheit). Now, I don't know where you come from, but in my book, that's nice spring weather. Some days it's a little chilly, but only because everyone wears short sleeves and maybe thin jackets. And people are carrying on like a new ice age is coming. It definitely gives a sense of... I don't know, power, or invulnerability or something to get to say, "When I was in Montreal, winters NEVER got above -15 C (~ 0 F) and we were HAPPY to have it that warm! Why, I had to walk back and forth to school in 3 - 4 feet of snow, uphill both ways!" My God, I'm gonna love being a grumpy old man...

The other thing is the rain. From the way people talked, I expected it to be a constant downpour throughout the winter. But there are at least as many gorgeous days as rainy days. And when the rain DOES come, it barely lasts five minutes! Actually, that's really weird - having a huge downpour, and it's LITERALLY gone in less than five minutes most of the time.

I have to say, the mildness of the winter here has got me a little worried about the heat of the summer. If you know me, you know that I don't enjoy the heat, and especially not humidity. Almost all accounts, however, assure me that it is a very dry summer here, though it can get quite hot. One guy (Bob) so far, has contradicted that, and said that it is really humid here in the summer. However, he's from Kenya, and I'm going to have to assume that where he's from, it's outrageously dry (I did a really quick Wiki search on Kenya, but could not get immediate confirmation of my assumption, as Kenya seems to have widely varying climate).

First Impressions

2007-08-10T09:14:00.000+02:00

So I've now been in Cape Town for two weeks. Let me now take the time
to write down my first impressions.

Funnily enough, what I have seen of Africa so far (which has not been
a great deal, admittedly), is really not very different to life in the
States. Yes, there are people speaking different languages (I've
heard some Afrikaans, and some Xhosa - the language of The Gods Must
Be Crazy [edit - I'm dead wrong - the people in the movie are Bushmen,
or the San people - which always makes me think of Star Wars,
and they speak Khoisian]), everyone else has a funny accent (half British, half
Australian, seemingly), and they drive on the left side of the road.
But probably the biggest and strangest difference to me is that the
public transportation systems sucks, and to do anything you need a
car. But presumably this is weird to me only because I've lived in
New York City for six years, and Montreal for five years before that -
having a car is insanity in those cities. Most other American cities
are probably just like Cape Town in that regard.

Which is not to say that there aren't differences. Like I said, the
fact that I have a foreign accent here has been kind of amusing. For
the first week or so, I was embarrassed to speak to anyone, because I
felt out of place by having an American accent. By now, it really
doesn't bother me anymore - nobody acts particularly weird when I
speak, so I just got over the whole thing. Although I have to say,
all the heavy accents makes it really frustrating sometimes to
understand. Especially when it's a non-native English speaker talking
(English is totally the dominant language here, though - a few things
are written in Afrikaans, but absolutely everyone speaks English). I
felt really bad in the class I was teaching the other day, because
this guy asked me a question, and I had ABSOLUTELY no idea what he was
saying. I had to ask him to repeat himself four times, went all the
way to the back of the room to hear him better, and I still only
caught about five of the words he was saying. I ended up nodding
stupidly, and I'm sure he just gave up trying to get me to understand
him.

Regarding driving on the left - I'm quite nervous about it, because
I'm going to have to get a car soon (hopefully in the next few days).
The funny thing is, I was completely taken aback to realize that not
only do they DRIVE on the left, but people WALK on the left in
hallways, on the street, etc. It is completely obvious in retrospect,
but it never even crossed my mind that people wouldn't walk in the
same way as they do at home. It really brought back memories of grade
school, when my teacher had to drill into our heads that it was polite
to walk on the right side of the hall. Well, I'm taking advantage of
this state of affairs by being very conscious of walking on the left,
in an effort to get myself used to it so that it won't be so weird
when I have to drive.

Probably the biggest actual difference I've noticed here (other than
my New York City car-phobia) is security consciousness. Everything
has WAY more security than I'd ever been used to. Every single
residence has locked bars over windows and doors (even my little
single bedroom apartment, which is INSIDE a complex with guards and
gates) has an iron gate with a padlock. And if you walk around, every
house has a serious alarm system. It was definitely very creepy when
I first got here, but I have to say, I haven't seen any crime yet. Of
course, I've been totally sheltered the past few weeks, being mostly
on campus, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything. However, I get
the strong impression (and have been told this directly) that at least
part of all this security is a status symbol. The richer you are, the
more gates, and giant search lights, and alarms you have, in order to
say - "look, I'm SERIOUSLY important, so I can't afford to get broken
into." Of course, I'm sure that crime is a significant problem, and
these security measures don't come out of nowhere. It's definitely an
interesting scenario, and I predict that this will become a continuing
source of discussion for me.

Getting used to Africa

2007-07-31T18:49:00.000+02:00

Well, I'm here! I'm staying with my friend/boss for the first few days while I wait for my next temporary flat, basically on campus. But in the meantime, I've started work, started seeing a bit of the city, and started watching South African soaps... specifically Rhythm City, which rocks.

This city is beautiful! The area where I am is basically built around a flat mountain (Table Mountain), with the University of Cape Town on the western slope - that's where I'm working. It's winter here now, which means that it rains a lot... this is not the winter I'm used to... However, rain means clouds in the air, and the clouds wreathing the top of the mountain looks really cool - it looked like smoke was billowing down the sides. I'm not yet set up to download my photos onto here, but as soon as I am, I'll set up some photos of it. Really amazing.

A new beginning...

2007-07-26T13:03:00.000+02:00

So here begins my adventures into two new lands - blogging and Africa. Choose for yourself which one is more alien.

Having never done any blogging before, one begs forgiveness for any lack of flair which might grace the pages of other, more developed pages, at least at the beginning. Anyway, my intention is that this format should act as a vehicle for keeping in contact with friends and family while I'm on the other side of the planet; I'd like to keep people aware of my activities/existence, prompting people to keep in touch with me, and giving me a place to show off how freaking cool it is to live in Africa.

Bringing me to the second adventure - moving to Cape Town, South Africa. As I type this, I'm sitting at Heathrow airport, awaiting the flight which will move me to my new home. So this really is as close to the beginning as it gets. I'd like to invite you to join me in figuring out what the hell goes on in South Africa - what it looks like, what the culture is like, what the wildlife is like (including the penguins), and anything else that goes on. So welcome to my new life, and let the adventure begin!