Mystery

Tuesday, 6 pm, London. More than 11,000 tube workers, members of the tube union (?) walked out to protest plans to robotize some 800 jobs. The strike is meant to continue for over 24 hours, till Thursday morning. Over ground traffic increased, many folks learned how to use their feet in ways long forgotten and buses were overloaded.

Wednesday morning, 8:00 am, still London. Hillel arrives in the midst of rush hour to one of the main lines to find out that it is not shut completely. Rather, the stops where no connections between different lines meet are completely skipped and a couple of the main lines are not running at all.

Enjoying the experience of being in London, H doesn’t pay much attention to the rather sour mood of many of the fellow passengers. Due to the onslaught of people, he misses the first one he tries to get on. For maybe the first time in the UK, he has to push his way onto a train. Eventually, many people get of and H gets an actual seat. A well dressed man sits next to him and starts chatting with him.

Now this is pretty rare in the tube, where most people seem to carry with them glass boxes which block out all others peeping into their private space and accidentally knocking their bags. But still, H engages. The man asks H about the tube strike and what his reaction was to it when he heard it will be happening. Did he get upset and annoyed or did he just go on his regular plans as usual?

H is wondering whether to tell the man that he actually doesn’t live in London but rather in Cardiff, that capital city in the well shaded areas away from the English limelight. But instead he simply responds that he just went along with his plans. No point in getting annoyed, transit can still be made and a bit of delay will not affect things greatly. The man proceeded to chat more, to which H responded with short yes’s and no’s. At this point the man turns to H and says, why do I feel that for some reason you work in mathematics?

H is a bit shocked. Huh? What in his answers gave that away? Was this man following him? Did a math paper leak out of H’s bag? Huh again? The man begins to explain. H gets up as the train has arrived at his station and the man gets up with him, they both exit as the man begins explaining. Suddenly he looks around and says, wait, this is not my station, and runs back into the train.

Mystery unsolved.

the longest town name in the UK

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is the short version, and even that is already impossible for ordinary immortals outside of the phlegm-spitting-land of Wales to pronounce. Double L's are pronounced as a mixture of the Hebrew/Arabic ch with an 'l' sound mixed at the end, which my Welsh teacher instructed me, comes from the right-back of the mouth. W is an 'oo' sound except with a 'y' attached to it when it becomes like in simple American English, as in wind... but why am I even spending time on this name, this isn't the full town name!!! Try your hands (mouths) at this,

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

yeah. maybe these pictures will help a bit,



the town received its name when the train was built from somewhere in England to Holyhead at the edge of Wales and quite close to Ireland (a port from which lots of boats leave towards the green land of ire) and this village was chosen as a station. a group of astute businessmen decided to give the town, a very boring little place with not much there, a name that would attract tourists. and what better than a name that has 58 letters in the english alphabet (51 in the welsh one...)? and well, even some welsh folk can't really pronounce it.

but this very nice lady from the tourist info was able to (and no she is not reading it from a piece of paper, but straight from memory!!!).



the town itself? a big shopping center which amazingly attracts loads of tourists simply due to its name! (hmm, yeah, we went there as well due to this fact).



the longest name in the world for a place? Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu, a hill in New Zealand... if you really want to count - 85 letters!!!

Makeup sex

You know that feeling you have when you are breaking up with someone? That rock that is stuck somewhere in your throat, that heaviness in your chest? The feeling that you just need to end this, to finish this chapter of your life and move on, and then things will be better, the rock will be gone, the heaviness will dissipate? I have had this feeling once in my life, and have had it described to me on the receiving end once as well. And well, yesterday I had it, again.

With math.

It just seemed that every minute I was able to concentrate and think about the mathematical concept I was exploring (having to do with discrete graphs and the way they are divided into smaller graphs by a specific function), was followed by a moment of misery, with the rock in my throat, the heaviness in my chest. This was followed by a few minutes of the mind wandering in unfocused domains and by a few minutes of tracking and redirecting it. And then the cycle continued. Man, talk about efficacy and productivity.
So yeah, it seemed that the break-up was inevitable, we’d both continue in our separate directions. Somehow, I imagined that math would manage just ok on its own. It would be able to use strong, clear-cut logic to understand what had succumbed, to deduce that this was the best step forward, and to systematically continue on its rational path. I? I would be more of a humming bird searching for its GPS till it understands that it has been carrying it for quite some time.

And then today happened. Today? Makeup sex.

German Housemate and Holocaust Books

Andreas was one of Alex’s housemates when I initially crashed there about a year ago while looking for an apartment. He then finished his masters, minus the viva (the defense) and had moved to Spain. He had asked to come and crash with me when he had to come back to defend his thesis and I promptly agreed, assuming that at most we were talking about two weeks.
Wrong.
*********
I hadn’t read a Holocaust book in maybe 15 years. I always found them very depressing to read and hence struggled reading at my favorite time, before going to bed. This always lengthened greatly how long it would take me to finish one of these books. So I just simply avoided reading them after I went through the period in which my thirst of knowledge about my history and my people was great.
Then these past few months suddenly I read not one but two Holocaust books. Of course this had to occur when I shared my humble abode with a German friend, Andreas. Now let me say a few more about Andy German as he is listed in my mobile. He is a very very nice guy. He is also quite big as he does judo and is very fit. And strong. Shoot, the guy is strong. And just to set the scene, he does have blond hair and blue eyes. Not implying anything at all here, but just saying. Masha in the math department, did ask me once if there was anything weird about him or curiously wrong with him, just searching for a flaw, because how could someone be, in her words, so perfect, smart, strong, nice.
**********
The first book I read was a gift I got from the lovely Jo for my birthday, everything is illuminated. This book deals with a Jewish American guy who returns to Ukraine to explore his family’s roots. It describes the discrimination and conditions that the Jews there lived with before the war, and the horrors of what happened during the war. It also coincided with me finding out that most likely my maternal grandmother’s family (Guralnik) comes from Ukraine.

The second book, I picked up while visiting my fam in San Diego. It’s an Israeli book written by a contemporary author I recently discovered, and its called Our Holocaust. It talks about the author’s life (it seems biographical...) in the great shadow of the Holocaust, from growing up with his entire neighborhood seemingly composed of survivors who would not tell him their stories remarking, you are too young to understand. Then as a grown man, each one of them recounts his traumatic story of survival and the memories of those who didn’t. The book also deals with the fact that Germany somehow did not really prosecute fully a lot of the people who participated in the Holocaust and released many that were prosecuted, after very short sentences. It is a very powerful and moving book. This as I explained above, means its harder for me to read it - I still haven't finished it…

**********
Andy ended up staying for two months. Since during one of these months I ended up in the states, our shared time in the flat was not that long. And he was a very well behaving flatmate. Very quiet, relatively clean and helped out with a lot of the house chores. Still, many-a-time, I found myself angry with him. Almost always, for no apparent reason. It was one of those angers that is a volcanic interruption waiting to happen from the very core of your soul, a purely emotional and neurotic-like reaction. One of those that shakes your stability and makes you think you don’t really know yourself as well as you thought you do.
Now I never did actually erupt or release any ash, smoke or lava. And I am not sure Andy ever noticed the build-up that was occurring to me as I was flipping pages, but still. The mere fact that it was there, in this way, was a very new experience to me.

that volcano thing.

email to department from prof. M.M.:
Subject Seminars and volcanos
Dear Colleagues,
This week's seminar has been cancelled due to the lack of flights from
Germany to the UK.
It may be re-scheduled for early May.

from facebook (via dr. D. S.): Can you see the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajokull? Can you pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?

text message from G. C.: Due 2 a volcanic eruption in iceland my dads flight has been cancelled,so he's crashing here another night.I'm sorry,i can't make the cinema. U around tomorrow?

final note. iceland owns the UK lots of money. the joke here is that instead of paying with cash, they decided to pay with ash.

Riding into the sunset

We woke up from our nicely hidden camping site between a canal and the river connecting the many lochs. I remember Lyonell asking me about farts. Asking how I was reacting to the food of the previous night. What do you mean I am not supposed to be writing stuff like this in a blog? So you don’t want to know my answer? Fine. I’ll skip it.
The second day included a lot of of-roading. Some serious of-roading in fact, to the point that a road bike would not be able to make this trip.

Of course the shocks on the front of Escriptius Robustus were quite handy. The trailer squeaked and sure made it sound as if it wasn’t so happy. We had to deal with quite a few obstacles on this day. First, fallen trees made us feel, hmmm, welcome on the forrest trails.

And of course, that would be ok – if it wasn’t immediately proceeded by the world famous dangerous lambs!


And I am not even mentioning the fact that we had to drive, scratch that, ride on the left side of the road! Pssh. How is one supposed to hand signal in this situation???
From the area of the lakes we eventually made it to the Highlands. This is where a Scottish national park stands along with the highest peak in Britain, a towering snow capped of a beast peaking above the clouds at 1300 meters. Yes, that is Ben Nevis. You could see it in the background…

The highlands were quite different. this almost felt like desert meet far north meet lots of water. I mean, it was desolate, very little fauna and very few types. Yet there were streams everywhere and the land was drenched to the point that it was hard to find a spot to camp. The water was drinkable. And by that I mean, we drank it. But not so showerable.
Damn that Scottish cold water.

The final day of the trip included finishing the climb into the highland eventually, completing the descent from the highlands… quite quite beautiful. Glen Coe is the main village, I guess the best known one in the area. And Glen, it turns out is not just a popular name, it also means valley, in Scottish that is. I did see a sign for Rob Roy’s grave from the train station where we boarded back on our way towards Edinburgh.





Beautiful weather was our lot. I might be the first ever person to return from Scotland with a tan…
142 miles total. Two nights out. Pretty lakes. Lots of hills. And so so many sheep.
Fun way to travel, by bike.

Scotland on two wheels

Inverness is the northern most Scottish city (so described to me by a Scot, so I’ll take it for truth). And this is where our trip begins. Let me clarify this ambiguous ‘our’. Well, I guess I am clear, relatively. The other main protagonist is Lyonell Boulton is a math professor at Hariet-Watt university. A Venezuelan who has decided to leave his homeland, and his faculty position there, to escape an uncomfortable political climate, and take a postdoc position in the UK. Eventually, he landed this faculty position. Of more importance to this story, he is the route planner. This means well folded pieces of 8 by 11 with hybrid pictures of maps and terrain courtesy of our friends at google maps.




From Inverness, the route goes up hill. Well that’s not accurate. Up many hills is more like it. And they seemed to not end. Of course the wind which was blowing according to reports at 6 mph, but felt much stronger and in my stories will definitely be stronger. Oh wait. I mean, the wind was blowing at least at 15 mph and really impeded our climb. Add to that H being out of shape worsened by three weeks of lots of food which included family time and conference time, and the extra baggage up the hill was tough. Lyonell was riding in very low gear (something he called ‘cadence’) and I thought he was doing this to allow me time to catch up. Eventually I found out that this is a system developed by Lance Arm-o-strong which is supposed to be the most efficient way to ride. I on the other hand usually begin at higher gears, especially up hill, and slowly move down my gear ladder. Lyonell said that this is not so good for the bike. Ok, I need to be educated about this. Internet – I am coming to you!




Meanwhile, after all of the uphills we reached a nice downhill, which was rudely interrupted by another uphill, but then was followed by a beautiful downhill to the southern end of Loch Ness. This is of course the famed monster lake of Scotland. Well, I wasn’t impressed. I mean the lake is beautiful and the setting is stunning, but Nessy, the monster? Our cat has meaner streaks. She was tame and sweet, made no fuss about my hiking-boots-pretending-to-be-biking-shoes or about our lack of powerbars or gels. Simply nodded, and with a thick Scottish accent (roll the r’s and pretend you are speaking with a giant gum ball in your mouth) ‘chop chop chop, drink drink drink.’