Coventry

Blogger’s note: this blog will be more of a diary entry describing a short trip to Coventry/University of Warwick via a hodgepodge of anecdotes, rather than the recent ups and downs of our narrator.

Dear blog-gery, there is much to say, much that has been happening lately, but I want to avoid all of that and concentrate on the little short trip that included a very nice conference. You know how it is, sometimes telling a story is dealing directly with reality, sometimes it’s a plotted escape. This is not exactly the latter, but its definitely in that ballpark.

From last Wednesday till this Sunday I was at the university of warwick, at a 60th birthday conference. It seemed that this conference was organized rather quickly which had the effect that only people who could afford coming from afar attended, along with a small group of ‘locals’. At the end of the day this meant that there were few people at the conference, all of them quite important and distinguished (read: ‘veterans’ of the profession…) and of course, me.
So I got to rub shoulders with some of the great minds of statistical mechanics, share note pads with innovators of selective random walks, drink beer with mathematicians that could describe many governing communist bodies – and in fact, chair a session and mispronounce some exotic names.
Ok, and now a bit of nerdiness - the math department at the university of warwick (as middle of nowhere as it gets in England (yes, it is England, not Wales…)) is incredible! The building is huge and modern, with lots of open space, high ceilings and light. The common room is two floors connected by stairs and an open balcony, spacious, inviting, and – excitingly, with huge blackboards! And overall, I was somehow inspired to do work while being there. In fact, I had never come back from a conference before with so much motivation to work! I am always so exhausted from attempting to concentrate so hard for 8 hours, trying to understand so many different details, so varied talks… but no, this time I came back motivated and energetic. And so far – its lasted three days! Amazing, I know. Maybe the university of warwick is in my future? Ok, we are not talking about that now…
The city of Coventry, where the university of warwick is located was heavily bombed during world war II, during the blitz. The reasoning being a jet factory. Circa 10,000 people died. The city was quite levelled. In response the brits bombed Dresden. There was a famous cathedral here from gosh, maybe the 13th century, of great importance that got a brunt of the bombing. It was located in the center of town. The walls of it still stand. The roof is gone, the inside is gone for the most part except for a few things that remained, such as some stairs. One of the towers was left completely standing. It’s a very strange place to visit, very powerful. Has that ghostly feeling of war and destruction and things that remained behind afterwards.

Interestingly, right next to it stands the new cathedral. Built in a very modern style, has no resemblance to the skeleton that it stands next to.



Inside, there is an inscription from the people of Dresden, speaking of peace and forgiveness. Coventry provided money to Dresden for its reconstruction and Dresden did the same for Coventry.

No where is it mentioned that the germans were responsible for what happened. The words forgiveness are seen throughout the cathedral.
I found this very interesting. I am not comparing this in any way to the holocaust or to Israel, but just observing that the words associated with the holocaust in Israel are do not forgive and do not forget. Again, this is not a judgement just an observation, something to think about…

Work

well, the overwhelming response(s) all said more about me. i was feeling like i was writing too much about me, me, me me me. and its hard cause i want to hear more about you in a sense, but blogging i guess is not really so much a two-way (or many-way) communication path...

ok, work. so, there has been a good amount of drama at work. and writing this down here will essentially guarantee that i won't open my blog up to the public. so let me begin with this, the major players in this story will be:
michael levitin: russian, late 40's - early 50's, russian, beard, two kids (one in cambridge, one finished uni), math professor at cardiff.
uzy smilansky: israeli, mid 60's, goatee, two kids, maybe three, at least two of which live in the UK, physics professor at weitzmann institute as well as a 1/4 position in cardiff.
marco marletta: italian, yet scottish accent, mid 40's, beard, no kids, math professor in cardiff.
hillel raz: israeli, yet american accent with faint traces of a crazyland, late-late 20's, thin beard, no kids, three year position at cardiff uni.

the setting: a three floor (two floor in the UK...) brick building on Senghennydd road (go for it, try to pronounce that... nope, try again). a cloudy day, rain plus sun, welsh and english accents heard in the street below. in the far distance, sheep are grazing in the meadows.

marco knocks on hillel's office door. hillel who is busy, tells marco he'll come in a sec. in his office marco tells hillel that uzy called and asked that hillel call him. hillel finds this strange. he has communicated with uzy plenty, via skype, via email. why is a third person involved? marco looks at hillel and says, you know why he wants to speak to you, no? close the door.

dramatic music onset.

so michael is 99% leaving the department. he has received an offer from reading university. this is due to personal reasons (and he hates cardiff). of course we would love for you to stay in the department.

huh? hillel's face expresses shock.

back in his office hillel considers the situation. will he have to leave cardiff to reading (just outside of london, not very exciting in any way shape or form - though oscar wilde was jailed there once!)? he is just beginning to maybe settle in cardiff, build some foundations. and yes, non of them are strong, still alone most of the time but getting better. move again? and into england? not excited.

hillel calls uzy. uzy talks about work. mentions nothing about michael.

days pass.

a weekend passes.

michael comes back from london (he spends essentially every weekend there, plus most of the weekdays). comes into hillel's office. does a couple minute talk of work. then asks hillel to close the door.

i will be leaving the department march 1st , michael informs hillel. personal reason. but nothing for you to worry about. the grant stays here. i'll be available by skype. we'll be able to meet every now and then. uzy will be coming to the department soon. nothing for you worry about. if you need, you can come and cry on my shoulder.
smile, leaves the office.

uzy speaks to hillel the next day. essentially repeating the same information. nothing for you to worry about. the grant stays, i'll be coming to cardiff.

hillel begins to think about this, realizing that michael esentially had applied for a job after hillel accepted the position, keeping this information hidden from uzy and himself.

a few good days later. uzy essentially tells hillel that there is no point in working with michael, that he is a bit of a dry well, has been for a while. the personal issues have affected his work and...

uzy advises hillel that he can come to israel for as long as he wants to.

hillel purchases a ticket to israel, planning on coming back to cardiff to spend two months with michael and see how things proceed. he goes back and forth on this decision, wondering maybe he should just stay in israel where he'll have family support, a friend network and people to talk to at work. on the other hand, hillel doesn't want to give up on the small foundation he has built in cardiff. these things take time, he reminds himself, so don't give up on what you have done and what may still be. on the other hand, create the best work situation possible for yourself and allow room for maneuvering.

and so, hillel will be on his way to israel november 30th. return flight set for january 25th, yet all of february has been cleared from any and all obligations and hillel may remain longer in israel.

hmmm, thinks hillel, more sunshine, less cold, more falafel, less fish and chips. this may still be a good idea...

work? that is a different equation that remains unsolved.

piano sonata number 14 by beethoven, comes on as the light fades. sounds of rain in the background. a red dragon is flashed for 1/10 a second as the music fades out.

YOU

this blog is about .... you.

why not? i have writing about me for so long, its getting kind of boring. i want to write about you, give you some facebook type numbers, throw some statistics out at you (and as you know, 92.3% of the time you can make 73.14% of the statistics mean anything you want!). so here we go... some numbers to begin with:

number of readers: 48
people with multiple email addresses listed: 3
people that haven't accepted invitation: 1
people whose invitation has been removed cause they hadn't accepted it for so long: 1 (not the same person as above... so far...)
different countries represented: 6 (none from the UK... don't want to be writing about people and my life with them and then have them read it and change things...)

number of blog followers: 18
followers with pictures: 4

total number of comments: 82
day with most comments: first blog entry, day before leaving..., with 7
second most comments: 6, occurred twice - blogs about food and judaism. hmm...
number of entries with no comments: 1
person with most comments: not even close, penguinrobot leads the pack with 23, sonya is second with 11. duck and frog, with 10, started very strongly and led for the first two months... then we have neta with 7, lisa w 6...
some others of interest: two comments have been removed by their authors (suspicious???). for a person that has only commented three times total, rohit has commented twice on the same blog that dealt with Cymraeg (Welsh) and spoke of leeks... 6 comments are attributed to hillel raz though the narrator claims to have only written one of them... three comments are in hebrew, two in welsh. one comment by the narrator is an answer to a question written by a reader (stronger effort will be made to answer all of your questions...)


future topics:
the narrator thought about a few future topics, amongst them - going out at night in cardiff, beer in cardiff, pubs in cardiff, late night food in cardiff (hmm, strong theme here, eh?), math department, driving/bike riding...
are their any topics you would be interested in reading about? please do mention them and the narrator (nagged by the group of editors and pushed by the investors threats) will comply.

finally, a reader suggested that the blog be made public. if you have opposition to this, or thoughts on the matter, please share...

Welsh

i began an intensive 5 day Welsh course, two hours a day (of which i missed four hours...). this was paid for by the uni and had to be approved by the head of the department, a native son of the land of Wales. he tested me a couple of times. hmm, i am not sure i passed... but - let me tell you about the course.

so first thing, there were about 8 of us on the first day. that number was halved by the next day - not sure why. some people take Welsh for work - the elderly here do speak Welsh and sometimes are more comfortable with it. a couple of the students in my class were actually elderly Welshians, Welshies, Welshires (hmm, i'll have to choose a favorite) who had learned some Welsh back in their elementary school days or from their parents, and wanted to learn some more. cute seeing this 60+ year old man trying to remember how to count by going back to the technique he learned in kindergarten (i.e. fingers), and having strange associations to some words...

i enjoyed learning some words, hearing some sounds. one things that surprised me was the letter ll (its considered 'a' letter). the sound is like the 'ch' in hebrew/arabic, except not. so i thought it would be easy for me to pronounce. i was the worst in the class. see the 'ch' in hebrew, comes from the back of the throat. the 'll' comes from the side of the mouth and its a 'ch' followed by a 'l' sound in a way. and there is definite tongue action while pronouncing it. its a bit weird. the teacher repeatedly helped me with it...

the roots of the language are celtic, yet there are some words that i recognized from italian (i.e. latin roots) such as llun (which is monday - lunedi in italian, but not pronounced in any way similar to that...). its much more musical than english, and this also explains the welsh accent. in fact, rather than just listening to the teachers, i spent half of the class time trying to listen to the teachers' accent so i can immitate it...

there are some definite funnies from the language:

a week - wythnos (pronounced oyth-nos). so this is funny because wyth = 8, nos = night...
raining - (yeah, they taught us that for *some* reason...) bwrw glaw (pronounced boro glaw) - literal meaning? hitting rain.
daffodil - the flower, is the national flower of wales (flowers around the birthday of st. davids, the patron saint of wales, but that's not the reason i have it here...) cenhinen pedr (pronounced kenhinen pedr). now why would i mention this here? rohit would def appreciate this - literally, this translates into Peter's leek. yipe. because it obviously greatly resembles a leek, or maybe because everything here resembles a leek...

finally - we learned how to count! and we started with dim = 0... i found this interesting. they have installed a whole number system here rather than a natural one...


10 days of rain in a row (though non yet today!)

cardiff castle

The main structure in the city centre, peering over all roads, buildings and arcades (the closed shopping areas with narrow lanes, small shops and round roofs – usually glass – old school shopping style) is Cardiff castle. This castle is built over roman remains, of which very little remains… seriously, these remains are a few bricks that used to be a wall and a few other bricks that used to be a part of a road. The castle itself was rebuilt a few times and held by various nobility. Whether this means dukes, lords, sires or other knights – I am not exactly sure – but they probably all loved fish and chips and ate leeks that were way, way, way boiled.



In the 1800s a new noble man took over the castle, Bute was his name, and reconstructed it to what it is today. He put in a variety of decorations, spanning different decades, different periods, different styles – and different political statements. For instance, the library is full of little carved out monkeys, some with sunglasses, others making faces. They say this was a caricature poking fun of the famous Chuck Darwin who of course was born in Wales. (actually he wasn’t, but why not give it a try…).

The colours of the rooms are vivid, the drawings go between strange to amusing to biblical. Sometimes, they are all three at the same time. Lord Bute spent a lot of money on this castle bringing it to what it is. He put in rooms and named them names that can only be considered ridiculous now days, but back then must have had some sort of ‘noble-high’ meaning - names such as the bachelor room, the arab room… still, he only spent 6 weeks a year here…


The castle wall is extensive and covers a huge area. One can only imagine peasants back in the day sneaking in on romantic adventures, to have a picnic in the castle grass. Now days, peasants are allowed in with a symbolic fee of 9 pounds – sometimes even to enjoy a cheese fair in the castle grounds! Either way, different animals guard the castle. The fact that these animals are made of concrete and have nothing to do with the ones that live in this country, do not stop them from protecting the castle, intimidating babies, and causing tourists to stop and take pictures with them. Ahem.

Bute did a lot for Cardiff, from reconstruction of the castle, to rebuilding parts of the city and to simply spending money here. A huge and beautiful park stands behind the castle with massive green areas and a river running through it. Its really beautiful and has traditional English gardens, colourful and wintery, all year long. The park is called, naturally, Bute park. Its one of the nicer parts of the city and follows the river for a bit of time. In fact, there is a bike trail called the taft trail (having to do with river in Welsh) which follows the river through the park, and then eventually out of town.

3 days of rain in a row.

jewish cardiff plus other bits...

so the high holidays came and went and i went to synagogue and then came back again (see the word play?! eh eh... yeah its kind of weak... but its late here so i'll give myself the benefit of doubt). so for rosh hashana (5770 baby!) i went with ronen the falafel guy. the synagogue i went to was the orthodox one which is led by a chabad rabbi, but its not a chabbad synagogue. cardiff has two synagogues (the joke about two synagogues is true...) the second one is reform and is led supposedly by a woman that has converted to judaism and has great legs and wears mini skirts (i have been told this by a non-jewish english man who married an israeli lady...). there were maybe 30 people there, three women. see, its orthodox but not hardcore - the women are facing the men and the mehitza (the dividing wall) is made of glass. so there is definite distraction going on... the people who showed up were mostly old men. not many youngsters. the rabbi is an english chap from manchester who studied computer science before becoming religious. has 5 kids now - and his wife is still young... he took a liking to me, and don't tell me that it's just because he is a chabad rabbi, darnit! anyway, i had dinner at his house that evening and met some of the israelies that work in cardiff. they all work in the carts at the mall selling dead sea products or hair stuff that provide curls. i guess the brits love curls (correction - i know the brits love curls, i went out with one of the israelies to a few clubs and he has a head full of curls and man, the girls were just magnetized to his head).
anyway, a funny thing about the synagogue. now i have seen a good number of synagogues in a few countries, and all of them take something from the local land in style - either in architecture, decorations, etc. in this synagogue, of course the accents were welsh - which was cute, to hear hebrew prayers in a welsh accent. the synagogue itself is quite new - 2002 - so the style is nothing in particular. but there is a special prayer on the wall - for the queen. in hebrew. i found this quite amusing.
the next week was yom kipur - the day of atonement. it was also the first day of school - but that's a completely different story. so i did what i usually do, and bought two puzzles in preparation. karen, one of the israelies that i met on rosh hashana, lives with a few other israelies who were not keeping the holiday, and wanted a place to fast, so she came and spent the night in my guest room. first guest!!! it was nice having someone to talk to through the holiday. someone i didn't know well (which means angry feelings of hunger and thirst could not come out... not that i was that hungry, but still). it was actually some what intimate to share yom kipur with someone. anyway - synagogue was more packed this time. some kids even. and an older israeli lady who met me once, who the first night said that karen and i are a great match, and the next evening called me over and said that she chatted with her a little bit and decided that maybe she is not that great of a match for me... ahhh, israelies.
some interesting cultural differences. not all the men wear talis here (the white cloth that goes over the shoulders, sometimes heads, worn in synagogues on special days when the torah is taken out). only the ones that are married or have been married. thats the cultural custom. i brought mine the first time and was asked if i am married.
the community, which i saw a bit more of on yom kipur, is not large. i was told it might be around 3000 people. of course when people hear you are from israel, they all want to tell you about the last time they went, what they saw, that their daughter is moving there, that their son studied there, etc. all in a welsh accent of course... the rabbi's accent though is manchesterian (?), which means all right he says all rice.
i told all my friends here about the holidays - they know very little here about judaism. in the states there are so many jewish references in pop culture, i now realize, here very few. so its interesting to tell people about rosh hashana - impress them with 5770 (2009, com'on...) and a full day of fasting.
the puzzles if you are asking were not too difficult. one was 250 of a maze, so i thought it'd be tough, but it wasn't too bad once you got the idea. the other had a ridiculous sky - completely dark, but besides that was quite easy.

finally - here are some photos -
bought some new kitchen ware, went to a fancy kitchen store. so fun. my new attitude is - i am getting paid a bit better than before, i can afford to pay a bit more for higher quality things. it begins in the kitchen!!!

my first making of schug. here is the UK version of the green monster...

and finally - swine flu is such a big deal here. here is a poster in the math department:

you are supposed to have TWO flu buddies in case you catch the virus. and then you are not to leave your house, just call the doctor and if 3 of the 10 conditions are met, you have swine flu. use your buddy to protect yourself, protect us all. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The valleys

cardiff is situated on the southeastern edge of wales, on the sea. north of it there are small mountains (huge in davis standards...) which create a nice network of valleys. now since i have arrived here i have been hearing about the valleys. for one, there is a definite stereotype of the valley people - and its slightly different than like 'the valley' in l.a.... the stereotypes say that the valley people are the ones who descend on cardiff every weekend and get smashedly drunk. they are the uneducated, ignorant fools that cause fights. half of the teenage girls there are pushing baby carts (ok, this stereotype is somewhat rooted in reality, the valley and wales in general have one of the highest (i think second) teenage pregnancy rates in europe). anyway, not a pretty picture do the people of cardiff have of the valley folk.
a bit of history, and some geography - the valley used to be a prime mining area. before WW2, they housed the world's highest concentration of mineral, metal, coal mines. now these mines closed, some before WW2, hastened by the great depression (or whatever they call it here...) and then during the war some were opened, yet heavily bombed. and then over time, more closed, with margaret thatcher really pushing some buttons against the miners when she tried to squash a strike. anyway, almost all of them are closed to actual mining. there are many museums and mines that you can go down to, and see what it was like (one is called the Big Pit, i am totally going to that one!!!). and there are rusty factories left and some other abandoned industrial buildings.
so this is the impression i have of the valleys from travel guides and locals. ready? here we go... (yeah, i know you can see these before, but still...)




doesn't exactly carry the written stories image... amazingly green. amazingly lush. soft hills with sharp cuts of the actual valleys, filled with large neighborhoods of villages that became towns. its not suburbia in any way, there are definitely rusty factories and beat up old buildings. it doesn't seem as if the hand of the government that sprinkles money on some areas has been generous with this part. the people i saw definitely had that roughness edge to them. cut up dirty t's. tattoos of the non-surfer, chinese letters variety (try not perfectly done scorpions, probably carved in a mid-drunkness state). definitely lots of teenage mothers pushing baby carts. and generally, a rougher look, i mean that's just the best word.
so at the end, you get this beautiful surrounding soft green hills, beautiful trees, white dotted prairies (the white dots = sheep...) and the roughness of what used to be mine towns, moving towards the 21st century (at 20th century speed, at best...). very interesting.