The Summer Palace and C4 Bending

I swam 19.29 today, much faster than I would have imagined, considering that my arms lacked swimming fitness. The daily badminton duels with my parents, and the floorball gathering, and the Beijing walkathons have taken their toll.

My first day in Beijing was covered in smog, gray gray gray, so much so I despaired that anything could be beautiful under Beijing's gray sky. The city is too far inland to enjoy the ocean breeze, so dust and pollutants from cars collect and build up, till the next wind or rain. On bad days, it's equivalent to smoking six or seven cigarettes a day, or so I've been told by a doctor, second-hand. Beijing locals aren't surprised that non-smokers get throat cancer.

Inside my five-star Royal King Hotel, I breathed cleanness and soaked in tubs and lay in huge beds with actually-comfortable pillows. Why is their pillow so comfortable? I don't get it - it looks so ordinary, so much so I now think Tempur-pedic is a fraud. I am treated to dinners in posh restaurants by BAB and Xi, and ate the best dumplings and xiaolongbao ever in Jade Garden, where I later brought Kat for a treat. The currency conversion here makes me feel like a king; even expensive restaurants don't feel expensive. And those famous words from BAB: keep the receipt. There are many receipts.

My idea about the C4-bent Wilson loop finally took life, after brewing in my mind for a year now. It's nice to see BAB and my chinese collaborators at the Institute of Physics so excited. BAB quickly proved the equivalence with the Pfaffian in the plane ride back to California, something that I wanted to do myself, because I enjoy these analytical challenges. I felt a bit cheated, like he could have let me earn my chops to derive it. Nevertheless, I came up with a better proof days later. Hopefully, these materials are really found - there is much hope riding on them, because their existence assumes no spin-orbit coupling, and so many materials have no spin-orbit coupling.

After a breakthrough in our physics discussions, I went off into the urban jungle, where wild dogs roam free, and attack each other, and are eaten in respectable restaurants, if they are not careful. Kat and I toured Beijing. We went to the outskirts of the Forbidden City, carefully avoiding the main tourist crowds. I hear that if you head to the center of the City, you're jumping into a river of tourists, and you just flow with the river. We weren't careful enough, and were dragged into hidden art gallery by a conniving university-student-cum-artist-cum-tour-salesman. He tried to convince us that his water paintings were beautiful, and when that failed he appealed to our compassion for his plight as a struggling university student. Nevertheless, he was charming enough that I didn't mind, and I not-so-quickly extricated myself from the gallery; Kat got stuck longer, and eventually bought a calligraphy of her name for ten yuan. We found a quiet garden in the outskirt of the city, where couples play badminton, and locals come to take their nap in the shade. Such an oasis I did not expect to find.

The last day was spent in the Summer Palace, which is dominated by the Kunming Lake - a man-made lake dug up by 100000 labourers because of the whim of an emperor. Rumours say the ground they dug up formed a small mountain next to the lake. We took Lonely Planet's suggestion and toured the lake in a human-powered pedal boat. Then climbed the most beautiful set of stairs  up to the Hall of Longevity, and finally got lost in a maze of gardens at the top of the climb, where we eventually found a beautiful pond surrounded by intricate walkways. There Kat taught me to salute the sun, and I got my first taste of yoga. Eventually, I admitted to feeling self-conscious. Our yoga session had attracted a crowd of tourists who were eagerly taking pictures. Sometimes I feel Kat is oblivious to the attention she gets. In Beijing, she drew a lot of attention. 'Meiguoren!' A child shouted at her. She admits to feeling surrounded by silence, because she couldn't understand a single spoken word. What a curious feeling. In contrast, I have had many misadventures being able to understand half of what people say, and being able to communicate a quarter of what I want to say. Like staring down an all-Chinese menu and having the kind waitress explain to me what each dish means. Like being locked out of the Institute office by a stubborn security guard thrice, and being unable to complain of the injustice of it all. I will remember his face when he saw Kat and I walk through the gate the next day. 

I see 47 a lot

Dear J,

I am currently in Singapore. As the saying goes, I am eating very well. Lately I've been seeing the number 47 a lot. 47% discount on yesterday's Chinese dinner at Tunglok Classics. $4.70 for every second person at the Orchard Hotel Buffet if you dress in the national red. This coincidence prompted me to thinking that tomorrow is Singapore's 47'th National Day.

I wake up early in the morning to play Badminton with my parents, have breakfast with them, then depart to Starbucks for my daily dose of physics. After, I meet the family for dinner and dessert and we show each other pictures of exotic vacations and everyday life. Moon and I are currently planning a trip to the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland in December. It promises to be amazing.

Soon, I will fly to Beijing and visit the Institute of Physics, to talk physics with my advisor Andrei and a mutual collaborator. While I've started making some forays out of Princeton to talk with collaborators, these forays are typically short-distance and I travel by train. Now I feel like a globe-trotter, and to think I will barely understand anything the locals say in Beijing, but some words will leap out because of my rudimentary grasp of the language. The novelty of the experience is tantalising.

I will also be meeting Kat in Beijing, and we'll find some places to explore for a few days, where I am not yet sure. By genuine coincidence, we found ourselves in the same city in the same week; she has a conference there. And EW has been bugging me to go to China for a long time, so very likely he'll be joining us in Beijing as well.  

I only remembering reading Asimov's Nemesis, and I appreciated his futuristic imaginations, though I find his character dialogues stilted at times. An author that I recently discovered is Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I think you may like the Bloody Sun, because the protagonist Jeff Kerwin is fleshed out well and I suspect he will appeal to you.

While you've been mastering Solidworks, I have been trying to beef up my vocabulary in C, and to a much lesser extent C++. My teacher is the internet, this fickle creature, source of all truth, if you can find it. There are some things Matlab can't do efficiently, and in one of my research projects, I found myself in a position where efficiency is essential, and is possibly realized by lower-level machine coding.

Robots in attics? What do they do? Hunt mice or bombs? Whatever they do, that sounds like the kind of hands-on project that you enjoy. I'm glad to hear about the program with high school students. What exactly did you do with them?

Also, are you still staying at that falling-apart house with the two girls who are always tempting you to drink? How's it going by the way - the not-drinking. And what is the big K up to these days?

I miss talking to you. I know probably I can't tempt you to go to China. At some point we need to discuss a coast-to-coast visit again.

An amazing Starbucks

Moon is sitting in front of me right now, we are in an amazing Starbucks. Starbucks does one thing right, sometimes, which is to appear friendly to people who care to stone with their labtops. This Starbucks at Adelphi is amazing in this regard, with long tables, comfy chairs, numerous powerplugs, and a view of Orchard Road (including two other Starbucks across the road; neither are amazing).

She is sipping her passionfruit tea, reading the 'Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms'. Lately, she's been explaining to me what a derivative is: many variations of the same theme. Sometimes, I feel the theme is just: I want to gamble. Lately, she's started reading the Business Times seriously, and is bugging me about Matlab, and learning covariances. She's serious.

Eventually, I must bug her enough so that she'll show me her China pictures, which she always holds back because she doesn't want to do it twice. She doesn't believe me when I say, the story always gets better in the next telling.

The Mix

It was a strange mix of friends who came for floorball this time. AC and GY have just left the country, only a few days after I became front page news. WH admitted to being uncomfortable around people without the support of the other legs.

Two ex'es came: JN and WX. Imps was worried that people would misunderstand the point of the game.

It was a poignant meeting with JN, whom I haven't met in so long. He has a finance-related job he doesn't really like, and a girlfriend who loves dancing. We've been friends, on and off, for a long time; it's times like these I wish we were on. It was a great game and my legs almost kept up with me, with frequent stretching! Playing with JN reminded me of euphoric games in junior college, where our class team were champions of a sort. Later, he told me, we should sit down for a proper dinner. Such was his manner, I could not doubt his sincerity; I was touched.

WX's brother was embroiled in a media scandal, as I found out later. I asked her out for dinner after the game, but she excused herself for that reason. But my gesture was not ignored. We met for lunch a few days later at her work place. Though I think of her as family, I wonder if she's fully comfortable with me. Sometimes I get the feeling that she won't meet my eyes. It can be so difficult.

YC and MS came as well. YC was his usual bumbling, charming self with my sisters. Later I found out about his sister. Such pain he must have felt.

Bo had a unusually productive game, in terms of goals. Imps later declared that 'she lacks discipline', so that 'her head won't swell'.