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Saturday, May 13, 2006
"Tomorrow, the conference"....man, I suck at updating this.
Friday
The residence I'm staying in seems to have a strange layout - the floors are co-ed, yet each floor has a disproportionate number of showers for each sex. For example, my floor has one shower for men and 8 showers for women, while the reverse is true a floor below me. How odd.
Everywhere I go in this city, the architecture is quite interesting. There are large, grandiose buildings, cathedrals seemingly everywhere, and different styles of houses almost per block. There's also lots of green space and trees, as I mentioned before. All make quite a favorable impression.
At the first event of the day (coffee and doughnuts) I manage to summon the courage to actually talk to people. Nevertheless, most people seem to want to talk to others they already know. I have some short conversations with a few grad students, then it's off to the Mac Lane memorial.
I don't remember much about it - mainly everyone just saying how wonderful he was. Great researcher, great professor, etc, etc. One thing that seems odd is how everyone mentions that he has precise ideas about writing textbooks, and how they should be written, and yet - I find his category theory textbook, while useful as a reference, not so useful as a tool to learn from. I think my supervisor mentioned a lot of people get turned off category theory trying to learn from his book.
There are a number of other events - a luncheon, reminisceses (an actual planned event), but the best part of the day was the first talk by John Baez. The slides for his talks are all available; I would definately recommend checking out at least the first one. As with most of his expository stuff, it is all quite accessible, even if you know next to nothing about the areas involved (quite an impressive feat actually). The first lecture covered the analogy between Galois theory and covering spaces (!). The talk was quite warmly received, and bodes well, I believe, for the rest of the conference.
Afterwards, I went back to the residence, and prepared to go out for dinner. I was feeling a bit lonely - again, I had no one to go out with. Fortunately, on my way out the building, someone called me over - he had recognized me from the conference, and wondered I wanted to go out to dinner with him and some friends. I was happy to accept. We ended up (after a brutal walk through severe wind) at an ok Thai restaurant - it wasn't really authentic, but it was decent.
After dinner, I went out with some of the people to a bar - a very American bar, it seemed to me. Pitchers were bloody expensive ($18 us!) but I had a good time. It was nice to talk to other graduate students. It's strange being the only Canadian, though: it reminds me a bit of Lydia's similar experiences - there's definately a cultural divide. These Americans were either from or near Detroit. I was astonished to hear that nearly half the city was basically abandoned, and you didn't go out late at night not because there was too many scary people out, but because if there was someone, there would be no one else around to help you. Yikes.
Friday
The residence I'm staying in seems to have a strange layout - the floors are co-ed, yet each floor has a disproportionate number of showers for each sex. For example, my floor has one shower for men and 8 showers for women, while the reverse is true a floor below me. How odd.
Everywhere I go in this city, the architecture is quite interesting. There are large, grandiose buildings, cathedrals seemingly everywhere, and different styles of houses almost per block. There's also lots of green space and trees, as I mentioned before. All make quite a favorable impression.
At the first event of the day (coffee and doughnuts) I manage to summon the courage to actually talk to people. Nevertheless, most people seem to want to talk to others they already know. I have some short conversations with a few grad students, then it's off to the Mac Lane memorial.
I don't remember much about it - mainly everyone just saying how wonderful he was. Great researcher, great professor, etc, etc. One thing that seems odd is how everyone mentions that he has precise ideas about writing textbooks, and how they should be written, and yet - I find his category theory textbook, while useful as a reference, not so useful as a tool to learn from. I think my supervisor mentioned a lot of people get turned off category theory trying to learn from his book.
There are a number of other events - a luncheon, reminisceses (an actual planned event), but the best part of the day was the first talk by John Baez. The slides for his talks are all available; I would definately recommend checking out at least the first one. As with most of his expository stuff, it is all quite accessible, even if you know next to nothing about the areas involved (quite an impressive feat actually). The first lecture covered the analogy between Galois theory and covering spaces (!). The talk was quite warmly received, and bodes well, I believe, for the rest of the conference.
Afterwards, I went back to the residence, and prepared to go out for dinner. I was feeling a bit lonely - again, I had no one to go out with. Fortunately, on my way out the building, someone called me over - he had recognized me from the conference, and wondered I wanted to go out to dinner with him and some friends. I was happy to accept. We ended up (after a brutal walk through severe wind) at an ok Thai restaurant - it wasn't really authentic, but it was decent.
After dinner, I went out with some of the people to a bar - a very American bar, it seemed to me. Pitchers were bloody expensive ($18 us!) but I had a good time. It was nice to talk to other graduate students. It's strange being the only Canadian, though: it reminds me a bit of Lydia's similar experiences - there's definately a cultural divide. These Americans were either from or near Detroit. I was astonished to hear that nearly half the city was basically abandoned, and you didn't go out late at night not because there was too many scary people out, but because if there was someone, there would be no one else around to help you. Yikes.
