Workin’…Yeah. Even though a lot of our discussion and other research chatter as a group happens on my “lab blog” I mentioned earlier, I do still meet with my small army of students for real face to face time. Today we decided to grab some lunch as a group while we brainstormed together for about two hours, hearing what we’ve all been up to. A sort of lab meeting, if you like. We went to the food court at the University Village, and had Mongolian food, Japanese food, Indian food, and (if I recall) Korean food. As you can see, we sat in the sun for extra warmth, because it’s the Bleak Midwinter here, and so a bit chilly (sorry) outside.
This is the whole crew: (left to right) Veselin Filev, Nikolai Bobev, cvj (front), Tameem Albash, Ramakrishnan Iyer, Arnab Kundu and Jeff Pennington. (And they’re going to send me angry email, since I think that they thought the photo was for the other blog!)
Anyway…. It’s been an insanely busy week here. I think I’m calling it the end of the day right now and after making a nice dinner I’m going to find a nice bar for a while and sit, scribble (maybe), and watch the world go by….maybe take in a movie. There’s a couple of new places on Sunset Blvd, I hear, and I’d like to check them out….
Later.
-cvj
January 20th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
[…] Sean « Workin’ […]
January 21st, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Blead Midwinter? And you’re sitting outside in the sun? That is such a… aaaagh! It’s about 10 degrees celsius cold in Sweden right now. You can’t go outside without having your breath freeze in your nose, and also there is the disadvantage with serious coldness and wetness in your shoes because of snow somehow finding its way to your socks.
Consider that! You sun-bather!
January 22nd, 2006 at 1:20 am
Amelia… I did say I was sorry…. sorry again!
-cvj
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Two questions/ comments:
a) You are dressed pretty formally. I’ve never seen Physics faculty wear dark suits during regular class times. A meeting with an influential person on the agenda that day??
b) I guess that drawing diagrams/ doing “back of the envelope” calculations are a part of talking about string theory. How do you manage that in a round table setting?
January 24th, 2006 at 1:59 am
Hi citrine. some answers:
(a) Whenever I do a formal calculation, I wear a jacket and tie.
(b) Anybody who joins teamcvj must learn to read upside-down.
-cvj
(Alternative answers: (a) Goodness knows what it was that day. Every day I can be sitting on one of several committees at the Dean’s or Provost’s level, or going to some function or other. I have a generic dark suit jacket that lives in my office that can dress me up a few notches when I need it to. When I want 100W level, I bring in a tie…for example at the Board of Trustees meeting tomorrow. Basically, I’ve never been one for the (so non-conformist that it’s very conformist) “scruffy scientist” look. It’s a bit more fun to buck the trend too. Also, it is useful for keeping me warm when campus is chilly. (b) No, the above was the correct answer.)
February 17th, 2006 at 12:53 am
[…] Where was I? Oh, yes, so went to see the movie. It was clearly going to be a better “performance” of the film if one went along to a place that had a good audience (the Arclight, of course) and maybe with some like-minded friends, so I took some students along on a sort of “field trip”, like I did for Proof last semester (see post here). Admittedly, the connection to mathematics and physics is a bit harder to argue for in this case, but what the hey…. So there was Arnab and Rama from Team cvj, (that’s a sort of in-joke…see Wes Anderson’s wonderful “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou”) , and Amy Cassidy from the Condensed Matter Theory group, and she brought along her friend Sam, who is not a student, but a web page architect. (Yes, she did use the word “architect”…. not a mere “designer”, I gather.) Anyway, Sam is probably way hipper than any of us, but she didn’t seem to mind being seen with us for an evening, bless her. […]
March 19th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
[…] Well, my undergraduate student Jeff Pennington IM-ed me last night to tell me about Adium X. It is a new (at least to me) IM program for Mac OS X, and if you have Equation Service installed (don’t tell me you don’t have Equation Service installed!!!), when you type an equation in LaTeX, it shows up fully processed in the IM window! […]