Omelette du Fromage: That's a Yank Accent!

An extremely long overdue blog post. I've been busy, okay? So. Busy. I have never averaged so little sleep or drank so much coffee in all my life.

I've heard complaints from friends that this blog doesn't have much turbulence. Well here it is!

I was working on an ungodly exam a few weeks ago, courtesy of Dr. USA. It was literally a month long take-home exam. It involved proofs, data processing, applying theories, and then seeing why the said theories are incorrect. Hardest. Exam. Ever.

I'm currently running code (yes, on a Saturday night; turbulence isn't going to solve itself) to calculate the Reynolds stress and several correlations of three-dimensional stereo Particle Image Velocimetry data from an adverse pressure gradient turbulent boundary layer. That pretty much translates to writing lots of code and using up lots of computing power and waiting for computations to get done. A few weeks back, I was running a Direct Numerical Simulation that took a good three days to compute; using four processors. I've heard stories of really big, important simulations taking years to complete; using the strongest, fastest computers in the world.

Have you ever wondered why weather reports are so unreliable? It's because we have only the slightest idea of how turbulence works. That soy milk the hipster barista poured into your fair trade, organic, chai latte? It mixes quickly due to turbulence. Blood flowing through your veins can be modeled as flow through a pipe. Turbulent flow through a pipe. Pollutants coming out a chimney. Huge fire blasts coming out a rocket. Oil spills by BP. High-speed flow over an airplane wing. Cigarette smoke. Wind blowing through leaves. Boiling water. The atmosphere of Jupiter. My life in general. It's all turbulent!

Besides school, I've been traveling a bit. Barcelona is probably the prettiest city I have ever visited. Warm beaches, delicious food, crazy-looking architecture, and Penelope Cruz posters. Amazing.

I took a quick two-day trip to visit the schools I'll be attending next year in Poitiers. One of the schools, ENSMA, has a building that is supposed to look like a crashed spaceship. Except the campus calls is the Camembert, because it looks like a block of cheese from overhead. I hope this Camembert is better than my previous experience. Also, there's an amusement park across the street called Futuroscope. I can't wait to get to Poitiers.

I went to Amsterdam again to meet up with a friend of mine. It looks so much prettier in the summer! We went to a pub close to the infamous Red Light District. I swear, the bartender looked exactly like Artie, the Strongest Man in the World. He served us some regional alcohol called jenever. He then proceeded to disco dance to Earth, Wind, and Fire. I can now say that disco-dancing Artie served me Dutch gin in Amsterdam. Check that off the bucket list.