I was unofficially offered a PhD position today.

I'm Sorry, I Don't Speak English

I "finished" with school! And by "finished," I actually mean not finished at all. I completed my classes, but I officially start my thesis work tomorrow. Even with all this work to do, I made sure to plan some time to travel. I went to Dublin, Glasgow, and finished in Manchester.

Dublin is a really fun place! It seems that every night the locals go to bars and get quite loopy. Don't they work the next day? I witnessed a grown Irishman perform a headstand, and then proceed to chug a Guinness while still on his head. Of course I went to the Guinness Storehouse. It turns out it takes ~2 minutes to pour a proper pint.

I have fallen in love with Glasgow. Glasgow feels like a long lost uncle to Seattle. A fancy uncle who is into pretty architecture and scotch. I didn't think it was possible, but I found a university that is on par with the University of Washington in terms of aesthetics. It's the University of Glasgow. Glasgow has a similar music scene to Seattle, it seems. I went to some random show in the basement of a bar and ran into these fine gentlemen. Oh Glasgow, I wish I had known about you earlier.

I learned that people from Manchester are called "Manc," but the word "mank" can also mean disgusting. Well that is just daft! The people are very friendly, and the city is quite nice. There are lots of pubs, cafés, and an entire mile of Indian food. Also, the city that Karl Pilkington comes from can't possibly be bad. I have no idea why The Smiths were so miserable, but thank goodness they were.

Cheeky Oscar Wilde is cheeky

Infamous Guinness harp

Glasgow Cathedral

University of Glasgow

Isn't this just the most picturesque landscape of all time?

Manchester

John Rylands Library

Manchester Cathedral

Pretty Blue Police Sirens

Oh, hai there! I'm a little late on the update. I've been super busy, okay? When you move to France and you start your own blog, you can update it as often as you want. I promise I won't complain. 

Do you remember that pretty picture I came up with a few months ago? Well, the experiment I ran resulted in nothing like it. At all. Oh well.

What in God's name do these colors mean? I have absolutely no idea. SCIENCE! 

I went to Paris to see some friends that have visited from Los Angeles. Despite what you hear about L.A. pieces of it are quite nice! Only pieces of it though. The rest of is is god awful. Why would anyone willfully decide to live there? Anyway, we decided to go to the traditional tourist places. It's hard to go wrong with visiting arguably the greatest museum in the entire world.

Asian girl doing I don't know what.

If I were a holy man, I would have a pet lion also.

What does it take to become a saint? Have a machete lodged in your head? I would totally do that,

A child choking a goose. Because it's art, that's why.

Guy is serious business.

Having these friends of mine visit was really fun! But it also felt a little strange. It felt like they didn't belong here. Except I am just like them, so I don't belong here either. We are strangers. They made me see how strange it is that I am here. Some American guy who speaks very little French: what am I doing here? Learning about turbulence? Yeah, I guess so. But why France? Why these strange people who say "alors" and "putain" all the time? Why these people who carry baguettes everywhere they go? Why this strange land that blames the Romanians for giving them horse meat instead of beef?  It's because some of the greatest minds are French. Laplace, Lagrange, d'Almbert, Fourier, Carnot, Boussinesq, Galois (my hero), Navier; they're all French. That's why I am here. To learn from the best.

It's been decided that I will stay in France until at least September. I will be studying the aeroacoustic instabilities on a plasma torch that is used for the coating of materials. Maybe turbine blades need some ceramic coating for thermal protection? Maybe an airfoil needs an anti-friction coating to reduce drag? I dunno!

I really like living in France. One of my favorite things is waking up on a Saturday morning, and tuning into KEXP. You see, France is +9 hours ahead of Seattle. So when I wake up, Seattle is heading home from a hard night out. If I were in Seattle, I wouldn't have a chance to listen to the radio, because I would be just one of the many people trying to get home. But I am not in Seattle! I am lucky enough to catch KEXP in the twilight hours. The hours where magic happens. The hours where no one else is paying attention. Only you and the moonlight and the 41 bus heading to home. It's like the entire city belongs to you and only you. The feeling you get is strange. But other people have felt it too. I'm not really sure what to call it, but some people refer to it as "the night bus" or "dream pop" and they have dedicated a type of music to the feeling you get during this time. If you've ever taken the bus from downtown at ~3am on a cold, rainy, and quiet night, then you're already familiar with the feeling this kind of music gives you. Here is a small example: 

Also, I got to talking to someone about intelligent design the other day. One of their arguments was that the universe had to have a designer. There is no way that the world could be so perfect and orderly without a creator. How could order come from chaos? This seems like a nice thought, and I wish it were true.

Well, let me tell you. The world is not orderly. At all. The world is constantly trying to kill us. (See today's huge fucking meteor strike.) The world is almost always in chaos and instability. Even something as simple as cooking spaghetti in your kitchen is a case for a chaotic and unstable system. Will it rain tomorrow? I have no idea! The weather might be modeled as a chaotic system and can only be described by probability. If a butterfly flaps its wings in the Atlantic ocean, will it cause a hurricane in California? It's possible, I don't know. There is chaos. Everywhere! All the time! Forever! So whenever someone tells you that the world is so perfect and orderly and how could that come from chaos, you call them out on their B.S. Even with something as simple as cooking spaghetti, the world is chaotic. 

In my humble opinion, this is what makes the world beautiful. The world would be terribly boring if you already knew what was going to happen. There would be no need for philosophers or scientists or ethicists or engineers. Everything would already be known. A very horrible existence, no? If you already know all the answers, it means you're asking boring questions. (courtesy of a softer world)

The Pope Does Not Tweet in Latin

Happy (late) New Year! Whooooo! I hope this last year was pretty great for you all, and I hope this coming year will be just fine also. As usual, I'm super busy. I spent my Friday night writing a lab report about the power level of an acoustic source in a semi-anechoic chamber. I did this while drinking a bottle of Spanish wine. I'm pretty sure it's the greatest lab report of all time.

I spent my New Year in Prague. Prague is probably one of the most beautiful cities I've ever been to. It felt like everywhere you looked, there was a a big castle or something made out of gold or something with a lot of history. For instance, I went to Prague Castle and saw the exact window where defenestrations would occur. A local made a really great pun about it. There were some people that survived their fall by hitting something soft before hitting the ground. The Czechs bounced, as it were.

Some friends and I had a nice New Years Eve dinner with lots of food and drink. At the stroke of midnight, we went out to the restaurant balcony with a bottle of champagne and watched fireworks go off. And good God, did fireworks go off! On every street in Prague, there was something exploding. It was pretty amazing.

Next up was Munich. I want to live in Munich. I stayed at a hostel and met a guy from Hong Kong, and another guy from Seoul. We went to the world famous beer hall, Hofbräuhaus (Mozart was rumored to frequent this place quite a bit) and ordered liters of beer, bratwurst, and pig knuckle (it tastes better than it sounds). It was honestly some of the best beer of my life. We were joined by an Italian couple. They were dressed all in black with random metal bands on their clothing. They were Italian metalheads. They didn't speak much English, so I tried speaking a strange Spanish/French hybrid with them. It worked out pretty well, and we spoke about things like religion, bunga bunga, and how horrible Italian beer is. We all ended up spending the night chatting and drinking liter after liter of delicious beer until closing time. It was such an amazing experience just connecting with random people from different backgrounds like that. It almost sounds like a joke: a Mexican, a Chinaman, a Korean, and Italian metalheads walk into a bar...

My last stop was Zürich. Zürich is a wonderful place! It felt like a very clock-themed city. There are clock towers everywhere, and Switzerland is known for their fancy watches. Although the city seems to be very time-themed, the people of Zürich are very laid-back people who just go with the flow. Maybe it was just the people I was hanging out with. I explored the city, bought some Swiss chocolate, and went to see an Italian physicist rock out with his band. I was also introduced to the magic that is Toss My Body. 

Prague Castle off in the distance.

Astronomical clock in Prague.

Rathaus-Glockenspeil in Munich.

Hofbräuhaus in Munich, the happiest place on Earth.

Clock towers in Zürich.

Along the river in Zürich.

Early Mornings and Late Nights

I'm late in posting and I'm very sorry!

I've been incredibly busy trying to come up with a way to calculate dispersion relations. I've also been busy making some noise in an aeroacoustics lab (see below). By the way, did you know that math is everywhere? Math can be so festive!

I have a few trips coming up. First, I'm going back home for for about a week. Then, I'll be in Prague for the New Year. After that, it's off to Munich and then to Zurich. SOOOO excited! It's probably going to be crazy cold, but that's okay. If I don't die from frostbite, I'll be sure to post some pictures. An added bonus is that I'll be flying with Icelandair on my way back to the US. Iceland seems like such a friendly little island, so I'm curious to see what their airline is like. Maybe they'll play Sigur Rós throughout the flight?

Lastly, here are some good words to remember in the wake of yesterday's events. Courtesy of Mr. Rogers:

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world."

At any given moment, this is what my computer screen looks like.

Disco power is amplified in the aeroacoustics lab.

Christmas market in the center of Poitiers.

Soundtrack to Eating Scottish Seabirds

Classes have started. So far, so good. I took up a personal project that involves what is called a circular, hydraulic jump. You can see a simple example of a hydraulic jump by turning on your kitchen sink. The ring of water that forms at the bottom of the sink is the hydraulic jump. Well, it turns out that this thing appearing in your kitchen can be used as a model for the time-reversed equivalent of a black hole, aka a white hole. A black hole sucks everything up and nothing can escape, not even light. Well a white hole spits everything out, and nothing can get in. In the kitchen sink, you can see little waves traveling out towards the ring, but you don't see waves traveling in. Just like a white hole! Who would have thought that fluid dynamics is analogous with the weirdest, craziest things happening in the universe?

My professor sent me a bunch of papers to read. Papers about things like quantum field theory, general relativity, time-reversal, and Hawking radiation. These topics are things super insanely intelligent theoretical physicists study. One of the papers even calls Stephen Hawking's calculation of the event horizon temperature as "naive." I'm in way over my head, but I would much rather be overwhelmed than underwhelmed.

I went to Bordeaux. Twice! Once to go exploring, and once to see one of my favorite bands of all time, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I've heard that there is a bit of a rivalry between Paris, the largest city in France, and Bordeaux, the second largest city. I won't add anything to fuel this rivalry, but what I will say that I really REALLY like Bordeaux. Of course, I made sure to try some wine while I was there. I also had a funny exchange with a bartender:

"Good evening. What kind of beer is the Waggle Dance?"

"It's a honey beer. You're American, right? Yeah, maybe you would like it."

My professor took some classmates and me to visit the Château de Clos Lucé. This was the place Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life. Everyone knows Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, and that he's one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (that's right, Michael Bay, both teenage AND mutant). However, he was also an engineer and an inventor. A really good one. Some of his inventions didn't work so well, but the principles they were based on made sense. Very impressive, especially for someone in his day.

One of my schools, École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et d'Aérotechnique. This building was designed to be slanted so that it looks like a crashed spaceship.

Basilique Saint-Michel.

Lots of nice little shops and cafés and restaurants.

Le miroir d'eau.

Pont de Pierre.

Leonardo da Vinci's study room.

"Movement is the cause of all life."

Courtyard at Château de Clos Lucé.

da Vinci's precursor to the helicopter.

da Vinci's design for a military tank.

Mon Aéroglisseur est Plein d'Anguilles

Classes start next week. The schedule is still being planned but, from what I know, I will be having Aeroacoustics (with associated lab), Advanced Signal Processing (with associated lab), Turbulent Heat Transfer, French Language, and a personal project in which I get to chose a topic to work on. I'm thinking combustion, maybe? These are all set for before Christmas. After Christmas, it's looking like I'll have a modeling class (RANS stuff), Stability, Compressible Turbulence, and more Advanced Signal Processing. Good God, these sound hard.

I've been in Poitiers for about a month now. During that time I've been exploring Poitiers and seeing all sorts of super old churches, hanging out at cafes, and studying French, often with funny results (see below). I'm planning on going to a city called Bordeaux this weekend. Bordeaux is pretty much the wine capital of the world. We'll see how it goes! 

Baptisére Saint-Jean, this was built in 360 AD and is thought to be the oldest church in France.

A super awesome cafe/library/bar. I'm planning on doing a lot of "studying" here.

Things shut down from 12:00pm to 2:00pm. Everyday. Lunch time is serious business!

Creepy headless statue in a church courtyard.

This study method is giving me the wrong impression about France.

Don't listen to them, little guy. You can do anything you put your mind to. You're such an inspiration.

P.S. Here are some clips from an old British show called Trigger Happy TV. Probably the greatest hidden camera show of all time. Hilarious scenes complimented by great music.

El Hambre es Muy Feo

This is a story my dad told me.

My dad grew up in a poor family in Mexico. Often times he doesn't eat because they don't have money. On the rare occasion his family does have money, there is no food to go around. He doesn't go to school because his father doesn't think it's worth it. Not even for the girls. Everyone works.

When he grows up, he goes to Texas to look for work. It's a strange new place. All the white guys there speak Spanish. Better Spanish than him, even. He finds a guy to work for, but he doesn't know how to do anything. The farmer wants him to drive the tractor around. My father doesn't know how, but he gets on anyway. He gradually teaches himself how to drive it. He also does several little odd jobs. He learns some carpentry, he learns to paint, he learns a lot of things. He starts a family.

Years pass, and he moves to Washington because he hears there's good work. He arrives, and there are almost no Mexicans there; maybe 4 other families. None of the Mexican workers speak English, and none of the locals speak Spanish. Everyone is crazy racist towards him. He goes and looks for work cultivating potatoes. He finds some asshole farmer to work for who calls him names like dirty Mexican, and just treats him like shit. They can't communicate all that well, but the farmer makes the signal for my father to go drive the tractor. The farmer is surprised he knows how to drive it. His experience in Texas comes in handy.

Two years pass of living and working in Washington. Just by walking around town and listening to people, he learns English pretty well. Proper English, not vulgar asshole farmer English. One day the farmer wants his potatoes cultivated, so he tells my dad:

"Get your ass on the tractor."

My dad responds with, "Hey, I'm not gonna take shit from you or anyone else."

The farmer is surprised, "Oh! You speak English?"

"Yes, you taught me."

"Anyway, get your ass on the tractor."

My dad is tired of this guy, so he quits. It sucks for the farmer, because my dad is the only one around who knows how to drive a tractor. He's also the only one who knows how to extract potatoes. A few weeks pass by and the farmer still hasn't found anyone to drive his tractor. My dad has already found work somewhere else.

A few months later, my dad passes by this guy's farm again. He sees the farmer has finally found someone to work for him. A guy and his wife are extracting potatoes. Except they're doing it all wrong. Chopped up pieces of potato everywhere. Serves the farmer right, my dad thinks.

Years later, he's got a family of about 6 total. He hears about work in bean fields in Oregon. He loads up his family, and travels to a small farming town. They get into town, and it's raining. All the time. Rain forever. They check into a hotel and get a room. My dad then goes off to look for work in the morning. It turns out a lot of other people had the same idea as my dad. Mexican workers everywhere!

He meets up with a farmer that has a good 15 to 20 acres of beans growing. My dad is one of about 50 people working the fields. My half-brother at 11 years old is another. It's still raining by the way. All day, everyday. Fields of beans and rain. Once all the work is done, he goes into town and gets his pay. 5 cents a pound is the going rate. He got about $2.50; not very much, even in those times. He still needs to pay the hotel owner. Instead of taking his family to a restaurant for a hot meal, his wife buys a loaf of bread and some pieces of ham. She makes a few sandwiches and everyone eats them in the car. That is their restaurant.

Dad goes back to the hotel and runs into the hotel owner. The hotel owner asks, "Oh, you're not working today?" 

"No, it's all over." 

"Oh, that's too bad. All these workers around and no work to go around for them. Me for instance, I need a huge section of my hotel painted. Except the painters I hire cost far too much money."

"I know how to paint. I can paint your hotel for you."

"You know how to paint? I got buckets of paint and brushes you can use. I'll get you a ladder, too."

My dad started at about 11am and by 5pm he was completely finished painting. The hotel owner is impressed, "Wow! It looks good."

"You like it?"

"Yeah, you did a good job. That money you owe me for the room, forget about it. You can stay as long as you want, no charge."

"Thank you! I had no money to pay you with anyway."

"I know."

P.S. I'm moving to Poitiers (pwuh-tee-yay) in 2 days. I spent my last day home packing my bags, having dinner with the family, and watching a very pretty documentary.

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.

Beachside bar in Barcelona.

The Nativity facade of La Sagrada Família.

 Interior of La Sagrada Família.

Delicious savory pancake in Amsterdam. Ham, bacon, onion, mushroom, and cheese.

Boat ride along the canals of Amsterdam.

Finding a Different Thing to be Excited About

I went to Paris for a few days last week and then I went to Amsterdam for a day trip. I was asked which one I like better, and I don't think I have an answer. Paris is definitely more "traditionally" beautiful. It's insane! There are all these things you see in movies and read in books, and then you go to Paris and here they are; right in front of you. These amazing, legendary buildings or locations or pieces of art right in front of you and you have no idea what you ever did to warrant this kind of experience. It's pretty overwhelming. That might actually be a problem. Paris is really pretty, but it might actually be TOO pretty. I feel like I wouldn't want to live there because everyday you would just walk outside, look anywhere at anything, and it would just be far too beautiful. You need some ugly to appreciate the beautiful! I'm a big fan of water, so I was quite enamored by the canals all over Amsterdam.

Arc de Triomphe

The Louvre

Pont des Arts

Clock from inside Musée d'Orsay

Moulin Rouge

Eiffel Tower

The Winged Victory of Samothrace

Mona Lisa

Psyche and Cupid

Venus de Milo

Apartments in Amsterdam

Clogs

Houses in the canal

Amsterdam love Heineken

I consider myself a tourist, but even I was annoyed with the tourists in Paris. By the way, a really good way to let everyone know you are not French is to wear a beret. I have never seen a single French person wearing a beret. It's like the French came up with a clever ploy to instantly identify foreigners. They came up with the idea to create this image of a beret-wearing French person, but actually no one wears them. Ever. At all. Don't wear them if you are visiting, okay?

I went to a pub called The Frog and the Rosbif. It's a French/English pub. It's fairly obvious that English speakers call the French frogs because they eat frogs. Apparently, the French have a similar term for the British; "rosbif", as in roast beef. This is probably the least offensive ethnic slur I have ever heard. Anyway, I had a beer called Dark de Triomphe. It made me so happy.

On my flight back into France after Christmas, there was a movie playing called Monte Carlo starring Selena Gomez. Now, I personally do not like Ms. Gomez. I'm sure she works hard and is generally a nice person, but the problem is her name. Her name is Selena. She is not worthy of such a name. You see, I grew up in the age of THE Selena. The one that each and every Mexican knew and loved. Her untimely demise was a huge blow to me and everyone I knew. This Justin Beiber, tweenpop, Disneycore whatever cannot and will not compare to the one true Selena. Sorry. I am not fooled by this false prophet.

I'm going back to London for St. Patty's Day. The Brits are pretty much the same as the Irish, right?

I ordered a CD from Sub Pop records (Seattle!) and it came in the mail the other day. I like hardcopies, okay? It came with a pretty photo album, so shut up piratejerk.torrent. The CD is by a duo from Toronto called Memoryhouse. For all the Seattleites, they are performing at The Crocodile on March 9, and will be live on KEXP on March 10. Highly recommend you go see them. Then tell me how they were. Here is their full new album:

Memoryhouse - The Slideshow Effect (Full Album Stream) from Sub Pop Records on Vimeo.

Lastly is monkey news. Important stuff.