A jet lagged post

The first day back from an international flight, you sleep pretty well, but you wake up with a headache around the backs of your ears that feels like you stayed up far too late, then slept too late into the morning.

The second day back you fall asleep just fine, but you wake up early early in the morning. If you're lucky, you can tell yourself to go back to sleep and you'll be ok.

The third day back is a repeat of the second.

And then by the fourth you are supposed to be totally recovered, but around 8:00 at night you suddenly feel totally worn out and exhausted and for a little while, you don't understand why. And then you remember that you are suffering from jet lag, and it can take up to two or three weeks to be back to normal.

It's a useful excuse, the jet lag, for those signs of early onset Alzheimer's disease.

This time around I couldn't remember the movies I watched on the plane.

But the vacation was lovely. You, my devoted follower, have already seen many photos. Now I shall print some text that goes along with the photos.

Day one: We flew to Sydney in the morning. Our flight from Sydney left at 1:00pm on Saturday, and arrived in San Francisco at 9:30 am on the same day. Not only did we get 3.5 hours extra on the ground on Saturday, but also those 14 hours in the sky didn't even count! That's why I can't remember the movies I watched. And then we met up with some friends of Tim's in Millbrae, and walked around a little, and went to bed early.

Day two: Did anyone guess it from the jellyfish pictures? Monterey Bay Aquarium. My favorite aquarium in the entire world. We took Jonathan there when he was 18 months old, and he loved it. But that was the last time we went. This time around, we all still loved it. Me, Jonathan, Tim, and the octopus.

After the aquarium, we spent some time wandering Cannery Row, and then wading on a beach in Monterey. There were little red crab-things in tide pools that the seagulls loved. Yummy.

Day 3: Classic San Francisco. We rode a cable car. In all the years Tim and I lived near San Francisco, we never rode a cable car. Neither of us. Because you have to wait in line for about an hour just to get on. Why would you do that when you have places to go? We decided we didn't have places to go, except the cable car, and we waited the hour. Here's Tim on the cable car.

Honestly it wasn't that exciting. Now that I've done it, I can say that I've done it and I don't have to do it again.

We took the bus from the end of the line to the Golden Gate Bridge. Surely you guessed that photo. It was the most beautiful, clear, warm day out on the bridge that I have ever seen. We walked halfway across. Jonathan didn't like that. I must say, with the traffic whizzing by on one side, it wasn't really a peaceful experience. But the photos came out lovely.

From the bridge, we caught a bus to Golden Gate Park. There are lots of things to do in Golden Gate Park: museums, Japanese tea garden, botanical garden. We took a bus to the far western side, though. And looked at the windmill.

Then we spent what was left of the evening on Ocean Beach, playing in the sand and eating at a restaurant overlooking the ocean. The restaurant would have been more awesome if we'd been having San Francisco weather. Because the day was so unusually hot, the restaurant was baking in the sun. No air conditioning. Why? It is San Francisco. Most of the year I'm sure the view is just fog. Jonathan loved his berry lemonade. Worth the walk and the heat and the beach, all for that drink.

Day 4: We had tentatively planned on Muir Woods, but after reading about all the tour buses heading there over the Golden Gate Bridge, and the lack of parking, we decided to plan an alternative redwoods adventure. We went to Big Bason Redwoods state park, south of the city in the hills. We very much enjoyed our alternative redwoods experience. We captured some key images: the boys with the slice of tree:

And shots of the large trees:

We went on a couple of nice walks through the forest, finished up at the gift shop, and started driving home. Road construction blocked the fastest way home. Looking at the map, I suggested we drive through Santa Cruz and up the Pacific Highway to Half Moon Bay.

Sunset at Half Moon Bay:

Day 5: More San Francisco. In the morning, we had tickets to see Alcatraz. We were up early so we could stand in line.

Jonathan really liked Alcatraz. He liked all the stories on the audio tour. Most of all he liked the rules for the inmates. He purchased a copy of the Rules and Regulations for inmates at Alcatraz, and read it carefully during the rest of the trip.

They had just opened part of the island to visitors after shutting it off for bird nesting season. It kind of stank, like lots and lots of bird doo doo. But again the pictures were lovely.

Our Alcatraz visit was finished by 2pm. After some debate, we decided to head to the Exploratorium, which has moved since the last time I was in San Francisco, and now was only a short walk from Alcatraz.

The Exploratorium is a giant interactive science museum. We all loved it. There were so many things to explore, and not so many people on a Wednesday afternoon. Here is Jonathan drawing with spinning sand.

I found the psychology exhibits the most fascinating this time around, especially experiments on group and leader dynamics, and how easy it is to get people to do really stupid things if you pretend you have a little authority, or you put them in a group doing likewise. I've been thinking about that exhibit a lot lately. Maybe I'll write another post on psychology sometime soon. In any case, we were there until they threw us out at closing time. And then we walked up the steep hills of San Francisco to meet friends for dinner.

It is a pretty city. If steep.


Day 6: Silicon valley, and travel. We only had a morning, so we opted to see the Computer History Museum, which none of us had seen before. The museum was ok, but the curators need to work on their storytelling. Rather than just show a bunch of stuff, with prettily printed words, they need to organize the stuff and the words to give things a little more context. What *is* this stuff? Why was it invented at that time in that place? Pieces of the story were there, but it was pretty disjointed. For example, the opening to one exhibit said that people needed to be able to give computers better instructions. Ok, sure. Then the first thing you saw in the exhibit were building plans for something whose name is an unexplained acronym, with no explanation of how the building fits into the history or why. Or whether it has anything to do with giving computers instructions. I found it annoying. Plus, by looking at what hardware was included and what wasn't, you could get a feel for which companies donated the most money to the museum. (I was looking for my grandpa's ancient Apple II, and they didn't show it except in a stuff-pile at the very end.)

But we did get to see a Google self-driving car. It was just parked, not driving.

Day 7: Oregon! I have a friend from grad school who is now a professor in Eugene, Oregon. The green photo is a picture of the campus at the University of Oregon.

I gave a talk and had a nice visit. Meanwhile, Tim and Jonathan went to the Raptor Center in Eugene and saw some big birds.

In the afternoon, we drove south to visit family: Emily, Mark, and Jonathan's cousins.

Day 8: Portland. Tim and Mark drove to Corvallis to a football game. Emily and I and the kids drove to Portland. That fountain is in Portland!

While cousins were at a kids' show (Jonathan wasn't that interested), Jonathan and I hit the most important sights of Portland: The famous Voodoo Donut shop.

The donuts were cheap. We didn't need more than one each, but after waiting in line so long, I decided to get two each! No, we couldn't eat them.

Portland water front.

And then the drive back.

Day 9: Crater Lake! Some of you must have recognized Crater Lake. It is an American icon.

And to get there, we did the all-American thing: we drove!

What cute driving companions we had! All three became Junior Rangers before the day was over.


Day 10: More travel. I took a walk in the morning in lovely Roseburg.

From there, we drove 1.5 hours to the airport, then waited 1.5 hours for our flight. Then flew 1.5 hours to San Jose. Then took the train 1.5 hours to San Francisco. Then Tim and Jonathan peeled off to the San Francisco airport, for a three hour wait, and then a flight back to Sydney, arriving two days later.






As for me, I continued on in the BART, under the bay, to end up in lovely Berkeley. I stuck a conference on the other end of it.

This picture is from Day 11: You can see all the way across the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge from the top of the Berkeley hills.

Unless the fog comes in. Same view, day 12:

Unless it really comes in. Same view, day 13:

And then days 15, 16, and 17 were travel days for me. And now I am home. Which brings us all the way back to the beginning -- the jet lag.

This post is long enough. I'm going to bed.

Spring break

Jonathan is at the tail end of two weeks of school holidays, which I will call "spring break". Our family has been on vacation, although the rest of the family is now back in Melbourne. I stayed a few extra days in another country to get some work done while I am less jet-lagged.

Here are a few photos of our vacation. See if you can guess where we've been each day based on the photos. I'll probably post the answers in a later blog post, if I don't get too distracted.

18 September. Where were we? (Difficulty: Medium)

19 September. Where were we? (Difficulty: Easy. Although the weather on the third photo will totally throw you off.)

20 September. (Difficulty: Hard.)

21 September. (Difficulty: Very Easy.)

22 September. (Difficulty: Hard.)

23 September. Where were we? (Difficulty: Probably impossible with this photo alone. Hint: there was a plane ride between the previous photo and this one.)

24 September. (Difficulty: Hard. But easier if you know who the extra two kids are in the second photo.)

25 September. Where were we? (Difficulty: Medium.)

26 September. Where were we? (Difficulty: Impossible unless you know the two kids above. Then easier.)

In all, we had an exceptionally nice vacation. We saw lots of very cool things, and some of our favorite people in the world, and there was even less arguing than sometimes happens on family vacations.

Spring

Spring is here! Or it's coming. Or both! That's the way Spring does it's thing. It's coy. Teasing. Sly. Spring.

We went for a spring walk along the Yarra River. I want you to notice how tall the small one has become. All his imported clothing is getting too short, too snug, too worn. He wears a uniform to school, and that still fits, so he isn't desperate for new things. But school holidays are coming, and I think he will be in trouble in a couple of weeks when he has to wear something else. 

Meanwhile, the boy is still his crazy self. Lately, his crazy self has had a thing with the French national anthem. It's like the French national anthem got into his belly, and it just belches out at random times. I will be sitting quietly, doing important quiet things like internet surfing, when suddenly behind my left ear I hear an explosion:

ALLONS ENFANTS DE LA PATRIE!

And then I jump, and scream a little, and the spouse and I yell at the boy to QUIET DOWN! And we go back to our quiet lives doing our quiet things until it suddenly belches out again:

LA JOUR DE GLOIRE EST ARRIVE!

I don't know how the French national anthem got in there, but I wish I knew how to get it out. Antacid maybe?

The first picture above was lovely, but not native. I leave you with a final picture, native wattle flowers. They smell wonderful. I love you, Spring.

Proper spaces

Last week, Tim moved the large drinking glasses to the right side of the cupboard, and put the small ones on the left side. Friends, the large drinking glasses have always been on the left. The large ones belong on the left, and the small ones belong on the right. After Tim moved them to the wrong sides, they sat in that cupboard, looking so very uncomfortable, lost and unhappy and upset. So I waited patiently until the dishwasher was full again, and then I unloaded it correctly, putting the large glasses back on the left.

Ah.  Doesn't that feel so much better?

I've been thinking a bit about the way things fit and don't fit, and how we get used to particular spaces. Yesterday we took Jonathan to a friend's house out in the suburbs, then Tim and I took a long walk back, through quiet tree-lined streets and parks, to the end of the line on a tram and then back into the city.

We've talked about the idea of buying a house again. Here, housing prices have doubled every ten years since forever. There has never been a burst housing bubble. Going into major debt is seen as a good investment in the future. Is it?

We could think about buying a house in the suburbs. Maintaining a house might not be as big a chore as it was in our previous place. Houses are smaller here, and gardens are smaller, and there would not be so much yard work, although there would be yard work again. And we would have to buy a car, so that we could use it to haul groceries and drive ourselves to events off in other suburbs. Do we want to go back to that? I kind of don't want to go back to that. The rate we pay in rent currently for three bedrooms and two bathrooms is significantly less than the rate we would pay in a mortgage for the same sized space for the next 30 years. And mortgages seem to be variable interest rates, so if the rate goes up, so does our monthly bill. Is it worth it to own a slice of lawn to mow? Or dirt to attract those famous deadly Australian spiders?

It seems like such a strange thing to so many people we know, to choose to give up home ownership willingly. But this life and this space seem to work surprisingly well for us. I'm bruising my knuckles while knocking on the wooden table as I write that. But thinking out ten years, twenty years, I'm still not convinced I want that yard work. If we bought a house now, we could in theory own a home that would be worth over four million dollars then, applying that doubling trick. But we would have paid nearly that much money in mortgage and interest. Whereas right now, we live in the most amazing location at the foot of a huge park where someone else does the yard work for us. The money we are saving in mortgage can be squirreled away to support our retirement.

I feel like we belong where we are for now. Like those large glasses, over on the left side of the cupboard. They could be moved, no harm done, but it just wouldn't feel as comfortable.

Writing a book

At work, I've decided to write a book for grad students. I've had some notes for grad students posted on my website for a few years. In the last couple of years, others have asked permission to use the notes in a graduate course, and students have been reading them, and sending questions and feedback. And a colleague-turned-book-editor encouraged me to turn the notes into a real book and get them published by a real publisher.

And I decided turning the notes into a real book is a good idea, in theory.

Here in Australia, grad school doesn't work like it does in North America. There, grad students enter grad school, spend two years taking coursework and shopping for an advisor and a problem, then solve the problem in three years and write a dissertation. The faculty who teach the young grad students can fight over the best ones, and convince them to join their group one or two years in.

In Australia, you skip those first two years. Before you arrive you contact the advisor. Together you decide on your dissertation problem. And then you apply for admission, with the problem in your pocket. You are done in three years.

Before, it was part of my job description to teach early grad students and convince them to work with me from the comfort of my office.

Now, it is part of my job description to recruit mysterious students from Out There in the world to work with me on problems they don't know anything about. And I don't know anything about the students, either. Or where to find them. Or how to introduce them to problems I find interesting.

In theory, if I write a book for grad students that is interesting and fun, then students are more likely to come to me wanting to know more, and I can invite them to come and be my minions. My prodigies.

In theory, if I write a book for grad students, grad students will read my book and they will know who I am and they will think of me as that person who wrote the book that sent them on this lovely path off into the world, and good feelings will come my way.

In theory, if I write a book for grad students, then when my grad students, or even undergrad students arrive, I can hand them the book and tell them that these are the things they need to know as background and let's talk about them. And I won't forget to cover that one topic.

But in practice, writing a book for grad students is hard work. I decide to add topic A and remove topic B. But then topic C should be added. But if so, I really should be putting topic D in there, probably at the end of chapter 4, which was supposed to be finished two weeks ago. And topic D is a little too long and technical. Maybe it will scare the grad students away. Maybe I don't know it well enough. Maybe I can invent my own proof using only a minimal amount of new definitions and a clever example. And then seven more hours have gone by.

And then there are all the voices in my head. I don't know if I should be listening to them or not. They say things like: Do you realize how many hours you have spent on this? Do you realize those are wasted hours you will never never get back? Do you realize that you're supposed to be writing real research papers? And this book doesn't count? It won't count for research, or teaching, or service. You do realize, don't you, that the things you are studying so hard to write in the book were all discovered 30 or 40 years ago? They are not Current. They are not new and exciting. Maybe the field is moving away and they are not even Important. Students aren't going to like this book. No one will use it. No one will read it. Except the experts, in passing. They will read your book, and they will say, this book is terrible. This is a stupid way to talk topic C. Why didn't she say more about topic E? Why did she use that proof? It is too abstract. It is not abstract enough. This exercise is stupid. THERE IS AN ERROR! I would never have written the book that way. Why was this included? There is already a great survey article that covers so much more! Wait, she's just copying the steps in the survey article. This exposition isn't different enough! COPYRIGHT LAWSUIT! I hate this book.

The voices in my head hate my book.

And maybe I am wasting my time, but I'm giving myself until October, and then I intend to be finished. But yes, this writing is sucking away time and life.

Watching events in Rio from Australia

After going a year without owning a television, Tim went out and bought one. He hauled it home on the tram and plugged it in. I came home to footy on the screen. Followed by a Scooby Doo movie. Then early the next morning, Saturday Morning Cartoons! Ack!

The real reason Tim bought the TV was so that we could watch the Olympics. In theory. The time difference between Melbourne and Rio is a little awkward, though. The opening ceremony was at 6am on a Saturday. No one was up in our house. Since then, live events have started around 11pm, carried on throughout the night, and then finished up in the morning hours while I'm off at work. Prime time TV is while everyone is asleep in Rio. We get to watch a guy named Hamish show us the highlights of what happened. We saw all of team gymnastics wrapped into about five minutes. No talk, no special back stories. No nervous anticipation while we wait for the judges to post the scores. Just four events in a row -- bing -- bing -- bing -- bing. And here's who won. Ads. It was truly amazing.

So we've given up on TV for the Olympics. We log into our internet service provider's special online Olympics site, and find the event from 2am the night before that looks most interesting, and watch that. HDMI cable means the TV is still good for projecting the laptop screen.

It's different being in the south of the southern hemisphere during the summer Olympics. It's kind of cold here. It isn't debilitating cold. The grass is still a lovely green. The wattle trees are beginning to bloom -- they're supposed to be spectacular in yellow in the early spring, but we haven't lived here through a spring yet. I overheard a lady on the tram telling her mobile phone that it was "literally freezing here." But it isn't literally freezing. It hasn't dropped below freezing all winter, as far as I can tell, and it hasn't even really come close. But still, it's the kind of weather that makes you happy to curl up in front of the heater. To wear at least three layers, and fuzzy socks and slippers, and to keep an umbrella close at hand when out of doors.

It's not really weather for climbing 10m platforms in a speedo. 

So when we watched the synchronized diving a couple of nights ago, jumps and somersaults into the green pool, I found myself getting colder and colder and colder. And I really really envied those divers the hot tub.

The next time I watch diving in the middle of the winter, I want to do it from a hot tub. 

Swimming has been another favourite. The Aussies took two gold medals in swimming the first day, more than anyone else! I became a fan. We watched a women's relay race, freestyle swimming, a couple of nights ago, and the Aussies were way out in front as the last team member jumped in! Go Australia! But then that infuriating swimmer Katie Ledecky managed to overtake the Aussies and win the gold at the end. How frustrating! And then I realised that I am cheering for the home team, and home has changed.

My home has changed, and I am changing. And I think it's a good thing.

Go yellow and green!

Moving along

It is the first day of August. That means a lot. It means that I am no longer affiliated with the Good Old Dudes University. It means it has been a year since I worked there for pay. And my unpaid leave has now expired without incident, without comment. We're both moving on.

I have no regrets. I love my new job. The people are great, from the newest student to the most senior dean. My colleagues have energy, excitement, enthusiasm. We've built a seminar, attracted grant money, hired a postdoc, organized students. The trajectory here is positive.

I love my office, too. Soon after I arrived, at my request, two additional large whiteboards were installed. I have a huge window on another wall. It's a really great workspace.

And the family seems happy.

There is a well known quote that Google says I should attribute to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

At G.O.D. University, it was clear there were things I could not change, and most of the time I could live with that knowledge with serenity and acceptance. But there happened to be a third option: "And grant me the awareness I need to escape when I can, with dignity, to find a new place where change takes far less courage, and acceptance takes less serenity."


Things aren't perfect here or anywhere. But things are better here, in many subtle ways. And spring is coming.