The orphanage

It gives me certain patriotic pleasure to see Belén Rueda in places like ESPN, in the commercial for the movie The Orphanage, the Spanish movie of the year. It premieres in the US on Friday, December 28th. I recommend all of you go see it, I will while I am in Spain.

Lottery

When I realized I was arriving in Barcelona on Saturday afternoon, that is, after the annual Christmas Lottery draw [always on December 22nd, one of the most important lottery events in Spain, everybody plays, I mean everybody], I thought it was a bummer I couldn't play. Until I remembered the Internet lottery sale service offered by La Bruixa d'Or, [The Golden Witch, link goes to the English page] which is the most famous lottery vendor in Spain. And yes, there I could buy a ticket to play, even though I am in New York, and I am now the proud owner of a one-tenth part of the number 76071. Wish me luck!

[La Bruixa d'Or became famous because it's in a city called Sort, which means "luck" in Catalan. They foresaw very early the power of the Internet, and they started selling lottery online a few years ago. Thanks to that, they are now the vendor which sells more lottery in the whole country, even though Sort has a population of about 2,000, and obviously, by sheer force of numbers, they get a piece of the price almost every year. This only helps its popularity...]

Going back!

Tomorrow Saturday the first leg of this New York adventure comes to an end, and at 8:45pm I catch my plane back to Barcelona, to spend the holidays. I will try to update the blog from there with interesting things I find worth posting, but in any case, I will be back in Harlem on January 10th, 2008. Happy holidays!

Herbie

Herbie is the City College math department chairwoman's secretary. Herbie is also one of the funniest persons I've ever met. He always has a new twist on things, a joke for you. He sends e-mails to the department that are hilarious, they're really something. Herbie has an office which is completely covered in clutter. Figure dolls, newspaper clippings, magazines from 1967, you name it. You enter his office and you don't know where to look, there's interesting stuff everywhere. He even has some football helmets in a corner, maybe he knows why. But the best thing he has is this little wonder:

This is an acoustic coupler, i.e., a modem from the Stone Age, one of those where for the two computers to speak you had to put the phone handset on top of it, and they would communicate using beeps of different frequencies. Incredible.

Nixon

I'm back in New York. Today I was walking around Union Square, and in one of those anti-Bush stands they had a T-shirt I found very funny. It said: Never thought I would miss Nixon. My laughs must have been heard all the way to Barcelona XDDD

San Francisco

So today I went to San Francisco. I did all the touristy things, I crossed the Golden Gate, I walked on Fisherman's Wharf, on the Italian part, on Chinatown. I drove zigzagging down Lombard Street. Didn't take a cable car, way too touristy for me. I did go to the Apple Store though :-) Here are a few pictures of San Francisco.

The view from the top of Lombard Street.

A seagull in the Marina. Behind it, the Golden Gate Bridge.

The view of San Francisco from the other side of the Golden Gate.

RIP Cody's Books

Telegraph Avenue, the most emblematic street of Berkeley, is always bustling with people. Students, street vendors, homeless people, all mingle among the street stands, stores and restaurants. It was the epicenter of the student protests in the 1960s and 70s, and it still has that hippy flavor that makes this city so famous.

This afternoon I went for a walk on Telegraph, to walk among people, and also to visit a couple of important bookstores in the area. In particular, I wanted to go to Cody's Books. Located on the corner of Telegraph and Haste Street, Cody's was a gorgeous bookstore with a list of over a million books, and whose selection of math books was legendary. People said (half joking) that when Berkeley mathematicians wanted to find a book they didn't go to the library, they went to Cody's. Last time I was in Berkeley in 2004 I bought a few books there.

Besides, Cody's always preserved that hippy character from the protest era. In 1968, when police hit demonstrators in Telegraph Avenue, Cody's would shelter them and become an improvised hospital. Cody's kept in its shelves the "Satanic Versos", by Salman Rushdie, when all major chains had retired it, and that cost Cody's a bombing attack in 1989. Cody's Books was a symbol of Berkeley, and of freedom of speech, as well as an icon for the math community.

Cody's Books has closed, a casualty of the Barnes & Nobles and Fnacs of this world. Couldn't compete with the big chains, the Walmarts and the Carrefours. And ultimately the Internet finished it off. Today I got the disappointment of the year when I saw Cody's closed and with a large sign saying "Available."

This already happened to me in one of my trips to Boston, when Avenue Victor Hugo closed down. Later in Barcelona, when the historic Librería Francesa liquidated its stock. Now Cody's. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing a great bookstore disappear. Rest in peace, Cody's Books.

Berkeley

Berkeley is one of the mathematical capitals of the world. Besides the University of California - Berkeley math department, one of the strongest of the world, it hosts the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, a math research institute at the highest level. This means the density of mathematicians per square mile is incredibly high here, and it makes that all mathematicians in the world come here in peregrination every few years, be it for a conference, a special program for MSRI, or a visit, or whatever.

Besides, Berkeley is one of the most liberal cities in the US, it had many years a mayor of the Communist Party (unthinkable in the rest of the country). In Berkeley you can see many people on bikes, and bikes are admitted in public transportation, including buses, which have a special rack for them. You can also see many hippies, people with long beards and ragged look. I guess weather helps, because here they have here a Mediterranean climate, like in Catalunya. I feel at home :-)

MSRI is on a hill in Berkeley, and it enjoys a breathtaking view of the San Francisco Bay. I am putting here a small picture I took with the iphone, before a panoramic view I hope I can take before I leave. This is the central bay, at the far end you can see the (small) Golden Gate Bridge over the entrance of the Bay, and the Pacific Ocean behind it. The piece of land right to the left of the bridge is San Francisco. I plan to go there tomorrow, so expect more pictures in a few days.

Fry's, o Fry's!

Fry's Electronics is a chain of electronics stores. Fry's are my favorite stores in the whole world, as I told you already in the Microcenter post. Well, I still haven't been able to visit the Far East, maybe in places like Japan or Taiwan there are better electronics stores, but I haven't checked first-hand. Some day. I believe that when I set foot in Akihabara (Tokio's electronics neighborhood) I will get Stendhal syndrome or something.

But in the meantime, Fry's is the best of the best. It's 34 stores, 17 of them in California, the rest spread out in the West and South of the US. For some reason, Fry's doesn't have stores in the Northeast, not in New York or in any place a thousand miles from it. Precisely because of that, because I can't visit them very often, every time I go to a Fry's is a special event. Today [Sunday Dec 9th] I went to the Concord store, which is at a 15-minute walk from a BART station (the BART is the San Francisco area transportation system), so I could go without a car.

Fry's is simply incredible. I have seen in my life many electronics and computer stores, but none like Fry's. Microcenter is a distant close, but each Fry's is like 5 Microcenters. Fry's is a huge store, humongous, full of all types of electronic devices. All types. Besides the usual computers, TVs, and so on, in Fry's you will find the weirdest adapters, connectors, parts. CDs, DVDs, games, batteries, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, you name it.

From a hard drive to a blender. Fry's is so big that it has a coffee shop inside, because if you can't go through the whole store without a break.

Here are a few examples of things you can find at Fry's, so you can have a small idea:

A fridge for your beer keg, together with the faucet to serve the beer.

An oscilloscope.

A house number with a solar powered light.

A chair with speakers, to play your video console.

In which store do you find one of these things, let alone all of them? Only at Fry's. If I lived in California, either I would go broke, or I would quit doing math to go work at Fry's :-)

If that weren't enough, Fry's founder John Fry, is a math major qho had to quit academics because of family pressure to dedicate to the family business, and a football player who had to quit because of his bad knees. Fry is the main sponsor of an institute for math research, the AIM, which is located in a warehouse next to the original Fry's store in Palo Alto. I visited this institute in 2004, and there I found out about Fry's. John Fry is a math lover, and he supports mathematicians.

And finally, the last blow is that instead of ugly employees, Fry's hires a good amount of young girls with tight tops and short skirts. As if we didn't have enough reasons to go already. Fry's considers that their clients are already electronics geeks, so there's no need to get expert employees, it's better to have pretty girls. It's obvious that geeks are many times lonely people with problems to communicate with the other sex.

This morning I have spent three hours in the Concord Fry's (damages: $160), and probably, since I will be here until next Saturday, I will pay another visit to another Fry's in the area before I leave.

California

Today [Dec 8th] it's California. This afternoon I will take the plane and fly to Berkeley, where I will spend a week at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, working with other people. And enjoying the good weather, not like the harsh Winters of the East Coast. I will be telling you things about California. Berkeley is in the San Francisco area, which has many interesting things. Keep an eye on the blog.

Yes, I know, many of you are thinking: "this guy is traveling all the time, he should be ashamed." In my defense, I will say that when I arrived in the US my only planned trips were to Utah in September and California in December, the rest came because when other people and mathematicians find out you are in the US, they start inviting you to give a talk, or to spend a few days, and it's very hard to say no... But right now it's been over a month that I haven't spend more than a few days in a row in my house in New York, and I am kind of tired... Anyway. As we say in Spain, God gives bread to those without teeth :-)

And the 21st I fly back to Barcelona!

Hanukkah

As I told you when they celebrated their New Year, in New York there's an important Jewish community. These days they celebrate Hanukkah, which remembers the redidication of the Second Jerusalem Temple after the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd Century BC (Wikipedia to the rescue). It's celebrated in eight consecutive days.

You will like to know that this holiday is when you use the famous Jewish candelabrum, the Menorah. It has nine branches, the central one higher than the rest, which represents the holiday itself, while you lit a candle on each branch each day of Hannukah. Hannukah falls in December most years, and many Jewish use it as an equivalent of Christmas (which doesn't exist for them since they don't recognize Christ as a Messiah). Jewish people wish each other happy Hannukah instead of Merry Christmas.

This year it's a little early, from December 5th to 12th. So today, 7th, is the day where one lits the third candle, as you can see in this little Menorah (electric, times change and one has to be practical) in the cafeteria of my college.

Hologram

In a Montreal mall I found this incredible machine. It was like an automatic picture machine, you sit, it takes the picture, but instead of four photos, it gives you a hologram of your face in an acrylic cube. Look:

On top of it, it's got a blue LED, so you can see it well. I thought it was incredible. It's not a real hologram, but somehow they manage to draw inside the plastic and make 3D portraits. Unbelievable.

Montreal

On Monday [December 3rd] I had to go to Maine, but weather kept me from doing it. I have friends in Montreal, so I went there on my way to Maine, to wait the storm out, and see if at some point I could continue to Maine. The storm lasted all day Monday and half Tuesday, so I decided it wasn't worth the risk, and I will just return directly to New York on Wednesday from here.

But at least I have visited Montreal. Without being the capital city of Quebec, Montreal is the largest city in the province. Located on an island in the Saint Lawrence river, it's a very liberal city, like all Canada. For instance, drinking is allowed here at 18, and not like that self-righteous absurdity Americans have of keeping kids away from alcohol until they turn 21.

As I said, we had a heavy snowstorm, with more than 12 inches of snow accumulating in day and a half. I arrived in Montreal on Sunday at 9:30pm, and when I got up the following morning, the city looked like this:

It took us some shovel exercise to get the car out of there.

The funny part is that the city doesn't stop for 12 inches of snow, just traffic goes crazy, but the day after, everything was back to normal. Montreal is a city completely prepared for bad weather. Downtown, for instance, they have a whole subterranean city connecting with tunnels a block with the next one, with malls, hotels, train and subway stations. Look at a map here if you are curious. You really can go a long way underground. I was there today and I have been at at least six malls without getting outside. Here's a picture of the tunnel connecting the Place Ville-Marie with the Center Eaton.

See how you go towards the street, and instead of a door, you find a glass window and a tunnel underneath the street that takes you to the next building. Very useful if outside it is -20 degrees and the storm is at its earnest. Look also the level of snow outside covering the wheels of the FedEx truck :-)

The underground city of Montreal has over 20 miles of tunnels, and occupies a surface of 4.5 square miles. It's really impressive. Check the Wikipedia entry if you are interested.

In Montreal people speak French. I felt like I was in France, with the difference that here most people spoke English too. Good, because my French is horrible. It's been a short visit, I will have to come with more time, or even better, with better weather... [This is a pun in Spanish because the words for time and for weather are the same.]

On nationalisms

In the picture you can see the Ottawa river, which has the same name as the city. This river is the border between the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the right hand side of the picture, you can see Quebec.

As you know, in Quebec there's a large percentage of the population which would like to be independent from Canada. In Quebec this is apparent in everyday life, as we people who live in Catalonia know very well. For instance:

• In Ottawa, signs are in English and below in French. In Quebec, they are in French and below in English.


• Montreal is the city in Canada with a larger population of arab origin, from Northern Africa or from the Middle East. The reason: they speak French.


• When you apply for permanent residency in Canada, if you do it in Quebec, most points are awarded to you if you speak French.

The possibility of Quebec separating from Canada is by no means remote. Canada is a young country, created in 1867, and it has undergone constant changes in history until today. Newfoundland-Labrador didn't join Canada until 1949. A new territory was created in 1999, the Nunavut. This means the Canadian borders haven't been the same for 500 years, they are changing even today. So, if one of these days there is a secession referendum and separatists win, Quebec will leave Canada.

But a crucial detail to understand the reality of a country with a separatist threat, and which many people don't know, is the following. Look at the above picture. As I said before, the left part is Ontario and the right one is Quebec. Well, the price of two exactly equal houses is 30% lower in Quebec than in Ontario. Why is that? Because many Canadians don't want to buy a house in the Quebecois side. They fear that if Quebec finally separates, they will be left in a different country, foreigners in their own house. And if demand is low, prices go down.

I would like to see what many Catalan independentists would think if they saw their apartment in Barcelona lose value, as much as 30%, because of the threat of Catalonia separating. I mean, it's good to be separatist, I am to a certain degree, but, are we aware that an independent Catalonia would have drawbacks, as well as advantages?

Kingston

I continue my Canadian tour. After working Thursday and Friday in Ottawa, on Saturday [Dec 1st] I went to Kingston, a small college town halfway between Ottawa and Toronto, to visit Maria, a friend from my department who is spending two months in Queen's University, in Kingston.

Saturday it really got cold. Here's a picture of Maria and me in Kingston, on the shore of Lake Ontario, at -12C [10F].

With that kind of cold we couldn't do much, so we just walked next to the lake, visited the Queen's campus, and in the evening, back to Ottawa.

O Canada!

Yesterday [Wednesday Nov 28th, I am writing the English version a few days late] I drove all day to go from New York to Ottawa, Canada's capital. I will be here until Monday, visiting a friend, professor at Carleton University, and I will give two talks.

Canada, as everybody knows, is a sort of US but more Europe-ized. It has a few traits proper of European countries, like the universal National Health System, which doesn't exist in the US, although Democrats say they will implement it if they win. In Canada, everything is like in the US, but a little different. Money in different denominations has different colors, which is nice after the uniformity of American bills. And the Canadian dollar, which used to be 60 US cents, is now even after the free fall of the US dollar.

The other interesting trait of this country is that it really is bilingual. Signs are also in French, and it's not difficult to hear French in the street. The border agent who checked my papers had a heavy French accent.

And it's really cold. Right now, at 11 am, we are at -3C [27F]. And it's snowing. It's my first exposure to snow this trip, but surely it won't be the last. Here's a picture of a white Ottawa from my hotel room window. The first building you see is the City Hall.

NBA

The other day we went to the NBA. You know I am a big sports fan, and I am taking advantage of this visit to the US to attend as many sporting events as I can, money permitting.

The New Jersey Nets were playing the Memphis Grizzlies. I chose this game because two Spanish guys play for the Grizzlies, Pau Gasol y Juan Carlos Navarro, both from the Baix Llobregat. They both started the game and played quite well, especially Navarro, with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Navarro, just arrived in the NBA, is showing he belongs, and he will be much talked about in the next years.