2007.04.27 13:06:46 EDT Journal: the flight back; lost luggage Home sweet home! But not so for my luggage. First let me back track a bit. Dinner had been plentiful for the past few days: Tuesday, we treated Ms Yu and Tian to dinner (we being Pin and I) at the res
2007.04.25 17:21:15 CST Journal: hair cut, uses of Chinese ancient medicine-fu This is the first time I've been to the barbershop in almost two years. It feels good, to have someone professional, someone who knows how to handle thick Chinese hair, to give me a decent haircut. Th
2007.04.24 20:18:19 CST Building security A few days ago, out of curiousity, we asked the guy down at the ground floor guarding the door about the door-locking policy of this building: he kindly informed us that 1) yes, they do perform a comp
2007.04.23 22:19:04 CST Journal: Elevators and badminton Elevator The elevator in this building allows for passengers to "cancel" a request. There had been several instances prior where, for example, Sergiu leaned against the panel and accidentally pressed
2007.04.18 21:15:40 CST Journal: Recap Lots to talk about here, so I'll actually include section headings. More Good Food Sometime around last weekend, I was in my office on the computer, and a westerner knocked on the door and asked in En
2007.04.13 08:38:03 CST Journal Whee! Two wonderful dinners in a row. Wednesday afternoon, Ionescu was invited to give a seminar on some recent stuff he has been studying with Sergiu. The problem is that of unique continuation: in p
2007.04.07 21:41:26 CST Journal: YiHe Yuan Yay! I went out to play today. (And thanks to S's wonderful suggestion of bringing a USB cable with me, now I have pictures!) Our wonderful host, Ms. Yu, took Sergiu, his family, Alex, and Jean-Michel
2007.04.06 13:12:13 CST Deliveries, cheap labour, and expensive coffee One of the things about China that Big Business loves is the fact that labour is cheap. One evidence for this even in everyday life is the curious phenonmenon where everything can be delivered. Pin or
2007.04.06 11:34:35 CST Peking static For some reason, the blackboard is so staticky here. I don't know if it is the dry weather of the material they made the black board from, but everytime I reach for a piece of chalk or for the eraser
2007.04.06 08:56:26 CST Journal: Another day in China So wind-chill seems to be a big factor in Beijing. Without the wind, even the cool morning air feels wonderful once I am in the sun, but when the wind starts blowing, staying outside for long is unbea
2007.04.05 08:29:11 CST Journal: Smog, gaijin, pineapples I got up this morning, looked out the window, and it looks dank and dark and grey and all other kinds of unpleasant. As I put on my backup extra sweather, Pin said, triumphantly, to me, "This is what
2007.04.03 14:05:05 CST Counterexample to endpoint Sobolev embedding A question that has been bothering me a little while, which Ionescu kindly answered: We know that the Sobolev embedding doesn't hold in the end-point case Hs → L∞ when s = n/2. The question
2007.04.02 11:01:58 CST China: Journal 2 Yesterday we went out to lunch with Alex Ionescu (and Klainerman and the whole gang). We found out that at one of the cafeterias, they have a booth just for Islamic food (right next to the one for veg
2007.04.01 11:33:27 CST China, First few days I am currently in Beijing. At the invitation of Sergiu Klainerman (my advisor), my officemate Pin Yu and I traveled to China to join him, who is taking part of his sabbatical year at the Institute for