Provence

Recently, my father came out for a visit. Although he was not able to stay long (he felt compelled to return to San Diego so as not to have more than one unexcused absence at his community college Latin class), I was able to take some time off of work and the two of us were able to take a very enjoyable and interesting trip to southern France. We spent a little less than a week visiting Arles, Nîmes, and elsewhere in Provence. We decided on these towns for a couple of reasons: first, it was early April and we were hoping that the further south we went the better the weather would be, and second, that region of France has a significant number of important Roman ruins that have survived the last two thousand years in excellent condition. Although the weather was not particularly great, the ruins were certainly impressive and the trip was a resounding success. Here are some photos, with commentary:

We rented a car in Lausanne, then with the assistance of a GPS borrowed from Jens, drove to Arles. Driving in France is expensive: from Geneva to Valence -- a distance of about 250 km (150 mi) -- there is a toll of 29.50 Euro ($40). After that, you get a series of smaller but more frequent tolls, the end result being that you pay about twice in tolls what you pay in gas. Anyway, once we got to Arles, we were totally at the mercy of the GPS as we only had a street address and no idea how to actually get to our hotel. Pretty quickly, we found ourselves driving through the medieval center of the town, driving on roads not significantly wider than our car. At some point, you had to just trust that the GPS knew what it was doing and that -- despite all appearances -- the "roads" we were on were actually meant for cars and that we were not cruising along on sidewalks. The above photo shows one of the "roads" we ended up on. To make a left turn off of that street, which was necessary to get to the hotel, you had to do it in two parts, i.e. turn left, then back up a bit, then complete the turn. Ultimately, everything worked out OK as we found our hotel, parked the car, and didn't drive the wrong way down any one way streets, but I would definitely put it in my top ten most stressful driving experiences list.


Arles is a really ancient city, and evidence of this fact is literally everywhere, as shown in the above photo. Most of the building (not pictured) was fairly modern looking -- maybe a hundred or two hundred years old -- yet for some reason, they had retained this very ancient looking marble column as part of the building. But, instead of building it into the newer building, they just sort of left it leaning against the corner almost as an afterthought. Pretty much the entire city looks like this: bits from this century, that century, this millennium, that millennium, etc.

One of the big attractions in Arles is the largely-still-intact Roman amphitheatre. This is a view from the top of the amphitheatre, looking across the city into the stormy weather that seemed to follow us around Provence.

Very interestingly, the reason why the amphitheatre in Arles (and the amphiteatre in Nîmes, and the theatre in Orange and many other Roman buildings) survived for so long was that it was in essentially constant use since it was built. After the fall of the Roman empire, the amphitheatre lost its original purpose of housing sporting and gladiatorial events and by the middle ages, it became a sort of walled city within a city, complete with defensive towers on the outside and churches and markets on the inside. I can't remember the exact numbers, but there were something like 150 houses inside the amphitheatre when, in the 19th century, it was decided to clear out the amphitheatre and return it to its classical condition.

The other well-preserved Roman site in Arles is the theatre, not far from the amphitheatre. Nowadays, both it and the amphitheatre are used for public events.

Although this time around our rental car was a VW Golf, I know exactly what to ask for next time.

Our next stop was in beautiful Nîmes, which was once an important Roman city and thus contains an incredible Roman amphiteatre, pictured above (next to my Dad). The helpful audioguide mentioned that, impressive as this amphiteatre is, it was probably only one of the top twenty largest ones built by the Romans. One of the top twenty! I'm not sure why, but I really find it almost impossible to imagine that the Roman Empire was so large and so powerful and so wealthy that they built roughly twenty amphitheatres this large! Incredible.

The interior of the amphitheatre. Like the one in Arles, the amphitheatre housed a mini city for most of the middle ages and now that the dark ages are over, it is used as a place to bloodily and gruesomely slaughter helpless animals. Isn't progress great?

The top of the amphiteatre in Nîmes.

The official symbol of the city, since ancient times, is a crocodile chained to a palm tree. The history behind this is pretty cool (see the wikipedia link above) and the end result is even cooler: there are crocodiles and or palm trees decorating most of the streets downtown and most of the public places.

Nowadays, Nîmes is probably most famous for two things: being the source of the word denim and being nearby the absolutely incredible Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is part of an ancient aqueduct that was built to bring water from Uzès to Nîmes (a distance of more than 30 miles) and is an absolute marvel of engineering. The water flows "downhill" from Uzès but the gradient is so slight that it is impossible to see with the naked eye -- over the entire 31 miles, it drops only 55 ft. This corresponds to 1 ft of descent for every 3000 ft of travel. Awesome.

One evening, we had dinner at the house of a friend of the family. The above photo is a French minitel that I found in the house. The minitel is a small phone/computer terminal first used in the early 1980s as a sort of proto-internet: people could look up phone numbers, check train schedules, buy movie tickets, and do other Compuserve-esque things. The minitel above is a pretty late model, probably from the 90s, I'm guessing. For me, this was a big deal as I had never seen one in the wild. I remember that my high school French book had a small article about how awesome minitels were and how they were so much better than anything we had in the US and how it was proof that France was just a much more connected place than the US could ever dream of being. Of course, nowadays, most minitels (this one included) sit in the corner and gather dust, only being used as a phone as they have been made redundant by the ubiquity of the modern PC. Anyway, I thought it was cool.


Not far from Arles is Les Baux de Provence, a one-time medieval stronghold that is now a bunch of awesome ruins on the top of some decaying limestone cliffs. Les Baux is a fascinating place and totally worth a visit for anyone in the neighborhood, the above photo is of one of the instructional posters around the site. I guess the poster is trying to illustrate the idea that this point was the ideal place for the residents of Les Baux to discard unwanted guests, but I'd like to think of it as an illustration of the world's earliest extreme athlete. Can't you just imagine him screaming out "Do the Dew"!?

One more aqueduct. This one, though, is not particularly famous. It is ancient and Roman and used to serve Arles, but other than that, it's not particularly famous. It doesn't have any (surviving) huge spans or anything -- it's not more than 15 or 20 ft tall -- and what's left of it just sort of rambles along the countryside. I thought that it was pretty cool that you could actually buy a house that was right next to ruins that are nearly 2000 years old!!! Also, as far as I could tell, there were a lot of small signs leading to this aqueduct (just saying "aqueduct," oddly enough), yet for the life of us we couldn't find a parking lot or a little information center or anything and ended up just pulling our car over on the shoulder of the road and hopping out to look around. To me, this is something almost impossible to imagine. I mean, there are so many awesome, 2000-year-old things in France that they cannot be bothered to make parking lots or signs for all of them. Like, only the important 2000-year-old things have signs. Crazy.

---

After France, we headed back to Switzerland for a couple days of hanging out and such (there will be another blog post about this, and it will rule -ed).

Always thinking ahead, my father remembered to bring both of our baseball gloves with him in his luggage so that we could partake in that most American of traditions, playing catch. A note about vocabulary here: in the movie Field of Dreams, in a very poignant scene at the end of the film, Kevin Costner asks his Dad -- well the ghost sort of thing of his Dad, at least -- if he wants to play catch. Since the movie was written and directed by people who had only vaguely heard of baseball (this is evident throughout), Costner asks his Dad if he "would like to have a catch." This is wrong, wrong, wrong. It is so wrong, in fact, that since that movie came out, my father and I have jokingly referred to playing catch as "having a catch" just to emphasize how stupid the phrase is and also to enjoy our own private joke. Anyway, as part of a tradition that goes all the way back to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 2000, my father and I had a catch in the Parc de Valancy in Lausanne. The above photo was taken afterwords, which explains why you don't see all the Swiss girls who were totally checking us out and being intrigued by our strange foreign customs.

Finally, here we are at Parc Montbenon, near my apartment, wearing our matching hats. Yes, we had matching hats. I know -- we rule.

Fitness

It is springtime, which means that it is finally time to get outside, get some exercise, and work off all of those wonderful winter fondues. The last couple of weeks have been beautiful here (high 50s!), so it has not been hard to motivate myself to get outside and go running. Further, I am motivated by the fact that on the 24th of April, I will again be competing in the 20km de Lausanne. Now, given that I would like to do much better this year than last year, I have come up with a two-part strategy for success.

1. Crosstrain!
2. Do not have fondue (and wine) with Serge in Geneva the night before the race.

With this plan, I cannot go wrong. Undoubtedly, some of you out there are asking, how do you intend to crosstrain? The answer is, of course, step aerobics.

A few weeks ago, Jens, my officemate, and I went down to the Centre Sportif to sign up for gym passes for the semester. Now, the EPFL/UNIL gym is not particularly impressive -- even though there are ten times as many students, it's not much bigger than the Harvey Mudd gym -- but I figured that if I signed up for a pass, maybe I would find the time to drag myself down to play some pickup basketball. Unfortunately, there really is no translation in French for "pickup basketball" and when I tried to ask about it, I was not able to get any real solid information. Sure, there are times where the gym is reserved for basketball, but these are for basketball classes which have organized games. If I wanted to play in those, I would have to sign up for a course and attend every week. As far as I could tell, after asking a few people who worked at the gym, there were no unorganized hours for basketball so my dream of whooping some Swiss butt at pickup ball was not to be. So, what could I do with my gym membership? I was on the point of despair when I saw this schedule up on the wall:

Fig. 1: Aerobics at EPFL. Sorry about the quality of the pic (I took it with my cellphone), but unfortunately this schedule is not available anywhere online. Seriously, it's like 1995 here sometimes. Coming soon to the Swiss Internet: Hamster Dance!

Pictured above is the Discofit schedule for the spring semester. If you are like me, your attention was immediately drawn to the two little step icons on Mardi (Tuesday) and Jeudi (Thursday) at 12:15. As anyone who is anyone knows, Step aerobics is where it's at.

I should take a moment to explain here. I started doing Step aerobics back at Stanford and since I've been in Switzerland I have been looking high and low for classes so that I could keep up the habit. I started taking classes at Stanford sort of on a dare and when I realized how much fun and how good exercise they were, I was hooked. In fact, for those of you lucky enough to be at Stanford, you should immediately go to the Stanford Aerobics and Yoga webpage and get your butt to the next possible class. Especially if it is taught by Bridgette, you will not be disappointed.

Now that I have been to three classes, I think I can make some general statements about differences between American and Swiss Step aerobics. First, French is not an ideal language for aerobics. As the instructor must be almost continuously calling out the next moves to be done, it helps if the names and words are short. French, never a language for brevity, does not do well in this regard. For example, the verb to kick in French is donner un coup de pied. As you can imagine, this multi-syllabic monstrosity is generally avoided in Step aerobics, and the instructor just says kick instead. So, the commands tend to have an awful lot of English mixed in, which on the one hand makes things easier, but can occasionally be quite confusing. The simplest action that one can take in Step is called a basic step. For a while, I was confused because I kept thinking that the instructor was saying vas-y -- which means "go!" -- for a basic step, but actually she was just saying bazeeec with a really frenchy accent. I was similarly confused by the veuh-step (actually a V-step) and the bébémombo (actually a baby or six-step mambo). After the first week, though, I pretty much had the lingo figured out.

Second, I have to say that the overall difficulty level here just isn't that high. For starters, the choreography is not tapless. For those of you not familiar with the minutiae of Step aerobics choreography, tapless step is a faster pace version wherein there are no pauses or "taps" in between different moves. In order to work, the choreography must be well planned and the end result is fast-paced and exciting as you are constantly moving. Opinions differ on the physiological merits of tapless versus tap step (see Gin Miller, the inventor of Step aerobics, on this top here), but as far as enjoyment goes, tapless step is oodles more fun and challenging. That question aside, I think so far the choreography has been pretty darn simple and I am hoping that it will increase in difficulty as the semester goes on.

All in all, though, it has been a pretty good experience and I think my Step training will give me that extra edge I'll need for the 20km. Now, if only I had started training more than a month in advance ...

Victory or Death!

Lately, things at work have not been going particularly well. My main project (since my arrival) has been to build a set of gradient coils which are the basis of a magnetic resonance microscope. My problem, of late, has been that for reasons unknown to me, my gradient coils have developed a nasty habit of killing themselves in the middle of a measurement. What does a dead gradient coil look like? Here's an early kill of mine:

Fig. 1: A destroyed coil. The red lines are wires which carry very large currents (up to 100 A) but for only very short times (no longer than one millisecond). The Aluminum frame transports the heat away from the wires and is connected to a water cooling system.

Notice the dark charring, the melted plastic, and the overall ugliness of the situation. When something like this happens, I have to scrape out all the bad stuff, replace everything and start over. It is a time-consuming and boring process and one at which I have become far too skilled. With each rebuild, I looked at the remains and try to diagnose the problem. For the longest time, I have assumed that the problem was of a physical nature -- the wires are under extreme forces inside the magnet so maybe they are being pulled apart. If you've ever had an MRI yourself, you'll recognize the loud clicking and popping noise that the machine makes -- this is the sound of the gradient coils warping, expanding and contracting over and over. Thus, I have spent a lot of time attempting to increase the physical robustness, adding epoxy, etc. and with each rebuild I think that maybe this time I have made it so physically secure that it will finally survive. Each and every time, I have been proven wrong.

Finally, I reached a point where there was no more improving to be done. I made a complete redesign, which will take the machine shop a few weeks to complete, and in the mean time started looking for more exotic causes of the problem. Based on a suggestion from Giovanni, I decided to look to see if the DAQ (the thing that controls the current pulses that pass through the gradient coils) was behaving exactly as it should. Given that our DAQ is very expensive and produced by the leading DAQ manufacturer in the world (National Instruments), there really isn't any reason to suspect it. Of all the parts of the system, it really should be the most accurate and the least troublesome. Thus, I only started testing it when I realized that I could test a couple other aspects of the system at the same time (things I thought were much more worrisome).

Testing involved having the DAQ send thousands and thousands and thousands of pulses, then monitoring the output and looking for bad pulses. I had the tests run overnight so that they wouldn't get in the way of the other people in the lab, and honestly, I figured that after sending the first 100,000 pulses and not seeing anything bad, what was the point? Really, I was just killing time until the new system was ready.

Anyway, this afternoon at 2:45 PM, on about the millionth pulse, I found my culprit. Without getting into the details, basically the DAQ decides to go crazy on random occasions and the result of this craziness is that it tries to send really large currents for way too long times. This is what causes my coils to explode and die. I honestly would never have believed this if I didn't have the full and complete proof right before my eyes.

So, what does this mean? Well, first, it means that I finally know what is killing all of my coils! Second, I know exactly what I have to do to solve the problem (I think ...), and it is almost ridiculously easy. Third, this means that I get to call up National Instruments and tell them what horrible, awful people they are what heaping piles of shit their hardware is. For those of you who know what jerks the National Instrument people are, you'll recognize that this is by far the best reward. And, finally, it means that I can stop wasting my time rewiring gradient coils and actually get back to doing real science.

It's time to get ill.

Ski Season

It is wintertime in Switzerland, which means that it is ski time in Switzerland. Fortunately, there has been a lot of snow the last few weeks which means that the skiing is good and even total bums like me can go out and have fun. It is my aim that before I leave this country I will have advanced to the level of "mediocre" skier, no matter how much pain, suffering and freezing weather that involves. So far, there hasn't been too much of any of that bad stuff, but then again, my advancement hasn't progressed very far.

Right after the New Year, my labmate Jens had an apartment in the mountains reserved for a week of skiing with his girlfriend and some friends of theirs that would be visiting. Due to some last-minute changes of plan, a space opened up in the apartment and I was invited to join Jens and his friends for a couple days of skiing. As I had stayed in the US until after the New Year, I basically got off the plane here in Switzerland, unpacked my bags from the US, packed my bags for skiing, slept for 5 hours, then got on a train to meet up with Jens and his friends. It would be an understatement to call it an adjustment for me to leave California, where it was warm and sunny, and then the next day to be in the middle of snow with temperatures in the teens and 20s. It was gorgeous, though.

Fig. 1: The view from the apartment in Valais.

With the new year came an (almost) all new Paul.

Fig. 2: The New Paul features all new skis (sorry Swiss Army), goggles, and a helmet for safety. He still has the same vintage ski poles and totally inappropriate pants (I think Soph bought these for a camping trip eons ago and then gave them to me because they didn't fit). Pictured with the New Paul from left to right, Jens, Matt and Jackie (Jens's friends from U Michigan).

I got to spend three days straight skiing "beginner" slopes with 9-year-olds, and by the last day I was able to do some of the same pistes as normal-sized human beings. It actually did feel like quite a transformation: when I started, I was timid, nervous, and constantly hitting the breaks so that I wouldn't go too fast. By the end, I felt confident skiing on decently steep slopes and I generally tried to go as fast as possible. I honestly believed that I had improved to a not totally shameful level of proficiency. Oh, how foolish I was.

Hot off of my success with Jens and his friends, I decided to agree to go skiing with Serge a couple of weekends ago. First, he wanted me to go with him and some visitors from out of town to a nearby resort, which sounded like a great plan to me. Then, the plan changed -- the visitors weren't coming and instead we would go to somewhere nearer to Geneva. Then, the plan changed from "downhill, fun, casual skiing" to "monstrous, uphill, death-march skiing" in the mountains with mountain man Bernard as the guide. I think I have adequately documented my previous misadventures with ski de randonée or peau de phoque as it is known. If I were sane, I would have ditched as soon as the plan changed from "downhill" to "uphill," but much as Icarus , filled with hubris, decided to fly too close to the sun, I decided to test my new skills in the most difficult possible circumstances.

Fig. 3: Jens showing off the peau de phoque.

When we started, it was cold and snowing. Although I thought I would die in the parking lot, by the time we got started, I was so hot that I had unzipped my jacket and taken off my helmet and gloves. Skiing uphill is really hard work, but similar to a nice mountain hike, its not too hard to get into a rhythm and actually start to enjoy the views which are usually pretty stunning. After a few minutes, I heard Bernard say, "Watch out. Try not to get your skis or boots wet, they'll freeze." We had come across a creek in the forest and the only way across was to balance delicately on snow-covered rocks. Anyone who has ever been hiking with me will know that creeks are my nemesis and rarely to I cross a small stream without accidentally dipping a boot or two into the water. My first attempt in the snow was not much more successful than one might expect.

Fig. 4: Crossing a creek with skis on is about as easy as it looks.

After a couple of hours, we decided to take a break. "Break" here is a relative term -- as there is generally very little surrounding you that isn't covered in a think, powdery layer of snow, there isn't really anywhere to sit. So, you just stand on your skis and try not to think about how tired you are. As we had stopped a couple hundred yards uphill from the nearest cluster of cabins, we didn't really expect any company on our break. Thus, it was somewhat of a surprise when we saw that we had a visitor.

Fig. 5: Mountain Kitty! Although she probably belonged to a chalet out of sight and down the hill, I'd like to believe that she was a wild cat, living off of her cunning, guile, and the frozen corpses of other skiers.

As the cat was super friendly, we all had a good time feeding it bits of dried fruit, watching it try to "ambush" our skis, and of course having it climb all over us.

Fig. 6: I guess it's pretty cliché to take a picture of yourself in the mountains in the middle of nowhere with a cat on your shoulder, but I just couldn't resist the temptation.

As you can almost see in the above photo, by the afternoon the snow had stopped and the weather was fantastic. Hiking (especially in the US), it's not so hard to get to places where you literally can't see any signs of civilization, but it really is a whole new level of pristine isolation when you can't see any signs of civilization and everything is covered with thick snow. This really is the one advantage of ski de randonée that cannot be matched by any other activity.

Fig. 7: Although technically you could still see a ski lift on the mountains behind us, I think this was about as far from civilization as I have been, here in Europe.

Of course, it was not all uphill skiing. For the other people in our group, the real highlight was the return trip -- downhill skiing on thick, untouched powder. I had been warned that skiing on thick powder was more difficult than skiing on manicured pistes at ski resorts, but (again) I figured that I was good enough now that I would be up to any challenge. This did not turn out to be the case.

First, I didn't account for the fact that I was extremely tired before I even began. After hours of climbing, my legs were tired and I had developed huge blisters on my heels. I found out fairly quickly that I could barely lift my right leg, which made turning on my left ski pretty much impossible. Second, not only was the snow powdery and thick, it was extremely varied. Every once in a while, you would hit a relatively hard part or a extra powdery bump and if you lost your balance -- wham. Finally, I was totally unprepared for the fact that if you went too slowly, you would sink into the powder and thus have basically no chance of staying on your skis when you tried to turn.

So, my attempt to go downhill went pretty much like this: Stop, go fast, crash, pick yourself up, repeat. The snow was so thick that when you fell it was like landing on a giant pile of freezing cold pillows, so it wasn't too painful, but it got to be pretty embarrassing after about the 20th fall. Every once in a while, though, I would actually manage to stay on my feet and make a really cool, cutting turn, producing a wave of snow. It was like being the star of one of those "Ski Utah!" commercials, at least until I inevitably ate it ten feet down the slope.

Fig. 8: It is fairly easy to identify me in the picture above -- I'm the one covered in snow. As you can see, I am getting ready to make a turn onto my left ski, which means that much more snow is in my near future.

The end result was that all of the confidence and pride that I had built up in my previous ski trip was totally and utterly destroyed by the end of this one. I reached the bottom a bitter, broken man and for the third time in my life I swore that I would never go on another ski de randonée for the rest of my life.

Stop the Planet of the Apes... I want to get off!

Seeing as how I saw/meet about 90% of my reading public in the last couple of weeks, I didn't feel very motivated to keep the blog updated. I mean, if you guys wanted to know what was up, you probably had a good opportunity to ask me in person. At any rate, I do hope to keep updating this thing, at least sporadically, and before I left for vacation I actually started an update before things got too hectic and it got shelved and now seem like as good a time as any to get back to business.

Sometime ago (almost a month, I think), I headed off to beautiful Grenoble, France to visit my good friend Loren. Although Grenoble is always rocking, I chose this weekend in particular for two reasons: first, I heard that the most popular Romanian folkloric dance group in the city would be giving a performance; and second, the Fête des Lumières was taking place in nearby Lyon.

Many of you, dear readers, probably do not know about my interest in Romanian folkloric dancing. Admittedly, even I didn't know I was interested in it until I found out that the aforementioned Loren had joined a group in Grenoble. I can only speculate as to why Loren chose to join a Romanian dancing group, but the results have been pretty entertaining. Read about his adventures here.

Fig. 1: Dancer, in profile.

The performance took place at the Romanian community center in Grenoble as part of festivities to commemorate the anniversary of the 1989 Revolution. Although I had been warned that it would be an "intimate" venue, I was a little bit surprised to find out that the room was about the size of a large living room and that we would be the only non-Romanians in attendance. I was also a bit surprised when it turned out that there was a large "audience participation" part of the program, but as nearly everyone took part, it was actually plenty of fun. The dancers, of course, were spectacular. Here they are, showing off the hottest traditional dance moves.

Fig. 2: Romanian dancing in action.

Later that night, we headed off to Lyon to see the world-famous Fête des Lumières, or "Festival of Lights." I wasn't sure exactly what I was expecting -- maybe a bunch of candles or something -- but it turned out to be something entirely different. Basically, at about a dozen locations throughout the city, buildings were used as screens for elaborate light and music numbers. For the most part, the productions tended toward the avant-garde (lots of random noises, sounds and lights), but some of the displays were really cool as well. One of the churches used its carillon to provide the music, which was coordinated with a light show on its facade. Most impressive, though, was the music selection. I can't remember all of the songs we heard, but I did manage to take a couple of short videos here and here for those of you who want to play Name That Tune. All I can say is that I never really would have expeted to hear either of those songs from a church carillon.

---

In unrelated news, it finally started snowing here in Lausanne, about a month later than it did last year (take that Al Gore haters!). It was really coming down on Saturday, the day before I left for the US, which nearly destroyed my planned Christmas shopping. If it weren't for a fortuitous break in the snow late in the afternoon, most of my friends would have ended up with gifts bought at the Indian grocery story around the corner from my house (probably large bags of unusual spices).

Fig. 3: EPFL, under the snow. On a clear day, you would be able to see the lake and mountains in the background.

As I write, it is still cold (about 25) and still snowing, which although not ideal (let's face it, life is better in when it is warm and sunny) at least bodes well for future skiing trips, so it is not a total loss.

---

I recently read the classic sci-fi novel La Planète des Singes (Planet of the Apes). Although most famous for its movie (and theatrical) adaptations, it was originally a novel by French author Pierre Boulle (who also wrote Bridge on the River Kwai). It's not a bad book and I would definitely recommend it to fans of speculative fiction as it is fairly "forward-thinking" for being written in 1963. I picked up a copy while I was in Grenoble (books are about 50% cheaper in France than in Switzerland), manly because I found the cover so amusing.

Fig. 4: Worst. Cover. Ever.

First thing I noticed about the cover: is that the worst photoshopping job ever? I mean, look at the statue of liberty's arm! It's as if they just used the "select" tool to cut out the torch and then gave up on trying to make it look remotely realistic. Also, I think the artist spent about ten seconds "blending" the statue into the "sand", after which he/she spent another ten seconds or so throwing together the rest of the background. Honestly, it looks like something a 9th grader would do for a project in their "computer art" summer school class.

Which, wouldn't be too bad, if it weren't for the fact that the chosen cover image has nothing at all to do with the book! Yes, yes, yes, we all remember the shocking twist ending of the movie version, but the book has a totally different even more shocking twist ending! And, seeing as how the author is French, I'll give you a guess as to how likely it is that the Statue of Liberty has anything at all to do with the book. The artist probably can't be blamed for content of the image, but shouldn't the publisher have been at least passingly familiar with the book? And, even if the book did have the same ending as the movie, why would you possibly want to spoil the surprise ending with a photo on the cover of the book?

---

Finally, I would liked to have put some pictures here of my trip to California and of my trip to Valais last week, but that is not possible thanks to the lovely people at LAX. Although my four-year-old, crappy camera was at one time somewhere in my large. cheap suitcase when I left it with the baggage handlers in LA, it was nowhere to be found when I arrived in Lausanne. With a street value of about $50, I'm sure it was quite a score for the criminal/TSA employee who jacked it. Obviously, I should have kept it in my carry-on, but seeing as how it was so old, so worthless, and hidden in a sock deep in my suitcase, I didn't think it would be much of a target to thieves. Oh well.

Future updates: skiing madness! the much-promised Calvin et Hobbes post! probably some other things!

The greatest thing since, well, sliced bread

Last week, I finally bought a toaster. Why did I wait this long? Well, the biggest reason was that I just couldn't really find anything that fit both my demanding tastes and my cheapskate nature. Toasters are somewhat of a luxury item here (I saw some that were $300) so there weren't a lot of cheap options. Second, I don't have any counter space in my apartment and I took a long time convincing myself that I could rearrange things so that I wouldn't have to leave it on the floor. And finally, every time I found one, I either gave up on the purchase because my arms were already full of groceries, or I just didn't have the patience to wait in a ridiculously long line -- electronic stores in Lausanne seem to be chronically understaffed. Anyway, a price/convenience nexus formed at the store near my apartment the other day and I decided to pick up this winning model.

Fig. 1: I've tried the "Crusty Normal" and let me tell you, it's a piece of crap compared to the "Crusty Plus". Do you think a "normal" toaster would have a defrost or reheat setting?

Although the price (19.90) was awesome, I have to admit that I probably would have paid twice as much just for the name alone. How could I go wrong?

Once I had the toaster, I had to have the toast. As traditional European bread is not particularly well suited for toast making, I had to make a run to the supermarket for a loaf of (what I would consider "normal") sliced bread. Fortunately, there was a wide variety available.

Fig. 2: I for one am proud to see the American flag on this product. Frankly, there are a lot worse things that we could be associated with than delicious, pre-sliced bread that does not go stale within two hours of purchase.

Things to note: this is allegedly "XXL" toast for "BIG" sandwiches -- please. Also, note the patriotic packaging -- this wasn't even the only brand to feature an "American" theme for its sliced bread. From what I have noticed, "American" branding is used to sell sliced bread, peanut butter, and pop corn. I guess if I were forced to come up with a list of distinctly American food items (not obvious brands, like Coke or Spam), these would be near the top, maybe I would add pre-sliced cheese, chocolate chip cookies, and BBQ sauce. One final linguistic note: notice how the loaf of bread is labeled "toast." Of course, it's not actually "toast" until you put it in a toaster, but I guess in French it's "toast" whether you toast it or not. Oddly enough, in Italian, "un toast" refers to a sandwich that has been made on sliced bread and then toasted. Maybe it's just me, but I find it kinda funny that the word was borrowed by both languages and then the definition kinda floated in different directions over time. Anyway...

---

In totally unrelated news, a few weeks ago, I went to Zurich for a concert and as my plans were somewhat last-minute, I had to make hotel arrangements the night before and thus ended up in a place called the Zic-Zac Rock Hotel. It certainly wasn't the best smelling hotel I've ever stayed in, but I have to admit that it did have some charm. For example, all of the rooms were themed on a different rock group. Here's the list:

Fig. 3: I guess with so many rooms, the Zic Zac Rock Hotel was bound to have a couple of less than rocking rooms. Foreigner? Heart? Bryan Adams? At least there isn't a Winger room.

Each room was filled with posters, fake gold records, and even custom-made paintings of the band. I guess for certain bands, this would be pretty cool. In my room though, the theme was Prince.

Fig. 4: Can't sleep, Prince will eat me. Can't sleep, Prince will eat me ...

I dare you to go to sleep with that thing staring in your face.

Fondue!

What to do on Thanksgiving if you're a vegetarian?  If one is fortunate to have lots of relatives who are excellent cooks, well, one just enjoys an endless supply of vegetarian side courses and such (this was my technique while in San Diego).  But, let's say you're not the world's best cook and you still want to have a special, gut-busting meal for the big day.  One word: Fondue.

As I've already fielded a number of requests for this already, I feel like now is as good a time as any to put "my" famous fondue recipe online for easy reference.

Fondue moitié-moitié (as adapted from Serge's recipe)

Fig. 1: Thanksgiving is very big in Switzerland on account of the large number of Swiss who came to American and were kicked out.  For bonus points: what is wrong with this picture?

Ingredients:

• 200 g cheese per person
• Kick this up to 250 - 300g for "heavy hitters"
• moitié-moitié means "half-n-half" -- half the cheese should be gruyère and the other half should be vacherin fribourgeois.  If you can't get vacherin at your supermarket, go to any specialty shop or just a frou-frou supermarket with a great cheese selection.  Stanford peeps, you can get your cheese from the Milk Pail Market.  If you can't find vacherin, or if you find its somewhat pungent taste too rich for your blood, then up the percentage of gruyere and replace the vacherin with a strong, white cheese.  White cheddar will work, but something too dry like Parmesan will not.
• 200 g bread per person
• Get plain french bread from the supermarket, preferably day old or at least a bit hard.  Don't buy sliced bread as you'll want it cut much thicker.
• 75 ml wine per person
• My original source (i.e. Serge) suggests that you should use 100 ml wine.  I think that this produces too liquidy a fondue, which although delicious, is not to everyone's liking.  Save the wine for drinking.  Go with a dry white wine, like a zinfandel.  Nothing fruity, sweet, or oaky.
  
• one clove garlic
• one shot of kirschwasser
• Kirschwasser is a dry, fruity, cherry brandy.  Cherry schnapps will work, but if you can't find kirsch, just get another dry, fruity brandy like Slivovitz, palinka, or tuica.  I have personally witnessed a Swiss person use tequila when Kirsch was unavailable, but I wouldn't recommend it to the novice.
  
• one Tbsp. corn starch
• fresh ground pepper
  
• one jar of cornichons
• Small pickles.  These are essential for occasionally refreshing the pallet.
  

Items that you will need

• One caquelon and burner per 4 people.
• If you don't have a caquelon, use a sturdy pan.  All the fondue sets anyone I knew at Stanford had were really tiny.  Use the burner, but toss the small caquelon in favor of a larger pot.
• Fuel for the burner
• Here in Switzerland, you can get these little cups of gel fuel which are disposable and easy to use.  I'm not sure how available these are stateside, but you can just buy denatured alcohol instead.  Be warned, though, because if you do use liquid fuel, you will probably want one of these ...
• Fire extinguisher
• You never know.

Fig. 2: Liquid fuel has a tendency to cause trouble, especially if the person in charge of filling the burners has already had a bit too much liquid fuel himself.

Preparation:

The first task is to grate the cheese.  Unless the cheese came pre-grated (ask at the cheese counter, maybe they'll do it for you), you are in for a lot of fun.  Set a couple of your B-ark guests on this task as it is a good way to keep them out of the kitchen.

Next, start cutting the bread.  You want roughly 1-2" cubes, or you can just cut into thick slices and let each guest tear off chunks, either way is fine.  I used to think that this was a fairly obvious and simple task, until I once assigned it to someone who shall not be named.  Apparently, having a Master's degree in financial math is not enough to qualify someone to quickly and efficiently cut bread.

Fig. 3: Poor bread-cutting algorithms will run in O(n^2) or even O(n^3) time, while an optimized strategy gets the job done in O(n).

Cut the clove of garlic in half and rub it around the inside of the pot.  If you like garlic, throw the halves into the pot, if not, throw them into the trash.  Next, add the wine and put the pot on a stove on medium heat.  Do not attempt to do this on your burner, it is way too inefficient and slow.  Mix the kirsch and the corn starch in a small container, then add them to the pot when the wine is simmering.  Now, just add handfuls of cheese slowly, allowing each to melt before adding another.  Once melted, you can add some fresh pepper to the pot, and you're ready to eat!

Fig. 4: Good times in Menlo Park.  Notice the chairs and table, all of which were stolen from the physics department to accommodate the large number of attendees.

Helpful hints:

• While the cheese is melting, one should stir the pot using a wooden spoon by making an exaggerated figure-eight pattern.  You might think that the way that you stir the cheese is irrelevant, but it's these kind of details that separate the fondues from the fondon'ts.
• As an experienced fondue eater, it is your responsibility to stir the pot while it is at the table.  Use a sturdy piece of bread that is well attached to your forchette to mix the cheese around.  Beginners should not attempt this move as it will most likely lead to them dropping their bread in the fondue, a huge no-no.
• Don't be too vigilant about stirring the pot; there should always be a thin layer of cheese stuck to the bottom that slightly burns during eating.  This is called la religieuse (the nun) and is a tasty treat for those willing to scrape it off of the pot.  I don't know why it's called "the nun."
  
• Drink white wine with your fondue.  As there is just something about cheese that makes it conducive to drinking, you should probably have roughly one bottle per person on hand for the event.  People who don't drink wine can drink water or hot tea, all other beverages are strictly forbidden.  Think I'm kidding?  I've heard of restaurants literally refusing to serve coke to Americans with their fondue for fear of it causing horrible gastric problems.
• No matter what you do, there will probably be issues with the consistency of the cheese.  If it starts to phase separate into liquid and solid portions, take it off the small burner and put if back on the stove, heating it and stirring vigorously (in figure eights!) until it starts behaving.  It really is difficult to get the consistency "just right," so don't worry about it and just eat it the way it is.  Too runny or too thick is still delicious, so enjoy!
• A final word of warning:  watch out what happens to your camera during a night of fondue.  If you do not practice constant vigilance, odds are high that some narcissistic joker will steal it and take lots of pictures of himself.  Be advised.
  

Fig. 5: I have like 10 of these shots on my camera.  Thanks, Nick!

Enjoy!!