Still Here

... still here.

Bon Mots

My sister thinks that I should drop a bon mot on my blog. So I chose a particularly big one---100 megatons of yeild---that I bought from the Russians. So now I'm droping it... we'll see what's left of the blog when its over.

Tornado in Prague

Recently I've been hoping to see a tornado in Prague. A few weeks ago there was a springtime storm and the wind was really fast, must've been 50 mph. I was in my office---the widows were shaking and there was all sorts of detritus flying in the air. It was rainy too. I ran between windows in hopes of spotting a vicious, cycling funnel. It would have been cool to see it tear through the panelaky. But I didn't see any. Last night there was another storm and it was a little windy and rainy. But no tornado there either. The end.

11 day anniversary

This post is to celebrate the 11th day anniversary of my blog. Many thanks to my devoted readers!

High Blood Pressure in Moscow

I was recently at a conference in Moscow. There was some Russian guy there giving a talk about noncommutative field theory. I could tell he was a mathematician, since he became very tense about precisely answering my questions. I got confused, and at one point I asked about the relation between his version of noncommutative field theory and the one most us physicists are familiar with. He said he was using the Hamiltonian formalism and couldn't comment on its relation to the Lagrangian. When he saw that this answer left me unsatisfied, he became more upset and at one point had to sit down and stop talking. He then collapsed and started shaking, looked like a seizure. The conference organizers tried to help him out, but eventually he had to be taken to the hospital. He never finished giving his talk, and I felt upset and guilty. The end.

Flaming trash in Moscow

I was walking down the Arbat street with my girl when we found a trashcan in flames. It was nice, because it was pretty cold outside and I could warm my hands. The melting plastic bottles made a bad smell though. I threw in one of my receipts so that the fire would have a more natural burning paper smell. But it didn't help much. The end.

No more Hindi

Sorry for the Hindi interruption. I enabled Hindi transliteration for my Indian readers, but then I realized I couldn't read my own posts.

हिन्दी नहीं जनता हूँ

इ दोन'टी स्पेअक हिन्दी

फॉर सम रासों ब्लॉगर इस व्रितिंग माय पोस्ट इन हिन्दी। दोन'टी ask me why !

Finger

My finger feels better now. Thank you for your concern.

Flaming Decorative Shrubbery

My girl and I like to go out to breakfast on weekends, because we never get a chance to enjoy a meal in the morning during the week. The other day we went to this French cafe. It is really expensive, but they have good bread. They also have two big decorative shrubs adorning the entrance. After breakfast I was waiting outside when---I'm not sure how---one of these shrubs went up in flames. It happened very fast and the fire was big. I realized that the fire could easily spread to the rest of the building, and in a moment of heroism I grabbed the flaming pot and pulled it out onto the sidewalk. There we could really watch it burn, without worrying about some larger disaster. Unfortunately the restaurant employees got word of the incident and came out with big buckets of water. The shrub was quickly extinguished. The end.

Flaming Candle

We also had another candle incident the other night. We bought this really pretty painted glass candle holder. I like to put candles in it because the candlelight glows through the painted glass and makes pretty colors. But I wanted to be careful with this one, because it is extra delicate... no exploding glass this time. So when I put a candle inside, I wanted to first make sure it had its own protective casing, so the hot wax wouldn't melt onto the glass and cause explosions. We found a votive candle with plastic casing, big enough to last through the night. But then I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sound. The whole candle---plus its plastic casing---had gone up into huge, very smelly flames. I put the fire out, but it was a mess. The glass candle holder didn't explode, though I had to clean out the inside. The end.

Exploding glass

This reminds me of another incident that happened the other night. I like to burn candles while we sleep so it won't be too dark. We had these nice glass candle holders... they were thick and small, they had nice colors. But one night while we were asleep the candle holder got so hot that it exploded. There were colorful shards of glass everywhere. I heard it explode too---it woke me up. The end

Burning glass

It's hot here so we tried to make iced tea. My girl poured boiling water into a glass and it broke. It was the only glass we had. She put it to rest in the sink and I wanted to see how broken the glass was. So I picked it up and burned my finger on the boiling water. I immediately dropped the glass into the sink and it really broke this time. My finger still hurts. The end.

You'll never remember this blog name, I bet!