Look, look, look

(30,000 ft somewhere over SE Siberia) - I've complained about this before.

People flying over fantastic landscapes. Being over places that they might only dream of going and might pay small fortunes to see. And then when confronted with them, shut the blinds and ignore it as it was only a movie playing on the little oval window to their right and not instead the actual fabulous panorama unfolding before their eyes.

And so it was on my flight back from Seoul back to Europe. We flew out over the Yellow Sea into glorious blinding sunshine on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday. Small fishing junks dotted the sea between thousands of untold numbers of unnamed islands. Unfortunately dense fog obscured the Chinese coast which didn't lift until somewhere north of Bejing near the Great Wall as we headed for points north. But all this was lost on my fellow travelers who were too engrossed in the TV's laughtrack to see what was happening below.

I wanted to get up and scream "WAKE UP!!! Do you realize what we're seeing? That's Mongolia! GET IT?! M-O-N-G-O-L-I-A. The steppes where the horseman of Ghenghis Khan raced out of 900 years ago to change the fast of the ancient world. Where vast tract were crossed by nameless traders of the silk and spice for thousands of years. Where the undulating gentle grassland hills roll on for thousands of miles to the east and west. Thousands of miles. Where hundreds of miles to southwest is the Gobi dessert and then the Himalayas beyond. Do you realize! How can you stand it! WAKE UP!!!"

But I didn't and they didn't.

I wanted to take my seatmate by the shoulders and wring her until she realizes what was happening and where we are going, or at least looks away from the US sitcom playing on the TV and glances out the window. Or at least lets me sit next to the window.

I've had similar.

We see not a sign of humanity for 1/2 hour. No signs of habitation then some road and a settlement. A Mongolian yurt. goddamn man a MONGOLIAN goddamn yurt. WAKE UP!!! The road bends and heads to south. why? Ghengis Khan was here. Holy Crap. Look. Look. Looooook.

I'd talked to this Korean girl on the way over. Mentioned that we were flying over the Russian federation and 'Oh look at the lights way down there in the middle of Russia... I wonder what life is like there.' She was like "Really?...", the interest and genuine amazement in her voice palpable "...I had no idea"

Where did you think we where .... Nowhere?

About such views and vistas, some may say "so what?". What can you really see or experience from 30,000 ft? But some people love maps. It thrills them to see where they are, the proximity of one place to another, where they are, what's near by and where they are going.

And there is of course intimate traveling... of having your hooves on the ground, being in and of a sea of humanity. But flying is a midscale experience. Not with the with the immediecy of being on the ground, but with more perpsective and expediency. You see the texture and lay of the land, where people live and what the terrain looks like. And what a view!

The grasslands of Mongolia have given way to the dark fir forests and small mtns. of southern Siberia. It looks cold and brutal and yet there is still 4000km of Siberia north of here until one gets to the sea. But its wild and wonderful also. "Look out the window people.... You will never in your lives come here, so get it now", I holler. But they don't. The low mtns role out beyond my sight 100's of kms away. They look probably much like the Adirondacks or Catskills do from the air. Deep forest on the slopes, with the tips just barely poking above the treeland... probably about 1200 m. at this lattitude.

And what next? We'll cross the vast forest of central Siberia, then over the Urals and out of Asia into the wide Volga valley, then leave Russia over St. Petersburg, down through the Baltic Sea, over Denmark to Schipol Amsterdam. Tonite I'll be back in my bed in Geneve. What times we live in!

Good Joy "Western Ice Bar Texas Palm"

(Seoul, Korea) - Have spent the last 5 days 80km off the S. coast
of Korea. Gave 2 talks which were pretty well received, but
unfortunately was so jetlagged and sick from a cold I picked up
enroute that I couldnt really take full advantage of the islands
amenities.

Jeju-do island is billed as "semi-tropical" and indeed there were
palm trees, but the temperature was not so much greater than
Geneva (9 C). Anyway, despite my illin' one day my friend
Changyoung Kim (who I worked with at Stanford and is now a prof as
Yonsei Univ. in Seoul) went hiking with his students towards the
top of this formerly volcanic island. It is the highest point is
S. Korea and while only 1900m gets ALOT of snow in the winter
because of ocean moisture. Again, so much for tropical. We left
the palms at the coast and spent 3 h. tromping around in the snow
on the final approach to the volcano cone.

We were only at 1200m and there was about 1.5 meters of snow on
the ground. I am sure there is alot more on top. Pretty cool day
messing around in the snow on top of an island in the middle of
the South China Sea.

Now I 'm in Seoul for 4 days. Luckily, part of the post meeting
workshop was canned, so I will have more time for site seeing...

...and speaking of palm trees. We got beers tonite at the 'Western
Ice Bar Texas Palm'. It's a bar and why it is called what it is...
I have no idea. Pictures of cowboys on the rough hewn walls.
Johnny Cash playing on the Juke box and random neon signs splashed
on the walls with bits of Americana geography. "Atlanta" "Indiana"
"Santa Barbara". As in Japan, it seems to be sufficient marketing
statement to just put up random American words and figure that a
non discerning public will find it cool. The cognitive disconnect
between it all was overwhelming. Seoul has changed I think from
when my Texas grandfather was fighting here in '52.

I feel like I'm back.

(Jeju-do, S. Korea) - When I am was in grad school, I went through a time were I went more or less cold turkey off of excercising or bike riding. I didn't read much other than work stuff and didn't go out much. Mostly I just worked. I had been in for about 2 years and felt like that I could get back into these things eventually, but right then I needed to buckle down and live like a physics monk for awhile. I thought that close to the end of my Phd. I could branch out again, but that if I didn't buckle down then that I might never finish. I needed to build inertia.

And so it has been with me and the blog. I am leaving Geneva in June and felt that I have just have so much to get down before I go that if I didn't buckle down I might never get it all done. There was Geneva stuff, Hopkins stuff, and still alot of UCLA stuff. Well, we have the first of what hopefully will be a few papers on the UCLA stuff, so I have a big weight off. Other things are going well. I am back baby!

Right now, I am 90km on the south coast of Korea at the 10th APCTP Winter Workshop on Strongly Correlated Electron Systems Jeju-do island. The Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics has an annual meeting where they invite a few international speakers. My old friend Changyoug Kim got me invited this. As I've said before travel and motion are my creative muse and so I feel the irresitible notion to blog again. That and they have wireless modem access in the lecture hall. More to come about what I've been doing the last few days.

The best.

Blonde joke. Ever.