Happy December!

It's 9th week of Michaelmas term and pretty much all I'm thinking about is Christmas time!

Here's a quick post owing to the fact that I'm going to a housewarming party for one of my lab partners tonight and I only have 10 minutes to bust out the highlights of the week!

1. Christmas time is definitely here in Oxford. In fact, hints of Christmas started back in November because they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here. Now I understand why people in the US occasionally "peak early." We just want to throw an extra holiday in there. Anyway, last Friday, Oxford officially kicked off the season with a Christmas market and festival! There was lots of food, including sausage rolls (think pigs in a blanket), mulled cider, European foods (German, French, Spanish), and sweets. There were also rides, handicraft stands, a stage, and festive lighting. In fact, Roger Bannister was in attendance to officially light the city's decorations! That was quite nice.

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2. UK news. If you haven't been following European news, now might be a good time to do so. Economic tensions are high, and they're spilling into the political landscape. Prime Minister David Cameron just went to a summit of Eurozone leaders and - with pressure from all sides in England- blocked EU-wide economic reforms in hopes of gaining financial protection for the city of London. Naturally, the rest of the EU wouldn't stand for London to get a security blanket, so now they are more or less teaming up against Britain.The next coming months will be crucial not just for the Euro, but for the political unity of the EU as a whole. Time will tell...

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3. Activities! With the undergraduates gone (term ended last weekend), things have really settled down. That means that as an MCR, we've had lots of free time. So what do most English people do in the evenings? Hit up a pub! There's nothing like a glass of hot mulled wine and some pistachios in the Eagle and Child on a chilly December evening. Admittedly, the weather has only dipped below freezing twice this term (tonight will be the third), but the wind has been rather brutal. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when the sunshine goes away next month in favor of rain. Blech.

Finally, we did actually go ice skating on Tuesday. I had a really good time... until I skated too fast, tripped on the teeth of my right figure skate (no hockey skates... booo) and went horizontal. Bobby Orr would have been proud, except at least he had pads! Now, three days later, I'm still wondering if I need to go get medical attention for my elbow and knee. Sigh... guess I'll see what happens to them this weekend.

Negative 4 minutes... oops! I'm off to eat chocolate mousse and tartiflette (the host is French :-D )!!

Speedy Passing of Time

Just like that, the weeks have flown by. I anticipated that this might happen, but it was definitely not my intention to go a month without writing. Nonetheless, I will do my best to catch everyone up on the events of the past month.

Research has settled into a fairly standard routine. Now in the 8^th week of term, I have been spending my time in the continuous quest of successful MATLAB models. Since my research will seek to assess the effect of pedestrian loads on bridge motion, it is relevant to begin by modeling two main systems. First, I worked on developing a model of the displacement of a “single degree of freedom” structure. Basically, an ‘SDOF’ structure is one that can only displace in one shape, such as a spring. If you think of a vibrating string, the first degree of freedom has only two nodes, which looks like a bent archery bow. Like a vibrating string, structures also displace in harmonics.  The first harmonic is the simplest shape of deformation. At any rate, this displacement of a structure can be modeled by a differential equation with inertial, damping, and stiffness terms.

Having modeled the motion of a structure, I also started to model the lateral motion of a pedestrian. Existing research shows that the lateral movement of a person’s center of mass can be modeled as an inverted pendulum (like a mechanical metronome), in terms of the person’s foot placement and the horizontal displacement of the ground. Thus, since a person really has an inverted pendulum for each footstep, I have been trying to develop a numerical solver (i.e. an estimator) to predict such motion.

Well enough about research. Last week was Thanksgiving and I spent all day in the lab, hard at work… dreaming of turkey, cranberry sauce, American football, friends, and family. Indeed, I did reflect during the day, as I have so much to be thankful for. Let me count some of the ways:

-New friendships in the UK. I’m extremely thankful to have met so many great people in Keble, the lab, and ballroom dancing. They have made my first term an easy adjustment to international living, so I am really grateful for them. Something that I’ve taken to doing in my spare time (“spare time?” I hardly know the meaning of the words) is cooking for lots of the people in my dorm. The first time I did it, I cooked American fried chicken and homemade biscuits for 15. It was a huge hit, so I have since added a Mediterranean-style pizza night with homemade crust for 25, and a fajita night for 15. It is a great way to bring everyone together to catch up and enjoy conversation. This weekend – to up the ante a bit – a fellow American and I are going to host a grand Thanksgiving dinner and gag gift exchange for 20+. The menu is quite extensive, but for whatever reason, I’m not particularly worried about it. Clearly I am my parents’ son. More to the point, however, the fresher grad students here in Keble have really bonded well this term, and I am really excited to have them as friends.

While I won’t go into too much detail on this here, I am also really fortunate to have a great group of colleagues in the lab. With students from across the world, we seem to have a strange mix of uniqueness (due to background, lifestyles, culture, etc) and commonness (civil engineering, Oxford, traveling, sports, etc). They are a fun group to be with, and incredibly smart to boot. I’ll certainly be learning a lot from them!

-Ballroom dancing. Dance has been an amazing addition to my life! I have been very fortunate to be paired with a fantastic partner, whose name is Jenna. She’s finishing up her undergrad degree at UCLA in psychology next fall, but she is taking a year of study here in Oxford. Lucky for me, she has done a variety of dance in the past. We’re both committed to success on the dance floor, so it has been and will continue to be excellent to work with her throughout the year. For the beginners’ team as a whole, a good deal of camaraderie has developed among the 30 couples already, which makes the rehearsals and competitions much more fun. Two weekends ago, we had our first competition at Nottingham University. The competition began at 10 am and did not conclude until 11 pm! Even though it was a long day of dancing, Jenna and I enjoyed the competition atmosphere. On top of the thrill of the event, we actually placed quite well too. In quickstep (which we thought was our worst dance, haha), we placed third among all beginners. In waltz, we placed second, and we won the jive outright! Unfortunately, we didn’t even make the finals in cha cha, which we thought was our best dance... but we are quite happy with the results all the same! The second event was this past weekend at in Birmingham (hosted by Warwick University) where the competition was much fiercer. Our rivals, Cambridge, went toe to toe with us, but we were surprised that Cardiff and Imperial universities placed even better than we. Nonetheless, Jenna and I were still fortunate to dance quite well – we finished 3^rd in jive and 5^th in cha cha among all beginners, but we did not crack the finals in either quickstep or waltz. We are both optimistic about our chances in the spring, but we also know that we have a lot of practicing to do. So far, the plan is for each of us to do 50 spin turns per day until Christmas as practice. Hopefully that will whip us into proper shape!

-Old friends. On 11 November, Kalli made the jump across the pond to visit and do some sightseeing with me. She was amazing for putting up with my dance and lab schedule, and we really enjoyed Oxford and London a lot. I would have to say that the highlight of her visit was taking a three-day adventure to Paris. Last Monday morning, we left Oxford at sunrise and took the Eurostar train across the English Channel. Actually, due to the long dance competition the day before, we were so tired that we slept for the whole ride. Once we checked into the hotel, we walked to the Trocadero and La Tour Eiffel, where we admired the sunset and took a ton of artsy pictures. I had a delicious crepe filled with chocolate, banana slices, and Chantilly (whipped cream). From Eiffel, we headed north, stopped at a grocery store for some cheese, bread, and wine, and found a beautiful bridge looking over the Seine to have our dinner. It was really an epic dinner! The last thing we did that night was walk the Champs Elysees, where they had a fantastic Christmas market set up. Little booths were filled with food, crafts, toys, clothes, and other Christmasy items, and it really helped me get into the holiday spirit.

On our second day, we started in the Latin Quarter, which is south of Notre Dame. There is one particularly narrow, cobble-stone filled street which is lined with some great stores. Kalli picked up some chicken and roasted potatoes in a sachet (British and French for ‘bag’), and I grabbed two yummy baguettes. We ate our delicious lunch next to the Pantheon looking down over Notre Dame in the distance. Of course, having stared at it from a distance, it was then obligatory to walk to the cathedral and take more excellent, artistic pictures. On a side note, I really like Kalli’s Canon Rebel SLR camera… I think I may need to ask for one for Christmas ;-) Anyway, we grabbed some gelato, listened to a really good street violinist, and walked around, admiring the area. Finally, we returned to Notre Dame for a choral concert! Half the concert consisted of Bach works for organ – which were stunning in the grand cathedral – and the other half was comprised of chorales from the Romantic period.

For our last day, we spent most of the day in the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa, and we wandered around looking at the various paintings and artifacts from the Italian Renaissance and ancient Rome/Egypt respectively. For a change of scenery, we also went and took a quick tour of the National Opera House, upon which Phantom of the Opera is based. As you can tell, it was a fun trip to Paris, full of walking and sightseeing.

Well, this post is bordering on epic novel, so I’m going to move to the big finish now, even though I have so much more to be thankful for….

CULTURE CORNER

As anticipated, the arts in Oxford are quite prevalent. One can attend a concert, dramatic performance, or see some art almost any day of the week. Last week, I was able to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni and hear the Handel Messiah Oratorio. This week – amongst my choice of concerts – I am considering going to see A Man for All Seasons, which is about Sir Thomas More’s dissent of King Henry VIII’s move to initiate the Church of England.

On top of those performances, a motion has been put forward to campaign for Oxford to be recognized by UNESCO as the “book capital of the world.” If you were to step into any of Oxfords dozens of libraries or bookstores, you would understand why. The wealth of knowledge is incredible here and it is amazing to be in such an academic atmosphere.

WORDS OF THE DAY:

Because I’ve faltered as of late, there are multiple words of the day today. Enjoy!

Aubergine: n. a vegetable with purple skin and fleshy interior. Syn: Eggplant.

Croquette: n. a vegetable with green or yellow skin and a cucumber-like interior. Syn: Zucchini.

Literally (pronounced: lit-tral-lee): adv. when something means exactly as the person says it does. e.g. Believe it or not, there were literally only five people attending that amazing performance!

Quid: n. slang for an amount of money. Syn: Bucks. e.g. How much did you pay for those trousers? Oh, they were a great bargain, only 8 quid at Primark!

Rubbish: n. 1. Items that are of no further use and are discarded. Syn. Trash, garbage. 2. Something that is completely and totally ridiculous. e.g. I can’t believe they served those terrible carrots for dinner again. They were completely rubbish!