Regina: That's All, Folks

It's time to wrap up a few odds and ends. I'll start with my roommates, who were a unique bunch ("Yegor, what did you do today?" "Every good Russian must be a spy, so I spent the day bugging your rooms.") We also had Ewout the MATLAB wizard, and Ortho, who knew how to make homemade pierogies. In fact, that's what we're up to in this photo -- a regular assembly line for mashing potatoes (with a homemade masher... you don't want to know), chopping cheese, putting them in wraps, sealing, and boiling them. The folks are, from left to right, Ewout, Giang (also in our working group), Yegor, Rachel (background, growing out of my head), and me.

I also mentioned crazy Aussies, and indeed here's a photo of the combined forces of Houghton and Australia, outside the dorms on the last day. That reminds me... we had to call a cab to get to the airport at the end of the IPSW. When the fellow picked us up (me, Rachel, and Hu, also flying to the US), he said "So did the folks at the cab service tell you that they were all out of regular cabs?" Of course we were confused, so he said "Yeah, they had to send this special cab instead. It's a karaoke cab! You have to sing a song before you get out, or pay double fare!" He then proceeded to regale us with all manner of songs (mostly oldies) and stories about famous people he'd known. In the end, I got out by singing "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," and he let the girls go anyhow!

Back to the Aussies for a moment -- here's something useful for all y'all who aren't from Australia. Apparently there is a thing called "Iced Chocolate" in Australia, which is so common that even the Starbucks there sell it. Of course, we have nothing like it in the US. It's a sort of cross between a milkshake and chocolate milk. The Australians decided that we needed to experience the One True Iced Chocolate, so they made some for us. Here below, I give away their secret recipe (shh! don't tell!):

There were plenty of other things going on -- like actual math, but that's boring for a photo blog! Perhaps I'll write about it sometime. But for now, I'll leave you with one last photo -- a 360 degree panorama which I took from the top of The Hill, the one and only hill in Regina (which was formed by dredging Lake Wascana). Enjoy!

Click for full size

Regina: Campus!

The University of Regina campus is a pretty unique place. Saskatchewan itself is very flat, and the winds (and Chinooks from Alberta -- winds coming over the Rockies at enormous speeds) get very fast and very cold. Temperatures regularly hit -40, and it doesn't matter what scale you're using then!

As a result, all of the buildings on campus are connected as part of one giant ring. Buildings either connect directly, via underground tunnels, or by specially built above-ground connections like this one. This is basically a greenhouse built entirely to connect the Education building (where we spent most of our days) to the student union (where we spent most of our lunches). It's almost entirely glass, with lots of exotic plants in pots and hanging from the ceilings. There is lots of natural light (and even full-spectrum artificial lights at night). Any Tech student knows the importance of getting your sunlight in winter!

We could easily get from the dorms to our various work rooms without ever going outside -- down the elevator, through the tunnel, down the walkway, and into the next building! Then for lunch, head through the greenhouse and there you are!

Regina is so cold that most cars are built with a special wire running around the engine block which connects to a plug on the front. In the winter, you can plug your car into one of these little posts, which are located in front of every single parking spot at the university. The "engine block warmer" apparently warms things just enough that you can start your car and get the heck out of there!

Another interesting fact is that apparently our favorite hotheaded French Mathematician, Évariste Galois, donated to the construction of the University of Regina Library. Or at least, someone donated in his name:

For those who don't know the story, check out "Final Days" at that link -- he fundamentally changed mathematics even though he only lived to age 21!

I think I'll be writing one more entry about Regina, this one about the various cool and amusing people I met there, and the trip home. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion!

Regina: The Lake, again

Squeaky says hello!
As promised, there was lots more to see around the lake. For one thing, these furry little buggers. There were prairie dogs all over the place, digging holes and running around like squirrels. In fact, they really are squirrels, just ones that run into holes instead of up trees when you chase them (not that I tried... honest...). Their holes were good places to trip and twist your ankle, so you had to be careful.

Near the lake, on U of R property, we found this neat sculpture. It was actually a big octagon made entirely of wrought iron, with a small dedication plaque in the center. This side caught my eye, especially with the moody sky we were having at the moment. I'm not certain what the story behind this nifty piece of art is, but I love campuses with actual sculptures on them -- Tech has exactly one such thing, and it's near the Humanities building of course. I suppose they make snowplowing hard.

A bit further on, we found something which I'd never seen before: a Canadian cemetery! As it turns out, Canadian cemeteries are just like US cemeteries, except that the flags tend to be different. This was the veterans' section of the cemetery.



Also in the cemetery was this little temple. It was in a section filled with Japanese names. The plaque explained that the temple was built to let Regina's (apparently large) Japanese population remember their ancestors in a more traditional way.

There were a lot of other neat parts of the lake, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me -- such as the artificial waterfall on Lake Wascana, which we tried to push one of the Australians under (didn't work: she grabbed our kayaks and pulled us under with her!) or the Saskatchewan Legislature Building (don't ask me how I missed that!). Regina also had some amazing sunsets. Unfortunately, there was no way to see them, because everything was so flat. I spent a lot of time running around trying to catch beautiful clouds hilighted by the setting sun, and totally failing. I did manage to get this one panoramic of the sun setting behind the lake:

Regina: Round About the Lake

I'm going to jump away from the nice, linear narrative for a minute and talk a bit about The Lake. The University of Regina is located in (so we were told) the second largest urban park in Canada. It is indeed big -- and the result is that the university is rather isolated from the rest of town. But it is in the middle of a very big and very pretty wilderness area, so for me at least it evened out.


The first weekend we were there, myself and some friendly Australians headed out for a walk to (and around) Lake Wascana. The lake is formed by damming Wascana Creek, which is actually a pretty dinky little creek. The lake is big enough for some good kayaking, though, and that's what we set out to do on Saturday. We rented kayaks at a local place and spent a fun hour getting battered by the high winds, being sprayed by waves, avoiding time-testing crew teams, and herding geese.


The next day, we took a walk around good old Lake Wascana. The lake is dammed and dredged, which means it's kinda swampy and gunky. It was also filled with ducks, geese, and (best for me) lots of pelicans! I didn't bring my long lens, or else I would have gotten some photos of them in flight -- they're really amazing.

There are nice paved bike / jogging paths around most of the lake. The first thing we came to was this interesting bit of sculpture. At the time, I had no clue what it was supposed to represent. (Yes, that's me hanging off of it.) I got a better idea when we walked a bit farther around and came to this amazing building:


This is the First Nations University, which is somehow associated with the University of Regina, and dedicated to (essentially) aboriginal studies. I love this building. Notice how the entryway is shaped like a tipi! Care to guess what that previous sculpture was? Yup, it's four giant bows and arrows, pointed in each of the four directions. Later, we came back the same way and found a nice little information kiosk just behind the sculpture (which of course we'd missed on the way in) explaining all of that.

This post is getting long, so I'll continue with a second installment in a couple days. We found plenty more cool stuff around the lake, and of course I haven't even started talking about math camp itself yet!

Regina: Swipe Cards From Hell

Sunday morning was our flight to Regina International (which is eight times as big as the Houghton County Airport -- by number of gates, at least). We had a bit of a wait on the tarmac at Minneapolis-St. Paul, and our plane was half empty. Our flight crew seemed pretty young and cool, and they started offering free upgrades to first class if you could answer trivia about the captain (who, for example, grew up in Buffalo, New York :)). I was happy with my seat, so I didn't go for an upgrade. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!


We were met by Shaun (one of the organizers of our workshop) and his extremely cute little daughter. They drove us to the University and dropped us off at the dorms we'd be staying in: The North Residence. I already knew that we must be in the big city -- these residences are as tall as the MEEM!

As it turns out, these residences were designed by paranoid architects. When we checked in, we received a key and a swipe card. The swipe card, said the "Commissionaire", was used in our doors and the elevators: "Just swipe yer card, and type yer number there, and you'll be on yer way." Well, turns out that the cards are more like puzzles. The elevator had a card slot, and a number pad above it. So, I put my card in and typed in my room number. No go. Then I tried my floor number. Nope. I tried my card, then press the floor number on the usual elevator buttons. No go! Rachel tried, and got it working eventually. Turns out it's: swipe your card repeatedly until you get a green light, then press your floor number. My card got a green light about 1/10 of the time.

After that, we ran around the building (and town) for a while to see what we could see. First, more building weirdness: we took the stairways up and down the building, because I don't like elevators. Turns out, the stairwells don't go to first floor -- there's no way to get to the first floor at all! How do you get out in case of fire? Beats me. So, we took the elevator -- but even though you can get to every other floor from the stairwells, you can't get to any other floor at all from the elevators except with a card. That's pointless paranoia!

Aside from the paranoia, the buildings were actually pretty awesome. In the photo above, you can see that on the corners of the towers, there are big vertical stacks of windows, and some smaller windows on the sides. Each suite in the building has four bedrooms and one common area. The big corner windows were attached to each common area, and they had awesome views. Mine looked out to the northwest, where the downtown and industrial districts were filled with lights every night, after a beautiful sunset. You could even see stars -- in the city! I tried taking many photos from my suite's common area, but I usually got bad glare or a bad angle. The one and only one I kept is this one... it gives you a little bit of an idea:



The big arched building on the right is the library. The big circular thing with lots of grass inside it is the campus "green," which was a fun place to play outdoor games or just hang out.

Next: Thar be a lake out thar!

Regina: The Saga Begins

Starting last Friday, myself and my colleague -- henceforth to be referred to by the clever pseudonym "Rachel" -- headed for the sprawling metropolis known as Regina, Saskatchewan, for the fabulous Industrial Problem Solving Workshop at the University of Regina.

We went by way of the Twin Cities -- it was actually cheaper to drive all the way down and fly out of Minneapolis, than to fly out of lovely Houghton International-state Airport. It was also a chance to hang out with our mutual friend, whose name I shall describe as "Rob".

We spent Saturday morning at some of the local lakes where Rob sails. Rob was dock captain ("I get to yell at people and make them do what I tell them!"), while I wandered around taking photos of the boats.

In a terrifying foreshadowing of the future which was yet to happen (yes, I know what I wrote), I ran into these two ducks poking their evil little noses around the lake shore. I would be seeing many of their comrades in the coming days. They might look cute, but their mad little eyes betray their true nature. (YouTube video is weird, but I love the song.)

In the meantime, Rachel was running a 5k race for fun (I know, I can't believe it either). After all that, we had dinner at a pizza joint called Punch. Calling it a "pizza joint" doesn't exactly do it justice -- these pizzas were amazing. They were covered in ingredients like spinach, feta cheese, grape tomatoes, and smoked ham, and then cooked in a wood-fired brick oven for a few seconds. I had mine with a Surly beer (also local, also amazing).

In the evening, we took a bike ride through the Twin Cities, along a path which is part of the "Grand Rounds" tour. It was pretty grand -- Minneapolis is supposed to be the second most bike-friendly city in the US, and I can believe it. We went 20 miles and hardly crossed a street -- and we were never on a street! The Cities have really spoiled me for Houghton roads now!

More to follow, as the saga continues...