gradUCLAtion!

14 June 2010

Washington DC — Capital Mall at Dawn

7 June 2010

Originally, we had planned to be in Asia for three weeks this summer, about 10 days in Hong Kong and then 10 days in Beijing. But the Beijing leg had to be trimmed to just 4 days because of a meeting that I'm now attending in Washington. It's a study of the Institute of Medicine (an arm of the National Academies of Science). The committee is deliberating and will write a report about how future climate change might lead to changes in indoor air quality and how these changes would affect public health.



Being associated the the process is interesting and it reminds me how big the gap is between what scientists believe and the public perception in the US on the climate change issue. For scientists, the debate on "is climate change happening?" is long over. The question now: "what are we going to do in response?" The alternatives: mitigate, adapt, and suffer the consequences. We'll likely do some of all three and the mix will matter a lot.



Traveling economy on United has become unpleasant so I decided to give Virgin America a try. It was a pleasant alternative, up to and in some ways better than the experience of flying on Southwest or Jet Blue. Even though we were in a narrow body plane (A320), there was seat-back entertainment. I also bought a laptop internet connection ($13) for the duration and was able to get 3+ h of work done en route.



The only bad part of this trip is that my body has no clue where I am. We had three nights in California and I hadn't adjusted to jet lag, which seems to be much tougher traveling east than west. Sleeping has been a problem; not falling asleep, but staying asleep through the night. On the first night, I woke up at 3 AM and after trying to sleep until 5 finally just got up and went for a walk.



As the photos show, it was a lovely morning. From the Hotel Monaco, where the committee members are staying, it's about a half mile to the Capital Mall, about half way between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building. I logged about 5 miles walking out to the Capital Dome just as the sun was rising, then headed over the World War II memorial just past the Washington Monument.



These photos were shot on the trusty old CoolPix. Now that I've been working with my Nikon D40 for almost a year, it's hard to go back to this more portable but less powerful camera. Still, the photos are okay...

A serene corner of Tsinghua University

4 June 2010

I'm lucky! I live in a vibrant urban setting with wonderful environmental quality and excellent access to nature nearby. I work at one of the most beautiful designed and maintained university campuses anywhere.



Beijing is certainly full of life and energy. And the vitality is palpable on the Tsinghua University campus. But at the same time, there is a strange mixture of neatly manicured and untidy that, when combined with the air pollution, undermines this jewel of higher education.



During our brief visit, the air pollution in Beijing was not as horrible as when we last visited, in 2007. Then, I could not see my shadow on many apparently cloudfree days. Now, at least the shadows were in evidence. But the air pollution was still quite bad: constantly hazy, with visibility at about 1 km. For me, this kind of atmosphere creates a strong depressing overtone that weighs on my overall experience of a place.



However, there are a few special locations on the Tsinghua campus, and this post features photos from the best one I saw during my short stay. It is a beautifully landscaped small lake, about 100 m x 300 m. The trees, lotus plants, bordering rocks, and adjacent buildings all combine to create a perfect setting of tranquility. Wonderful!

Beijing — Bikes at Tsinghua University

3 June 2010

We flew from Hong Kong to Beijing on Monday. After a two-day workshop at Tsinghua University on "semivolatile compounds in the indoor environment," Ingrid and I said goodbye to China. We left the hotel at 8:30 AM Thursday, local time, and because of the date line magic touched down in San Francisco just before 9:00 AM Thursday, local time!



I only had a bit of free time with my camera. These photos were shot either on Wednesday before the workshop and during a lunchtime walk or on Thursday in the early morning. All were taken on the Tsinghua University campus.



The Tsinghua University campus is a large campus in the Haidian district in the northeast side of the city. Cars are allowed on the campus, but the traffic there is dominated by bicycles of all types. The young man in the yellow shirt is LIU Cong, who is a PhD student working with Professor ZHANG Yinping, the organizer of the workshop. Cong was the captain of the brigade of graduate students who took care of all of the delegates and the logistics at the meeting.



We were booked into a lovely hotel just outside the east gate. The taxi ride from the airport should take about a half hour. Generally, taxi drivers don't speak English, so you need to have your address printed out in Chinese characters to show the driver. Cong had sent me a copy of the address we needed, which I had printed. From Hong Kong, we were traveling with two Swedish colleagues, Jan and Carl-Gustaf (CG). Unfortunately, CG had laid over in Beijing on his way to Hong Kong and in doing so had used up his single-entry visa into China. Consequently, he was not allowed to board the plane with us and instead had to get an emergency visa in Hong Kong and then pay a high price for a ticket on a later flight. Since Jan was currently staying in Beijing (as a visiting professor) and knew his way around, I gave CG the paper with the hotel address.



At the Beijing airport, we got settled into a taxi and Jan told the driver that we wanted to go to Tsing Hua. Off we headed. But, after about 20 minutes, when we should have turned onto the 4th Ring Road, the driver kept heading toward the city center. Fortunately, Jan recognized the error. After trying without success to explain to the driver his mistake, Jan took out a business card with one side printed in Chinese characters and handed that to the driver. "Ahhhh. Tsing HUA!" he said, with a strong emphasis on the second syllable. Who knows where we were headed! But -- after an hour in the taxi instead of 30 minutes -- we did make it to our destination safely!

Hong Kong — Parting Shots

30 May 2010

Some final impressions of Hong Kong.


1. Dramatic scenery.


2. Monumental buildings.


3. Crowded streets.

In all, a remarkable place: compact, congested, but quite civilized and highly functional.

Hong Kong — Happy Valley Racecourse

29 May 2010

Finally I have a chance to catch my breath and also catch up on a bit of blogging. Here is a sense of both how wonderfully we've been hosted and how busy I've been. We arrived eight days ago. Since then, I have only had one lunch or dinner at which I was not the guest of someone here in Hong Kong.



One of many highlights was Wednesday's dinner at the club level of the Hong Kong horse racing track at Happy Valley. We were the guests of Professor ST Tan, who heads the Mechanical Engineering Department at HKU. In all, we were about 10, mostly academics from HKU. The meal was a most-elegant buffet in a box overlooking the race track.



No, I did not try the baby octopus on sea blubber! But I did have some other much-less-exotic food that was fantastic. On Rani's standing recommendation, Ingrid bet on a gray horse in the 5th race, but it finished in the middle of the pack. A big surprise to me was how incredibly fast the horses were as they raced around the track. On TV, that speed is not revealed.



A final note: These photos were shot with Ingrid's Panasonic Lumix pocket camera. Its digital image stabilization is remarkably effective in these low-light conditions. Ingrid shot the opening photo.

Hong Kong — Kowloon

27 May 2010

On Thursday, I spent a long day in Kowloon, the complementary part of Hong Kong across the harbor from the island. In all, I visited three universities: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (pictured below), City University, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University (shown at bottom). At each campus, a student or post-doc with whom I worked at Berkeley is now on the faculty and served as my host: Chris Chao at HKUST, Alvin Lai at CityU, and Frank Lee at Poly.



After a full day of meetings, discussions, laboratory tours, and a seminar at HKUST, Ingrid joined the party and we had a Chinese banquet dinner for about 12 at Poly, hosted by Frank. Then, we had a scenic return trip by taxi, ferry, and taxi back to HKU on the Hong Kong island. The top photo shows the stunning nighttime scenery from the ferry.