We've been having a heat wave in Lille the past couple days, which is scheduled to end tomorrow evening with some thunderstorms. The temperatures have only been in the mid 90's, with some humidity and little breeze, but it's high enough to have broken the record temperatures for yesterday and today. Of course, most homes (including mine), in France ( Read more... )

After a productive week with Gautami, where we quickly decided against two research problems and settled on a third, I'm now off to Paris to meet up with my sister and nephew. My nephew is traveling Europe this summer with an orchestra and the first segment involves staying for a few weeks with a family in Aix-en-Provence. My sister decided this ( Read more... )

My first few days in Lille were rough. There's an insane amount of pollen floating around and so my allergies were going worse than they've ever been (and I don't get much in terms of allergies). But I think I also caught a cold from one of the two women on my flight with horrible hacking, gurgling coughs. Thankfully, I treated that aggressively ( Read more... )

Oh sweet LJ, I've come back to you. I know no one reads this anymore, but I needed somewhere to reflect on my trip during my quiet evenings.

I am in Lille, France until the end of June to do research with my colleague, Gautami Bhowmik. I left this past Monday and was supposed to arrive midday Tuesday, but my SAS flight out of Newark sat at the ( Read more... )

Tue Aug 4 ( Read more... )

Mon Aug 3 ( Read more... )

We are in Toulouse! It's our first time together in France since we left Lyon back in 2011. I can't believe it's already been four years ( Read more... )

Apparently I can be served mustard on tap. WHY WAS I NOT MADE AWARE OF THIS EARLIER?!?!

The final day of the conference I woke up extra early to finish my talk. This is probably the worst I've ever been in terms of preparing ahead of time, but considering the short notice I had about knowing I'd be going for sure and also the number of things I had to do before I left, I don't feel all that guilty. Especially because I did get it done ( Read more... )

Today was by far the best day of the conference so far. Eric spoke in the morning and I found his talk really interesting, even though at one point my jetlag hit me hard and I fell asleep for 5 minutes. But after resting, I was able to get back into his talk, which is a sign that it was highly accessible. After his talk, a graduate student spoke ( Read more... )