Durham: preparation and Friday

On the weekend, I went to a conference at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Martin had mentioned this conference as a chance to meet some researchers in the field of granular materials, a possible area in which I might look for a postdoctoral position. The conference website had a program filled with invited speakers, and encouraged other participants to present a poster, so I submitted a title and expected to take a poster.

But a couple of weeks before the conference, I received an email inviting me to present a 10 minute talk as well. This was a great opportunity for which I was very glad, so I quickly accepted and had a chat with Martin about how to fit an overview of my research into less than 10 minutes, preferably in a way that would be of interest to granular physicists.

I wrote my talk and gave a practice to Evelyn, Patrick, Jordan and David on Monday. To be honest, it wasn't very good. The main problems were that I tried to cram in too much, and I didn't begin with enough introduction and motivation. They gave a lot of useful feedback, and I worked late (by my tame standards) into the night to improve it.

The next day, I practised for Justin and Tim, and this time was much better. I still needed to frame the big questions better, but overall it was much closer to an acceptable final version.

I had two more practices, for the water in concrete collaboration and our group at group meeting, but they were more about fine-tuning (one of the suggestions was literally to use squares instead of triangles as points on a graph).

I was also preparing a poster to show that I have multiple research interests. It focused on my previous work on lithium-ion battery degradation, which I spent longer working on (so far) but is not as interesting to this community. I wanted to have it done by Wednesday afternoon, but I was up until the early (not as early as I would have liked!) hours of Thursday. Fortunately, Copytech prints posters promptly.

I set out with poster and suit (normally I don't wear a suit to a conference, but people say you should wear a suit to a job interview even if you never will again while doing the job, and though this conference was not a job interview, it was a chance to make myself known to some relevant people) in hand, to Boston airport whence to fly to Raleigh. The trip was uneventful; I read a few papers on the train and plane.

The bus trip from the airport into town was easy, and I set out looking for a place to eat lunch. I had found two places on Yelp, and since Toast was full I went to Parker & Otis. It is a very cute little place. I think it would appeal to Mum and Dad / Jacqui and Vik in particular, and if I end up in the Research Triangle when they next visit (which is on, but not high on, the list of possibilities), I'll surely take them. I had taken a seat mostly facing the wall because it was easier to get to with three hands full, but I swapped so I could enjoy looking out over the dining, gift and wine areas (there was more in the store, though I didn't really investigate). I was tempted to take a photo, though I restrained myself because it would have been full of people in the foreground and I thought it might be impolite. My roast beef sandwich was very good, and the cole slaw had an impressively high cabbage to mayonnaise ratio, unlike most I have found in shops.

I headed back to the bus station and was soon on my way west to my hotel. After checking in and depositing my bag, I set out to explore Durham a little. I had done my research on Tripadvisor and was contemplating going to Bennett Place historic site, site of the largest surrender of Confederate soldiers at the end of the Civil War. Google's walking directions would have led me along a "busy" (I found Durham's roads to be very quiet) road without a footpath, so I decided not to walk there. There was a nearby bus stop for route 6, with marked destination being Duke University (my hotel was near Duke, but the campus is big enough that it is easy to get to it in many ways). I knew route 6B went to Bennett Place, so I hoped route 6 might also. I decided to wait for a bus: if it took me to Bennett Place, good, if not, I would simply explore Duke a little.

The bus indeed turned around well before getting to Bennett Place, so I alighted in the end not all that far from my hotel. I set out for Duke Chapel, the most famous and nicest building on the campus. Wandering through the campus, I found it very pretty. It is very spread out: if transplanted to Cambridge, the campus would very nearly cover not only MIT and Harvard but everything in between. I took a photo, which completely failed to capture the peace and serenity the campus invokes, but does at least show plenty of green amongst the buildings!

After some very pleasant wandering, I came to the Duke Chapel. It is structurally very impressive, but it seemed to lack some feeling. It was as if someone saw pictures of grand churches in England, and simply made a copy. Perhaps it was because I only saw it from the back end, and mostly empty, but it doesn't rank on my list of favourite churches. I did take the opportunity to say a brief prayer that the conference would help take me to where I need to be.

Adjacent to the chapel are dorms and some other buildings, including I believe the academic center of the medical school. The overall feeling of this part of the campus is very wealthy. It certainly feels more like an elite private university than any of the other elite private universities I've visited (or the one in which I'm sitting right now).

I was then headed downtown, and I decided to wander through the Sarah Duke Gardens on the way. This botanical garden is very beautiful, and I wouldn't have minded spending a little longer there.

I caught a very convenient free bus (convenient in that it ran more frequently than most of the bus lines) back downtown, for dinner at Dame's Chicken & Waffles. This is one of Durham's favourite restaurants, so I thought I should check it out. There was a bit of a line at the front of the store, but the wait was only 10 minutes or so, and gave me time to decide what to order. The basics were dictated by the name of the restaurant (they have other options, but they are probably aimed at people who don't like chicken but were dragged here by friends), but there were choices of which parts of the chicken to eat, the flavour of waffle and the schmear. I chose the legs, with a gingerbread waffle and chocolate schmear, with cashews. Don't worry, there was also a salad, not shown in this picture!

I wouldn't necessarily be in a hurry to come back. The chicken was fine, but nothing special: certainly no Nick's Rotisserie. The waffle was very good, though more than I needed. I once had a dream about eating deep fried (tempura, I would say) gingerbread for breakfast at a cafe (along with custard-filled french toast), and it tasted a lot like that. The schmear was good, but a little out of place to this non-Southerner!

I wandered around downtown a little more, stopping at Brightleaf Square, another destination recommended by Tripadvisor. It is not really a tourist attraction but a pleasant square, lit with strings of lights, around which are located restaurants and shops. I rested for a few minutes, having walked a lot already that day. I also figuratively bumped into the 11 foot 8 bridge, which many drivers have literally bumped into, not realising their vehicles are more than 11 feet 8 inches tall. A nearby shop owner has installed a video camera, and his videos have become somewhat popular. There are plenty of signs around, plus flashing lights activated if a vehicle is too tall, but there are still so many crashes that the railway company has installed a big metal frame just before the bridge, so that trucks crash into it instead of the bridge itself!

It was then time to go to Durham Performing Arts Center for Beauty and the Beast. DPAC is Tripadvisor's number 2 attraction in Durham, after Sarah Duke Gardens (yes, I was basing my trip almost entirely on Tripadvisor, partly because I have found this website reasonably good and partly because it's easier to make plans given a numbered list than if one has to make every decision for oneself!), so I decided earlier in the week to see what was happening there and potentially go. It was a touring Broadway production, which sounded good to me.

The theater was indeed very nice: spacious, modern, clean and comfortable. The show was enjoyable: "If I Can't Love Her" by the Beast was my favourite song. The Belle-Beast relationship got surprisingly deep at times: it was easy to sympathise with the Beast given how he had been treated, and feel that Belle should indeed treat him with more compassion than she initially did. Gaston was good, although those surrounding him were a bit over the top: too slapstick in the case of LeFou, and too annoying in the case of Gaston's three admirers.

After the show finished, it was time for a bus trip and walk back to my hotel, and a good night's sleep in preparation for the conference.