Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone. I hope all your wishes come true.

And to the Pastafarians, happy pasta day. I hope you never run out of basil for your tomato sauce.

Burgas: First snow

After a very mild fall, with temperatures in November staying  near 20C (68F) for many days, we have had our first snow today. It’s really wet snow and it’s sticking to the ground. It’s still too warm, and I expect the snow will be gone by tomorrow morning. Isn’t it funny how one can describe temperatures near freezing as “too warm?”

Next Saturday the temperatures are expected to reach a high of -7C (20F) and a low of -15C (5F).

Here’s a picture:

Snow in the Maritime Garden

St. Nicholas’ Day (Никулден)

Today we celebrate Никулден (St. Nicholas’ Day) in Bulgaria. He is the patron saint of fishermen/fisherwomen; he’s also the patron saint of Burgas, my hometown. So we’ve had several days of celebration culminating in a ceremony of fishing out a cross out of the sea. One of the priests tosses a silver cross from the pier into the sea. People then dive and the first person to gets good luck for the year (and a possibly a cold).

the pier in Burgas

Those silly rituals led by men in musty dresses don’t appeal to me. This day is also a day when fish is the traditional meal, especially carp. That’s what I care about. I have always fondly remembered the only time before today when I had it, stuffed with walnuts, onions, and tomatoes, so long have I wanted to replicate the recipe. I tried doing it in Madison, but finding carp was next to impossible. Eventually I found out that Asian Midway had fresh carp on Fridays. So I went there only to find that the carp they had was bigger than my oven! So I tried the recipe with black sea bass and it was scrumptious. Finally today I made the original recipe with carp and it turned out delicious. I’ve included it after the fold.

St. Nicholas Carp -- final result

Cool math problems

It’s been forever since I’ve done a math post. Here are two problems which I find very cool. In both of them one has to use the fact that someone can or cannot solve a problem at a given time as the extra piece of information needed to arrive at the solution. I don’t know any other similar problems.

In order to spare the delicate sensibilities of some of the readers, the problems are below the fold. Feel free to share ideas/solutions in the comments. In a few days I’ll post solutions.

World AIDS Day

I missed blogging about the World AIDS Day yesterday. To my shame, I had forgotten about it and was only reminded late in the evening, at a concert by the local music high school. Their last piece was a re-orchestration of the music from Requiem for a Dream and they dedicated it to fighting the AIDS epidemic and drug abuse.

The concert gave me an idea to post my only published poem. I wrote it during a poetry workshop in 1996. I was 18, attending the Armand Hammer United World College. Sometime during the school year (perhaps even around World AIDS day) two poets, Joan Logghe and Judyth Hill came to the college to present some work of the group Write Action. This was a group comprising people with HIV and AIDS, caregivers, family, friends, and allies and giving these people a creative outlet. At the end of the workshop/poetry reading, details of which are hazy, Joan and Judyth asked us, the students, to write things in response. I think we all wrote poems. Did some of us submit them, did they collect all of them, and then selected some to be published? I don’t remember, but the end result is that my poem, “Quantum Theory of Love” got published in a small anthology called Catch Our Breath: Writing from the heart of AIDS.

I think it’s a fitting occasion to share it with others once again. Here it is below the fold.