In my last post I mentioned how the coast of Vietnam, where the Rencontres conference series is being held, looks amazing — with photo evidence. You might have guessed that that image was a promotional picture, and you’d be right: it came from the 2014 edition of the conference’s website.

This one I took with my cell phone:

Guys. Vietnam is really pretty!

I arrived in Quy Nhon Saturday morning after an overnight trip from Wuhan, about 15 hours door-to-door. So despite having a couple of free days before the official start of conference events tonight (Sunday), all I really managed to do was catch up on some desperately needed sleep, and snap a couple more pictures of the coast.

Of course, I have been enjoying the food. Vietnamese cuisine, or at least what I’ve seen of it so far, is not as strongly flavored as what I’m used to in Wuhan, where every other dish is spicy with a thick Szechuan-style sauce. But they do some great things with a more subtle flavor palette. We have all our meals provided at the hotel restaurant, arranged by the conference organizers. Steamed vegetables with garlic sauce, fried spring …

Greetings, readers!

I’ve been absent from the blog for a while for a few different reasons — between some issues to deal with in my personal life and a bunch of projects for work, I haven’t been able to focus on a blog post for about six months. But I thought that streak has gone on long enough. Here’s a quick status update:

• My group has put out a paper, which was just accepted for publication into Physical Review D! This paper is a generalization of the same calculation I did for my PhD thesis, which I’m 2/3 of the way into a series of posts explaining. The third post is coming at some point, I promise.

• I’ll be traveling to two conferences to talk about this paper. First, the Rencontres du Vietnam workshop on heavy ion physics, held at the brand new International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (PDF), which is taking place next week. This is the first time I’ve been invited to present at a real conference! The venue also looks amazing.

  (image from the Rencontres 2014 website, all rights reserved)

  When the official schedule includes time for “Beach and …