I am off to India today to take part in the celebration of the Platinum Jubilee of the Department of Statistics of the University of Calcutta, which was created in 1941 by Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. (One of the first cohort of students to complete their studies in this department was C.R. Rao.) The conference is organised by Asis Kumar Chattopadhyay whom I first met in Bangalore a few years ago and who visited Frédéric Arenou and myself last summer. This trip is quite exciting, from visiting this department to discovering Calcutta and Western Bengal, with a short stop in Darjeeling and the Himalayas foothills on the way there… Obviously, ‘Og mileage may vary in the coming days, depending on the wireless coverage. (But expect mostly pictures, anyway!)
Archive for Himalayas
off to India
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Bengal, black tea, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Himalayas, India, Mahalanobis distance, Platinum Jubilee on December 18, 2016 by xi'anThe one-hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared [book review]
Posted in Books with tags Arto Paasilinna, book review, Himalayas, Jonas Jonasson, Monash University, picaresque novel, the girl who saved the king of Sweden, The Long Walk, The one-hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared on September 11, 2016 by xi'an
Scandinavian picaresque, in the spirit of the novels of Paasilinna, and following another book by Jonas Jonasson already commented on the ‘Og, The Girl who saved the King of Sweden, but not as funny, because of the heavy recourse to World history, the main (100 year old) character meeting a large collection of major historical figures. And crossing the Himalayas when escaping from a Russian Gulag, which reminded me of this fantastic if possibly apocryphal The Long Walk where a group of Polish prisoners was making it through the Gobi desert to reach India and freedom (or death). The story here is funny but not that funny and once it is over, there is not much to say about it, which is why I left it on a bookshare table in Monash. The current events are somewhat dull, in opposition to the 100 year life of Allan, and the police enquiry a tad too predictable. Plus the themes are somewhat comparable to The Girl who …, with atom bombs, cold war, brothers hating one another…
