German wannabe nerd with Turkish origin living in Sweden presents: A blog!
I am used to here complains regarding the time I spent with my iPhone. But who can blame me? Its an iPhone after all. Another mistress I have neglected for some time now, Turbulence, should get some renewed attention. Particularly after coming across a new book by Wyngaard, from which I cite the following:
I survived the cold, but son and mother are sick at home; somehow it was more convenient to be the sick one. Anyhow, after calling the “child emergency” they told not to worry and to tilt our sons bed. They didn’t even ask us if he has a bed or if he sleeps in his bed, just “tilt his bed”. Great help, now his bed is tilted and my books are under his bed and he still doesn’t want to sleep and continues crying. Onces again: the importance of initial conditions!
or the dismissed importance of keeping a word. Since my childhood, almost all my stories start alike (it might show that I haven’t changed a lot over the years), I have hated it when people didn’t keep their word, especially if it concerns minor issues. I haven’t had much trouble with people who were not keeping serious promises, just because I stopped hanging out with them, but people who had problems with minor issues are not so easy to get rid, because they mostly do not see why I had to let them go. Few simple examples:
a) The towns Imam, in which I studied, was also the person who was selling Islamic books in Turkish language in Germany. So I ordered few books from him and arranged a meeting with him at a certain place, just because I ordered a bunch of books and didn’t want to enrich the German post. As far as I remember we agreed on a Saturday at 11 a.m. and as usual I arrived few minutes earlier, to be on time. At 5 past the agreed time I left home and some 20 minutes later I got a call. He was angry and asked where I have been. I said, that I was there on time and waited even 5 minutes. He said, that he just arrived AROUND 11 a.m. After asking him several times what exactly AROUND means he said that he came just 20 minutes after point 11 a.m. The same scenario happened 2 more times at two different times and places with the same person. From that day on I stopped respecting him.
b) A friend who wanted to meet me asked if we could have a coffee in Kista. So we agreed on a time. I went there, earlier as usual, and waited at the agreed place. 5 Minutes later, after not seeing him I went home and some 15 minutes later he calls me and asks if I were late. I said no, I was on time, and I am on my way home again. He said, that he came all the way from blablabla and that he had to drive 30 minutes. That was approximately the same time I needed to go there, but anyhow, since that day I do not make appointments with him, so we just see each other accidentally. And the strange thing is that he thinks I am rude. That is exactly what the Imam told others, viz. that I would make him wait. Tssss!
There are many similar stories, and another one happens almost every time I have to do laundry. There are lists to sign up for laundry times. And whenever I go down on time, someone exceeds his time and makes me wait 5-15 minutes. That is lost time, because I am too lazy to go home and come back and it is too booring to just wait in the laundry room and most of the time I forget to bring a paper or a book to read. In Germany, where similar things happen, I usually switched off the washing machine and put the wet clothes somewhere, IF they were washing in my time. But here I can’t do that (I tried that of course), because the door gets locked and than I can’t use the machine. The problem is also that if they exceed my time I am forced to skip the pre-washing step or steal time from the next person. And I would rather die than steal time from others! I never thought that such things would happen in modern countries like Germany or Sweden. I am just used to it in Turkey, or Turks who keep their strange tradition of a timeless life even in Germany or Sweden. I wonder how they manage to start their work on time, but not to keep their word/agreements/appointments. The good thing about being German with Turkish roots is that one can criticise both sides and escape unpunished from both sides :). I am not saying that it is wrong to live a life without precise times, IF one lives in certain places where other signs are used instead of clocks. It is for instance normal in the villages where my parents are from to say: “We will visit you tomorrow” and than show up 3 days later, that is still within the time period of “tomorrow”. I had to adjust to it during vacations in those villages, when I brought my motorbike to the technician and asked him if he could fix it tomorrow. A normal answer would be “inshaAllah“, meaning “if it is God’s will”. I thought it means that he will do it tomorrow, unless someone cuts his hands or he dies, but for him it is nothing more then “I will do it whenever I will, maybe tomorrow, but rather next week”. Unfortunately people do not think about thinks they say as much as those to whom they say it.
We live in a time where almost every little child has a mobile phone and is able to inform another person that he or she is late. I admit that I as a family are more often late than I as a person, because I still haven’t managed to enforce my adapted German habit of Pünklichkeit (German for punctuality) to my German (to be correct: East-German) wife. I hope that I will be able to teach my son to pee or poo on time, that would be very practical from a selfish point of view. I could continue to tell stories over stories over different incidents, and while writing I get angry over these people and in the same time I hate my self for every minutes I have let people wait for me. As an alibi I can say that most delays are caused by my wife :), but still I have to enforce the only German habit I have adapted to all Germans I know, otherwise Germans will be only known for their funny English pronunciation!
As can be seen I tend to misuse this blog to handle my anger rather than improve my English. But lately I started to get angry about every little thing, like today, where I got a parking ticket (SEK 500, ca. 55 Euro), because I parked the rented in front of our door. I deserve it, I agree. There are certain rules one has to follow, but I rather pay the money then letting the car somewhere else where it could be damaged and then one has to deal with the renting firm. No thanks! Than I was at the library of Stockholms university to copy some classic German meteorological papers from the beginning of the last century, which our university didn’t have. So I went there opened an account to copy them and didn’t manage because there was a “1” in my password which looks like a “l”. So I tried several times got pissed off and opened a second account, where the same happened. After 30 minutes of trying and getting angry with little baby tied to my body I came up with the idea that “1” could be “l” and it was as I thought. Why on Earth do they still give passwords out where “l” and “1” are indistinguishable? At least the weather was nice, above 20 degrees Celsius, and our son was smiling for hours.
PS: It is late and little son sleeps in my arms, therefore I haven’t had much time to write carefully.
Almost every student of fluid mechanics knows the Album of Fluid Motion by Milton Van Dyke.
A book with exactly the same title is available since 2003 with much more beautiful images, see for your self.
Alex drew my attention towards the Russian translation of the classical book, which can be accessed online. See the post by Alex.
You might remember that I started to eat more fruits than sweets. How that worked out, you might wonder. It worked quite well, until yesterday, where we went to LIDL to by food and sweets. Since it is free to go by bus when having a buggy with you we explored some places in Stockholm (from Stockholm University to Odenplan) and landed in front of the Gustav Vasa Church (picture on the left below).
To make up for the sweets I bought what I have bought last time (right picture above). I asked the salesperson what it is, he said something, but I forgot the name again. It tastes similar to a grapefruit, but is slightly different and much bigger. Any idea?
PS: Recently I found the following book entitled Microscales of Turbulence: heat and mass transfer correlations, by Arpaci, V. S.. (Is it correct to have two dots in the end of this sentence? Or is one sufficient? The first denotes that S is a abbreviation for Sedat and the second one indicates the end of the sentence, but two dots in a row look somehow strange?) Why I mention this book? I think it has a nice way of introducing scales of turbulence, i.e. the integral scale, the Taylor scale and the Kolmogorov microscale. Nothing special or new, it can be found in almost any book on turbulence, but somehow the author introduced them in a very illustrative and simple way. And after years of overflying or reading turbulence books I think I understood something and it all made sense. I can’t judge the rest of the book, but at least one drop in the ocean makes sense and that is enough.
Taken from Prof. Davidhazy‘s homepage.
Looking at that beautiful image, however, shows that there is so much more to explore in regard of impinging droplets on a free-surface.
wAnNaBe NeRd 
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