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Hello from Hell!
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Hello from Hell!
2008.08.11
Hello from Telluride!
Last summer I accepted the invitation to attend the "Liquid and Solid Aqueous Surfaces and Interfaces" Workshop at Telluride without considering the fact that it collides with the Beijing Olympics. This made me absent from the excitement at Beijing during the Olympics.
Telluride is a very small mountain town with only 2000 some residents. So it does not have internet connection at most hotel rooms, and I have to use the computer provided by the conference which does not allow me to type in Chinese.
The scenery here is great. I just can not simply describe it. It more or less like where I lived in the deep mountains in Sichuan when I was less than 10 years old. The name Telluride is the compound contains the nonmetal chemical element Tellurium. Teluuride can be usually found in the gold mines. However, there has no Telluride ever found here even though it was a gold mining town some 100 years ago. So there is another saying that Telluride was from the expression "To-hell-u-ride". Telluride used to be a gold mining town, therefore a very rough place to be. It was said that the famous bandit Buchy Cassidy robed some $24000 from the bank here in the 1880's. There was a famous movie called "Buchy Cassidy and the Sundance Kids". Even if you have not watched the movie, you may well have heard the tune of the song called "Rain drops on my head" from that movie somewhere.
Telluride is now a rather famous resort place for vacation. Telluride's airport is the highest airport in the United States. It is about 2800 meters from the sea level, if I did not take the number wrong. Yesterday afternoon after arriving Telluride I went hiking with a Czech scientist and a German scientist. It was just great. I told the Czech that we Chinese were quite upset that the lady from his country stole the first Beijing Olympic gold medal from us.
Buchy Cassidy on the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy
Because it is such a nice isolated and beautiful place, some years ago the great physical chemist Steven Berry at University of Chicago started the Telluride Conferences for the physical sciences. There are about 20 to 30 weeklong conferences on different topics in physical sciences each year in the spring-summer time at Telluride. The Telluride Conferences are more or less like the Gordon Conferences in the physical sciences and have very good reputation among the scientists outside China.
It's so great for me to meet all those colleagues who have been doing cutting edge research in the field. We have talks and discussions in the morning and in the evening. Afternoon is fun stuff for people go hiking and taking other activities. I'm leaving the computer in a few minutes to hike or to take the gondola to the top of the mountain.
The program of this workshop can be found in the link below if anybody is interested.
Link for the "Liquid and Solid Aqueous Surfaces and Interfaces" Workshop:http://tellu003.secure.omnis.com/workshop_details.php?wid=38
The Town of Telluride, from the top of St. Sophia (3211m from the sea level)
Top of St. Sophia, the Telluride Airport on the far side
Blue sky, clouds and mountain
游记
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-176-34868.html
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