Last week I have visited National Taiwan Normal University to give a talk at Taiwan string theory workshop 2010. This is in fact I guess 6th or 7th time visit to Taiwan, as I ama very frequent visitor to the Taiwan string theory group. Poeple there are always hertful, and this time again I enjoyed the visit very much, although the visit was only for three days.
Tanwan string theory group consists of members from many universities. Though some of the universities are very far away from the central Taipei (for example there are members in Shinchu city which is almot one-hour away from Taipei by a bus), people gather at National Taiwan University for enjoying seminars almost once every week. Discussions in every seminar is quite lively, and I am sure every visitor is surprised to see this kind of seminar series working in Taiwan. Most of post-doctoral fellows in Taiwan string theory group are Japanese, and so there is an intimate relationship to Japanese string theory community. Many Japanese researchers visit Taiwan, and I am one of them.
I visited Taiwan for the first time quite a long ago, probably about ten years ago. At that time the string group was not so big, but the basis of the present heartful group was already there, I enjoyed talking with active people there, all of them are my friends now. Since then, the group gradually expands and grows, with a national fund supported by the government, forming a string focus group. From the Japan side, thanks to prof. Inami’s effort for getting a special fund for visiting Taiwan, there are a lot of researchers, in particular young researchers, have visited Taiwan. Now, I think we can say that there is a strong connection between Taiwanese and Japanese string theory communities.
The workshop this time was joyful again, and I enjoyed talking with participants and other speakers, and also enjoyed drinking beers with my friends at a bar near the National Taiwan university canpus. I am happy to see my friends, in particular Japanese friends in Taiwan are enjoying their lives there.
After coming back to Japan, I soon came to Kyoto for speaking about my favorite supergravity solutions and trials to solve some equations of motion for a holographic realization of color-flavor locking phase, at a Yukawa institute workshop on blackholes in higher dimensions. It was really a fun to communicate with people doing research on gravity and relativity, in particular at a drinking place. When I talk to them, I soon became aware of different motivations for computing the same background geometries. Well, that is obvious. and, even worse (or better), we have a confusing terminology. When I (and people doing string theory) say “backreaction”, the meaning is different from the “backreaction” which the gravity people use! — Quite confusing. But at least for me to know this difference is a benefit, for my presentations in the future. My talk was on 25th December, there is no Christmas or something in the field of gravity and relativity, it seems.
I wish you all a happy new year.
