Citrouilles and tango

Now it is autumn for real in Montreal: cold wind, gloves needed. Still the colors are bright and the markets are full of apples from Honey Crisp to Macintosh and Lobo, carrots in different colors and, approaching Halloween, lots of "citrouilles" - pumpkins. The colors of the houses in Plateau Mont Royal where I live are also distinct so walking or cycling in October Montreal is nice.

Otherwise, I have taken some tango steps during the weekend. Tango takes technique, pondus and smoothness. I am glad to have started.

At Jean Talon market, Montréal

Programming in z-tree

For the moment I am working on constructing a lab experiment on coalitions, coordination and voting. This means I have to learn how to program a lab experimental session in a data program called z-tree. I have some resistance learning new programming language. However, after some time and effort it becomes more fun, learning how to be careful with commas, colons etcetera.

The whole lab experimental thing is a bit risky, since you don't really know how it is going to work out and it certainly costs time and money. In fact, I presented the first preliminary design a year ago, and now the research process has landed in what I hope a doable experiment. I aim to run the first experiments in November. A part of it is too see what happens: theory is theory, practice practice.

In Munro's land

I was glad this morning when I heard that Canadian writer Alice Munro got the Nobel prize. I read one of her short stories books when I was taking quantitative courses in Ann Arbor in the US last summer. Especially, I was struck by a story that took place on a train in vast Canada. I got a feeling for the landscape and the mentality, the sea and the grass. I wanted to go somewhere similar. For the moment I am living in Canada's most densely populated area (Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal), still, you have a sense of that something is going on out there, far away. There is space and place. In November I will get the chance to get a train through Ontario myself.

Like many others I am impressed by Alice Munro's effective style, and my experience from reading her is that you realize that something is going on but if you read too fast you may have missed a detail, or two, so you'd better go back, to confirm what you already knew by sentiment. The book I have read is "Runaway". I was not taken by all stories, but the three-part Chance to Silence got me.