Late for MRC

 I have not written here for more than a month as I was preparing frantically for our Applied Category Theory-MRC in Beaver Hollow on the Dialectica construction in programming. Then I got ill and had to be taken to the emergency room in the Stanford Hospital.  Twice. 

The first time I went simply to see my general doctor because I was feeling a bit weak, but the doctors didn't like  my pulse rate at all and send me to the ER immediately. I thought it was a big joke, as I was feeling fine, I didn't even realize that my heart was racing. They did something that I thought was a small miracle of science: a cardioversion. This is when they inject a drug that stops your heart for a second and that reboots it. So I thought they had solved the problem and then I wanted to go home and forget all about it.

However, four days later, the same thing happened again. This time I was  fully aware of the heart racing and I panicked quite a bit. I ended up having another cardioversion, but I wasn't marvelling at their technology anymore. I was just worrying that this might be it. That I was going to die of an overzealous heart. 

I stayed in the hospital one night, under the counselling of a young ER doctor who said, `if you were my mom, I wouldn't let you out of here'. That was pretty convincing. In the hospital I started medication and, the next day, met my cardiologist.  I am now trying to take small steps in the direction of accepting that instead of being super healthy and able to do anything I want, I am now very fragile, as this whole thing might start again, from nowhere.

This whole drama meant that I was not able to participate of our MRC fully. I tried at the distance, but it doesn't work very well. More than the two years (pandemic issues) in the making and the last  month of intense preparation have at least meant that the group was able to do quite a bit. I'm extremely proud of the Team Dialectica, pictured below.

Our group was divided into 4 subgroups: Dialectica and Games (Jeremie), Dialectica and Poly (Nelson), Dialectica and Lenses (Bruno and Matteo), and Dialectica Petri Net implementations (Eric). The names in parentheses are the leads of the subgroups. The issues are overlapping, of course. And the competencies and backgrounds of the participants are very different. But I'm told the group had a good time, despite the fact that one of our own got covid there or getting there. He's fine now though!

The presencial phase of the MRC is done, but now comes the second phase, working out the ideas discussed during the brainstorm in Beaver Hollow. I am not very sure how this phase is supposed to go, but I do hope we'll be able to get papers from all the  subgroups!