A Belated iPhone Post

Yesterday marked the end of vacation, complete with the last leg of all-day driving, this time from South Carolina back to Ohio. Hanging out in the car all day can be really boring, especially when preceded by a day of hanging out in the San Francisco airport watching what we were told was the "worst weather in over ten years." So, naturally, I started playing with the (not my) iPhone:

I just learned that I can't upload photos directly from an iphone to blogger. But now we are at a toll plaza in West Virginia. Typing on the iPhone is hard so I don't think I'll finish this post here. Also the road is curvy and Carina wants a belly rub.

Here is said picture of δ Carina sitting on my lap:
The problem with these kinds of "vacations" is that they are not at all relaxing—and yet it is still really hard to even pretend to get work done, so they are just exhausting. I doubt that going to sleep at 8pm the night before returning to the office is a sign of renewed enthusiasm ...

There might be a lesson or two in here somewhere ...

The plan was for me to come back from South Carolina on Wednesday and do my oral exam on Thursday. Roughly speaking, that's what happened, but like many stories, there's a nice "travelling sucks" story stuck in the middle.

So Wednesday morning, my mom drove me up to Charlotte and it was no problem at all getting to Detroit (I was flying Northwest). As we were landing, a nice thunderstorm broke out, and so we got to sit on the tarmack for about an hour before someone would come out and bring out the jetbridge so we could get off. I grabbed a sandwich and talked on the phone for a bit (long layover) and worked on my presentation some. I was working enough that I didn't even notice my flight back to Columbus had been delayed a bit, but I didn't care since I didn't have a tight schedule. When they finally let us onto the plane, the two people ahead of me in line got all huffy with the boarding ticket lady because they didn't realize that they couldn't bring their big suitcase onto the plane and had to check it planeside. Oh, and they were rather drunk. Finally get on the plane and one of them is sitting across the aisle from me and smells like a nice ashtray—quite unpleasant. Eventually someone comes onto the plane and asks to "talk" to them "for a minute." They go; I get two seats to myself. We then sit at the gate for another twenty minutes for security to deal with the drunk people (why they needed the plane there to do that is beyond me). We then go sit on the runway for about an hour before the pilot tells us that we don't have enough fuel to get to Columbus because we're being rerouted, so they take us back to the gate before letting us know the flight has been cancelled. By this time it's after 8pm, and I was supposed to be back in Columbus before 6:30. Needless to say, Northwest was fully uninterested in getting me back to Ohio that night; they said they "might" be able to get me back "tomorrow." Tomorrow? Might? I have an exam at 2:30 that I'm—oh yeah—unprepared for! In the meantime, I had made friends with some ladies in the back of the plane (apparently watching smelly drunk people get kicked off a plane is a bit of a bonding experience). One of them was able and willing to rent a car on her company credit card and drive the four of us back to Columbus. (Thanks, Robin!) By the way, this is another example of why to never check luggage; I was the only one in the car with all of the stuff I had been hoping to leave with. I pretty much never spend time around "real" people, so I was pleasantly surprised when the conversation was lively and interesting the whole way back—and it definitely made for an upbeat ending to a rather shit-tastic birthday. I was dropped off at the airport, where I picked up my car and finally made it home sometime after 1 a.m.

Thursday, I was fairly dead to the world. I was reeeeeally hoping that some combination of caffeine, adrenaline, and maybe even anxiety would suffice for waking me up, but not so much. The hour before the presentation I spent trying (unsuccessfully) to nap on my desk. The talk itself went okay; somewhere in my academic past I have learned to give a half-decent presentation on auto-drive. The more than an hour of questioning afterwards, however ... let's just say it was a rather embarassing experience I'd rather not reminisce over and leave it at that. I passed of course, and I went out for wings afterwards (BW3s has finally re-opened near campus), but I am forced to wonder how it would have gone if I had actually been cogent and lucid, and actually, you know, prepared for the ordeal instead of taking a five day joy trip to a place that has the power of giving me a really thick accent.

Day 1 at the 210th AAS

To the left is the view from my room. It is sunnier this morning, but yesterday I enjoyed watching the fog (or perhaps that is rain?) in the valley lift up and re-descend. Jet lag here isn't so bad; I like the concept of being a morning person, but in practice it never holds.

The conference kicked off yesterday morning with a talk by John Tonry on Synoptic Sky Surveys. Essentially, the Sloan Digitial Sky Survey (SDSS) is coming to a close. Sloan has mapped about a fifth of the sky in visible wavelengths, with stupidly large numbers of cataloged stars, galaxies, quasars, and what-have-yous. I think in some ways the holy grail of observational astronomy is to have the entire sky mapped down to the faintest magnitudes possible, at all wavelengths, and to continually observe the entire sky for time variability. According to Tonry, we are rapidly approaching the first goal for visible wavelengths; it is likely that in ten to twenty years, the entire optical sky will be mapped down to the faintest magnitude allowed by the atmosphere. Surveys like Pan-STARRS and SkyMapper are coming online this year. In 15 years, will astronomy be a field of searching databases and waving the wand of statistics, or are we practically already there with SDSS?

After the first talk, everyone trickled down to the room with the posters and exhibits; more specifically, the room with the pastries and coffee. I like going around to the exhibits and talking to the people there; I've already collected half a dozen bookmarks (to make up for forgetting to bring one with me) and more stickers than I know what to do with.

Then it was time to break into individual sessions, with five minute "normal" talks and fifteen minute "disseratation" talks. Several people simply did not show up to give their talk in a few of the sessions I attended; I cannot understand how someone can not only just not "show up," but also be rude enough to not inform the organizers that their plans have changed. I managed to miss most of the talks I had wanted to go to, since I was skipping around the galaxy evolution and galaxy cluster and variable star sessions, but most of the talks I heard were in fact interesting.

At lunch, I found myself with a solar physics group from Boulder, Colorado. This meeting is in conjunction with the Solar Physics Division, which is to say, there are a lot of astronomers here who have taken the "day shift." The sun is fascinating; one would think that being the nearest star, we would know everything about it we might want to. But people don't even agree on simple-seeming things, like the amount of oxygen relative to hydrogen. It is also an interesting field in that we can measure all sorts of things from the sun that we can't in other stars: details of sunspots, coronal mass ejections, granulation, helioseismology, sun flares, etc. etc.—things we would looooove to know about Other Stars, but we just can't make the measurements yet. After all, the sun is just a star, and what we really want to know about is stars, and in many plots, we only have the one data point. A few of the solar folks I talked to are excited about the upcoming missions to search for extrasolar planets; by making exquisitely accurate measurments of the light coming from stars, we can also hope to learn about astroseismology (literally, starquakes) of stars not our own.

Speaking of extrasolar planets, apparently the big news release yesterday was on a bunch of new ones being announced. (One of the breakout sessions yesterday was on extrasolar planets, but I did not go.) There have been rumors circulating for months that 2007 will see a huge increase in the number of known extrasolar planets; many of the ongoing searches for transiting planets are finally coming to fruition. It is heartening to see people announcing more than a handful of planets at a time; it means that the field is growing from one of stamp collecting to one in which they can actually do statistics and begin to really learn about planet formation.

In the afternoon, I went to the COSMOS session. I have a soft spot for the COSMOS project since it was my first real introduction to astronomy; the summer I spent at Caltech in 2004 was centered on playing with all of the HST COSMOS data that was available at the time (about half of it). It's a gorgeous data set. Apparently the S-COSMOS data set, the Cycle 2 Spitzer data of the COSMOS field, is now available. Many of the talks were about these infrared bright galaxies, though the talk I found most intriguing was the one on asteroids found in the COSMOS field with Spitzer: one person's trash is another's science.

After all of the talks, I went over to some nearby beach with a group of graduate students mostly from the University of Hawaii. Yesterday being Memorial Day, there was a Lantern Floating ceremony; people light little lanterns on little boats in remembrance of lost ones, and at sunset let them out into the sea. There was music and ceremony and many many people. I took lots of pictures, but none of them are very good. I didn't care much for the overly fancy rituals projected onto the big screen by the people running the shindig, but watching the people who had brought their own personal lantern boats walk to the ocean, I think I like this way of honoring and remembering the dead. As the sky grew darker, the water became more and more littered with bright lights.

Day 0 at the 210th AAS: Honolulu!!

I flew in yesterday afternoon via Chicago on American Airlines. It was a 9 hour flight, and yet they didn't have any food resembling a meal back in steerage class, just things like overpriced chips and overpriced cookies and sodas. I guess I've been spoiled by the only four hours longer trans-Pacific flights where they have two real meals, as well as snacks. So when I arrived at the hotel yesterday afternoon, I didn't know if I was more hungry or more tired.

I've never been to Hawaii. It's 7 a.m. here, six hours behind the east coast of the continental US. This kind of jet lag isn't so bad, as I can both sleep for a long time (still recovering from a cold) and feel like I'm getting ujp early. From my hotel room (which comes with a nice balcony!), I can see two moutains with either really thick fog or rain between them. From what I've seen so far (airport, mall, convention center), this is a really indoor-outdoor place; I like it. I like how I can not realize that I'm outside until the ceiling above me disappears.

Last night there was a small reception on the roof of the convention center. This is another way of saying, there was a small amount of food, but enough to make me not want to go foraging for a real meal. I only keep mentioning the food because I really haven't eaten since like Saturday, but I'm not a breakfast person, so I still don't feel like eating now. Anyhow, I met a group of people from the University of Texas, a girl who plans on conquering the infamous eigenvector 1. In the increasing darkness over dumplings and fresh fruit, we discussed said eigenvector and other AGNy things like the broad-line region, FeII, FeVII, and NeV, with Greg Shields and Richard Green. I sometimes wonder what's going through people's minds when they ask me the simple question of what I work on, and I stammer a little, explaining that I am presenting here on variable stars at the Galactic center,
but now I'm working on the Lyman-α forest. Do I seem well-rounded, or indecisive and noncommittal?

Today is the first day of talks and posters. The posters will be up in two batches; the first batch today and tomorrow, and the second batch Wednesday and Thursday. Mine is in the second batch. There are several simultaneous talks I know I will want to go to, and I haven't decided which I'll actually go to yet. One thing people always complain about with the AAS meetings is that they are so big; talks are limited to 5 minutes each (and, of course, people routinely go over, which mostly serves to annoy the audience and the moderators). The irony is that since the meetings are so big, no one comes. They say it's good for undergrads and graduate students (and, to an extent, postdocs) to go and meet people, but if no one who "matters" goes, then who is there to schmooze with?

A much more relevant question, though, is whether I give this post an EST or an HST timestamp.

Ready for Honolulu

I leave tomorrow morning for Honolulu for a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). I just want to assure everyone that astronomy conferences are not always in exotic locales. Here, for instance, is a picture from the last conference I went to, in Ishigaki, Japan.

While I'm sure there won't be any talks nearly as interesting as this one at the AAAS this March, it will probably be a fun and interesting conference. I will have a poster on variable stars at the Galactic center; the paper has been accepted for publication and I even bought a nice purple poster tube to carry it in. I might even try to post on the exciting goings-on while there.

American Idol, Landfills, and Juvenile Justice

Alright, I confess. I'm an American Idol fan. I'm all about the brainrot. It's pathetic, I know, but what's even more pathetic is that I don't even own a television and I watch a taped version of the Tuesday night show on Wednesday evenings. Last night's show revolved around "Idol Gives Back," this "big" war-against-poverty campaign they're doing. The big thing they kept mentioning is how for each vote, NewsCorp was going to donate $0.10, for up to five million dollars. They never really said where the money was going, except that it was to *gasp* Save Lives! Also nevermind that this is freaking NewsCorp and five million dollars is barely a drop in the bucket, if that. It probably did do some good and made a lot of people feel warm and fuzzy inside, so I can't complain too much.

So, last night, instead of forcing us to watch Bono "coach" the contestants (oh God thank you for sparing us that pain), we got to see a bunch of short segments of the host and the judges going around the US and Africa. The parts from Africa were ... familiar. (Nevermind that they never told us where in Africa they were; it's one big homogenous place, so it must not really matter anyhow. And while they did talk about how horrible of a disease malaria is, they didn't mention AIDS even once. American Idol is a family show, after all.) But, yes, the shots of people walking through landfills and of large groups of orphans happily eating in large bare rooms... it was a total deja vu, except the grinning kids in the video had darker skin that the ones in my memory.

In August 2005, in the middle of a month-long trip through southeast Asia, my father and I found ourselves in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. (If you don't know anything about Cambodia, quit being ignorant and go check out the wikipedia article or something. Especially the parts about the Khmer Rouge and Angkor.) We knew that Phnom Penh was going to be horrible, the worst combinations of a large dirty city and abject poverty in a country still recovering from large-scale genocide. Cambodia's tourist attractions are are elsewhere, and we were only in its capital out of necessity. My father's all-too-natural solution was to spend our one full day in town visiting the dump.

I'm not kidding. You just can't make this stuff up. We had met a couple in Siem Reap (the town near Angkor) who had spent a few days volunteering at the Centre for Children's Happiness in Phnom Penh. This organization actually runs two orphanages; the kids are separated by age and amount of time since they've lived in the landfill. Lived in the landfill. Like the girl in the picture on the left, these kids have all lived in the Phnom Penh dump as "garbage pickers" before coming to the orphanage. They go through the trash trying to find something, anything, they can sell for mere pennies in order to try to get enough money to buy food with. They literally live and sleep in the dump; the lucky ones might even live there with older siblings or even a parent. Most are orphans, or have parents in worse situations than them (e.g., missing a limb from the copious land mines scattered throughout the country). The CCH carefully picks children living in the dump to come live in the orphanage instead—and, importantly, the kids have to decide for themselves that this is a change they want in their lives. Usually the children coming straight from the dump have to spend about three months (if I remember correctly) in a hospital gaining strength and being treated for various diseases. (Actually, many only spend a few weeks, but some must spend many many months in recovery.) At the orphanages, they get a chance at having a "real childhood." They learn to read and write (in Khmer, English, and Japanese), they learn math, they learn job skills, they learn traditional Khmer dance and art, they learn how to care for one another and how society runs better if people treat each other with respect, have jobs, and take care of themselves. And, oh yes, they learn math. The walls of the courtyard in the main orphanage are covered with painted lessons: vocabulary, useful math formulas and ideas, proverbs, etc. I spent a while talking to one of the older students, a 16 year old boy who had been in the orphanage for three years. He said he really liked math, "especially trigonometry," and working on the computer. This is what we call a "motivated player." He said that when he turned 18, he wanted to work for the orphanage as a full-time employee; this was two years ago, and I do not know what he has wound up doing. The founder of CCH, Mech Sokha, is very open about the workings of the orphanage; the main office (where the computers live, and thus where many of the children spend much of their time) has a whiteboard dedicated to a breakdown of exactly how much it costs per child per day, and where all of that money both comes from and goes, as he is explaining to my father in the picture on the left. This is one of my favorite pictures (aside from all of the math!) from the orphanage because the kid you see standing next to Mech is so typical. For the first time in their lives, these children are somewhere safe, and it was so obvious just how safe they felt. Kids were running around, hugging each other, hugging Mech (like this one here), and generally just being happy. (I was the one with the camera, so many of them while I was there were taking turns having their picture taken, inspecting the preview on the screen on the back, informing me it wasn't good enough, and making me retake pictures. Oh, the cuteness.)

My dad actually got really excited by the entire experience. One thing we noted is that their computers were all really old and crappy; they had about ten, but only one or two would ever work at a time. My dad thought, "I have a lot of friends; we could easily get dozens of nice computers here." So he tried to help, to forge a bond, but apparently Mech just quit responding to his emails, the last I heard. I personally found the entire experience depressing rather than invigorating; it is difficult to see people making so much out of so little and not feel guilty for making so little out of so much opportunity in my own life. I'm still naive and idealistic; instead of seeing one potentially solvable situation, I see a whole helpless world full of Things That Should Not Be. In my head, I know what the world should be like, but the real world around me is so different that it's overwhelming to know how to go about fixing it. Well, there's that, and the fact that I'm incredibly cynical and impatient and people annoy me.

My father, you see, is different. (It takes a special kind of person to decide to visit the Phnom Penh dump on a tour of southeast Asia, yes?) He was a high school guidance counselor for almost 30 years, and somewhere along the way got involved with a volunteer organization associated with the state's Department for Juvenile Justice. Whereby "involved with," I really mean "founded," and whereby "Department for Juvenile Justice," I'm referring to "juvy," the prison where kids under 18 go. My strongest memories of Christmas morning when I was a kid don't center around getting up at the crack of dawn to run downstairs and see what presents I got; they revolve around getting up before the crack of dawn to drive out to DJJ to hand out bags of Christmas gifts to the teenage inmates there—gifts like pads of paper, pre-stamped envelopes, an orange, and a toothbrush. Since his retirement my senior year of high school, my father has poured himself into running this multimillion dollar philanthropic adventure. Explaining everything they do would require a whole other post, not to mention actually listening when he's going on about all of it on the phone.

My father's philosophy is that charity has its limitations; money can only go so far, and if you actually want to make a difference, then you need to actually do something. Charity is trying to treat symptoms ("we need to feed these hungry children!"), while philanthropy is trying to cure the cause ("we need to help these children's parents feed them!"). Charity makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside; it has immediate gratification and results, and it's easier, but it the results aren't lasting. Philanthropy, on the other hand, is hard. Philanthropy requires thought, action, and inspiration in additon to mere money. It's one thing to give incarcerated kids prestamped envelopes, but it's something all together to try to change their lives and keep track of them so that when they get out of jail they don't go back to their old (criminal) habits upon returning home.

This is part of what has me cynical about the whole "Idol Gives Back" nonsense. I'm not saying it's bad; I'm saying it sounds like it isn't going to be as effective and useful as it could be. Money going to food doesn't solve problems; it merely postpones them until the next meal, while teaching people that they don't have to work for what they get. In Africa, wouldn't the money be better spent teaching safe sex and supplying condoms so fewer unwanted kids are born? Shouldn't we be trying to attack the problems instead of simply making ourselves feel better?

And, yes, I was glad to see Sanjaya go.

I'm a Published Photographer!

Check out page 34 of the current edition (Spring/Summer 2007) of the Harvard Design Magazine! The issue, subtitled "New Skyscrapers in Megacities on a Warming Globe," has several articles discussing the interplay of urbanization and high-rise buildings. It's an interesting dichotomy I've never considered: on the one hand, it's presumably better for the environment for people to move to the cities and get around on foot and via public transportation than to live in the suburbs and guzzle gallons of gas each day, but on the other hand, if moving to the city means building tall buildings, then the fact that tall buildings consumer enormous amounts of resources should also be considered. This being a "Design" magazine, the role tall buildings play in their cities is also discussed at length; essentially, no one has yet found a way to pleasantly incorporate skyscrapers into cities that isn't off-putting or mildly hostile. They go over the history of skyscrapers; in the 1960s it was all about maximum volume efficiency, but then not only was it discovered that people are unhappy working in cubicle farms, but also that these new-fangled "computers" need lots of wiring, which requires extra space between floors. Additionally, all these extra electronics means extra cooling is needed; extra cooling in turn means more energy consumption. And so on. After several articles of people talking about buildings generating their own energy and being "green," they have a nice article entitled, "No Building is an Island." It pleases me to know that there are people actually thinking about these kinds of impacts, both on local and global scales.

The other aspect discussed at length is the rapid increase in skyscrapers: apparently, as of June 2006, "40% of the world's 200 tallest buildings have been completed since 2000." Furthermore, many of these buildings are in countries essentially saying, "Look! Our *ahem* building is taller than yours; we must be important!!" I definitely found this to be the ambiance surrounding the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpor (I took the picture above, which was featured in this issue, looking down from the skybridge connecting the two towers about halfway up). The Petronas Towers were basically bought in order to showcase Kuala Lumpor for the rest of the world: in 1998, people were like, "Kuala Lumpor? Where's that? They have the tallest building(s) in the world now??" They are situated in the middle of a large park, the Kuala Lumpor City Centre (commonly referred to as the KLCC). There are essentially no other tall buildings nearby; the Menera Maxis building is actually directly adjacent and connected underground to the Towers, but as it is more than half as tall as the Towers themselves, from ground level they are nigh indistinguishable. From the sidewalk, there is just no good perspective; sure, they're tall, but I for one couldn't tell they were all that tall. For comparison, in March 2001 I stayed for a few nights at the Marriott World Trade Center in New York, and, yes, the World Trade Towers seemed quite tall, in part because they were noticeably so much taller than their already tall surroundings.

Having never even considered picking up and reading an architecture magazine before, I'm finding this to be rather entertaining and educational. If you can, you should go pick up a copy and read it. And check out the most excellent photography on page 34.

Well, That Was Interesting

I had a layover in Philadelphia this weekend, and as such, found myself in need of coffee. I was standing in line at "Java Jazz" admiring the tanalizing display of nearly topologically interesting objects nearby when the fire alarm went off. Bright white flashing light and a siren like what I'm sure a fire truck barreling down the nearby corridor would sound like. A few people looked annoyed and conused, and then a voice came over the intercom letting us know the fire alarm was going off (thanks for letting us know!) and that we should move to the nearest exit. A few people spoke more loudly so that their orders could be heard over the ruckus, and the TSA folk looked a little bewildered as to what to do. The pilot in line behind me was making wisecracks like, "Welcome to Philadelphia." I don't think he likes his job very much. After a few minutes, the alarm went off, as I pulled out my credit card to pay for my coffee. I was told their credit card machine was broken, which was FANTASTIC since I don't carry cash. I told her she should put a sign up saying the machine is broken, but apparently it is against airport rules to post handwritten signs, and she has to abide by those rules.

Now, something in the story I just told you strikes me as deeply wrong and twisted, but I'm not sure what it is exactly.

Free Wireless

I learn something every day. Apparently, the clustrmaps website is offensive, sexual, illegal, or harmful to my computer system. I know this because the Columbus airport blocks such sites, and said site is indeed blocked.

Driving here this morning, I also learned why a rear windshield wiper is useful. I then learned that US Airways apparently charges a $25 standby fee, though this fee doesn't apply to tickets "purchased" with frequent flyer miles.

Hopefully after this short sojourn, I'll be in the mood to learn about more... universally applicable sorts of things.

Vietnam's National Day

My father and I left Hanoi for the States a year ago today, after a full month touring southeast Asia. Coincidentally, September 2 is also Vietnam's National Day. We had managed to miss the Queen's Birthday in Thailand by a day, Malaysia's National Day by a few weeks, and Singapore's National Day by two days. But for Vietnam's National Day, we were in the capital, trying to get out, and staying within near spitting distance of the Vietnamese equivalent of the Esplanade on the Fourth of July. Both of us were in a horrendous mood; my father's wallet and glasses had been stolen as we squeezed through half a mile of ass-to-stomach thick crowd the night before, and I didn't know whether I more wanted American food or to walk down a hassle-free Walmart aisle.

Our flight out was shortly before midnight, so we took our last dinner at the cozy backpacker's place we had already frequented on a number of occasions. While my dad was shooting off a final email to my mother, I had a few drinks and made a final purchase of a 750mL bottle of Da Lat red wine. I hadn't actually had any on the trip, and we hadn't actually made it to Da Lat, which is in the mountains north of Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon). Next time I'm in Vietnam, I'll definitely try to get there; we simply didn't have time on this trip.

We trudged back to the hotel, going well out of our way to this time avoid the burgeoning masses of people around the lake, getting back around 7:30 or so. The roads around our hotel were completely blocked off, and it only took about ten minutes to realize that "we ordered a taxi for you" really meant "I have no idea what you said, but I don't want you mad at me." So we walked away from the commotion for a few blocks, looking for someone to give us a ride to the airport.

Now, for those of you who haven't had the distinct pleasure of travelling somewhere where they can tell you're a foreigner by the color of your skin (please note that this is not an issue in the U. S. of A.) and where everyone knows that you can take advantage of a foreigner because they are endless fountains of money, let me explain something. One of the main reasons I was so ready for this slightly-too long trip to be over was that I had begun to cultivate an intense desire to be able to walk down the street without every other person yelling at me, Hey lady, want a taxi? Considering this, there is a strong level of irony to the fact that we had a hell of a hard time finding someone willing to give us a ride to somewhere else for the exchange of a few colorful pieces of paper.

We eventually found two guys on motorcycles, and realizing this was the best we were going to get, decided on a slightly too high price, and set off. There had been a bit of discussion over the word "airport," and then some arguing between the two of them as to, presumably, the best way to get there, but it was good to be on our way.

We arrived only about twenty minutes later. At the (closed) Vietnam Airlines head office. I honestly do not think that either of these gentlemen really knew what an airplane or an airport is. But they wanted their money. And explaining to them that they hadn't taken us where they told us they would didn't really work. And we really really needed to get to the airport.

At this point, the streets were completely packed, we were out a decent bit of cash (wallet stolen and all, we had a finite amount, see), and now no earthly clue as to our location, except that there probably wasn't a plane headed to Seoul within a mile.

One advantage to the street being at a standstill is it wasn't too difficult to find a cab. We agreed on a definitely too high price, and climbed in. And just sat there. And moved a little bit. And then sat there some more. Sometime between getting off of the motorcycles and into the cab and the cab not really going anywhere, the fireworks had started. Now, in the U.S., if you're in a car, and you're on the road, even if it is July 4th, if fireworks start going off, ... you keep driving, right? Right? You don't stop the car, get out, and watch the fireworks, even if you're in the middle of making a left-hand turn. This is probably because most people in the United States have actually seen fireworks before... as one kind woman about my age explained to us as we were trying to get the Red Traffic Sea to part, "But it's our National Day! Everyone is so excited!"

The only car that made any perceptible progress for the next half hour was the taxi (originally) next to us, with six people in it, most of whom were hanging out of the windows yelling and motioning at everyone else in the traffic jam. I think they were everso calmly explaining, "We've got a lady giving birth in the back seat, so please move over so we can get through."

Once the (rather brief, even if you are worried about missing an international flight) fireworks display was over, and we were definitively on our way, I recognized a familiar tune in the instrumental music on the radio. It was a forty-five minute ride out to the airport, we didn't miss the flight, and I was only mildly scolded by the immigration agent because my visa expired on the first of September. As I was moving shortly after returning, I even had the joy of going to Walmart almost daily for a week.

And now I've been here for almost a year. When my parents visited a couple of weeks ago, I marinated some steaks for them, and my dad opened up the bottle of Da Lat wine I had been saving for a special occasion. We toasted and sipped. Only one sip each. It was... earthy, in that thick muddy black dirt under your toenails kind of way. At least it'll make for good cooking wine...

Renmin Square, Shanghai

This afternoon I used the department Windows box to upload some photos and try my hand at making panoramas using Autostitch. The program was remarkably easy to use, but unfortunately is only available for Windows. Here's the panorama from Shanghai:
This is outside of the entrance to the People's Museum, in Renmin Square (People's Square). I don't know what's up with the green part in the middle-left, but not bad for a first try, eh? It wasy very cloudy and horribly smoggy the entire time I was there; let's put it this way: there was apparently a full moon while I was there, but I have no memory of ever being able to see any moon at all. I took the pictures that comprise this panorama my first day in the city (after having spent a week on the Fudan campus). It was nice to see a real city ... the Fudan campus was rural enough (which is to say, not terribly, but still) that the cicadas were deafening. I like all of the crazy looking buildings... Shanghai is still in the middle of a huge construction boom, but apparently (and I have no way of knowing if this is true or not) many of these new buildings are fairly empty... but they look pretty and China can tout about how progressive they are.

These United States

California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, ... and home. Finally finally home, after over a month of travelling, the latest being driving from San Francisco to Columbus with Oliver (with a whole two days reverie in Columbus between Shanghai and San Francisco). As much as I would like to, I don't have anything all that coherent to say, so I'm going to have to try to the bullet-format blog post ...

• There is a lot more traffic on I-70 in St. Louis and Indianapolis than there is in Utah.
• Hotels west of Denver are expensive.
• The Mojave River looks pretty much like you'd expect.
• Hoover Dam: Expect Delays, 2003--2008
• What's in Kansas isn't all that bad; there just isn't much. Also, the slogan on the tourbook: "Kansas: As Big As You Think." And here we were hoping we were wrong ...
• There are lots of ADULT SUPERSTOREs in Kansas and Missouri. The ones I wanted to visit were usually coupled with "JESUS SAVES Pornography Destroys" signs. Isn't free speech grand?
• Limon, CO: Left In the Middle Of Nowhere
• If the TripTik suggests going around Kansas City instead of straight through on I-70, you should take the suggestion.
• Illinois and Indiana are really similar, except Indiana has worse construction delays.
• There is a lot of empty space in this country. I hear all of this stuff about how the population is rising exponentially, but we really do have places to put them all, and it can't be that big of a problem, as long as we can feed them all and someone fixes the energy problem. Oh, and global warming, that's another thing we should fix. Not that I think people should be having so many babies per se, but I'm just saying, the US of A is still fairly large. I have also become much more aware of how little I know that I would like to: exactly how much land is unused in this country that could be used? How much is used for farming, how much for animal raising? How much would it cost to make trucking a purely local venture and make long distance transportation of goods be left on the trains? Would that really help the environment? Just how much of a water problem is there? I want to know numbers, and I am just now figuring out which questions to ask.
  
• The new cool thing for cars to have is fans on their rear bumpers. They are shiny and spinny and very distracting.
• Lanya has a kitty who likes to meow. And who bit my nose.
• Delilah is incredibly easy to find on the radio, regardless of location.
  
• Las Vegas is shiny. In more ways than one.
  
• Bailey's Chocolate Bar in St. Louis is totally my kind of place, especially since it was Lanya's treat.
• The City Museum, also in St. Louis, would be an excellent place to have some sort of event, like a wedding reception or a ring premiere.
• The Glenwood Hot Springs in Colorado seems like it would be a fun place to go ... at night ... in the fall or spring when it's cheaper and there aren't kids around ....
• Check the hotel room before you leave. Really.
• Despite all of the talk about how different we all are, the United States is amazingly homogenous. We just need to communicate better is all. "I'm right; you're wrong," isn't exactly effective.
  
• It's very strange to be exclusively with one other person for a week and then to all of a sudden have them not be around.

But now I'm home, and there is work to do. I currently have no trips scheduled. It's quite a relaxing feeling.

For Security Reasons

July 8, 2006; Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Backdated for reasons which will become obvious ...

Other background: I was in China for RSI (just like the one typically held at MIT, but in Shanghai, with Shanghainese students, instead), teaching useful science communcation skills, also known as LaTeX and how to give a presentation ...

Well, I'm stuck in the computer lab tonight until 10p.m. (it is currently half past three, but I'm expected to start answering more questions around five), so I figured I'd try to actually write up a blog post. Of course, there are all sorts of problems with this idea. First of all blogger.com and blogspot.com are blocked in China. So... yeah. Other various problems I have mostly circumvented by giving in and bring my laptop, wisteria, into the lab today. Now let me explain this lab. Dell, being one of the corporate sponsors for RSI-Fudan, gave us 35 "state of the art" computers for the kids to do their projects on. Please ignore the fact that anything with a cathode ray tube quit being state-of-the-art around the turn of the century. On the other hand, the Dell guy who came to opening convocation brought with him a bag full of fifty 256Mb USB sticks, which has turned out to save our asses quite a bit as far as giving the kids a place to store their work. And, hey, I get one too! The other immensely interesting thing about this particular lab is that it is configured to only access websites that originate within China. In case you were wondering, there aren't many particularly useful English-language sites originating in China. So, after a lot of hoo-haa, we got a proxy server set up. But lots of sites are still blocked from this room. It's not a site, but ssh is also blocked, which is more than just mildly annoying. AIM is blocked, but jabber is not. Some sites are blocked only every now and then. Examples include such things as google.com and gmail.com. Not that anyone would want to use those anyhow. Besides, if it's not working now, just keep trying, and it might work again in a little bit.

There are about ten computers in the RSI office which don't have these issues. The only things blocked on them are the things that are blocked throughout China, e.g., wikipedia.com. (Interestingly enough, answers.com is not blocked, and contains much of the same information as wikipedia... and googling ofte brings up a wikipedia result, but I'm just now allowed to actually view it. Or the cached page.) On the other hand, ... they all have viruses, which have already claimed at least one staff member's pictures from five weeks in India. That, and I'm stuck here, not there.

UPDATE: ooooh yeeeeah

Birthday Candy

One of the nice little touches at this conference has been the availability of small snacks and candies during the coffee breaks between talks. As this is in fact a conference about galaxies, and one of the more popular galaxies is the Milky Way, it should come to no surprise that I have found myself craving a bit of chocolate. You see, astronomy, aside from the science of sugar, I suppose, is the field after which the most candy has been named. We've got the Milky Way, the Mars Bar, and, of course, the Starburst. But apparently Americans are confused about candy. I didn't even realize it, even after I had a clearly-labelled Milky Way bar this morning, with its soft nougat-y center. Apparently, what we Americans call a Three Musketeers is actually a Milky Way, and what we call a Milky Way is actually a Three Musketeers. Think about it. Milky center? That would be the stuff in a Three Musketeers. Three components? That would be the Milky Way's nice chocolate, caramel, and nougat. Somehow, this managed to blow my mind more than the influence of the bulge on the rotation curves of spiral galaxies.

Other adventures in eating include Tuesday night (birthday!); I went to dinner with roughly the same group of people I had gone out with Monday night (when I was terribly jetlagged and could have fallen asleep in my chair quite easily). This whole Japanese food thing is growing on me ... some of the raw fish is quite delicious, while some of it makes me think, "Why is this so chewy? Shouldn't it be cooked some?" Tuesday night I had raw beef for the first time, and it struck me how yummy it was. Not too chewy, and not to, well, raw-seeming. Afterwards, we went out for "dessert," or shaved ice with flavored syrup and possible beans. I passed, but it was still a fun place and I enjoyed the company and watching people investigate their dishes. We then went to the same bar we had gone to the night before .... their menu was primarily in Japanese, but some of the headings (e.g., Sake or Beer) were in English. One such heading was "Birthday Cocktails," and there were twelve pictures of colorful drinks in martini glasses. Obviously, this had to be investigated. As expected, my drink, a "Moonstone," was free, and I even had to show ID for it (in order to prove that it was indeed my birthday). It was one of the... weirder drinks I've ever had. It was milky white, and apparently yogurt-based. Aside from the fact that it was definitely alcoholic, that is all I know about its ingredients. It had this odd citrus-y flavor to it, like it was confused about what it wanted to be when it grew up. I won't mention that I think I was at least five years younger than everyone else at the table. While I may feel as if I have wasted the last twenty-two years of my life, it was definitely a young birthday.

arrived in Osaka

Arrived in Osaka. Will miss first half day of conference, but will get there. Tired, but but free internet!

Apparently the really-awesome camera (ACS, the Advanced Camera for Surveys) on HST isn't working. This is Not Good.

The mirror in the bathroom here has this nifty feature that part of it majikle-y doesn't fog up. There's no noticeable border to the area, either.

More later ...

Disconnected

The illusion of world connectivity, shattered.

Have you ever had the feeling that what you're experiencing just can't be real? That you will soon wake up and it will actually be a few minutes or hours earlier? I like acronyms, so let's call this sensation the feeling of This Must-be A Dream, or TMAD for short. While I sometimes get TMAD when something really good is happening (e.g., oh my god, hejustkissedme), I more often feel TMAD when something really horrible is happening.

As a random example, let's take Friday afternoon, shortly after noon (Dallas time), as I was standing at the American Airlines Admiral's Club in Dallas being told that I would have to spend the night in Dallas. As all good travelling-on-planes-sucks stories are long and convoluted, and I'm currently sitting in a Hyatt Regency hotel room without internet access, I might as well start at the beginning. So, there's the conference in Japan entitled "Mapping the Galaxy and Nearby Galaxies." I'm supposed to present a poster there on Tuesday, and my advisor, Paul, is supposed to give a talk there, also on Tuesday. Of course, we would both like to be there for, you know, the entire conference. The conference is in Ishigaki, a tiny Japanese island off the coast of Taiwan. It's really hard to get to. Our itinerary had us flying from Columbus to Dallas (at 8:43am on Friday), and then from Dallas to Osaka (leaving at 11:45am). We were then to spend the night in Osaka. The next morning, then, we had a flight leaving at 12:20 p.m. to Naha, and then on to Ishigaki. This was going to be excellent---I could explore a random Japanese city for a night, and we'd be able to get over the jetlag before arriving at the conference. Alas.

We're sitting at the gate, and they come over the PA system to tell us to start boarding. We stand up. They come over the PA again: "We're sorry, but we just found out there is a ground stop in Dallas due to thunderstorms. We'll have a decision on a flight time by 10." Uhm. It's a two and a half hour flight to Dallas, and our next flight was supposed to leave at 11:45. This would be pushing it close. Paul, who has Platinum status and is therefore special, calls up American Airlines and asks them if our next flight is also delayed. This part is kind of boring and not very exciting, unless you include the bit about my laptop deciding that 60% battery means 0% battery and shutting down randomly. Anyhow, when we finally got on the plane shortly before ten, it looked like we might be able to make the connecting flight. If we missed it, we might be able to get on a flight to Narita-Tokyo at 12:05; the people on the phone assured us there were plenty of open seats on this flight, and that we had nothing to worry about. We decide we'd rather be stuck in Columbus for a night than Dallas, but that it's worth the risk. Oh, and, apparently, they do not delay international flights, even if all of the incoming domestic flights (you know, the ones with the people on them) are delayed. Paul had a seat towards the front of the plane, but I was stuck in the next-to-last row, with no hope at all of getting off the plane quickly.

The flight landed right at 11:45. From my delightful seat in the back (next to the girl with lots of mascara, badly dyed hair, and a red and black tattoo that covered her entire back), I could see Paul jumping up quickly. He was probably one of the first ones off the plane. When I finally get off the plane, he wasn't at the gate anymore, so I check the screen. Flight to Osaka delayed to 11:55, but in another terminal. I start running, assuming that if Paul got there in time he'd try to have them hold the plane. Oh boy. So, the Dallas airport has five terminals, connected by a tram thing. I was in C terminal, and had to go to D. Of course, this requires going through E. At the second E stop, the doors don't reclose. We wait and wait, and eventually someone comes over the PA and tells us to get off the train and to take the one going the other way, as it will service all of the stations. Never listen to the big brother voices. Get on the other train; the doors start closing on the first one. Run over to the first one. Wait. Wait some more. I was mildly anxious at this point, by the way. It was probably at this point that I realized Paul and I should have exchanged cell phone numbers. Then another one coming the wrong way comes along, and, once again, we're told to get on that one. So I do, and it goes, and when we're almost to the stop I started at, we see the first tram leaving the E station. I freak out a little bit, switch trains at the next station, turn on my cell phone, go all the way back to D, finally, and run to the ticket counter.

There's no one there. At all.

So this would be when I start freaking out, a lot. There is a huge departures screen right by the gate, so I look at it, and ... the Osaka flight is no longer listed. See, this is bad. I look, and ... the Narita flight is also no longer listed. This is also less than ideal. Some poor guide lady asks me if she can help. I figure she's not with American Airlines, so, no. I am probably hyperventilating at this point. If I had been thinking clearly at all, I would have totally been having TMAD---this was just not possible. I go to the next gate and ask the lady there if Paul was on the Osaka flight. No, but he was on the Narita flight. Which has already departed.

So, this wasn't good. I'd like to think I'm a fairly self-sufficient person, but at this point, I was falling apart in every which-a-way. It's also at times like these that I all skill I might have at maintaining composure is quickly converted into skill at cursing.

"So, wait, he's on the flight? And the flight left?" "Yes, ma'am."

Right then, my phone rings. It's a 617 number, but it's gotta be a good sign. It's Paul. That's weird. He's three gates away and had called the department to get my phone number. Relieved does not begin to express what was going through my mind at that moment. He had apparently been booked on stand-by on the Narita flight, which, though half-full two hours earlier, had been filled up due to some other flight dumping passengers. Anyhow, with his special-person status, we go to the nearby Admiral's Club and they start trying to get us to Japan.

Apparently, all flights to Japan from the lower 48 leave between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. All of them. So, if you miss one, you miss all of them. They found an itinerary that would have us flying from Dallas to Frankfurt. Yes, Frankfurt, you know, the one in Germany. And, yes, the other direction. From there we could have a flight to Osaka and arrive in Osaka in time for our next skip and hop to Ishigaki. Sure, we wouldn't exactly be rested, but at least we'd arrive on time and not miss our next flights. The problem with the flights from Osaka is that they are part of a (rather sketchy seeming) package deal, which includes our hotel rooms at the conference. We've only corresponded with these people via email, it's unclear that they work on the weekends, and it's also unclear that they actually speak English.

As exciting as it might have been, it turns out that the airline with the flight from Frankfurt to Osaka is "not booking" on that flight right now. Not that they don't have seats available---no, no, they just aren't booking them right now. Even with all of the special powers of the Admiral's Club, we couldn't get seats on that flight. And we'd already missed all of the flights out of the US to Japan for the day. Why is it so hard to get half-way around the world in 48 hours?? Aren't we living in a highly-connected world these days? As we are apparently not, we are currently booked on the same flight we had today, but for tomorrow. Now, the problem with this is that it puts us into Osaka at 3 p.m. on Sunday. But .... our flight leaves at 12:20 p.m. And it's mid-summer and Ishigaki is a resort island. All of this was running through my mind as I was standing there listening to the kind man with the nice suit, and I just didn't feel like it was real. It's past being funny; I want to get to this conference. I don't want to miss any of it. But right here, right now, that's just not going to happen. I don't see a happy ending for this story yet, but at least I'm not the one on the phone trying to take care of it.

Meanwhile, they gave us vouchers for lunch, dinner, and breakfast, as well as rooms at the Hyatt Regency for the night. The beds look like they are to die for. There are four channels of ESPN, but I'd have to pay for internet. I have vouchers for three drinks from the Admiral's Club, including alcohol, in my pocket, but that's on the other side of security. I may or may not try going tonight. It's almost 4 p.m., ... now what?

(Posted at 10 p.m. ... we have reservations for Sunday night in Osaka, but it's currently unclear how or if we'll be able to get to Ishigaki from there. As it is simply inconceivable that I would have to spend my birthday travelling back to the States after failing to get to a conference ... at worst, we'll arrive a day late. Right??)