iceland: the great outdoors

halldor took us on our long trip


we walked on precarious cliffs


and saw waterfalls

and drinking boxes

not to mention blue blue pools


and finally ended up on a glacier

you can see more here

on our way to iceland

at san francisco international we heard the loudspeaker blaring our names and so we rushed to the gate to make sure everything was ok. we were worried that the flight to iceland was overbooked. when we got to the front of the line the guy said he had only good news, took our tickets, ripped them up, and handed us new ones: saga class! (a la icelandic sagas... it's their first and business class, rolled into one). when i think of "saga," i often think of a grand quest, with people getting killed by fierce vikings. not sure it's the best name for first class, but of course we accepted the upgrade.

now i don't think i can ever fly economy class again on long flights. i managed to sleep peacefully in saga class, with my eye mask on and my chair fully reclined, legs up. i can never sleep on long flights. this was a miracle! my theory is that the airlines all band together and have a big database of people who have been bumped up before. they track the effect of bump ups on later ticket purchases. for long flights i might now be a saga class traveller... (though i haven't looked at the prices yet :) )

when we landed in iceland, we were picked up by halldor and we headed to the blue lagoon. halldor is pictured below.

 

chick pea soup, indian style

i've been reading bill buford's Heat and i'm loving it! buford goes to work for a famous new york chef and he picks up a bunch of cooking skills and funny stories along the way. and he inspires me to want to make a dish or two!

so i called my parents and got the recipe for chick pea soup, indian style. i love this soup... one of my mom's best. and the recipe is surprisingly easy. The output is pictured above.

Ingredients:

1. 1 can of chick peas, drained (19 oz can.. so in america they seem to have 15 oz cans so you need to improvise on the spices a bit)


2. 1/2 can diced tomatoes (28oz can.. ie 14oz of tomatoes)


3. 1/4 tsp red chili powder


4. 1/4 tsp black pepper


5. 2 tsp masala spice mix (i used mostly chana masala, which is the chick pea spice mix typically used to make curried chick peas.. it's a mix of a bunch of spices and can be bought at any indian spice store)


6. pinch of salt


7. 3 cubes veggie bouillon


8. 3 cups water


9. 1/4 cup chopped onion

Recipe:

1. In a large sauce pan boil the tomatoes, water and bouillon.
   When boiling, add the chickpeas, onions and spices.


2. simmer 30 minutes (until chick peas are done)


3. puree in a food processor/blender


4. serve and enjoy! (neha and grant suggested adding fresh coriander or some cream to the final soup to give it a more restauranty feel)

I doubled everything in this recipe and used 3 15oz cans of chickpeas and hence added a bit more to everything else. It turned out great.

sitting in the bathroom vs being out on the town

as you live your life the moments that trail behind you accumulate and define your character. that character is evoked by how you act and how you're perceived.

when i think of my life as a series of moments that accumulate to define who i am (ie history matters, you are stuck with your past) inevitably i start to wonder which moments are most valuable. tonight i was thinking about going out on the town.

going out is fun, no doubt. you meet people, talk about their ideas, your ideas, the world, soccer, chit chat. sometimes it isn't fun... those times, the minutes were essentially thrown away, seemed useless, boring, unenjoyable.

now consider the bathroom. a great place for thoughts! alone time! reflecting. in some cases quite a bit more fun than an awful night. and don't forget the relief!

so in this calculus of character building, of who you are, how do things stack up? the thing i've considered is the potential of each situation. the bathroom is very structured. sure, i may have a eureka moment. but its positive (and negative) potential to change my character is likely quite small.

so in this calculus, for me, bathroom loses. which jives nicely with my normal thoughts, which are that a nice sauvignon blanc and conversation are wonderful, wonderful things.

ps: i think people are a lot more than just the accumulation and expression of their past moments. there's this potential to choose at each moment, and whether that choice is in a hip bar or a bathroom seems irrelevant. but the bathroom likely makes poor theatre.

hokusai

while sick this past week, i had a lot of time to sit around and reflect. as you've already read, i played and thought a lot about the cats. but i also had a chance to pick up my big book of hokusai, a famous late 18th, early 19th century japanese artist.

hokusai was a genius. his art and literature are fantastic, and he was constantly learning and exploring new themes. he worked up until he died, and is quoted on his deathbed as saying "If Heaven had lent me but five years more, I would have become a great painter." of course, he was fantastic. you probably recognize the woodcut at the top, one from his series on mount fuji.

i started reading all the fascinating articles in my hokusai art book. i usually just look at the prints, but i must encourage people to read the articles themselves.. they are so enlightening and fun! one article touched on hokusai's difficulties with his publisher. hokusai sent some woodcuts to his publisher, who would get them made by professional craftsmen. now the quality of these works is a function not only of what hokusai produces, but what the mastercraftsmen do in their shops. i guess hokusai had been burned one too many times, and so he sent this amusing letter to his publisher, constantly dropping the name of this one craftsman who he thought would do the job splendidly... hokusai even went so far as to say that he wasn't in cahoots with this craftsman (ie taking a cut when the publisher chose that craftsman because hokusai made it happen) but in fact loved his work. i'll add some quotes here when i get home.

here are some prints (i especially like the "small flowers" and "large flowers" series, but i couldn't find many of those online):

Poppies and Yellow Butterfly, 1833-34


The Ghost Kohada Koheiji

an inconvenient truth

i saw an inconvenient truth this weekend, and it was fantastic. before i saw the movie i thought that a movie which is mostly a multimedia presentation by al gore would be boring and stupid... i thought i'd fall asleep.

i didn't, and i was completely stoked to help out in some way after seeing gore's moving presentation.

that's where the movie failed.. at the very end, gore disappears and suggestions for what you can do are posted along with the credits. that sucked. gore should've said way more about this.. a whole section of the movie should've been devoted to that, because let me tell you i wasn't the only person who at the end of the movie was really ready to help out and wanted suggestions.

anyway when i went to the movie's website (climatecrisis.net) i found some links that indicate how you can help.

calculate a rough estimate of your contribution to the global warming crisis here

read some things you can do about the problem here

as an aside, i found it really funny how much they showed gore working on the presentation on his nice little mac. moving around slides and building slides. gore came across as quite mac savvy :)

lazy cats

these past two days i've been sick as a dog, and so i've stayed at home. it's good for the cats, because my roommate's away. i've played with them, pet them, fed them treats, and they, for the most part, have slept. i wonder what they think about, as they lie there, twitching.

raja gives me angry slits as i use the flash on him

zelda cannot be disturbed in her sleep. yesterday i saw her fall off this chair while sleeping

mika, the champion sleeper. if you pet her when she looks to be sleeping, she'll flip over and adjust into optimal petting position, all the while keeping her eyes closed

then there's me, sick and bored (no picture provided). i watched germany beat argentina on espn360, and i was sad, but the german keeper really was extraordinary in penalty kicks.

 

should all content be readily available?

let me motivate the title of this thought. this past week i was reading the new yorker, specifically a wonderful article by Bill Buford called "The Dessert Lab: A pastry chef's quest for the new" about Will Goldfarb's new dessert place Room 4 Dessert in new york city (dessert pictured above is from Room 4 Dessert, courtesy yelp). i loved this article. i can't explain it exactly, it was just so perfect and fun and informative. i'll give you some fun quotes. goldfarb couldn't get a reliable bartender, so he had the author tend bar. the rules:

There were three rules. Break nothing. ("Please!") Make no money mistakes. And let people wait. "A pastry rule," he [Goldfarb] added. "Better to be perfect and slow than fast and flawed."

so buford tends bar for a bit, giving advice to the customers and having some fun. goldfarb does not approve of buford's work:

He [Goldfarb] took me aside: "You are too frantic. You've got too much adrenaline. You don't understand. There is no fourth wall here. There is no kitchen to hide in. Everything you do is on view. You have to be relaxed. Easy. Listen to the music. You are the atmosphere. Do you understand?" He paused, clearly convinced that I wasn't understanding. He was trying to be polite. "And the advice you keep giving? Do me a favor. Don't."

i wanted to share it with people i knew wouldn't have the new yorker. i have some friends who would really appreciate this article! of course, the new yorker site isn't serving this article (they only serve a subset of what they publish each week).

furthermore, i couldn't buy the article online. after some snooping, i found a blog that had posted a pdf version but they subsequently took it down when the new yorker came a servin' legalese. i contemplated scanning the article but never got to a scanner. in a last ditch attempt, i photographed a page of the article, but that came out poorly.

so i give up. the new yorker doesn't want its content flowing in the world. i'd be happy to pay for this article, to share it! and if ads mean more, then by all means make it available with ads all around it, online.

but i guess that the new yorker can distribute in any way they want. what if they never want an online copy? what if having that paper, the funny cartoons, the odd cover, the package is what matters to them? well, all i know is that i will be visiting Room 4 Dessert when i'm in nyc. here's the cartoon from the new yorker:

live HDTV sucks

i was in berkeley watching the first brazil game of the world cup a week ago. it was displayed on a beautiful hdtv in the front of the bar, and, if you arrived late, on a normal tv in the back of the bar.

so, brazil's applying some pressure when suddenly i hear this scream from the back of the bar. i turn around and see people cheering and clapping and i'm wondering: "what game are they watching?" suddenly i turn back to my tv and kaka has scored
(pictured above celebrating the goal).

it turns out that the hdtv broadcast has a few second delay compared to the regular broadcast! the back of the bar knew about the goal before me! i thought this only happened in different solar systems where the exploding star reaches me years later! this completely blows. there's no point watching if i can just wait and listen for the people behind me.

mihai pointed me to an article about this on bbc. supposedly the bbc spokesperson advises that people shut their windows so they can't hear celebrations from normal tv watchers. ridiculous. that is not a solution. live hdtv sucks!

bad commencement keynote speech

oh man.. i was at a college graduation today, and the keynote speaker was the ceo of some fairly large company (depicted at the left). he had us hooked on his idiocy from the beginning:

he started his speech by saying that he was a really busy man, and he didn't have time to write the speech, so one of his staff wrote it, and so if anything is wrong with the speech, don't blame him, blame his staff.

what a beginning. the speaker to inspire the next generation of business people tells them that they should delegate to their underlings, and if anything goes wrong, blame them.

it gets better: at the particularly corny moments in his speech, the speaker paused to note that what he was about to say wasn't actually written by him, so again, blame the real writer.

at one point he got into a verbal exchange with an audience member whose last name was fani (he asked for the student's last name) and then made a butt joke.

is there anything good to say about this speech? well, we had a good time laughing at the speaker... the picture above seems appropriate since we think he wasn't completely sober. however, i feel really bad for the graduating class. at least their valedictorian gave a solid address.

ps if any of you hate this blog entry, don't blame me, blame the ceo

broken social scene

i've told a lot of people about broken social scene, but now i want to announce it more widely: i love them! i bought their most recent album, "Yor Forgot It in People" and it's fantastic. you can listen to some of the songs here if you scroll down to the samples. what's amazing about the group is that they are a supergroup -- a conglomeration of many artists, with a few core artists directing the vision. the album really speaks to this diversity that's unified despite its wide scope, from soft, strictly instrumentals to really moving vocal pieces.

i especially like tracks 5,6 and 7 (this supports my theory that the best tracks on a cd are track 7 or thereabouts.... i strongly believe this!). track 6 is called "pacific theme" and it just makes me wish i was sitting down by the ocean relaxing and listening to a band (broken social scene would be ideal!).

dealing with anger

this week i realized that i deal with my anger in a quite peculiar way, in the sense that it's quite different from how other people perhaps deal with their anger. i've created a graph below to illustrate:



i don't think this is good because it means the person or thing that is angering me gets almost no feedback until a point at which i express feedback in a strongly negative, labeled bad, way. i've drawn a normal person as linear, though i doubt the average person is linear. this is also bad for me because sometimes later on i realize that i was angry (my curve starts to look more "normal") and yet it's too late for me to give any feedback. the moment is lost.

i'm going to try and get away from this step function. it isn't good!

japanese traditional entertainment: lost in translation

in hakodate, at the aamas conference reception, we were treated to some traditional japanese entertainment. the japanese people in the audience were fascinated by this husband-wife pair, clapping and singing along. the foreigners, from my observations, were a bit dumbfounded. i really got into it after a few minutes. the woman's jumping was hypnotic.

my podcast lineup

over on winky's blog i just posted a comment that lists my favorite podcasts, and then i figured i wanted to spread my love of podcasts here.

i listen to so many podcasts. i've been doing this for almost a year now. here are the ones i like:

democracy now: great daily independent reporting show that really sticks it to US media and does a fantastic job covering the latest stories.

bbc's documentary archive: radio documentaries from the bbc. some are amazing.

bbc's in our time: it's always a discussion about some historical person or phenom. always fascinating, very scholarly, if you're into that. a recent show on john stuart mill was just great. i learned that his father essentially treated him as an educational experiment, and in fact jeremy bentham was his godfather.

kqed forum: discussion of topics of interest in america and abroad. a panel discusses a topic, and the last half of the show there are callers. quite good, though the host has a way of talking too loudly and hurting my ears at times.

cbc's quirks and quarks: bob mcdonald is amazing. he makes science so much fun. the recent segment on happiness was fantastic. "if you're looking for happiness, skip bulgaria.'

in addition, i listen to the new york times podcasts of their opinion columns. finally, a good search engine for podcasts is podzinger.

insults on the street: how to respond?

while walking around the mission yesterday evening, neha and i were heckled by a loud, perhaps drunken man carrying a guitar. this guy certainly seemed drunk or crazy. he asked, "is your woman for sale?" and then proceeded to make some racist comments concerning arabs, which i didn't quite catch. we kept walking and largely ignored him, even as he shouted loudly (but not coherently) in our direction.

as we walked away, neha commented that maybe the best thing to do to this guy would be to kick him in the balls. she said she'd get a sense of satisfaction, and maybe next time he'd think twice about insulting people and saying rude things, especially to women if it was a woman who beat him up. i thought that violence wasn't the answer, as it could get ugly, but also because i don't think violence is a good tool for teaching people lessons. i imagined that this might just make this heckler violent towards others, if he himself was attacked (note: interestingly, now that i think about this, if someone told me that in this case violence was the ONLY way to teach a lesson, i still don't think i'd endorse it.. so my original argument certainly isn't enough for me). at the time, i thought that ignoring him was the best strategy. though now i'm not so sure. i guess the question is whether some harm (verbal, physical, emotional) should've been meted out on this jerk? neha pointed out that in a reasonable world, we could just tell him that what he said was very insulting and we were hurt. but such words wouldn't have worked here.. so then what...

at the same time, i remember feeling so violated by the miami immigration agent and i think i did imagine punching him at some point (though of course that would've been very, very bad, at least practically speaking). i had this strong sense of "he can't do this to me, and i shouldn't let him. i should teach him a lesson!" of course, punching him probably would've taught no lesson, but my point here is more about the strong reaction i felt when i was mistreated.

Buying Clothing Online, revisited

if you recall, about a year ago i wrote about an idea i had for getting all your clothing online, shipped to you, styled for you (see here).

well, while this isn't exactly the same, MyTailor.com is in the business of making clothing that fits you well, and matches your style. you send them a shirt and they'll measure it, and you choose your shirt/jacket/etc style and they will custom tailor it, in hong kong, and send it to you.

it's a start! i found out about MyTailor from this times article.

graduate school: the horror!

recently we were asked to fill out a form concerning our experience in our graduate department. the responses were sometimes uplifting, often funny, and downright depressing at times. here's a sampling of answers. note that i've gone with more funny ones than anything else.. to be honest, there were many happy responses. but those aren't interesting!

update: my sister seema tell's me that my samples below are more depressing than anything.. i tend to think of them as quite amusing. perhaps there's some schadenfreude here

on advising and graduate advisors:

After my advisor received tenure, he stopped showing interest in most of my groups' research projects. It has been very frustrating.

The advisors should at least be living in Berkeley and not in another country! The advisors priority is his fame, industrial relationship and money more than the students research and progress.

Instead of explicitly turning me down, one professor would just schedule other people during our arranged meeting times so I would show up and he would be busy. He'd promise to email me and not follow through. It's not clear what professors are looking for in potential students. There were way too many students my year and not enough advisors to go around. [ed note: i especially liked this one because it can be read as if the advisor promised to email AND not follow through with his promises. ha!]

I had secured an advisor early on but had to change in the middle of my PhD as the previous advisor ran out of funding on the project I was working on. I was told to change topic or change advisor.

a happy one:

I feel that my working relationship with my advisor is excellent, but it would be nice to have a better working relationship with other faculty in the same area.

on improving diversity and position of women in computing:

Maybe making the environment a little more friendly toward women.

This question assumes that 'improving diversity' is a good thing. For the love of god, talk to people who've gone to programs with forced measures to 'improve diversity' (CMU's fiasco with women, first and foremost), and you'll get a good idea of how much that fucked things up.

some photos and a video from japan

we actually got to japan at a wonderful time. in hakodate, the cherry blossoms were just blooming, while in tokyo the temperature was perfect, albeit a little rainy.

 

omar, angry-looking, but really enjoying the cherry blossoms blooming in hakodate, japan.

 

some beautifully colored trees in a tea garden on the outskirts of tokyo

 

can anyone guess what these symbols mean? they sit between the up and down escalators, at 10 meter intervals. i thought the red symbols meant that you shouldn't place items on the middle area (see the guy placing something in the right-hand red symbol?) i was wrong. the red symbols mean "no smoking."




in this video, some crazy goldfish try to leap out of the water and eat me as i get too close to their feeding ground.

 

hakodate, japan

i'm now in hakodate, japan, where halldor and i are presenting a paper at the ap2pc workshop. my presentation went well, and i think i may have found someone who wants to do some quick collaboration.

today halldor and i browsed around the city. we went up to mount hakodate, which gives a spectacular view of the city.

while there, we saw a crow that let us get really close. i mistakenly insulted the crow, and now it's haunting me and halldor believes i'm cursed. i took a video of this close encounter i've uploaded it to google video. Here it is:

Award Error

I TAed for a class this semester and won an award for excellence in teaching. I received the certificate in the mail and wasn't very impressed... can you spot the error?


Update: the department is sending me a new certificate. they didn't approve of the spelling either... :)