adam.oliner.net

In the thickest Scottish accent I’ve ever heard, as he drives me to my hotel, my cabbie asks what I think of Bush. I answer cautiously that I am not his biggest fan. “Fuckin’ prick, ‘e is, that one!” My cabbie yells over his shoulder. I laugh, and we discuss the exit of Tony Blair and the inauguration of a Scottish Prime Minister.

My paper talk goes well, and I post the manuscript and slides on my Research page. I make a surprise announcement at the end that we are able to release our data; there is much rejoicing.

I decide to skip a portion of the afternoon sessions to be a tourist. I hop into a cab from the Hilton and ask for the Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center. There is a pause. He mumbles something and starts driving. I say again, half-question, half-repetition, “Scotch Whiskey Heritage Center?”

“Scaaatch,” the cabbie retorts, mocking my American pronunciation.

“Scotch whiskey,” I try again in my best Scottish imitation.

“I understood ya’, I joos had ta think about it a wee bit.”

At the booze museum (for what else is it, really?), I meet a Canadian named Dean with whom I have lunch after the tour. We do a flight of scotch drams from the four regions of Scotland: Lowlands, Highlands, Speyside, and the Islands. According to an extremely scientific blind experiment, I can identify two of the four by smell, and all four after tasting. I win a 1 pound bet with him about whether our waitress was Scottish or Irish. Sláinte mhath!

The conference excursion takes us to Stirling Castle, where we have a guided tour followed by champagne in the garden and a banquet in The Great Hall. The meal begins with an Ode to Haggis. A bagpipist, instrument singing, leads in a waiter holding a plate of haggis aloft. The plate is adorned with napkins curled up like the ends of a viking long boat. The musician then recites Burns’s “Address to a Haggis“, in the most exaggerated accent he can muster.

The Edinburgh chapter of my travels is nearly at a close, and I will depart for London shortly after I post this. Pictures forthcoming once I settle in London and move them off my camera. I should really get a flickr account…

There are three elements to my Irritability Trifecta. They are heat, hunger, and exhaustion. With any one, I get a bit whiny. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Any two and you ought to wait before asking a favor. The trifecta is me at my most grumpy and stabby. This story begins with me at one out of three; I am on a red-eye from Los Angeles, having gotten only a couple of hours sleep.

As we descend into Heathrow, I see raindrops streaking the windows. Ah, raining in London: how predictably quaint. It was my brilliant idea to take a train from the airport to Edinburgh, rather than flying, so that I could spice up my trip with a pleasant tour of the English countryside. I take a light rail to Paddington, and then the Tube to King’s Cross, from where my train is to depart. The station is packed with people, and most of them look cross, or concerned, or disappointed. I sidle through the crowd to check the light board for the next train to Scotland. It reads thus: Canceled, Canceled, Canceled, Canceled, and so on down the line. The enormous flat-screens flash BBC images of the severe flooding that has washed out roads, and railroad tracks, all up and down the flourishing, green countryside.

“We advise you not to travel to Edinburgh tonight,” a gentleman with the GNER tells me. I advise him, in my turn, that I will be ignoring his well-meant words, wholesale, and seeking passage to my destination. We dance the frustrated-customer-and-powerless-terminal-operator jig for a couple of minutes, and I emerge with a ticket to Edinburgh that will leave “sometime” and take “probably a very long time”. The flooded sections slow the train to a few miles per hour, I learn.

Ticket in hand, I go stand dutifully underneath the giant light board with the throngs of passengers awaiting further instructions. The amber colors flicker and a single train is announced: Edinburgh-bound, Track 5. I bob and weave through the current of people as they rush toward the train (FCFS), my giant suitcase trailing heavily behind me as I curse myself for packing like a woman. I dive into a car and slump down in my seat, exhausted and, I realize as the train pulls away from King’s cross, hungry.

Sufficiently displeased with my condition, airline-rested and fed as I am, I immerse myself in The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. A revered classic, to be sure, but I also took a writing course from Joe at MIT and felt ashamed to have never read anything he wrote. I finish the book on the train, pleased with the experience. The rain takes a break to allow the summer sun to blaze down through my west-facing window, driving me into a sweat and completing the trifecta. I stare out the window, pointedly.

Soon, though, the clouds roll over the sun again and food service sates my animal hunger. My status downgraded to whiny, I write this post. The train ride takes about seven hours. Total travel time to Edinburgh from home is roughly 24 hours, subjective time.

The countryside really is quite lovely. Speckled with white sheep and rising near Edinburgh into seaside cliffs and crumbling stone walls. Rolling, green, and well-watered.

I will be going on at least ten trips over the next three months, starting with San Diego last week for a conference. This Sunday I leave for Edinburgh, UK for another conference, followed by some fun times in London with Sisi and Yong-Hwa. There’s also DC, Portland, Vegas, Anaheim, Vermont, Massachusetts, Burning Man, and assorted camping trips. I don’t know if that will translate into more blogging or less, but I promise to keep you abreast of any and all debauchery.

At least three of the trips (Edinburgh, DC, and Anaheim) involve me giving a talk of some form, which means I have to convincingly feign cognizance. Sean is tying the knot in Portland, which will either make him a married man or qualify him to become an eagle scout. Or a sailor. Vegas is the MIT Pi Reunion, roughly 3.14 years after our graduation; I’ve got a room at the Wynn and tickets to Cirque. Vermont is a revivification of an old tradition, except in a better house and with people who care about each others well-being. I haven’t seen my family in a solid while, so I’ll be stopping there afterwards to raid the fridge and reluctantly (but with secret glee) accept numerous hugs.

Preparations for Burning Man have been ongoing for months now, beginning with the building of a 40′ diameter geodesic dome out of metal conduit piping (our trial assembly). The current projects involve making a cover for the dome, so that we can live inside of it happily, and designing the art car, which will apparently have wings. I joined up with a camp called DeMaTerial, which has gone to Burning Man before and includes several of my friends. I’m a playa virgin, so this will be a new experience.

I’ve been making an effort to leave my comfort zone whenever possible. I think it helps me grow as a person and inspires new ideas. Somewhere between Scotch tasting in the Scottish highlands and living in the Nevada desert in a colorful hemisphere of pipes and hotel sheets, I ought to be planted firmly outside of that comfort zone.

I hope it inspires more than just discomfort.

Sometimes I feel like a Pokemon trainer of academia. It’s as though I’m trying to catch ‘em all. I’ve got (or am working on) MIT, Stanford, IBM, Google, LLNL, Sandia, IEEE publications, ACM publications, book chapter, fellowships, two BSs, an MEng, and a PhD. I just need Dorkizard and I can take on Team Nerd in the tournament. My next conference trip is IPDPS in Rhodes Island, Greece. It looks like I’ll be making a stopover in England on the way home to visit Yong-Hwa at Oxford. She is truly a Pokemon Master.

This past weekend included Peter’s Australia Day party, during which time I ate copious amounts of guacamole, smoked salmon, and fairy bread. I know what you’re thinking: “Adam, you promised to fix your photo galleries and still haven’t done it. What gives?” Right after that, you’re thinking, “What the deuce is fairy bread?” It’s a popular dish in Australia, you uncultured buffoon. Now, bring me my brandy and sprinkles.

Before that, I spent a weekend at Sierra near Lake Tahoe, learning to snowboard. From what I now know of snowboarding, and from what Colin has told me about abusive homosexual relationships, I would say that snowboarding is a bit like an abusive homosexual relationship. You take a severe beating, convince yourself that its worth it and that you are happy, and at the end of the day your ass is killing you. There will be nonpornographic photos of the snowboarding and gorgeous Tahoe scenery posted as soon as I keep my word and fix the galleries. I hope this little metaphor didn’t offend anyone. Except Colin, obviously. I think it’s safe to say his panties will be considerably bunched.

I’ll leave you with today’s political gem. As you are aware, Hamas recently won in landslide Palestinian elections. These well-known supporters of terrorism were elected democratically, so you’d think the Bush administration would be thrilled. After all, bringing democracy to the Middle East was the reason for invading Iraq, right? Well, no, it was WMDs. Remember when Saddam was an imminent threat? Neither does the administration. Suddenly, they went from “we must fight for peace” to “fighting for peace makes no sense”:

“You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.” – Condoleezza Rice, January 30th, 2006.

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” – George W. Bush, June 18, 2002.

Comprehensive exams are over, with relatively positive results. I passed 6 of the 8 that I needed, which is sufficient for me to advance to Ph.D. candidacy and which constitutes me making “reasonable progress” through the end of my second year. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “reasonable progress” is the vague metric by which the Department, University, and my fellowship determine whether I’m actually worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars they are paying for me to be here. Making reasonable progress is good, and I am.

The last few weeks have been a bit surreal, actually. Aside from taking 13 hours of exams, I also meditated with the Dalai Llama while he visited Stanford, met Orkut (of orkut.com fame) at a bar in Mountain View (I believe my companions were more excited about this than I was, but that’s another story), celebrated International Jane Weekend, and a number of other minor adventures I’ll have to save for another time (because one of them is a surprise… shhhh). I was very impressed by the Dalai Llama, by the way. He was friendly, good-natured, intelligent, and, for someone whose English is by his own admission “a disgrace,” quite well-spoken. Had he not been selected at age two to become the religious leader of a third of a billion people, he said he would like to have been an engineer. His answers to audience questions (including one about genetic engineering) were structured with a respect for science, logic, and practical concerns. He talked about how, as a young man, he was obliged to memorize an ancient Buddhist text that exhaustively accounted for the movement and position of the heavens in a way that was meticulous, precise, and “completely wrong.” To paraphrase his conclusion, there was no sense ignoring what the world was telling us; blindly following the words of a religious text despite the evidence of your own senses is silly. He laughed heartily, and always a little longer than the situation merited. The world could use more religious men like him.

More tidbits: I’ve officially aligned with a research advisor, which roughly means that my bribe check cleared. But seriously, Alex Aiken has agreed to guide me through the doctoral jungle. From my few interactions with him so far, he lives up to his stellar reputation. I am very excited for the opportunity to work with him. I have temporarily put him on hold, however, to work on some residual topics related to my Master’s thesis. In particular, I am preparing a paper for a December 9th deadline. I am also working on a post about torture; keep an eye out for that, because I know you have nothing better to do. Tomorrow, I fly to Boston to spend the week with my girlfriend (Amanda-face!) and family for Thanksgiving. Can I get a “hell, yeah”?

I knew that I could. Time for me to retire now, and become a duck.