Today is an absolutely lovely day (“Glorious weather!” as the British would say) and since I am on such a high, it is only fair that I convert such enthusiasm into bringing the world up to date.
I had a terrific time at the conference in San Diego. As it turned out, this year was one of the years when they bring all conferences together under one roof (and call it the Federated Research Conference) so in effect, practically every important member of the research community was there in the 2600+ strong crowd. Having been away from India for about a year and a half now, I have to say that I have lost my capacity to handle large crowds – something which didn’t even warrant a second thought from me as I went about boarding buses, pushing and shoving and being quite used to having no concept of personal space in the years I was a student and therefore, not privileged enough to drive my father’s car. But at the conference, all of a sudden with so many people, it took me a while to get used to the idea that even in the US, you could have crowds!
But it didn’t end with that. I met at least a dozen IIT Madras seniors at the conference – some of them had just not changed in their outward appearance while some others were practically unrecognizable. Since most of them back in IIT were recluse CS dudes, I was quite surprised to find that some of them actually recognized me – a lowly Chem Engg chappie!
The other thing that really hit me was the simply staggering number of Indians in the CS research community. If you think about it carefully, the packs of students who sail into US universities to pursue higher studies or to simply “just get to the US of A” have to show up someplace – you can’t be sending the maximum number of students in the world (or are we second to China ?) to the US and have them all hanging out at Indian restaurants and wearing sneakers to nightclubs, can you ?
The hotel I stayed at (and where the conference was being hosted), The Town And Country Hotel Resorts was quite disappointing. For one, I hardly expected to be charged for using the gym/pool and that too 9 USD a visit! And two, the room was a quite funny and had one of those pre-historic thermostats which only had four positions with the extremes being ‘Warm’ and ‘Cool’ !
My talk was on Thursday, June 12, and it went off pretty well. There was some good questions and the chair of the session (Rajeev Gupta) even complimented me for my style of speaking. Friday was my day off so I rented a car from Enterprise (the only company willing to rent to guys under 25) and drove around the city with Daddy (my batchmate from IIT Madras and one of the original cool dudes in the world) and Arvind, my friend from Arizona whom I met at last year’s conference in Berlin. We checked out Sea World, Pacific Beach (where I was profoundly disappointed by the complete lack of babes and the muck giving the beach a rather dirty look), and the La Jolla village, the Banjara Hills of San Diego. At one point as I drove through La Jolla to the Indian restaurant for dinner, I actually felt like I was in Banjara Hills, the poshest area in the city I come from – Hyderabad, AP, India.
On all days of the conference, I went out for dinner. On two occasions, it was with Ron and his buddies from his days at IBM’s T.J Watson Research Center. I enjoyed interacting on a more social level with Ron and especially his incredibly funny friend, Michael Brent. Old Town turned out to be really quaint and full of Mexican restaurants – I had easily the best Mexican food I ever tasted. Other evenings it was the Gaslamp area – once for Italian cuisine and once for Spanish.
Ron and me after my talk
Check more pictures out in my gallery
I got back on Saturday, Jun 14 at 4 in the evening – minus my baggage of course, thanks to American Airlines that managed to lose baggage on a direct flight from SAN to STL! Thankfully enough, the suitcase arrived the next morning and I realized only then that the only reason they located my suitcase was the tag that the airline person made me put on my bag when I was checking it in. I have long ignored such advice – my suitcase doesn’t even had the card with my information filled in – but I know better now.
Among other things, nOnda moved to Milwaukee and is having a tough time coming to terms with the pace of work life after having had such a relaxed time in school. It isn’t without a reason that some people prefer delaying having to work for as long as they can 
Vidya is fast becoming the road warrior amongst us all here – she helped nOnda move to Milwaukee and drove to Chicago to see her brother-in-law Rohit off – 5 hours non-stop all by herself ! At first she was rather apprehensive and used up a good deal of my daytime minutes coming up with worst-case scenarios where she would fall asleep on the wheel and have an accident. In the end of course, things were just fine and the worrying was quite redundant. Oh well, you know how women are
My Carnatic music classes are going pretty well nowadays. Swapna and I are progressing at a much better pace now that we have classes twice a week. Music class brings back memories from my childhood when Rahul and I would sit cross-legged on the floor and practise singing for hours at end with Amma to supervise; it also reminds me how much joy and happiness Music (and singing in particular) brings to my life. I can’t ever thank Amma enough for bringing home to us the beauty of music and making it an inseparable part of our lives.
While on music, it was only this afternoon that I was talking to Vidya about how genes has so much to do with your sense of music. Children of parents with a good sense of music almost always turn out exceedingly talented in music themselves. Ron was telling me the other day about his youngest son Jacob having perfect pitch – which isn’t surprising really from what I have made out about Ron’s and his wife’s musical talents. Vidya, one of the most amazing singers I have known, is one of 4 sisters, each one more musically gifted than the other. So there you go although sometimes I do think it is unfair that something like this is a consequence of your genes!
My cousin Navin, is currently in East Lansing (MI) on a work-related trip to the US (he is a nuclear phycisist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay) and I look forward to meeting up with him tonight as I fly out for the weekend. Joining us is another cousin Sumanth (who lives in NJ) and I am really looking forward to some quality time with them. Sumanth and Navin have always been very special – they bring back the happiest of memories from my childhood – time they spent with us kids when they were all well in their twenties!
The weekend promises to be some good fun so I am going to end in anticipation of a nice flight and a long drive from Detroit to Lansing at midnight!
