… Damian Pascal!
06.04.2009 09:27
3600g 50cm 36.6 deg. Celsius

The proud parents
Carmela & Michael

Another UPDATE: More pictures are now at a new location: here

Really. Your safety is our number one concern. Therefore, may we ask you for your own safety and that of your fellow travelers to only take one drink at a time? And for your own comfort to clean up your mess after use? And while you’re at it, please fill out this self check-in form, so that we don’t have to do it. For your own comfort, of course…

These kind of requests are everywhere today in the US. I really don’t mind if I’m asked for a little cooperation, or to make everybody’s job a little easier by just, well, behaving like any well-behaving person would do. No problem with that at all. But please – don’t try to make me believe that it’s for my safety to only use one toilet seat cover at a time, or to throw away empty paper cups. It’s not. Not for my safety, not for my comfort. It’s just common sense. Tell ‘em that next time, instead.

Another feature of the pacific northwest are the microbreweries. As I was told, this trend really took off in Portland, but it’s everywhere up here now. If you want a sampling, go to Henry’s 12th Street Tavern in Portland. They have exactly 100 beers on tap – and I counted them. Small isn’t always beautiful, however. I have tasted many of the microbreweries around here, and occasionally, I would actually prefer some standard Miller or Budweiser to their product:

The above was advertised as an IPA, but it was foamless and turbid like a 2-day-old wheat beer. And that’s what it tasted like. Maybe it was two days old, after all.

The picture below is for Albert the office mascot. Thousands of puffins and other marine birds nest on the rocks around where Tillamook lighthouse stands. Even though there’s abundance, they’re not found on the menu, perhaps the local chefs are lacking the right recipe?

Even though the weather hasn’t really been very cooperative, it is a ray of light in our busy schedules. Time to relax and look out on the ocean. Or to sit in the hotel lobby, writing blog posts while it pours outside. Every now and then, the rain subsides, and we even managed to take some nice shots of the surrounding scenery, for instance in Ecola State Park:

The weather fortunately keeps changing quite dramatically during the day, and the picture below was taken on the same day on Raffles Place.

But back to Orchard Road, the top-class shopping district, a bit like Ginza in Tokyo, or the Bahnhofstrasse in Zürich. Singaporeans are fashion victims, but in their own, very civilized way. There’s a queue in front of Gucci of happy shoppers waiting to be let in to browse the collection. Note the large prevalence of Louis Vuitton bags in the crowd. Similarly, a queue formed in front of Louis Vuitton (but without Gucci bags).

It certainly is true, working in science, and even more so, in academia, is not always very rewarding. While the suited business guys zip around in business class and get their incentive holidays and other perks, we usually sit day & night in front of our monitor glare (voluntarily!). But sometimes, the exceptional happens, and usually, we call that a conference. The one I am currently at is the GIW2007 in Singapore. So that’s why you can find me looking skeptically at the conference dinner, with local cuisine favorites like shark fin soup or abalone and really spicy fried rice.

Singapore is Geek Heaven. They have shopping malls 6 storeys high, full of electronics, from laptops to cooling fans.

And finally for todays photo tour, Singapore is of course also very asian. Here are some rickshaw drivers chilling out in front of “the best durian in town”.

So long,

Michael

Besides attending the conference (after all, that’s what I’m here for), I was able to get some time off to explore Valencia a bit further, and for this time, I focused on the “spanish old town”. The city has beautiful old buildings, and the sidewalks are made from very nide stone tiles for the most part. If only there was less dog turd on the sidewalks, navigating the streets would be easier, as you could look up rather than down. Here’s a view of Plaza de la Reina:

Around Colón, which is very close to my hotel, all the big shops are located, including the department story giants like Corte Ingles. In addition, a little quarter off colón has all very nice boutique-type shops, including a jewellery-style chocolate shop. The streets in that quarter lead to the Mercado de Colón, a very nice hall that presumably used to be a covered market, but nowadays has little shops and cafés, all contained within glass cubes, inside:

Finally, here’s a picture for Carmela: Rows upon rows of zapatos:

In the end, I wanted to venture out for Sushi last night, and of course, the sushi place recommended is on the other side of the old town. This turned out to be a good opportunity for a walk, and without really getting lost, I found myself at the sushi place, which , however, was really really small, and all tables were taken. With only half an hour of dinner service to go, I decided to go elsewhere, as it was not very likely that I’d get a table and order in that time.

In the end, I went for tapas (what a surprise), had some of that great iberico ham and some fried baby squid. And I made contact with one of the more annoying things in Valencia: panhandlers. If you eat outside at night, you invariably get numerous visits from Africans selling you fake leather belts and all the other things that they also sell in France and Italy. These guys are OK, you tell them you don’t want anything, they move on. More annoying was a guy who came by bike and wanted some handout. He was unfazed by me not speaking spanish, and continued in broken English. He wasn’t even really impressed when the restaurant owner told him to go away. It’s sad, and annoying at the same time.

However, here are some more pictures from my nightly stroll:

First off, here’s me moving fast in Valencia’s shadier side streets:

On my way back, I snapped this picture of a building around the mercado central. Quite a few buildings in Valencia are in this very massive style of architecture:

This is the government building of the Valencia region, on plaza de l’ajuntamento. It (no surprise here) is very massive:

If you look at the plaza de ayuntamento from the side of the government building, you discover more grandiose architecture. This all looks very impressive, especially since it’s well lit at night:

It’s great here … Although I haven’t seen much yet really, just the change from rainy, grey, chilly Basel in June to sunny, 30°C Valencia with the smell of sea in the air is great. After a very uneventful trip with Helvetic Airways from Zurich to Valencia, I am now here, and ready to go out for some tapas (or maybe sushi …).

In the meantime, here is a picture of my hotel room. And – just so that you believe me I’m here on official business – there’s my laptop visible in front, with a paper up in pdf format. And I swear I didn’t just pull that up to impress.

Maybe I can upload a few more interesting pictures once I am back.

What else did I do in Vancouver? In preparation of my trip to Vancouver Island, I bought some robust shoes, not quite hiking boots, but definitely something you can wear on a trail (and how could I anticipate that most trails in Pacific Rim National Park are actually paved with wood planks and could be done in flip-flops … But I am getting ahead of myself).

Also, I went to a Salsa club in Vancouver. That’s right – salsa is a pretty big thing in Vancouver, just like everywhere else. In fact, Josie Neglia, the “Princess of Salsa”, is from B.C. and currently lives in Nanaimo. Unfortunately, I just missed the Vancouver International Salsa Congress, which started just on the day of my departure. The funny thing about Vancouver salsa was that everybody is dancing On2, but (from what my eye could discern) not the sort of stretched, shuffled, New York Style On2, but pretty much a puertorican style, just danced on 2 instead of the one beat. That was reason enough for me to draw back to the sidelines, drink some excellent beer and watch in amazement, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to adapt to that style quickly enough to be a convincing lead.

One last factoid: Vancouver has the highest relative density of Starbucks in the world, 79 cafés in a city of 600′000. That’s even more than Seattle, and there’s more: Starbucks gets fierce competition from Blenz Coffee, which must have almost the same amount of cafés. So, if you’re a caffeine junkie, don’t worry, you can get your fix anywhere, anytime.