Category Archives: travel

The Spring

By zach | Published June 8, 2010

It’s hard to believe that it has already been three months since I visited Zürich. A lot has happened in the meantime. After returning from Zürich, I dove into work on finishing up a bit of research to round out my dissertation. I think it turned out rather well, and I’m currently in the process of deciding whether to submit the last piece of the puzzle to POPL or PPoPP. POPL has a deadline in mid-July, which is good to shoot for. If the paper isn’t ready by then, it’ll certainly be ready by the PPoPP deadline at the beginning of August.

April was also an exciting month. I visited MSR in Seattle, gave my dissertation talk, and went adventuring with Christina. In mid-April I made a visit up to MSR, and did my song and dance for the fine people there. I had a good time, and had lots of good conversations with people about research-y things. I think it would be a good place to work someday. In the end, though, by the end of April I had received and accepted an offer for a post-doc from the folks in Zürich =)

A few days after returning from MSR, I gave my dissertation talk. In a surprising stroke of luck, I managed to get my whole committee to attend. Unfortunately, I only managed to do that by scheduling the talk at 8am, so the only other person who showed up was the indefatigable Leon, who was up that early anyway to teach a recitation section at 9.

The following Monday, Christina showed up in America and we traveled together from San Francisco to Pittsburgh, and had a good time there for a week or so. After that, during the first week of May, we traveled back to San Francisco, met up with Christina’s parents, and drove down to Paso Robles, and then back up Highway 1 stopping in Big Sur for a couple days, and passing through Carmel and Monterrey before spending some time in San Francisco. It was a really fun vacation!

Immediately after returning from vacation, I spent a couple of days running around campus trying to get signatures and last-minute feedback from my dissertation committee. By late Tuesday afternoon everything was finished, and my dissertation was successfully filed, and by Wednesday morning, I had discovered the first missed-typo =) Wednesday was also the first day of the yearly OSQ retreat in Santa Cruz. The weather there was beautiful, and I had a good time.

By the time I got back from the retreat that Friday, my family (my mom and dad, Andrew and Christy, and my aunt and uncle, and cousin Ben) had already arrived in Berkeley for my graduation. On Saturday we drove up to Napa and visited a few wineries, Sterling and a couple others. On Sunday I got up early and graduated. In the afternoon we all went to a barbecue at Ben and Juliet’s place in Lafayette.

On Monday morning we got up early and drove to Yosemite. We rented a 4-bedroom cabin in Wawona, which was pretty nice. Unfortunately, I managed to catch a cold, and was stuck in the cabin for part of the trip, but my family had never been there before and enjoyed it a lot. After Yosemite, we drove down to LA for Ben’s graduation from Pepperdine, and spent the weekend at the mansion of his Great Uncle Steve. I flew back to Berkeley on Sunday afternoon.

By this point, I was pretty exhausted from lots of travel and adventure and excitement, and still recovering from my Yosemite cold, and so I skipped the ParLab retreat (also to Santa Cruz), which took place starting the day after I got back from LA. Since then, I have been working on some research things, hanging out with Ben and Juliet and other folks who have not wandered off yet, and starting to pack up my apartment to get ready to sell things/ship things home/ship things to myself when I have someplace to ship things in Switzerland.

I have also made plans to visit Christina in July, which I am very excited about. I’ll be there for about a month, and we will be going on some new Japan adventures =)

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Nagasaki Lantern Festival

By christina | Published February 24, 2010

This past weekend I went to visit Nagasaki for the lantern festival. The weather was really nice and I had a good time overall, but the lantern festival was extremely crowded, and so I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked. I could have tried to squish in more, but I am not a fan of huge crushing crowds, and so I decided that it wasn’t worth the extra squashing. I also went to visit the Dejima reconstruction, which was neat. I like the sorts of places which try to show you how people used to live with furniture and food and such. I particularly liked the wallpaper, but it certainly looked like it was a pain to put up.I had some delicious Nagasaki Champon, as well. It’s a type of Chinese-style chicken soup with various shellfish and fish and cabbage and things in, and the bowl I got was nice and peppery and tasty.

The weather has been nice for most of this week, but I hear it’s getting worse starting today, and we may well have a big storm tonight. Hopefully the weather isn’t too bad for my lesson tomorrow!

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Dazaifu fair

By christina | Published September 7, 2009

On Saturday, I went to Dazaifu for the flea market/antiques fair. I wanted to get some old kimonos to rip up and make into other things, and this is one of the best places I know for doing so. It’s easy to get a silk kimono for under ¥1000, and the way that kimonos are made, you can end up with a reasonable length of uncut fabric. You have to watch out for stains, but with the help of a washing machine, you can often make those better. I came away with a pretty good haul. The Kyushu National Museum is also right near the temple, but I didn’t go in because the line was apparently 3 hours long! And it wasn’t even for some special event.

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Obon trip step two!

By christina | Published August 26, 2009

My goal for this day’s travel was to see Mizu no Kuni, a museum focusing on water in the deepest reaches of Shimane Prefecture. I had originally seen pictures of it on this blog, and have wanted to see it ever since. Its location, however, makes it relatively inaccessible, and even more tricky if you don’t have a car. Luckily, I had a bicycle! The nearest train stop, however, has only 5 trains each way each day. Getting on the train in Hagi at around 9:30, I finally arrived at the station at around 1:30pm. Using my phone’s handy GPS function, I found my way to the museum, enjoying the river scenery and the cool weather. I arrived at the museum and was not disappointed.

The museum is set into a pass in the mountains, and the museum nestles into the trees, and the only sounds around are those of the bubbling fountains (and the occasional other guests!). The exhibit halls are actually rather small, but they had an exhibit on a local movie director from the sixties, a traveling exhibit of curious mechanical items, and the main permanent exhibits of various curious water-related things. There was a “well” where spouts dripped water melting from ice cubes, a water powered music-box, another water-powered music thing, and some ways of playing with water, including a high-speed camera for capturing water droplets.

I had a good time there, but by the time I was done I still had a couple hours left until the next train! And there was really nothing else around, not even a convenience store! So I decided to take my bike and ride it all the way to my hotel, which was about 10km from the museum. So off I went! Except it was about 3:30 at the time, and very sunny, so it was getting hot, and I was not feeling so awesome without any sunscreen on.

I ended up taking a few breaks along the way, and even crossed over to the other side of the river once I decided that the side I was on had too much sun and too many cars. Luckily, the other side was much better on both accounts, although it did have the occasional “Watch for bears” sign. It followed pretty closely along the train tracks, and I got a nice picture of a place where the train goes through a tunnel but the road goes around.

After about an hour all told (with a few 5-10 minute breaks), I made it to my ryokan (recommended if you’re ever in the area, unlikely as that may be), and took a nice cool shower and a nap until dinner. Dinner was a curious selection of fishy things and fresh fruit, all tasty, and I was told that it was the night of the local Obon dance, so at around 7:30 I headed out to watch the dance. People there were particularly surprised to see me there! It’s not the kind of place that gets a lot of foreigners. Part of the Obon festival in this area is a special style of story-telling dance called Kagura, and they interspersed that with the traditional dance around the tower. Obon dances are meant to send off the recently departed to heaven, and everyone participates (even I got dragged into it!). The festival was pretty small, for a small village, but the people were nice and I got free shave-ice.

The next morning I had some more delicious food and then set off for Masuda city, a bigger city in Shimane.

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Obon trip first stop

By christina | Published August 20, 2009

In Japan, they have this ticket called the “Seishun 18 Kippu,” or the “Youth 18 Ticket.” Contrary to its name, this ticket allows people of any age to use it, and provides 5 days (not necessarily in a row) worth of unlimited local and rapid train travel throughout all of Japan. There are certain seasons when it can be used: early spring, late summer, and new year’s season. With no other plans for the Obon Holiday (a holiday for the rememberance of ancestors, a kind of Thanksgiving-like holiday), I decided to get a ticket and go somewhere. I had read online about this neat-looking museum in Shimane Prefecture, and decided that this would be my best chance to ever get to see it. However, with only being able to use the local and rapid trains, it would take at least 8 hours one way to get there. So I decided to split the trip up over the 4-day holiday, stopping in one place on the way there and one place on the way back. I also decided to take my (folding) bicycle so that I’d have a reasonable form of transportation in these small towns that I was going to visit.

My first stop was Hagi, in northern Yamaguchi Prefecture. Hagi is an old castle town on a sort-of-island on the northern coast of Honshu. On the train on the way there, I managed to get friendly with some other young 18 Ticket travelers going to Hagi, and so I managed some company for the afternoon.

We biked to the Shoin Academy and then onto lunch before it started to rain. We made it to the castle ruins (stopping for me to check in at my hostel on the way), and wandered around in the rain. The place was almost completely deserted–a nice change of pace from any place in Tokyo. It kept on raining, though, so by the time my companions had to leave for their next train (they were making the most of their ticket!), I decided it would be fine to rest and wait for dinner at the hostel instead of bothering to try to go around in the rain.

I ate dinner with my hostel roommate, and then we went on to the lantern festival. There are a couple temples in Hagi which have hundreds of stone lanterns, and they get lit up to welcome the spirits at the beginning of Obon, and then again to send them off again at the end. Luckily, the rain had stopped, so we biked to the temple. We got candles to place in a location of our choosing, to help get the dark temple grounds brighter. It was a pretty small festival, but they had custard taiyaki (my favorite). It started to sprinkle a little, so we headed back–actually the light rain was a nice antidote to the hot weather.

The next morning I left the hostel early before my 9:30ish train, and rode around while the weather was nice. Being so early, most places weren’t open, but one of the old houses in the castle town was just opening up for the morning, and let me in a little before the official opening time, so I had a nice wander around all by myself. I was offered a guide when she showed up, but I didn’t want to have to worry about missing my train, so I didn’t get the full tour. Soon enough it 9:10, so I headed off to the station to fold up my bike and wait for the next tiny train!

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Tokyo!

By christina | Published July 23, 2009

I went to Tokyo last weekend, and it was certainly interesting to finally make it there. However, I didn’t do all of the most touristy tourist things (I’m hoping to do them when my parents come to visit in a couple months). I met up with my friend Deanna and we ate tasty food, played silly arcade games (Block People! It is pretty awesome), and wandered around a lot. I was tired by the end of it, and I think I still haven’t quite caught up. I did take some pictures, and I’ll try to go through them and put up some interesting ones. Hopefully I’ll find some time sometime soon!

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Catching Up

By zach | Published July 10, 2009

I knew it would happen that I would get distracted by various other projects before posting all of the best pictures from my trip to Japan. But now that there are no (fewer?) impending deadlines, I have a chance to catch up! I still have to post pictures from Hiroshima, but that will have to wait until another day.

Anyway, here are pictures from Oita and Beppu.

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Dublin

By zach | Published June 22, 2009

Last week I was at PLDI, which was held this year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. Initially I was exhausted due to the long trip and jet lag, and nervous about giving my talk, but after getting some sleep, and getting a good response to the talk, I had a really good time. I also had the chance to get lots of good feedback on my work from some of the big names in the field, and good suggestions about where to take my research next. (One of the tricky things about Computer Science is that negative results don’t get published, so usually the only(and easiest!) way to find out about things that don’t work is talking to people at conferences.)

The major tourist attraction in Dublin is Trinity College itself. It sits right in the center of the city surrounded by a high stone wall. On the western end of the campus, the buildings are very old, and then as you go east, they become increasingly modern until you reach the far eastern end where there is a brand-new-looking computer science building. Every bit of space on the campus is used, except for a few patches of grass that you’re not allowed to walk on. We ate lunch every day in an ancient looking dining hall lined with huge portraits of past provosts (think Hogwarts.)

I also had a chance to visit other tourist-y things in Dublin including Dublin Castle, which was a strange mishmash, and not very castle-like; Christ Church Cathedral, which had some very neat stained glass windows, and a crypt filled with strange artifacts; and the old Guinness Brewery, which is now a museum about the brewing process. Part of the museum is shaped like a Guinness pint glass several stories tall at the top of which is a bar with a very nice view of Dublin. If you pay for the tour of the museum, they give you a complementary pint of Guinness there, which was the best Guinness I’d ever tasted =) Dublin also has some nice shopping areas, and has lots and lots of Irish pubs, as you might expect, that serve tasty lamb stew, bangers and mash, fish and chips, and other similar dishes.

Getting home was a bit of an adventure. I missed my connection in Philidelphia, and had to spend the night there. The lady at the customer service desk told me that my checked bag would probably beat me to San Francisco the following morning, but when I arrived my bag wasn’t there yet, and there was no record of its location in the computer. The man at baggage claim said they would find it eventually and deliver it, but I had the slight problem that my apartmet key was in the missing bag! Luckily, the building manager was home and let me in, and later in the evening my bag was delivered with all of its contents present.

This coming week, I will likely slack off a bit. It has been several months since I’ve had no imminent deadlines, though if I am feeling especially motivated I will probably work on doing a new release of my compiler, or beginning an outline for my dissertation =)

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ParLab-ing

By zach | Published June 5, 2009

I had a good time at the ParLab retreat. It was at the same hotel in Santa Cruz as the OSQ retreat a couple of weeks ago. The weather was beautiful, and there was down time in the schedule, so I got to enjoy the beach and the hotel pool and hot tub. This is the third ParLab retreat I’ve been on, and the talks and conversation have gotten better with each one. This is doubtlessly because people are starting to make progress, and write code, rather than talking about proposals and visions, which are sometimes difficult for me to take seriously.

Last night I went to the CSGSA bar night, which was held at a new sports bar called Miranda near University and Milvia. We watched the Penguins win game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, which was exciting. The series is now tied at two games apiece. It would be really cool for both the Steelers and the Penguins to win national championships in the same year! After the bar night wound down, the OS group dragged me to Triple Rock for monkey beer, which is tasty, but strong, and we had interesting discussions about all sorts of things. I am happy to be getting to know them better since I think it will make working with them for the next few months more fun.

However, it was a late night, and I am conspicuously the only person in our cube in the ParLab even though it is past noon. Luckily, last night was probably the only bar night we’ll have this summer, and now we’ll be able to get some work done =)

I’ll post some pictures from the trip to Santa Cruz this weekend sometime!

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Aso Picture Post

By zach | Published May 17, 2009

Mt. Aso

Blue Flower in Kuju Flower Park near Aso

Tea Set at the minshuku near Aso

View of Mt. Aso from the train station

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