My trip to Pittsburgh

Ignoring the tragedy that occurred in my life while I was in Pittsburgh, it was not very eventful.

My trip there took me through Minneapolis/St. Paul. Beyond seeing a woman who look Amish (and thus I wouldn't expect to be flying), there was also a Fox News Store. Funny thing about that was they probably had as many, if not more, adult magazines as the other shops in the airport. Having a couple shelves of black-covered magazines kind of stands out.

When I landed I realized that I knew someone on the flight also attending SOUPS 2008. He had looked up how to get to CMU by bus and I knew my hotel was near the campus, so I joined him for the hour-long ride (he also spotted me the bus fare since I had a dollar in US currency on me). Riding the bus in made it obvious that the town had been a round in a while, has already gone through a peak and a trough in its life, and that they like brick for their buildings.

The conference itself was fine, but I didn't see a lot of it. Wednesday was taken up by me dealing with what had happened with Meesh. Thursday was me just trying to focus. And Friday was me trying to get home, so I skipped the conference entirely that day.

I did go to the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History. I was surprisingly underwhelmed. While they did have some very funky modern art (typified by an installation that was as series of "caves" created out of packing tape), everything else was surprisingly small. And the antiquities was a real disappointment as they were all casts.

At least some of the architecture was interesting around town. You could tell the town sprang up during the 1800s when Greek/Roman colums were "in". A nice change of pace from what I am used to on the west coast where you just don't see as much early American architecture.

Overall, Pittsburgh is not a place I feel a burning desire to go back to in terms of vacation. Maybe if I had a car and was able to go downtown instead of sticking to Oakland (where CMU and the University of Pittsburgh are) there may have been more, but I didn't get that impression.

Belgian observations

This is going to be a hodge-podge post of various things I noticed in Belgium that I found interesting.

To begin, restauranteurs like to stand outside their restaurants. They don't really hound you or anything to come into their establishments, but when it starts to get past lunch and lurch into dinner/supper time, there seems to be someone standing outside, ready to answer your questions or seat you.

The toilets are not exactly low-flow. Maybe I lived in California while there was a drought for too long, but the amount of water expelled by a flush of a Belgian toilet is huge!

The French do not speak English. Not once did I come across someone who spoke Dutch who didn't speak English. But that cannot be said of the French speakers. The thing that really astounded me was that I ran into people who spoke French in the tourist part of town but not English! You would think someone in the tourism industry would speak English since it is one of the more common languages of the world.

The metro is great! I really miss living in a town where there is a centrally located subway system to get around by. Vancouver's SkyTrain doesn't count as it doesn't service a huge portion of the population of Vancouver.

The Belgians like to redo (or just simple raze) buildings. Going through the Brussels museum it was surprising how many times I read something saying a building was re-interpreted in the 19th century or it had been torn down for some reason or another.

Having direction-related things listed in two languages is stupid. To fit both names on a map you end up abbreviating, making it hard to find the name you were given or are staring at on a street sign. Or, worse still, some maps don't have enough space for both languages, so they choose one. Map use Dutch but you were given the French name? Tough shit. And having both languages means there are twice as many names to scan on a map to try to figure out where the hell you are. Just choose one spelling based on history or something and keep things simple. Or go with names that are not controversial, like numbers or something.

I like being in a country that is not uptight. I found several examples of things that would never fly in a country like America that was founded by Puritans. Amazingly, having these things in the public did not make people swear more, or dress in a scandalous way.

I don't know when Brussels banned smoking indoors, but they sure want to make sure that you know that is is illegal. Pretty much every visible wall in a public place had some sticker that told you smoking was not permitted. And the sign varied; there was not a universal sign that everyone used.

The Belgians drink like Canadians. They have strong beer and they like to drink it. A lot.

Museums are not that great if you don't read French or Dutch. Since everything is already bilingual, the museums seem to typically prefer to not translate things a third or fourth time. That means that you should consider yourself lucky if there is a translation. And typically, if there is, it is not complete. The Brussels museum, for instance, has several rooms not translated. The Musical Instruments Museum has no informational placards translated, just what music is played on the headsets.

And the Belgians love to say "please". But not when you would typically expect it, but when you would expect someone to say "you are welcome". It is really off-putting to be handed a waffle by a vender, you say "thank you", and they say "please" as you turn to leave. I had to do a double-take a couple of times to make sure that they didn't actually want something from me.

That's everything I wrote down to mention. Overall the trip was good (ignoring the personal stress I was going through while there), but I don't really feel a need to go back as a tourist.

Brussels: the last days

With Sunday being my last day in Brussels, I decided to spend it in town instead of going somewhere else like I did with Gent. I started off by going to Parc du Cinquantenaire. I thought the Institut Des Sciences Naturelles (the natural sciences museum) was there, but it turns out I was wrong. Park was still pretty, though.

After taking the metro back to my hotel and realizing where I had made my mistake, I managed to get my way to the museum. The dinosaur exhibit was great, albeit small. The rest of the museum was not really entertaining as none of it was in English (the dinosaur exhibit was in four different languages, including English).

It must also be the worst laid out museum in the world! There are a total of six floors, from -2 to 4 (yes, that is a negative number). Floors -1 and -2 house the dinosaur exhibit. Floor -1 also has minerals and some mammals stuff. Floor 2, 3, and 4 each house other things. But the joke of it all is that floor 2 can only be reached from floor 0.  That means that you go from floor 0 to floors 3 and 4, go back down to 0 and then do floor 2 in order to do all the above-ground floors! And this is all having to be figured out without any English signs or helpers who speak native English.

Once I was finished with the museum I decided to take a look at the Atomium. While the building is rather funky (photos are coming for the entire trip), the entire areas is just a tourist trap. So I walked around and then just went back to my hotel room.

Monday I woke up at 3:45 AM to catch my 7:00 AM flight to Heathrow. I actually managed to get to the airport so early that the checkin counter for my flight had not even opened up yet! And once I got through it customs was severely backed up. But otherwise getting to Heathrow was fine.

Heathrow itself was also okay. The waiting area in Terminal 3 is like terminal 1; a small shopping centre. And I still hate how they don't tell you your departure gate until 20-4o minutes before you are meant to leave. They didn't announce the gate for my flight until it was time to board.

The flight itself was no big deal. Had an aisle seat this time which helped. Otherwise I read a lot and watched "Batman Begins" on my iPod touch.

And now I am home. I am so jet lagged right now that I am going to bed at 22:00 and waking up at around 5:00. While I plan to try to make my wake-up time to be 8:00, it is going to take a while to get readjusted.

Brussels: days 7, 8, and 9

Thursday started with the usual conference stuff. In the evening, though, there was a reception at the Town Hall, which is the historic building you always see in photos for Brussels. It was rather nice inside, although smaller than I expected.

After that was the banquet at the Hotel Metropole (a four star hotel). Food was good. Spent it with some of the Colombian students from VUB (there is a sort-of exchange program for grad students with a Colombian university). As with every night, after the banquet I was exhausted and went back to the hotel to sleep.

Friday had an entertaining keynote from Philip Wadler. He did his Lambda-man t-shirt gig just like at OOPSLA 2006. I also had my second demo which had three grad students in the audience. Turns out they couldn't decide which demo to go to, but when they noticed my room was empty they chose mine. Turns out they were happy with the choice; one of the guys said it was interesting and seemed like good work.

After the conference closed, I went with the organizers (including the Colombians as they were the bulk of the student volunteers) to a pub on campus. Ended up drinking for six hours with them. I had to fend them off giving me more drinks since it was on a tab.

Saturday I met up with a fellow student volunteer from Thailand and went to Ghent. It was interesting taking the train in a country where you can't read what everything is written in. Made taking the tram to where we wanted to go a little difficult.

We went to the Castle of the Count to start. It was somewhat interesting. They had a video that tried to explain some history by having a movie inside a movie with some corny drama tossed in for entertainment.

Afterwards we went to the top of Belfry which had a great view. Once we got down to the bottom, though, my compatriot was tired and so he decided to go back to Brussels. I stayed and took a historic walking tour around Ghent. I then walked from the old part of town to the train station and then came back to my hotel room.

Beyond going for dinner at an Italian restaurant (really good pizza), I also picked up some chocolate to bring home. 

Brussels: Days 4, 5, and 6

Day 4 in Brussels started with me getting the VUB by 7:30 for student volunteer orientation. Didn't involve much. Since I was already there I stuck around. I ended up working on Python stuff (importlib specifically). I then also attended an afternoon tutorial on CLOS and the metaobject protocol.

When the tutorials and workshops were over there was a Belgian chocolate tasting. I had 14 separate pieces of chocolate on an empty stomach. Needless to say I didn't feel great.

Afterwards I went back to the hotel and relaxed a little bit. Eventually I met up with some people at a Moroccan restaurant. Since my stomach was still upset from the chocolate tasting I ordered a salad. But it had some salad dressing that tasted like deli mustard, which I hate, so I just spent the dinner talking with people.

Day 5 was more workshops and tutorials at the conference. Since I didn't have anything specific I wanted to attend nor had any student volunteer duties until the afternoon I went to Parc de Bruxelles/Park van Brussel on the way to VUB. Turned out to be a let-down. The park didn't have much itself. The Belgian Parliament was okay looking, as was the royal palace; both warranted a photo, but nothing more.

Once as the conference I did more Python work (this time 'warnings' stuff). Eventually it came time to do my student volunteer duty. I spent it just doing more Python work, though.

That evening was the Belgian beer tasting event. I had a couple of different beers while standing around my impromptu poster that was made from eight slides that I had for my demo. I talked to a couple of people, mostly fellow students.

Once I got back to the hotel after the poster session I was pretty tired. I went and had fries for dinner (which is completely acceptable in the country where they were created) and then went to bed.

Day 6 started with me getting to the university by 7:45 to work the registration desk. I did this until 13:15. It was rather boring as most attendees to the conference had already checked in one of the previous two days. It at least gave me time to finish reading Omnivore's Dilemma.

I had my demo after lunch. Beyond people I already knew, two people attended. It turns out there were two other demos plus the research track and the industry track going at the same time, all while being right after lunch. Overall I think the demo went fine.

With my demo finished, I spent the rest of my time at the conference that day talking with my supervisor and another professor from UBC about some ideas that came up.

At 17:15 I took off with other conference organizers and students volunteers to go to the Musical Instruments Museum. A reception was being held there, with the doors opening at 18:00 and a reception starting at 19:00. I helped man the front entrance for an hour. I was then allowed to spend half an hour in the museum. I actually managed to get through the entire thing within my time limit since there was hardly any info on the actual instruments (and when there was it was in French or Dutch, not English). I then spent all but the last 20 minutes of the night there watching the front door or making sure no one took drinks into the museum.

Being so close to the city centre, people went for food and drinks after the reception. A student volunteer and me went to a little café for dinner. Some other student volunteers also coincidentally went to the same café, but there was not enough room for us to sit with them. After dinner, as all of my other nights in Brussels, I went back to the hotel and slept.

Brussels: days 2 and 3

Thanks to the jet lag I ended up going to bed at about 21:00 Friday night. That led to me getting up and being downstairs for breakfast by 8:00 which is early for me.

After breakfast I went to Grand Place to see it during the day. I planned to go to the Brussels museum, but since it didn't open until 10:00 (I was in the plaza by 9:30), I just wandered the streets around Grand Place. This is when I began to think that there was not a whole lot of old architecture in Brussels.

When I went to the museum my guess about the town was confirmed. It seems Brussels has always been willing to move forward by tearing stuff down. That and a large chunk of the city was decimated in something called the "bombardment of 1695". In the end this means that most buildings that seem old, with the exception at least of Grand Place, seem to be from the 19th century.

With a tendon that connects my hip to my femur aggravated, I came back to my room and relaxed. Spent most of it Redoing my budget spreadsheet in Apple Numbers from Google Spreadsheets. It allows me to have more information displayed on a single sheet. Plus the formatting options overall are just plain nicer.

Once I felt up for going out again I just wandered north, passing two architectural points of interest (the stock exchange and the oldest church in Brussels which does not look that old). Ended up in a part of Brussels that is not aimed at tourists. I then headed back down toward the hotel to give my leg another break.

After another rest I went to a nearby church designed by a famous Brussels architect. Along the way I saw the famous XXX; the fountain of a urinating boy. This town does have a love for that thing.

After being disappointed by the church I wandered south until I could see a major highway. Then I turned back and came back to the hotel once again to relax. I tried to take a half hour nap, but it stretched to 1.5 hours thanks to people making various ruckuses within earshot.

Having noticed many places closed on Friday night at around 21:00, I made sure I got up and went out for dinner. I walked around a bit to look for a place to it, but soon realized I had no clue what most places were serving since it was in either French or Dutch. I finally settled on a waffle house near the hotel.

I had a Belgian waffle, a sugar pancake, and hot chocolate. All of it was good and expensive. For the sugar pancake I had melted chocolate and french vanilla ice cream (at the suggestion of the waiter). It turned out to be really good! And the hot chocolate seemed to have actual belgian chocolate just melted into some milk.

Shortly after dinner my roommate for this trip finally showed up. Turned out he had been delayed by four hours in Ottawa which led to a ten hour delay in Heathrow's now-dreaded Terminal 5.

Sunday morning I got to go through daylight savings again. which cut short my already small amount of sleep I am getting (keep waking up early).

I hopped on the metro to get to VUB (the local Flemish university) for Spring School. Managed to miss my initial stop because I didn't realize you needed to press a button to open the doors of the train to get off. Luckily two stops down also works for getting to the university.

Basically they have a bunch of students get together to meet each other and discuss where they think the conference should go in the future. Afterwards we had beer and dinner. Unfortunately I was utterly exhausted at dinner and was actually dozing off. Needless to say when I got back to the hotel I promptly fell asleep.

Brussels: Day 1

By the time I go to bed tonight I will have been up for 24 hours, with over half that time spent at the airport or on an airplane. Needless to say I am exhausted.

The flight over the Atlantic was cramped. The flight was overbooked so I was unable to get an emergency aisle seat like I normally do. Ten hours in a cramped economy seat is not my idea of spacious.

And it doesn't help when the guy sitting next to you decides he wants to make comments to you when you are obviously trying to sleep. Nor does it help the space issue when he constantly puts his elbow over the dividing armrest.

At least the flight was not bumpy.

Once I got to Heathrow I had a three hour wait until my final leg to Brussels. That airport is massive! And they really need to have more flight info displays when you are trying to make a connection. I luckily knew who the carrier was and what terminal I would be leaving from, but had I been wrong it would have been quite the pain to get to another terminal.

An odd thing about Heathrow is that they do not announce the gate until 30-40 minutes before the flight leaves. So everyone loiters in the shopping area, waiting for their departure gate to be announced. Kind of frustrating for someone like me who prefers to be at the gate so they don't miss the flight by falling asleep, etc.

Another odd thing (that is also true at the Brussels airport) is that there are ads on the outside of the gates on the skywalks. It was odd to see ads for HSBC and ExxonMobil while the plane was taxiing to the gate.

The flight into Brussels was really bumpy. Apparently some front was crossing the Channel and we flew right over it. We landed into Brussels with rain and slight gusts of wind.

Once at Brussels I took the train in to my hotel. The street signs are not the best in the world, so it took a little while to get my bearings. Luckily my hotel is really close to the train station and thus was quick to find once I figured out the right street to walk down.

When I checked in I found out what they considered a double to be; a double bed. But I had them move me to a larger room that has a sofa large enough for someone to sleep on (they had no more rooms with two beds).

I found out that Internet is charged by the hour here. I will probably spring for it come tomorrow when I am more conscious and thus more able to actually take full advantage of my time online.

Back from Chicago

PyCon was fun as always. It was also exhausting. The conference grew to over 1040 people this year! It is now so big I can go an entire day without seeing some of my friends.

My talk apparently went well. After my practice talk I gave here in Vancouver flopped, I reworked it all to use flowcharts. It seems that made all the difference in the world. People not only seemed to comprehend how stuff worked, but I finished seven minutes early, letting me field that many more questions (of which there were plenty). Some people I know seemed to like my talk. Heck, it went over well enough that someone is considering inviting me to give a talk somewhere on their dime.

And my coaching of a bunch of people who worked on Python after the conference went well. While it prevented me from getting to do my own work, it still led to a lot of good work getting done.

It was also nice to see Vivian and Armand for dinner. I have to admit I was happy with the food in Chicago pretty much the whole way through.

Anyway, now I am prepping for my trip to Brussels. While the trip should be fun I am definitely looking forward to being back home and taking a break from the traveling.