Parsed Participle

Kudos to Northwest

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:00 GMT

An Unexpected visit to Nagoya. (!!)

My flight from LaGuardia to Detroit (NW 1195) was delayed due to bad weather. It was my connecting flight back to Japan, so I ended up missing my flight from Detroit to Tokyo(NW11 or perhaps NW25 - there was some confusion). At Detroit, the Northwest folks got me to an alternate flight, to Nagoya instead of Narita (Tokyo), and the plane was just about to begin rolling along when they opened the door and let me in . I was running all the way, so I didn't even get to ask what sort of options they would be providing, if at all, once I reached Nagoya.

I was supposed to get to Tokyo on the 21st evening, catch a night's sleep in my apartment, and then fly again the very next morning, beginning Sabbatical Leg 3 (Chennai, India). Had they not put me onto the Nagoya-bound flight (NW71), I'd have missed my flight to India for sure. But here I am now, in a train bound for the JR Nagoya station, with a reimbursement-promised Shinkansen (Bullet-train) printed schedule in my hand. They were waiting for me soon as I arrived at Nagoya and informed me that Northwest would pay for my Shinkansen ride back to Tokyo.

So, instead to arriving at Narita and taking a train to Tokyo, I ended up arriving at Nagoya and taking a (slightly faster) train to Tokyo!

Anyway, they were really sweet and efficient about the whole thing. I'm glad to be home.

Sabbatical Leg2 / LAN-less Lamenting at LaGuardia

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:11 GMT

The second leg of my sabbatical is just about done.

I'm at LaGuardia Airport, lamenting the lack of wireless Internet access, as I wait for my flight to board. I'd hoped to write about my days in New York as they rolled by, but I'll have to settle for a last-minute account. This trip has served its purpose as a holiday, and I managed to spend a good deal of time walking around Manhattan, meeting cousins, friends, and a lot of surprisingly friendly people. At least twice, complete strangers offered me a ride in the city when I was actually looking out for a cab; and everybody I asked for directions were extremely helpful. Needless to say, a great part of the trip was spent in long, desultory walks. The sublet culture is awesome; I'd say it's easily the best way to stay in Manhattan if you are there for over a week.

Yurika and me took a bus ride to Washington DC where we spent a couple of days with a friend of hers. DC is a nice city to walk around in, and I walked great distances both by myself, and with Yurika and Omura-san.

Sakura at the Capitol.

There are two restaurants that we recall best as part of the eating experience in DC - a seafood place called Legal Sea Foods and a concept Pizza restaurant called Matchbox, which seemed to be almost always full with huge crowds waiting outside throughout the day. We got to visit the Smithsonian museum at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (the other half of the National Air and Space Museum) when we went to see off Omura-san at Dulles Airport. The NASM was not as much fun as might have been had I actually visited when I was a child.

Back in Manhattan, I was lucky enough to attend a colloquium at the Courant Institute (Where the NYU Computer Science department is located), which featured a project that makes the night sky search-able. It implements a search engine for astronomical images that uses geometric hashes (as opposed to words) derived from the pixels of the patterns that stars form in random images. Got a taste of what a CS lecture might feel like (and there was breakfast as well).

Funk: The Headhunters (sans Hancock, whose absence was noted in many ways) were playing at the Iridium on Broadway. I dragged (my cousins) Aamer and Zafar to see the second set. Earlier on the same day, Aamer had taken me on a guided walk around the West Village all the way up to the Meat-Packing District;

Zubair shows me the view of mid-town Manhattan from his lower-east apartment building's roof.

His brother Zubair on the other hand, showed me the Lower East, and his symbolically located apartment which stands on the eastward-pushing demographic border of the lower east.

...

UPDATE:Apr 22, 02:30 JST: I should say that I did not, of course, complete this post while at LaGuardia; I had to get on the plane, and missed my flight to Tokyo.

Indoor R/C Helicopter

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:56 GMT

As a going-away gift from my colleagues (who feared

that my sabbatical could turn out to be permanent), I got this rather wonderful toy: A radio-controlled, unbreakable 2-channel indoor helicopter. It has only collective and yaw (anti-torque), but is still capable of surprisingly controllable flight.