Goodbye Europe; for now

 A few days before I left Ireland I went to Switzerland one more time to say goodbye to some friends and family. It'll probably be the last trip to Switzerland this year, but I'll be back and more frequently then when I used to live in the USA the last time.

 Although I had only four days and had to carefully plan my schedule to see as many friends as possible, I did have the opportunity to go on a day hike with Stef and Ursula. From the pictures here you can see it was well worth it. I've never been this close to the Matterhorn. What a fitting excursion to remind me to come back soon!

 We had to get up early and take the train into the Wallis. The week before it had been cold and rainy, and, it turned out, the week after was also cold and rainy. Ruining my brother's family's and many other's vacation. But, the day we went on our hike, it was gorgeous. It was also quite hot, in the 90s, but we were at a high enough altitude for most of the hike that that was not a problem. We even had a breeze for part of the way.

 Stef kept pointing out flowers and naming them for me. I like flowers to look at and to photograph, but I can never remember their names and pertinent characteristics. Stef tried his best, but it seemed to me he kept pointing out the same ones over and over. At least he was consistent and gave them the same name every time; except when Ursula corrected him.

 The hike was scheduled for seven hours, but because I'm not used to that altitude and long distance hikes anymore, we took it more easy and spent nine hours. Quite a bit of that extra time went into taking pictures. A map and some technical details about the Höhbalmen trail can be found here. The trail is also called the Edelweissweg, and near the end we were indeed rewarded with some Edelweiss along the way. They, and most other alpine flowers in Switzerland are protected. Don't pick them. If only a small fraction of the hikers did, most people would never see flowers along these trails.

 You can see all the pictures I took on this hike in this picasa album. For the remainder of this trip, I took much fewer pictures. Mostly of people and scarecrows in Trubschachen.

 On my way back to Ireland I got stuck in Munich for a while and got back home late a night. Something I had wanted to avoid, since I still needed to sell my car and get ready for the packers and movers the next day. I had two hectic days but finally managed to get everything done the last minute, load the cats onto an airplane, myself onto another, and find our way to Portland.

Our stuff leaving Ireland. Still need to sell the car.

 I thought I had sold the car, but when I met up with the would-be buyer he couldn't stomach the scratches and dents. I bought it with some and a bad paint job on one door, but then Lee Ann and I added quite a few more learning to park in narrow spots and driving on the left in Ireland. This guy, or I should say travelling circus -- he comes from County Clare with his wife, infant, pierced teenage son, and grandfather to Dublin to find cheap cars he drives back to Clare to sell to travel averse locals. So, he didn't like the scratches.

 Finding another buyer quickly was just a matter of lowering the price. A (I hope) deserving grad student at UCD ended up with a great bargain. Bye, bye Ireland. I'll miss you.

Another Life

We can explore lighthouses now

Remember how, at the beginning of the year, I told you we would start a new life in Barcelona, Spain? Well, it didn't quite work out that way. After some hard thinking we agreed to Barcelona and to accept my new job. Not too long after that, the company closed the site in Barcelona, so moving there didn't seem such a good choice any more.
Intel gave us several alternative options, including Hillsboro near Portland, Munich, and the Bay Area. We had hoped to stay in Europe longer, and Munich is a great city, but in the end we decided on Hillsboro in Oregon. Lee Ann thinks she has a better chance of finding work here, and I think it is a better career move for me.

Weather on the coast yesterday was not great

The cats and I arrived here a week ago. Lee Ann is getting ready to leave Albuquerque. She is getting our house there ready to be rented out. Our furniture and things from there have been picked up and are on the way here. So are the things we had in Dublin, although they might still be on a ship crossing the Atlantic. James is in Austin for another year of college and Anika is in Barcelona, planning to teach English starting this Fall.
Yesterday afternoon I drove out to Tillamook Bay to see the Pacific. It was 90 (32 Celsius) and sunny here in Hillsboro but when I got to the coast it was overcast and in the low 60s (16 Celsius) in the evening. Obviously, we'll be there visiting a lot in the future. There are a lot of hiking trails and things to see. It takes about 1.5 hours from here, but it is easily doable in an afternoon, have dinner in a seaside restaurant, and be back home for bed time.

On some beaches it is allowed to drive and get your car stuck in  the sand

Everybody here drives a Subaru and they are all into local foods and drinks. That sounds good to me. We'll miss Europe and will be back to visit frequently, but for now we have found a new place to explore. Pictures, as usual, are on picasa.

Munich

Last week I got to attend the ROSS workshop and the ICS conference in Munich. The prediction was for rain most of the week, but it was hot and sunny, and we won best paper for our workshop submission. Yay!
I did not have much time outside the conference but did take a few pictures walking there and back. On the last afternoon we sneaked out for a couple of hours into the English garden which was just a few steps away from the conference venue. My pictures are on picasa.

The Englischer Garten is one of the largest city parks in the world, but just a little over half the size of Phoenix Park here in Dublin. What it has, and Phoenix doesn't, is an artificially created water wave which surfers enjoy during the Summer. It is fun to watch the skill of these athletes.

The first night we went to a local beer garden for dinner. It had big round tables for eight or more people and we joined some people from Munich. The standard quantity of beer here is a Mass; about a quart. Together with the heavy glass mug it comes in, this is actually difficult to lift one-handed.
One of our table neighbors had brought an old-style ceramic one with a metal flip-top lid. He got a discount that way, and he needed it too. By the time he left, he had to pay for six Mass. He was at the table before we showed up, but six Mass is more than a gallon and a half of beer! This was also not the first time he was there. During the evening several people walked by and greeted him.

Another of the people we were sharing the table with was more talkative. He wanted to know whether I liked the goulash I was eating and whether I was gourmet enough to judge its quality. On my advice he ordered the same but requested the spicier version because I told him it was good but rather mild.
After we got to know each other a little bit, he asked whether I had a good sense of humor. I tentatively confirmed and he promptly called me a pig dog.

In Switzerland, calling someone a pig dog is a pretty bad insult and usually reserved for very mean people. After my astonished look, he began to explain. He said that in Bavaria, pig dog is actually a compliment. My quizzical face made him explain that dogs who heard pigs must be pretty clever to keep up and that in this part of the German speaking world, telling someone is a pig dog means that they think of you as highly intelligent.
Another Bavarian joined us later after the first one had left. We asked him about pig dogs and he confirmed the story. Of course, it is possible that it is all a big hoax by the Bavarians who most certainly have a sense of humor.

One evening, before dinner, the conference had organized a walking tour of the old part of Munich. It was quite informative and fun. We learned that the first Oktoberfest was held to celebrate the marriage of crown prince Ludwig and princess Therese. This did not prevent Ludwig to have an affair with Lola Montez. That was pretty common, but this affair cost the citizens of Munich a lot of money and even led to the closing of the University. In protest, a student wrote a letter to now king Ludwig, complaining about the affair. In the version we heard, the king was impressed with the letter and offered a large sum of money to meet the student.

The student, in need of money, turned himself in. The king was so impressed by this show of courage that he paid the student. Before the student had entered the king's residence, and after he left, he rubbed the face of the lion on one of the many statues in front of the building for good luck.
Ever since, locals, and tourists who heard the story, repeat the ritual. It did not take me long to take the shots of hopefuls above.

The conference dinner coincided with the start of the soccer world cup championship in Brazil. We sat with a group of Brazilians and Oldfield spent the night watching the game with them. It turns out one of them works here in Dublin for an HPC center.
I am back in Dublin too and it is time to start packing our things. We're moving soon!

Graduation

On May 17, 2014, Anika graduated from Mills College with her Bachelor's of Arts degree. I am very happy and very proud. Anika has worked hard and come a long way from four years ago. Part of that is just growing up, but a big part is the learning  and studying.

Mills is in Oakland, overlooking the San Francisco bay. The Bay Area is a different place than Edgewood in New Mexico where Anika grew up. That change alone took courage and will power. It was scary at first, but Anika has come to successfully navigate the place and love it.

The school made a video of the commencement. Anika receives her diploma at time stamp 1:21:48. Anika, her Mom, and I spent the day on the East bay and celebrated with an Italian dinner in Berkeley at the Trattoria la Siciliana. You can see the pictures I took during the day on Picasa.

At the end of the month Anika will travel to Barcelona in Spain, first to further her studies in teaching English as a foreign language, and then to live there for a year and teach.

Tokyo is far away

Origami on my bed in Tokyo

For the first time in my life, I got to go to Tokyo. We had scheduled a 1.5 day meeting there and I was excited to go, even though it was only for a very short time. Ordinarily, I would have tried to extend it with some personal days, but I could not this time. I had to be back in the bay area that Saturday for Anika's graduation from Mills College. More about that in my next blog post.

This looked really nice after a 50-hour trip there

The trip to Tokyo was a horrendous ordeal and took 50 hours. By the time I got there, I had missed the first day of the meeting. I attended the remaining half day and had an afternoon to see a little bit of Tokyo. Clearly not enough time, I was exhausted, and it started to rain later in the afternoon. The little bit I did see was very nice, exotic, and very interesting. The people are very nice and polite, and most speak at least a little bit of English.
A striking asymmetry. How many people you run into in Europe or the USA who speak a little bit of Japanese? Or another Asian language?

I did not use the WiFi (click on the image to enlarge)

The trip began ordinarily enough on Tuesday morning in Dublin. My flight to Chicago was delayed quite a bit, but I had plenty of layover to make the connection to Tokyo. I flew this longer route, instead going across the middle East, because after Tokyo I flew to San Francisco to celebrate with Anika, and then come back to Dublin from Albuquerque. Anika and I drove her car across the American West from Oakland to Albuquerque. I'll post pictures from that vacation week soon.
Because most of the trip was over the USA, the cost going through Chicago was a lot less, than the shorter route flying East from Dublin.

I wonder what that message lamp was for

We had almost reached Chicago when the plane turned around and we headed for New York city. The Pilot informed us that there had been a fire in a control tower. The evacuation forced Chicago to turn away flights and caused a major disruption in the air traffic flow over the US.
After we landed in JFK, nobody knew what would happen next. The only thing clear was that we would be sitting there for a while, since the crew needed to be replaced with one that was rested.

A little bit of Tokyo from my hotel room

I got a seat on a plane out of La Guardia the next day to get to Tokyo via Dallas. But, I would have to do without my luggage, since my bag was still on the first plane and they were not unloading it. That was too risky for me. By the time my bag would get to Tokyo, I would probably be already on my way to San Francisco. I already felt uncomfortable in the clothes I had on.

I got a beautiful, upgraded room in Tokyo

We took off from New York and flew to Chicago. We arrived amidst utter chaos. The control tower fire and the previous days' weather delays had left many people stranded. All hotel rooms anywhere near the airport were sold out. They said they would bring out 300 cots and toiletry bags for the people stuck in the airport.
I managed to change my flight from La Guardia to one that left Chicago for Los Angeles the next day, and then from there to Tokyo. I learned later that that flight from La Guardia got canceled the next morning. If I had been on that one, I would never have made it to Tokyo.

I was longing for that

It was midnight on Tuesday now; already Wednesday in Tokyo. I needed some proper sleep and a shower because I knew I had another long day ahead of me.
I booked a hotel room about 30 miles North and rented a car. My flight for LA would leave in the morning, but five or six hours in a real bed and a shower would still be infinitely better than sleeping on a cot in an airport with 299 fellow passengers.
It looked like going North along I94 for a while and turning left would get me there. So, I drove for a while. It's long past midnight, and I am very, very tired.

A luxurious bathroom

Concentrating on exit sign and traffic was difficult after the long day I had had.
At some point I stopped and called the hotel. I told him what exit I had just passed and asked whether I had gone too far already, or not far enough. He assured me they are far away from the airport and, unless I had already driven 45 minutes, I had not gone far enough. I had no idea how long I had driven.
He gave me an exit number that was much higher than the one I was at. I asked him whether he was sure that was the exit number or the number of the cross road. He said exit number.
I didn't trust him.
So, now I was trying to read exit numbers and cross road numbers, to see if anything matched the number and street name he had given me. Nothing matched, and I still had to be careful of other traffic.

A technologically advanced toilet

It is 3 a.m. and there is a lot of traffic! Several times I left the Interstate to stop at a gas station to buy a map and ask for directions. Just telling me where I was would have helped me immensely.
Nobody sold maps. I guess I was not in a touristy area. The people in those areas also didn't seem to know much about geography either. Concepts like North and South seemed to confuse them. Basically all I got out of them was that I was in Chicago. Somewhere.
At this point my brain was mush, so maybe it was not entirely their fault. But it was a weird place. It is 3 a.m. and I am stopped at a red light in front of a busy intersection. A lot of cars rushing by. At 3 a.m.
In the midst of all of this an old haggard women wobbling across the intersection in front of me with a Styrofoam cup in her hand. She knocks on my window and begs for money.
I can't think anymore. Should I ask her where I am? She must be really, honestly poor to be out at this hour begging. Would she know where she is?
If anybody deserves help, it would be her. Should I go further North or make another attempt at going South? How many times had I done this already?
The light turns green and I drive on North. Who was that woman? Did she have family?

A shrine seen from the top of Tokyo Tower

The exit numbers keep increasing and so are, some, of the road numbers. But not enough. I finally reach the border to whatever state is North of Chicago. The numbers are still not high enough, and everything resets to start with Exit 1, 2, ...
My Irish smart-phone is expensive to use in the States. At some point I give in, enable data roaming, and turn on Google maps. It is a very slow connection, but I am getting a map, although no clear indication where exactly I am.
I am, probably, traveling in the right direction. Is it this exit? This one? Why is my position not updating?
It took a while, but I finally realize that my pay-as-you-go phone had run out of money and no more map updates, or any other data, were coming in.
I know there must be a better way of dealing with this situation. I also know my brain wont find it that night, until I had some sleep.
Back to the airport to those cots.

View through a glass bottom window in Tokyo Tower

Drop off the car and back to the airport. Now I could sleep anywhere.
Just not on those cots. They are in the secure area and it is too early for me to get back in there, because the security check lines are not open yet. At least my flight to LA and the connection to Tokyo have not been canceled yet.

Another window, freshly cleaned

I don't remember much after that. Some wandering around in a Los Angeles airport terminal, finally landing in Tokyo. Take the train into the city and the subway to near the hotel. Only a short time wandering around and then finally, finally, the hotel.
I'm in the wrong tower but a friendly escort guides me through the labyrinth of corridors and stairs, around corners, up and down elevators. This seemed almost as long as the Chicago thing. He wants to know where I am from. Complicated to answer. First time in Tokyo. Please, leave me alone. I need a shower and a bed. Just ring him, if I want ice or need anything else. Here is some US money. Please go.

Hazy view from Tokyo Tower

It took longer to get there than the time I got to spend there. I need to try again. I hate Chicago. I love Tokyo.

Paragon Days

(Click on the image to get the full-resolution version)

It has been a very hectic first-four weeks into my new job at Intel. I spent the last two of those weeks travelling, which is fun but also exhausting. Lee Ann and I went to Barcelona for a meeting and to scope things out, then a meeting in Santa Clara, and now Portland, or more accurately, Hillsboro. Later this morning I'll fly to Switzerland for a workshop and a weekend with my family and friends there.
Over the weekend in the bay area I got to see Anika and spend some time with her. We took lots of pictures which I want to process on my big screen at home (30" 2560x1600, yeah!) So stay tuned.
A new job means meeting and talking to lots of people I have never met before. It is exciting, confusing, interesting, and tiring all at the same time. Once in a while it also brings up old memories. Yesterday I was telling someone about the work we had done with the Intel Paragon and we realized that he had worked on that project as well on the Intel side. And then later that night I had dinner with some of the people I had worked with back then.
Lance and Maggie had brought their kids as evidenced by the rabbit ears in the above picture, Val told us that Theo is already 30, and Dave still looks like he did when we first started to work together.
Mack reserved the table and organized the evening, but then decided to stay away from the fun and spend the night in the hospital. He has a defibrillator in his chest and it had gone off a couple of times last night. It monitors his heart and tries to keep it beating with a regular rhythm. When that fails, it stops the heart and delivers an 800 Volt shock to get it going again; a reboot, if you will.

Val, Dave, and I went to see him after dinner. He has had a few more of these reboots since the morning and we got to witness a couple of them. The nurse said he had never seen one before and got first-hand experience when he was working on Mack and got shocked. The device went off and some of the current traveled through Mack's skin, through the rubber gloves, into the nurse's body. He was visibly shaken.
Mack describes it as being punched into the chest without the bruising. It is not pleasant to see an old friend having to go through this. It is even less pleasant to be the one in the hospital bed. Get better soon, Mack! The doctors are trying different combinations of drugs to find the mix that gives Mack back the quality of life he has had over the last five years and let Val sleep again. Until then, he is under observations at the hospital to make sure nothing worse happens during that time.
There are few English words for which I remember where I learned them. One exception is persnickety. Mack used it when we were sitting in Beaverton twenty years ago trying to make those Paragons behave. Although you may not be experiencing Paragon days right now, Mack, let the persnickety doctors put things right. I'll see you next time I'm in Hillsboro: in the restaurant, not the hospital!

Leaving IBM Research (and Ireland)

It has been almost exactly three years since I have come here to Ireland to work for IBM Research. You can read all about it in these blog pages. Well, not all, and I very seldom wrote about work. Above you see Kostas and Pierre, two of my coworkers. Kostas asked the security guard to take a picture as I was walking out on my last day.
I don't regret having worked and lived here, but it is time to move on. Over the years the job I had changed and I felt I had very little control over the direction things were going. Near the end we got a new lab director and she really started turning things around. However, by that time several of my colleagues had already left and the team had shrunk considerably from the size it should be. Of course, my leaving doesn't help and it will take a couple of years to build the team to its full strength. Sorry everyone.

Our future new home

Sometime last year I got a tip that Intel was looking for people to help work on operating systems for high-end HPC systems. This was something I had done before at Sandia and enjoyed very much. I was (and am) a little worried about how long it will take me to get back into this, but as our negotiations progressed, I became more and more excited about the possibility for this to work for both Lee Ann and me, as well as the group at Intel I have now joined.

Gaudi is big in Barcelona

 Originally the plan was for us to stay in Ireland. Other than the weather, we like it here and it would have let me concentrate on my new job instead of having to deal with a cross-country move. In the end we agreed that we would move to Barcelona in Spain.
That is exciting, but also a little bit scary. We neither speak Spanish nor Catalan. Barcelona is a very international city and it is easy to get by there with English; as a tourist. Living there will be more complicated. I don't understand the Irish plumbers when they come here and fix things, so that wont be that big of a change in Spain. But at least here I was able to read rental contracts, information from the bank, and the tax office web page.

We'll be eating tapas instead of fish and chips

 Lee Ann said she wants to learn Catalan, since Barcelona is in the heart of Catalonia and may some day secede from Spain. I'll try to learn Spanish first. It looks easier than Catalan and many more people speak it. But it will be a few years before we'll be better than Google at translating web pages.
So, busy times ahead learning new languages, new jobs, and a new culture. It will be good and fun to continue stimulating our old brains in new ways.

After a bunch of beers at the Halfway House pub.

On my last day at IBM some of us went out for beers. My colleagues gave me a jersey from Qatar airlines and tried to explain to me that Madrid also has an airline and that they were going to give me their jersey at first. But then they thought it would be safer for me to have the jersey of the local airline. Or something like that ;-) Anyway, it was real nice and the whole team chipped in and wrote their names on it. Thanks everyone!
Now the question is whether I should start a new blog -- my fourth life -- or keep going on this one: After all, we are just moving from one European country that is trying to recover from the financial crisis to another which still needs our help!

Christmas in Ireland

Maybe not what you would expect to see when you read the title of this post. I took the above picture in the walled garden next to Malahide castle on December 27th. It was an extremely windy day and we had a lot of rain. It was also cold and we spent most of the time indoors looking at old furniture in the castle and souvenirs in the Avoca shop.

Playing with HDR. The church is next to Malahide castle.

When we came back and I showed Lee Ann this and some of my other Malahide pictures, she couldn't believe I had taken them that day. Because the wind was blowing so hard, it would rain one minute and then, for a few seconds, we would get blue sky with clouds drifting very quickly.

Malahide castle

For the holidays we had James, Anika, and Jessie, a childhood friend of Anika's, here. The two Js had never been to Ireland so we tried to show them a little bit of Dublin and the surrounding area. This is not the best time of the year to visit -- we had to wait out a bunch of rain and storms -- but we nevertheless got some sightseeing and some cultural events in.

Anika

Jessie

Lee Ann and James

The picture of Castle Rag (and here) is sort of an accident. We went to Naas to see Jigginstown Castle because a book Lee Ann got for Christmas had a cool picture in it. But it was surrounded by a fence and scaffolding. From the looks of it, only some of the brick walls survived. Not even worth taking a picture. The one in the book was from the inside, where we could not get to.

Castle Rag near Naas.

In a field next door was the much cooler and older Castle Rag. It seems that used to be a common type of dwelling at the periphery of The Pale (beyond which things get really bad.)

St. Patrick's cathedral

On Sunday before Christmas we went to St. Patrick's cathedral to attend a service. (Check out the 3-D view on the bottom of their page!) I don't usually do that sort of thing voluntarily but this was a sung service by the cathedral's choir. We were there an hour early and had good seats near the front by the choir. It was pretty neat.

Christ Church cathedral

But, we did even more culture! We saw the film Moon Man at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) and went into the medieval crypt of Christ Church cathedral for a Christmas market and to look at the exhibits; including the cat and the rat which, during a chase, got trapped in one of the organ pipes and were later found mummified. The Moon Man movie is visually very imaginative, but not exactly a thriller, even though it has marching armies and space ships in it. The Secret of Kells was better.

Coach House of Dublin Castle

We also saw the Chester Beatty library, next to Dublin Castle, which is very interesting.

Bective Abbey

From the back

On a brief trip to Kells we stopped at the almost 900 year old Bective Abbey which is often overlooked by tourists but well worth a visit. Of course, we also did Grafton Street and other touristy parts of Dublin's city center such as the George's Street Arcade. And we ate our share of Irish food in places like Bewley's Oriental Cafe, the Winding Stair, and O'Neill's.

The Winding Stair

My pictures are here and here.