Blessed by the Potato

I can’t believe I forgot to mention the latest perils of my poor car.

After being stolen, the window that cost over $300 to fix so that it would go up and down no longer works. I don’t care enough to fix it again. I rolled past the 200, 000 km mark last week, but was on the road back from Toronto, so I forgot to get a picture of the event, as it were. And of course, the aforementioned grinding/harsh resonance noise at certain speeds that could be the beginnings of a transmission failure.

On the home front, I’m looking for something semi-productive to do with my time during the summer. Voluntarily working out hasn’t exactly… happened, and my weekends have been spent in Toronto, so I haven’t gone off exploring the paths like I had planned.

I’m a little bit afraid that it’s going to lead to an over-compensation come fall: I’m going to have Halloween, which is a production all on its own (especially since this year the party has to be super-fantastic so people will come down to London to actually attend). Then there’s curling, and since I’m going to have to pay a ton of money to play at a real club now that the University stopped the business with the intramural league, I’m planning on playing at least twice a week (possibly even competitively!). Finally, I’ve wanted to study a martial art (Aikido or Karate or something) for some time, and I think I might join up when classes start this September, which could eat up another two nights a week.

Madness!

Anyhow, I finished reading the Sabriel trilogy by Garth Nix, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They’re easy books to get into and read, the characters are quite enjoyable, and they prominently feature smiting the hated undead. Those who know me know of my great disdain — nay, loathing — of the undead; the only two characters I played through the end game of WoW were those with undead-specific abilities, and it’s only now, as they release a new undead dungeon that I’m tempted to return to save the terrified citizens of Azeroth (insects? what were they thinking).

Speaking of books, I haven’t yet mentioned one of my graduation presents: autographed copies of Far-Seer by Robert J. Sawyer, and a book by Scott MacKay (The Meek), who happened to be sitting beside RJS at Word on the Street and made puppy dog eyes at Wayfare and had a book half signed before she could break his little heart by telling him she had never heard of him before. I plan on spending at least part of my upcoming long weekend sitting in a lawn chair and giving the Meek a fair shake, now that Nix’s books are done with. (Aside: it’s shaping up to be a busy weekend: I’ve got to hang with the guys, take the cat back and get her settled, read a book, see Superman, go for a swim, maybe catch some fireworks, and continue to throw time and effort into a gaping chasm from which escape is not even theoretically possible).

As for Far-Seer, well, it turns out I now have two. Wayfare, in her funny parallel dimension where time is decidedly non-linear, claims that I went ahead and bought my copy after she got the one for me signed. However, that clearly can’t be true, as I didn’t take a vacation last summer and subsequently got very little reading done on the whole. Last Potatomas, I got the 3rd book in the Quntaglio series as a gift, so it is very likely that I got the first book over a year ago. What’s incredible is not only did she get this signed book ready for my graduation nearly a year before the actual event, but she refused to ruin the surprise by getting me to return the second copy of the same book when I bought it (assuming, of course, that I actually did buy it after… which I didn’t). It depicts a level of Craftiness that not only demands capitalization, but also italics. Er, that is to say, she’s an extremely Crafty girl. It’s actually quite frightening to be around her: she must possess an alien or pathological detachment from reality (and, I suspect, the flow of time itself) in order to so coldly pursue gifts with such malevolent forethought and patience. Any normal human, faced with keeping a gift a surprise for that long (and the time must have seemed longer yet, as for a long time there was no concrete date for my graduation), would have simply cracked and told the receiver all about it; or at the very least dropped some rather significant hints. Wayfare revealed nothing of her devious plan. She even bewitched poor Mr. Sawyer, who can’t help but blurt out choice quotations from his upcoming book (Rollback, for those who aren’t on the mailing list) — but who made no mention of signing a book for me, nor even a casual mention about anyone on the verge of getting a master’s. So powerful is her Craft that there lies in the dark recesses of her closet, behind the unopened copy of Kiss: Psycho Circus for the PC, underneath the box with her treasured merit badged from Brownies, just to the left of that pair of boots that she’ll never ever wear but just can’t quite bring herself to throw out: there, sheltered from the harsh rays of our yellow sun, lies a present — the perfect present — for someone she hasn’t even met yet. And it’s already wrapped.

My point, dear reader — and I have not forgotten it — is that I have two copies of Far Seer now, both in excellent condition. I am willing to part with one should anyone wish to buy, borrow, or gently smell it. You will, however, have to fetch it yourself, as I no longer trust my car to carry such loads.

I was just talking about how prolific I’ve been with regards to writing: not only for work and all that jazz, but with 10 000 words on BbtP in about 10 days. Almost too much for my poor readers to keep up with (especially the dull travelogue). Now, of course, I’ve jinxed it: it’s been days and I haven’t had a post up. Traffic dropped to record lows on the weekend, and I haven’t made any more progress on my novella or screenplay (too many projects going at once? Hmmm…) ongoing project to piss my free time away into the gaping maw of a black hole. In my defense, I’ve been sick the last two days, and catching up on my sleep.

To conclude, I’ll point you at an interesting link that relates to my last post about electric cars.

I had this thought ages ago, and started to write this article/post back on the Potatomas break. Unfortunately, a change in government and apathy made it more or less pointless to bother finishing & posting it. However, Netbug’s recent post reminded me of this, so I decided to ressurect it.

My thoughts on the matter are quite simply that Crown corporations can be put to a lot of good if the government would use them as such. CN & Bell laid transcontinental networks when it was economically unattractive to do so publically; the CBC gave us an ostensibly independent broadcaster; the LCBO prevents a company from being tempted by profit to sell alcohol to minors (and also brings more than beer to the North). In this line-up, PetroCanada stands out a bit, having only been started after foreign companies already had a decent gas distribution system in Canada. Perhaps that’s why it was privatized so quickly.

But, it has a big capacity to do important things if the government would turn it towards those uses:

• A government-controlled oil company can help control pump prices, relieving the fears many Canadians have that oil company collusion is robbing them blind. Perhaps not the best thing for the big picture, since high gas prices might help more than they hurt (vis-a-vis curbing demand for SUVs, making people actually walk down the block, etc.).
• Use the already present retail distribution system to introduce alternative fuels such as E85, hydrogen, or battery charges. This could be huge, since it can break the viscious new technology cycle: oil companies don’t want to offer alternative fuels because they don’t sell, since no one has the cars; the car makers don’t want to build and market the cars because no one will buy them; and no one will buy them because they can’t take them anywhere and expect a fill-up. It’s why we’re pretty much stuck with hybrid technology as the only alternative to gas/diesel (it’s good, don’t get me wrong, but we could perhaps do better).

I find it an exciting prospect, really, to leverage a Crown corporation’s ability to bring about uneconomical transformation on the taxpayer’s bill. It’s something that could become really big: once the government has a decent distribution system out, it can make the car makers sell a certain percentage of cars taking advantage of that (and knowing Canadians, a decent number would buy anyway, once it’s even remotely feasible). If research needs to be done, well a few well-directed NSERC grants could plug that hole. Then, the manufacturing & product design could be done here in Canada, providing jobs when the technology eventually starts to spread south of the border.

Now, let’s move on to talking about electric cars.

They are a very strange beast: they produce zero emissions (though you will need the generating capacity somewhere, so at worst we might just say that they take the emissions that would clog a downtown area and shift them to the location of the power plant… which can also conceivably scrub them better), get great acceleration and decent cruising efficiency, yet are barely produced at all currenly. The reason, of course, is that electrical storage in chemical batteries has terrible energy-to-weight ratios (after all, you have to carry around all that battery, rather than burning it up completely as you go), so their range is often limited.

Range is, in fact, probably the biggest reason electric cars haven’t taken off: you simply can’t recharge them quickly, like you can with a quick stop at the gas station for a hybrid or traditional combustion engine car — so once you run out your battery, you’re stuck there for 8 hours while you charge up the slow way. And the range just barely covers relatively routine treks (such as to the cottage, or driving downtown and back to the 905 five times in a day), which makes many people nervous.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way: tons of devices around us have replaceable/rechargeable batteries, and that is perhaps a model for electric cars that the car companies haven’t looked at closely enough. When my camera runs out of juice, I simply go to any convenience store and pick up a pair of AA’s, plug them in, and off I go. We could make cars the same way: pick a decent-sized battery and make it standard across all cars. A small car might have 6, say, and a large electric SUV might sport 18 in an array, but the point is that you can then drive across the country and swap out your batteries as they dry out. All you need is a distribution system that keeps a decent number of them charged up and in stock.

Which brings us back to PetroCanada.

Of course, this concept is not without its challenges. In addition to having someone decide on the battery standard, and having someone set up a distribution system of chargers before the first car is actually sold, there are engineering challenges to solve. Electric cars that currently exist (or, for the EV-1, I should say, formerly existed) are engineered tight, with all kinds of innovations made to save on weight and extend range. If batteries were broken down into smaller standardized subunits, it would make them heavier and bulkier since more space would be wasted on the plastic casing and less spent on actually charge capacity. It might also make placement in the car more difficult, since you’d need to get access to the batteries somehow (whether from beneath the car, the trunk, hood, or from panels in the side), so they couldn’t be squeezed in between other parts wherever space could be found. The bigger the battery is, the faster a changeover could take place, and the more efficient the design would be. However, batteries are heavy, so it doesn’t take much before it’s infeasible to expect even a relatively healthy, in-shape person to change them manually, let alone an elderly, injured, or out-of-shape driver. Planning on simple hand-pumped cranes to help might work, but even the most simple tools foil some people (there are people out there who can’t pump their own gas as it is). At first, providing full-service might work, especially since even self-only stations still have at least a cashier on hand, and the electric fleet will likely be small enough at first that that person could afford to run out on the rare occasions he or she was needed.

An interesting social dilemma is also raised: who owns the batteries? Who is responsible for replacing them when they no longer hold a charge or are otherwise damaged? With permanent batteries, it comes down to either the car owner or manufacturer (depending on the warranty) owning up. But with batteries changing hands every time someone takes a trip of more than 250 km, it becomes more complicated. At first, PetroCanada could own the batteries, but that would raise all sorts of problems once other distribution lines opened up (whether say, Shell also got in on the recharging station game, or if an all-new company started up like an Ontario Solar & Windmill Recharged Green Electric Car Coop). Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this one. Even if the batteries were insured by a government agency (perhaps funded by a portion of each new electric car’s purchase price), that would leave open the problem of American cars coming across the border to change out their faulty cells.

Completely new technology, such as capacitor banks, flywheels, or superconductors might allow permanently installed storage devices and bypass these legal issues, while still allowing for quick-charge stations to extend range… but none of these, AFAIK, store electricity well over the long term.

Finally, one very clever method to extend the range of electric cars is the Genset trailer. I’ve never personally seen one of these, but they look absolutely brilliant. They basically consist of a small gas or diesel generator that provides the electricity needed to run the car (or, if you prefer to think of it this way, the electricity needed to constantly charge up the batteries as you drive). I don’t know why they don’t sell electric cars along with one of these right now (or with a roof-rack or trunk-mounted version, since a generator + fuel tank doesn’t have to be huge). It’s basically like having a plug-in electric car with the option of switching to a hybrid mode for long-distance travel.

Footnote: the transmission on my car has been making unhappy noises since I got it back from the police. I think I might go and give the Civic Hybrid and the Prius a test drive while the weather’s nice, and start thinking about retiring the Accord (though that’s probably still a few years down the road).

What a goddamned fucking mess these bills are from the Gran Melia are: do not stay there, especially if you need receipts to get reimbursed.

In addition to the general shittiness that we knew about when checking out (not honouring the quoted conference rate, charging for 3 people after 1 had checked out, weird, non-translatable spanish only), we’ve uncovered a new wrinkle: they charged us twice. Not double, not quite that bad. No, what they did is they charged our credit cards for $168 US before we even got there.

A week before we got there.

What $168 US is, we have no idea: the student rate on the room was $115, the supervisor rate was $150, and the hotel’s regular rates weren’t actually too far off from that, with rooms starting as low as $109 (which is why it was a double piss-off to not honour the conference rate: we got like 25% off at the other place, but this place the conference rate was quite close to their normal rates). So, what they did is they put in a credit for our accounts for $168 US (in Pesos, so we probably got screwed on the double exchange) as soon as we checked in, then racked up the charges on top of that. It means a few things that really screw with our heads: first, is that the grand total I signed off on was *not* the grand total charged to my credit card, since there was that extra at the beginning ($1,481.50 was the bill I approved at check-out, but I was actually charged $1,669.66). Next, the receipt is only for $1,481.50, so I have to somehow explain to the hospital’s accounting department that they need to look at the first line of a 3-page bill and see the credit there as something else they need to pay me. I have my credit card statement, and hope that will help me, but they’re notorious for not accepting statements on the same footing as receipts (especially when it’s dated a week before the conference you were ostensibly travelling to attend!).

It’s also strange that we had this charge since they never told us that there was an advance charge/deposit (and, in fact, had a seperate deposit charged upon check-in). It was also charged well before their published no-fee cancellation date, so it’s not like we were being locked in at that point.

Talking with others now that I’m back in Canada has added new dimensions to this affair as well: they knew very well that early check-outs from rooms with 3 people checked out, despite continuing the charges, since they got in a fight before they let them go. In order to prevent one person from a room fleeing and sticking the charge on the other person, or leaving without paying by claiming that someone else was still there when you were really the last to leave, they require you to present a check-out pass before the bellboys at the front door will let you off the property. If you’re just doing a partial check-out, and sticking the bill with someone else, they need to call that person and get their permission. I was out of touch, so they almost didn’t let my roommate catch his bus back to the airport… I’ve got to call shenanigans when they claim they don’t have a record of him checking out.

The bills of other students are even more pockmarked, where not only were the conference rates not honoured, but they changed every day they were there. Correcting entries (”traspaso cuentas”) were made on various days, adding hundreds of dollars to the bill, then taking almost all of it back off.

All of this is on top of the general non-communication from the hotel: no 1-800 number to call, getting put on hold when calling regular day-time long distance, not answering a single email of ours, and not telling us any of this billing stuff until we find, with a shock, that VISA wants the money from us. I can’t do much about it: arguing with them for 20 minutes in person didn’t do much, so calling them long-distance is probably just throwing good money after bad. Hopefully work will sort all this out and I won’t get stuck with it (my Accountant is better than my Spanish). In the meantime, I’ll just do my best to pan them here and on other travel review sites.

We didn’t get a chance to stay there since they were destroyed by the Hurricane, but the Marriott was much better about at least responding to emails and phone calls while we were setting up our booking in the first place (even if they, er… lied about their ability to open on time and host the conference at all).

I work with an Evil Genius, it’s clear now. Look at what they did to the desk of the girl who won the best speaker prize while we were away. Just marvel at it! I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time I was at work today, and it’s just going to be awesome to watch her take her revenge on these guys.

Note the attention to detail: they individually wrapped all the levers on the desk chair. The lightswitches were wrapped in such a way as to still be functional. The nozzle on the hand cream pump was very elegantly wrapped; the airconditioner and its cord were wrapped, as were the coat hangars. Everything inside the desk drawer (including the interior of the drawer) was wrapped. There’s even a circle you can see where an elastic band had been covered. What I love most is the Kleenex box on her shelf, with the newspaper coming out the top, it’s so artistic I well up a little just thinking about it.

I’m totally hiring these guys to wrap my Potatomas presents.

This prank also made me realize how very terrible my digital camera is. Even with a well-lit room and standing remarkably still, I got motion blur with most of the pictures I took.

As I mentioned in my previous reports of Cancun, the food down in Mexico was not very good on the whole. I don’t deal with spicy stuff very well, and almost everything was hot. Some other standbys had strange interpretations (in particular, the bruscetta, which is essentially defined as consisting of tomatoes on bread; it had no tomatoes, just a slice of french bread with a thin tomato paste and some cheese).

One thing that I did like when I was down there was a cucumber dip for nachos. I never caught the name of it: the cucumber dip was always served with a red, spicy paste dip, and the waiters told us a name that seemed to refer to both of them. When we asked for some later, we got only the red paste dip, and had to painstakingly explain the properties of the cucumber dip to get some of that, too. Now, I forgot even the name of the red paste dip.

Anyhow, it was a very surprising how well cucumbers went with nacho chips, and it’s a kind of dip I’d like to make here. However, I’m having no luck trying to Google the recipe, so I’m hoping someone has heard of this stuff before and can help me out. Essentially, it consisted of cucumbers chopped very finely (into roughly 3 mm cubes) in an oil base, along with small amounts of diced tomato and (we think) grapefruit. It had some sort of sweet green herb for flavour (Cilantro, perhaps?), as well as just a hint of spice, presumably from ground cayenne pepper (or from being in the same room as the spicy red paste dip).

Update: I got some supplies and made an attempt at reproducing this. I’m not quite there, but what I made was eminently edible. The recipe is now available in the recipes section as Cucumber Salsa.

I had over 50 messages in one email account, and 115 in another account that I pretty much only use for the BEMs discussion group. I thought that maybe some of the discussions at the meeting had spilled over into something that was intensely intellectually stimulating on the email list.

It was better: a massive flame war had broken out. It’s fantastically lame, all these scientists & tin-foil crazies sissy-slapping each other in public email, while others call for order, sometimes even in all-capitals. I haven’t finished plowing through it yet, but so far no one has made a Hitler simile; not even an oblique reference to communism, asbestos, or giant robots. It doesn’t appear as though usual usenet flame rules appear here; a carefully balanced system in which Godwin’s Law does not apply. It’s possible that this flame could burn for years, with new students joining the fray and taking up the moronic position of their thesis supervisors, continuing the fight for generations to come. I’m tempted to introduce new technology to the battle, such as the flame form or profanity, just to see how they react and handle it.

Checking out of the Gran Melia was hell: they charged us $65 US per night for the 3rd person in our room (after quoting $50/night for the conference rate). However, we only had the 3rd person and the cot for 5 of the 7 nights, but got charged for all 7. We tried to fight it, but they told us the charge was for the 3rd person, not the cot. I pulled out my receipt showing that I had checked in a day after the other two, so even if they had lost the records for the first person checking out a day early, at the very least that was proof there were only two people for the first day. They sat there and refused to take the charge off. Finally, my ride to the airport arrived and I had to give up and go. Hopefully work will cover it.

That pretty much sums up the hotel: the facilities were decent (except for the hot water capacity… there only seemed to be luke warm water in the afternoons, probably due to the sun beating on the pipes). The staff was reasonably friendly, but the prices were just insane for everything. They constantly screwed up reservations, bar bills, and changed quoted prices on the fly. We knew it was an expensive place heading out, and it turned out to be significantly more expensive than planned when leaving. I can’t recommend it as a vacation destination for anyone who hasn’t won the lottery. A few years ago, we stayed at a resort in Costa Verde, Cuba, and it was about half the price for a place that was almost as nice. The only thing Cancun had over Cuba was the option to go into town for shopping/bars/restaurants/clubs if you wanted (which we didn’t really), and I doubt that’s high on most people’s list of priorities when they look for a beach resort.

The flight back was pretty decent: we ended up coming back almost an hour early. I was the first one through customs, but then had to wait about 20 minutes for my bags to come up on the conveyor. I got bad directions from someone at Pearson for the Park ‘n Fly shuttle — they pointed at section “C” and said what I thought was “C”. After waiting almost half an hour for a bus that should have come every 10 minutes, I found out from someone else that the bus would be in “P” (they do rhyme). Once I got to P there was a bus waiting for me. While waiting though, the interterminal busses came by like crazy there: the terminal 1->3 bus came by so often that the next one would arrive and honk at the one that came before since it hadn’t had a chance to leave yet. You were never a moment without being able to see one of those. There was less than two minutes to wait for the 1->2 busses.

In the end, I was the only one who didn’t get sick and didn’t get a sunburn (fancy that!). After I wore a T-shirt into the pool on the second last day I was there, all the guys were wearing T-shirts into the pool.

After getting home I was telling all my stories to Wayfare — which mostly involve complaining, as you can imagine — who commented:

Wow, you’re not so much of a ‘my glass is half empty’ kind of guy so much as you are a ‘my glass is broken!’ kind of guy.

At dinner one night, a question was posed to me: if money was no object, where in the world would I go? I didn’t have an answer to that question at first. They goaded me: “Surely there must be somewhere you’d go, for historical reasons, or for the sights, or even the chocolate…” but no, I’m just that much of an agoraphobic that if money were no object, I could just pay to have people come to me :) Eventually, I changed the hypothetical a little: if money, agoraphobia, arachnapobia, ophidiphobic, etc. were all not an issue, I’d visit the rainforest and monkey around the trees with the primates, or go diving with the penguins off Antartica. I asked them where they’d go, and everyone at the table replied, in unison: Bora Bora. It was a little freaky, to tell the truth. Where would you all go?

Finally, it looks like Sword of the Stars is recruiting beta testers. I’m tempted to apply, but afraid it will destroy me ;)

Well, the conference ended with a whimper. Attendance at the last few talks dropped like crazy, I think the last talk only had a dozen or so people in attendance (to be fair, people had to check out by noon if they were leaving today). The closing ceremonies were short and sweet — and someone from our lab took home the prize for best talk (no, it wasn’t me).

I was walking on the hotel lawn yesterday and came to a little pool where some birds were hanging around. They sort of looked like a cross between ducks and crows: they were all black, but had webbed feet, and a bill that was somewhat beak-like. So I went up to them and said “quackquackquackquack” like I would to a Mallard in London. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to get what I was saying; some sort of breakdown in communications. They returned a confused “wobblewobble”. Perhaps it’s just that they had a thick accent and that made things difficult. Much like the rest of the conference. I’m going to try to brush up on my French for the one two years from now (not going to Japan, not gonna happen), so we’ll see if that helps with at least some of the groups.

Anyhow, with the conference done I don’t have much of a reason for loitering by the meeting rooms where the internet access is, so this will probably be my last chance for a fix until I get back. The server still seems to have some pep left in it, so hopefully it’ll stay up until I can give it the personal attention it needs.

After 3 days of begging, pleading, threatening with the hotel to let us use the wireless network since the free internet in our rooms was out, they finally realized that they might be responsible for a mass scientist internet addiction suicide pact if they didn’t open it up, so I’ve finally got some internet access. It’s only in the lecture rooms and the immediate area though, so I won’t be checking my email much. I’ll try to write a few in my room and cut/paste when I come down to the talks. Also, there’s a good chance my webserver will die towards the end of the week, and I won’t be able to get it back up until Monday morning, so be patient if the site disappears!

Notes on the trip:

Day 1:

That was the fastest I’ve ever been through security in Toronto. They had me take my laptop out of my bag as usual so the thieves could identify me, but then never even did a swipe test for explosives, let alone trying to get me to turn it on and all that jazz that eats up time. The guy in front of me had a huge camera case with like 24 different lenses, and the swipetest lady had to get them all, so after he packed up she just walked off on her break. I’m left standing there wondering if I can just pack up and go or if someone else is going to come test my laptop, and maybe look in my shoes and anus like they did in Washington, but they just waved me through.

I found Stephen King’s the Dark Tower part 3 in the airport book shop and bought it (my local Chapters only seems to stock 1, 2, 4 and 6, and I want to read them in order). I ended up starting into Sabriel (Garth Nix) on the plane instead (it looked easier to read in turbulence), and so far it’s been really engaging. I met my supervisor at a breakfast place in Pearson, which was good because part of my terror at having to take an international flight was doing it all on my own. It was good for him too because he hadn’t read the instructions on what to do once we got into Mexico, so I guided him through that part.

The plane ride wasn’t very good. We had about 3 hours of mild turbulence (on a 4 hour flight). Not so much that people were hitting the ceiling, but enough that I was really glad the people beside me slept the whole way and didn’t order any drinks. Oh yeah, and the seatbelt light was on the whole time. Most people ignored it though, including the family that had been split up in front and behind me. The mom and the ~1 year old screaming hellspawn were in front of me, and the dad and the jackrabbit ~4 year old were behind me. So for most of the ride this baby is just wailing its head off and this kid behind me is kicking the seat, and the two parents are stumbling back and forth trading off duties, while the airplane shakes and shudders…

It’s not a new idea, but there really should be a law against taking infants on planes (the kicking was less annoying than the screaming, and it only affected me, whereas nobody likes hearing a wailing baby on a plane, and they almost all wail). I know, I’m biased against air travel in the first place, but really, your infant who can’t speak and won’t remember any of what happens to it will not really get a whole lot out of your beach vacation – dump them at the grandparents, or a wet nurse or whatever it takes and go away yourselves if you must, but for the love of god don’t bring them on a plane unless you absolutely must (for instance, when emigrating one-way and only once). Remember, this is from a guy who generally likes kids (there was actually a cute moment where I crossed my eyes and the baby in front of me went all “blurgggle hehe!”): if you bring your baby on a plane and it cries for more than 90 continuous minutes, I will take it from you, and wring its little neck (if I’m feeling merciful; if not I’ll throw it out and leave you with the decision of whether or not to jump after it). That, or put them in a separate (mostly) sound proofed section. E.g.: move the galley section up a few rows from the very back, and then in the tail cone you can stick a dozen cheap seats for babies and their families. It’s also conveniently close to the washrooms!

Anyhow, we got to Mexico and there was a relatively long line at immigration. When we finally got up, they scanned our passports, stamped them, stamped the immigration forms we filled out on the plane, and sent us on our way without saying a single word to us.

Our flight number was up on a baggage carousel, so I sat at that for almost half an hour with no sign of our luggage. In the end, it turned out we had spent so long in the immigration queue that our bags had been taken off the carousel and put in the unclaimed luggage section. From there it was a smooth ride through customs, they just asked where we were coming from and sent us through with nothing to declare. It wasn’t quite that simple, actually: the Mexicans have a fairly elegant way of selecting people for random screens. You press a button below a traffic light: if the green light comes on, you walk out of the airport. If the red light comes on, you have to empty your bags. I don’t know if it actually makes it random in a fair way, or if it just provides that illusion to travelers while someone behind the scenes chooses the light based on the usual mix of racial profiling, behaviour, appearance, and a smidgen of good old fashioned randomness.

Checking into the Gran Melia wasn’t too bad, the guy who helped me was actually from Scarberia, though that didn’t leave much to talk about aside from “Hey, we’re both from Canada… ok, can I have my room?”

Unfortunately, once I got up here it was a different story: there is no internet access. The free in-room data ports are here, but they’re just not actually connected to anything (we have two dataports, so I theoretically didn’t even need to bring my networking stuff to get both of our computers working). There’s wireless access in the lobby (which does barely sneak up here with one bar of service), but it requires a login that runs at a steep $5 (US) for 15 minutes. That’s $20/hour, and likely over $200 for the week if I were to use the internet as I had planned when I got here (I was going to use Skype to call home, I had a bunch of emails I had put off writing, I was going to look up some papers by someone presenting here). I might break down and check my email in a few days for 15 minutes… but that’s really excessive pricing to begin with, let alone when there’s a big conference here (ok, a small conference; slightly larger than a large symposium). There are a lot of scientists who brought computers hoping to get some work done in the off hours (or even just email each other after the talks while the ideas are still fresh). At ISMRM when similar problems arose, they brought in a few email stations: just open-access computers for people to check their webmail at. A time limit kept them from being monopolized (and the hard stares of a hungry crowd behind the users), and they were completely free.

Anyhow, the room itself is pretty nice: marble in the bathroom, the beds look decent (though we had to order more pillows since they’re really flat; plus Mexico has a smaller double bed than we do). The décor is good (for a hotel), and we have our own private balcony to soak up the sun. There is air conditioning (but not in the girls’ room!), and it’s about adequate. It’s definitely cooler in here than out there, but it’s running on high and making a lot of noise just to keep up. I’d say it’s about 22 C now that the sun has gone down. Comfortable enough, but hardly cold (which the noise would make you think).

Day 2:

The A/C finally caught up overnight, and we woke up to a room at a lovely 19 C. The talks today weren’t very good: one of the biggest problems was that so many scientists seem to need to cue themselves off of their slides, and the room is set up with the screen and lecture in opposite corners, so you look at it from a pretty oblique angle from the podium. It also makes laser pointing difficult. Unfortunately, scientists seem to be not only completely ignorant of the basics of personal hygene, but also the concepts of how microphones work and contrast. We had a few people come up to the mic, test it, then turn around to read their slides and speak like that, and no one could hear them, so the poor hotel tech guy had to run up and physically place the microphone in front of their faces. Then one guy just didn’t take the hint and turned around a few more times, out of the way of the mic again. It wasn’t too bad though, since his talk was terrible (starting with the illustrious title of “the proper use of statistics on the field of bioelectromagnetics” – we thought it would be a basic tutorial on parametric and non-parametric stats, perhaps with some scathing examples of bad stats published in BEMs recently… instead it could have been summarized with one slide that said “Do good stats, it’s important.”). People also had terrible presentations prepared, with no concept of contrast for readability. One guy had an abstract background that basically looked like the sun in one corner with a deep blue background. So a whole quarter of the screen was white/yellow (with yellow streaks at that since it was kind of starbursty), and the text was… yellow. Another guy had a picture in the background of what looked like a lake on a cloudy day, so you have some very white sky for the whole top half, and some pale blue water (reflecting the clouds) on the bottom, with nearly invisible white text on top of it. You can tell he never even looked at it for a practice session, since he was trying to just read the screen word-for-word, and could barely make it out himself, after walking up to the screen (which also prompted the A/V guy to run up and move the mic for him).

I’m not looking forward to my talk tomorrow too much with this setup…

Anyhow, something else I forgot to mention is that the toilets here are pretty strange: the flusher is sort of spring loaded so there’s resistance when you move it, but you only have to move it a tiny bit for it to suddenly go bang and flush. It’s a little odd.

Day 3, morning:

My god, they *both* snore.

Day 3, later:

So last night I just couldn’t sleep: I had my talk and I was somewhat nervous about it, and both of my roommates were snoring. AL was snoring with a low, constant wheeze that was just a bit louder than the air conditioner and my earplugs could compensate for. I could have slept through it, however, since it was nice and regular… if not for the added harmonies of CC, who has a terrible, world-ending grunt/gasp snore that is very loud and very irregular. Sometimes, he would snore so loud he even woke himself up.

I decided I just couldn’t sleep through that (though if I managed to get asleep, I could probably stay asleep through the snoring), so I grabbed my book and read in the lobby until about 4 in the morning, when I was finally sleepy enough to give it another go. It still took a while after that, but I eventually got the hang of it and managed to sleep – almost slept right through breakfast, too.

The days here are *long*, starting at 7 am and going until almost 6 with the talks, with social events to follow. I was pretty nervous and sleepy for my talk, and now I have virtually no recollection of what I said. I know I left out some points I came up with the night before based on the talks of the first day (no true replication efforts in BEMs, etc.), but not what I actually said. The room was packed, right to standing room only. Ok, it wasn’t quite that bad, since people vastly prefer aisle seats, there were plenty of spare seats in the middle for the people who did end up standing. Nonetheless, it was a daunting sight. Everyone says I did okay though, and despite coming close my voice never actually cracked (but my pointing was uselessly shaky).

It’s over now, and I had a big plate of nachos and cucumbers for dinner (which go together surprisingly well).

After the social event, a few of us had another drink at the hotel bar and then decided to go for a night swim, but security kicked us out of the pool, so we went to the beach, where I lost my room key. Then another security team stormed the beach blowing whistles (it’s shark season, and the tide was going out with a fury), so we went back in. On the way back, we saw a roach that was almost 3” long – good times were had by all.

Back in the hotel I realized not only did I lose the room key, but I also lost the gift Alex had entrusted to me from the BEMs society for his sponsorship. I also found out that something in the water had eaten at or caused an allergic reaction with my feet and legs, because I was just covered in tiny little red bumps. Fortunately they don’t itch much.

But yuck!

Day 4:

It took a little bit to fall asleep last night with the two lumberjacks beside me, but I managed to get a decent sleep… by sleeping through the morning plenary and barely making it to the talks I did want to see (it still wasn’t a very good lay in, at least for me: I was still out the door by 10 am). The bumps on my feet have gotten bigger and started to itch; there’s one on my hand too. I’m suddenly afraid I didn’t pack enough Benedryl (I’m already down to 5, with 3 and a half days to go).

I haven’t complained much about the hotel, so I suppose it’s time to remedy that. There is no concept of hot water here, which I find odd given the fixtures all have two taps; must be imported from the States then. The showers, even with just the ostensibly hot tap on, are not even luke warm. The cold tap is only marginally colder. It’s made showering somewhat of a pain, especially since it’s so hot and sticky that I take two showers a day. Sooner or later I’m going to have to shave or they won’t let me on the plane, and that’s going to be a bitch with cold water.

Almost everyone who ate the beef last night got sick (except my supervisor, who we theorize might be sick on the inside, but too drunk or large to actually take notice). We all packed tiny travel bottles of hand sanitizer, but suddenly today everyone remembers to carry them around with them :)

The maid staff comes by 3 times a day, and it’s getting annoying. They move our stuff around, even if no one’s moved anything since the last maid moved stuff. They come in in the mornings and make our beds like you would expect a normal hotel to do, putting the icky top patterned sheet back on the bed, and the coloured pillows that you’re not actually supposed to sleep on. Then in the afternoon they stop by for just a few minutes to move our stuff and put out another room service menu. I think we have 6 in the room now; I’m surprised they don’t just wallpaper the room with them. Later in the evening they stop by again and take the icky top sheet off the beds, put away the covered pillows, and lay down a chocolate mint. It’s all very superfluous.

It’s an extremely expensive hotel for all of this, and they employ Dark Arts to conjure up the bill. Someone recommended that we check our detailed bill long before it came time to check out, so we had the front desk print us off a copy. They charge us $5 US per day for “bell boys” and $9 US per day for room service (they told us they would include gratuities, but yikes, I’m not that good a tipper!). The room rate is nowhere near either of the conference rates quoted (we’re getting hit for about $130 US/night, while student rooms should be $115 and supervisor rooms $150), and they’re charging us $65/night for the cot for our third person (despite promising to honour the quoted rates for our first hotel, which was $115 per night and $10 for a cot).

Everything else here is expensive, too. The food and drinks can be deceptively expensive, since they give us the drinks in tiny glasses or bottles. $2 for a coke is not unheard of at a bar or restaurant for us, but you usually get somewhere in the 350 mL neighbourhood of liquid – I think these are running at more like 100-150 mL (they’re less than half a can). Most ridiculous was my phone call to use my calling card: $61 US for less than 10 minutes to what should have been a toll-free number.

Most of the front desk and restaurant staff speak passable to decent English, so it’s been pretty good for us here. However, the maids and repair people don’t speak a word, so it’s very difficult to tell them what’s wrong with the air conditioner, or that there’s no need to barge in every 3 hours.

The conference hasn’t been a spectacular one. There were a fair number of no-shows, and many talks were sub-par. Also, the side discussions haven’t been as good as they were in Dublin or Washington – it seems when a talk that’s uninteresting comes up, rather than going outside for a coffee and discussion, most people are slinking away to their rooms or hitting the beach. I can’t really blame them, since I’ve just slinked up to my room to write on the computer.

It raises an interesting question about where we should site conferences, though. For an upcoming conference in a few years, it’s been decided that Canada will play host, so it’s essentially fallen to our lab (as Canadians) to try to decide on where exactly in Canada we should host it. Some people say our only real options are Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal, since it will be easier for people to get to a large city and there will be more things to do so they can turn it into a vacation. But most people don’t really even pretend that a conference is going to be a vacation, so that may just needlessly make things more expensive, and not really live up to people’s expectations of Canada (green spaces, nature, etc.). A good compromise has been London, where not only are we already located (which gives people the opportunity to tour our lab and see things first-hand rather than on powerpoint), but is also close enough to some open spaces and nice river walking trails that people can spend a little bit of time with nature. Plus, it’s close enough to Toronto that people can still easily go see a ball game or show or whatever, and large enough to have the hotel and meeting room capacity we need. Another suggestion was to really go all out and go to the Maritimes or northern Ontario. There are a number of resorts in those places that we could rent out, but it would probably end up being more expensive than London (unless we went in the off season). One further suggestion was to rent partial blocks of a number of nearby places (which might be cheaper than dominating a resort large enough for all of us) and then arranging for shuttle busses for everyone.

It’s a surprisingly interesting problem, with many factors being considered, right down to having to force people to take connecting flights (hardly anything flies direct to London or Ottawa, and busses would be necessary if we went for a nature retreat).

Ouch, I spent most of the morning with my rear end glued to the toilet, but thankfully I seem to be empty now. Oddly enough, though I feel really super bloated right now (and that’s backed up by extra tightness in the waistline of my shorts… ugh).

Now I’m helping Netbug rebuild his site. Unfortunately, comments are going to be a bitch, so I’m probably not going to bother unless they were really long or really deserving of long-term archival. Since that’s just one spud’s opinion, let me know if you had a comment on his blog you want restored, and if you can remember which post it went with. I think I have all of them from November on (note that this is a pain for me since the comments are only linked by the post number, not the title…). For now, his domain isn’t pointing to the rebuilt site, but I’ll drop him a line to get it back up.

Oh, and that WMAGNFARB.