I maintained a thought log of events in Florida, thinking that I will get back and eventually update my blog. Didn’t happen. The end result, 3 months from now I would have forgotten where all I went, or what I did. And in 6, that I even went.
I will NOT let the same thing to happen to New Mexico. Not that it’s an exceptional loss even if I do. But still, decided to atleast have a mini .triplog, for hmm, to sort of off-load the contents of my brain freeing it for more useful things.
And, it’s happening already. It was a 6 or so day trip and I hardly remember 3-4. Note to self: Get yourself checked. Anyway, the original plan (or the portion I can recollect) I think was:
07/27/03 I want
07/28/03 All the world’s a curve fit
07/30/03 Talk, bomb scare, bar
07/31/03 Old city, flight back
Or something similar.
I think this post sort of covers the “I want”, though it’s too feelingy to be in true actuality.log style. But, it will have to do.
I don’t have the time, patience or material to get separate blog entries from the other days. So, what follows is an arbitrary mix of facts. The trip started off as any other. I left here, one stop at Houston in between, and finally arrived at Albuquerque (henceforth ALB). The first thing I noticed from the plane was that this place was a teeny patch of green surrounded by arid/dry/orange/red/rocky landscape for as far as the eye can see. Pretty pretty. The airport also was strangely populated with cool grey millitary aircraft.
ALB is a small poor place which is built around national and defence labs. So you got the cool facilities, and nothingness around it. Lots of “engineering” concerns, which do “engineering” work, and we know nothing more about what happens inside.
Reached the YACH (Yet Another Classy Hotel, the Hyatt in this case) in a while and mundane events like registering and collecting the cool bag with the scratch pad, CDs, pens, highliters, schedules and all such other swarf. The coolest pen was a highliter from Sun. Cheap thrills, yes.
The thing about this place is you can walk ONLY on select roads. No getting off the path. Tons of homeless people and so on, so no 800$ cameras outside, and no walking out of groups after set times.
Fast forward a couple of days, came my talk. Which went off, decently. All in all, the thing had been very professionally organized, as it should have been, it was a USNCCM. The highlight of that day was actually that there was actually a bomb scare. A “suspicious” package had been found in a mens room and all events, some terminated midway, were shut down for a couple of hours until things were sorted out.
Of course, they didn’t bring it up again, but it was obviously nothing since we are all fine and alive. During this conference however, I am further depressed considering the state of “science”. Our understanding of what’s going on is really limited. I had a big thing planned, but this has to be in it’s own article. Sadly, all the world’s a curve fit. That’s all I plan to say about it right here right now.
The Brazilian bar/grill was, interesting. After eons of waiting (while listening to extremely good, live hmm Afro-Latino music) we were treated to a fun served dinner. Grilled different sorts of meat on rotation and the waiters run around with these big, kababs? with a REALLY LARGE AND SHARP KNIFE (and they weren’t too safe with them either) and chopped up on your table whatever you wanted. Again, here I had to go through the “Vegetarian huh? Sure you eat salmon” sort of talk. There were grilled veggies also, so all is well. Anyway, that was that, and it was fun.
Fast forward again, a few days later, back on the flight back home, and then home. I have to say the burrito I had on the flight (surprise, they served food food) was the best I’ve ever had.
I have to joke about the psychedelic/hypnotic light/music in the airport, but it’s so bad it isn’t even funny. A relative of my advisor had a migraine just being there. Sheesh.
Oh, almost forgot, since I didn’t really see anything, including at the Old Town, which was an hour walk to see a bunch of shops, I started photographing graffiti, including a can of paint I found on the ground used for these deeds. I have to say, these people weren’t too creative or skilled, so that pretty much sucked too. But hey, it was colourful, at times. Put up some of them up at the usual place
That triplog sucked, but it’s got to do.