Hotel room 2.0

A day and a half later we finally arrived in Leicester. After walking all over Schipol yesterday, from shop to shop and from cafe to cafe, I think we pretty much covered the entire airport. (For those of you who are technologically curious, my laptop is an Apple Mac with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo with 2 G RAM — I prefer the 15" display since it's large enough to work with but small enough to travel with; I think the 17" is just too unwieldy.) Unlike Memphis, we had a good dinner (pasta), prepared with simple and fresh ingredients. We flew the last 1.25 hr from Amsterdam to Birmingham in business class. We were split up and I think Core had the better seat with more legroom. I was right up against the bulkhead so a little cramped. The light snack, consisting of ham-wrapped goat cheese and three little fruit mousse balls gave us enough sustenance to stay awake for the car ride to Leicester. Had we arrived earlier we would have taken the bus/train to Leicester, which we thought would have cost us about £30. As it was, the A2B service cost me another £20. Oh well, at least it was door to door. After we unpacked, we went downstairs to relax with a glass of Guinness for Core and a Caffreys for me.

Our first room was ok to sleep in but this morning we found absolutely no cold water pressure in the bathroom. The hot water wasn't flowing terribly quickly either, so I ended up having a bath in a bout 4 inches of water. Pathetic. There was not enough pressure to drive the shower head, and what there was was scaldingly hot anyway, so a normal shower was impossible. Worst hotel plumbing I've seen in years. Corey had to skip a shower altogether and after a full day and a half in transit she was not happy. Breakfast helped, but what really improved my mood was the hotel bumping us up to a better hotel room after a brief, calm inquiry as to why the previous room lacked water pressure. I guess they know that floor requires remodeling. They said that the new(ish) room was on a floor where they had recently remodeled. Hotel room v2.0 is much better. I have a little "executive" desk for the slaptop and Corey just sung out of the bathroom that the shower is "normal" and hence acceptable. Now all we need is an iron and ironing board and we should be all set.

Back at Schipol I finally found a really cool power adapter for European (actually global) electrical outlets. It's that cylindrical black thing in the picture to which I plugged in my traveling extension cord. It's not a voltage converter, so it won't step down the European 240 V but it has all the wall plug prongs all in one neat little package. You just slide out whichever prongs you want to plug in. On the back side it has outlet holes for any plug making it truly universal. Luckily, most of the electronics gizmos that I travel with have their own power converters so that you can plug them in to either US 120 V or European 240 V outlets and they'll step the voltage appropriately. I charged up my laptop and cell phone this way last night so the adapter appears to be working as expected. Finally someone designed this little appliance correctly. The other one that I carry around in is this clunky box to which you have to snap on the various prong extensions. Which means you have to carry all of them in a little vinyl bag. Most annoying since these things stick out all over the place, puncturing everything including the little travel bag itself. I'm so happy with this new "Swiss universal adapter" that I think I'll buy another one on the way home.

Schipol

Schipol airport. It's a nice airport, nice shops, cafes, restaurants. I guess we'll get to know it fairly well since we'll be spending the next 8 hours here. The flight out of Memphis was delayed by about 90 minutes, making us miss our connection to Birmingham. The next flight out of Schipol isn't till 21:05. We then had planned to take a combination of bus and train to Leicester. Originally I was hoping to check in by about 16:00. Because our new late arrival we'll miss the last train out of Birmingham. So our options are to either spend the night in Birmingham or hire a car to drive us to Leicester. I guess we'll opt for the latter. Which likely means a larger expense over the train as well as a really late arrival (midnight or later).

This is the second time NW has done this to us. Maybe this is a common occurrence. They certainly seem to be prepared for it, judging by the number of rebooking counters and automated kiosks. It was fairly easy to get new boarding passes printed so at least that aspect was relatively painless. But that still doesn't help with the remainder of the screw up. The whole day is pretty much ruined as a result. I mean I like Schipol, but not enough to spend 8 hours here. A hop out to Amsterdam downtown? To find a coffee shop there perhaps? We did that last time but I don't think we're game this time around. Six hours to go...

Memphis

Dinner in Memphis. Not that good. The entertainment wasn't either. I've never liked the solo guitar player/singer act. This guy didn't change my mind. He sang in a very squeaky falsetto. The food was awful. We both have stomach aches. I had the crab cakes, Core had the catfish. We both had soggy vegetables on the side. Core had the mac and cheese, or more like mac and velveeta. Yuck. Meanwhile the flight's delayed an hour already. It's oversold as well so it's going to be packed. First thing we'll need to do when we arrive in Amsterdam is go to the recheck counter and get rebooked to Birmingham. Last time we did this (on our way to Dundee), they redirected us to Glasgow and lost our luggage in the process. I remember walking around the conference in sweat pants. Most embarrassing. Hopefully they won't repeat this this time.

The future's so bright...

...we gotta wear shades. (Remember that song? Timbuk 3 was the 80s band that did that one; wasn't bad actually, kinda catchy.) Here we are at GSP again, on our way to Birmingham, England, then Prague. It's late afternoon but it's still quite bright out and we're sitting right in front of the window (where I found a power outlet for the laptop).

For this trip I booked an "open-jaw" ticket, which lets me fly in to BHX but then fly out of PRG. I didn't know they let you do that, but it ended up being more convenient than having to return to Birmingham from Prague. I wish I had done this for the Zurich trip earlier in the year. Luckily European flights (in and out of smaller airports) are cheap. I booked a flight from East Midlands to Prague for 60 pounds. Not bad. The actual flight only cost 10 quid per person but they ding you for luggage, taxes, and various other "options". Prague was a kind of last minute idea, but since the conference I'm attending in Leicester was only two days and EuroGraphics in Prague ran all week, I thought what the heck let's go. My flight should be being reimbursed by the first conference since I'm delivering the keynote there. And a paper as well. The work students did last year with a prof from out west turned out pretty well and so I'll be presenting the technical aspects of the paper. The keynote is more of a review of others' work as well as a bit of my own.

I thought this was going to be my last trip this year. Turns out I have to drive down to Charleston next month. Meanwhile Rio in October is canceled due to dual paper rejections, pity. The conference I sent my paper to allowed simultaneous submission to a co-located workshop, but both venues sent back rejections, so we're not going. You can't win 'em all I guess. On a more positive note, although I'm not presenting, I do also have a paper at EuroGraphics (the educators' track) that I asked a colleague of mine to present. So on this trip I'm picking up credit for two papers. "Dziękuje i za to" as my Mom would say ("and I'll thank you for that as well").

We should be boarding soon. Next stop is Memphis, TN. Then on to Amsterdam and finally Birmingham. In Birmingham we have to take a bus and train to get to Leicester, our destination for the first segment of the open jaw. Should be a really long day. Hopefully they'll have those little private DVD players on the Atlantic hop. A couple of movies really helps pass the time. Either that or a long snooze since we're on the red-eye. Next blog entry is likely to be from Schipol since I know they have wifi in the airport and there's a nice cafe there where we'll probably grab a coffee. We'll need it after the flight. Bon voyage!

The Morning Routine

Get up, feed the cats and let them out. Then it's off to the gym. An hour or so later a shower followed by a sensible breakfast (OJ, mini bagel with light cream cheese and a vanilla yogurt). That leaves time for a cup of coffee, a check for any new email messages, and perusal of various web pages. Sometimes, like today, even time to enter the blogosphere. Oh yes, why a picture of Harley? After they've been let out, like Hobbits they'll often come back in (maybe several times) for second breakfast. Their first course is moist stuff from the can, they then come back in for second helpings of the dry stuff. Which they seem to like well enough. After that they get let out once again to spend the day outdoors. But they don't seem to venture very far away, sometimes spending most of the morning on the deck railing as in the pic. (Today Sidney came back in for a third course and then hid under the bed. Very strange since she's usually quite eager to get back outside. Maybe something spooked her? I had to chase her out but finally once I put her on top of the recycling bin and opened the kitchen door she jumped down and out like normal. Goofy cats!)

That just about describes my "morning grind". Corey's is a bit different in that she does a workout at home and then prepares lunches. We generally eat at our desks, munching on salad and fruits. These days it's still quite warm so I throw the lunch box on the back of the Harley (the bike, not the cat) and ride that to work. During the first week the "campus cowboys" (as they used to be called at TAMU), meaning the parking enforcers, are pretty lax about handing out parking tickets. They give this grace period that seems to drag on for weeks if not the whole semester. This results in full parking lots, with many of the spots designated for faculty/staff occupied by students. So the bike makes a lot of sense: less gas consumption (last week I think I filled up for about $6) and a guaranteed (well, almost) parking spot right in front of the building. See what I mean? Not counting half the bike on the far left, mine's the 3rd from the left with the helmet on the back seat (no helmet law down here).