Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Hi all, it's been a while. Here's what's been going on in the past month.

First, at the end of April/beginning of May I was working on some papers, as I mentioned last time. The cool thing is the conference that these papers were submitted to is in Korea, so if my paper gets in, I get to go to Korea to present it.

Oh yeah, and I went paintballing. The last couple of times I've been paintballing, it's been indoor paintballing. It's pretty different from outdoor paintballing which, as far as I know, is the only kind that people in California do. The pace is way faster because everybody starts off closer together and the field is so much smaller. So each game is over fast, and you get to play more games, and when you get shot you don't have to sit out very long. Which are all pluses. The downside is you don't get to play around in the dirt, crawl around in ditches, take cover behind a tree or a bush, or otherwise make use of a real landscape. Instead you just have these big inflatable artificial obstacles. So the experience is somehow less cool.

Ok, so then about a week and a half ago, I drove out here to New York. I am interning at IBM Research for the summer, working on some compiler stuff, and I'm staying at a house in White Plains. The place where I'm staying is awesome, not because of the location or the space or the other people who live here or anything, but because the landlady makes 3 meals a day for me, and does my laundry. And the food is good. The landlord, landlady and the other 5 tenants are pretty cool too, though I don't see them a whole lot since everyone's gone most of the day.

White Plains is about a 35-minute train ride from Grand Central Station in New York City, so last weekend I went to the city. Visited MoMA which gives free admission to IBM employees. Also last weekend I met up with my cousin's family who lives in White Plains, which was probably the first time I've seen them in 8 years or so. We went biking, which was cool. Every Sunday in spring, they close down one of the parkways here and let bikers and rollerbladers use it. So that's where we biked; nice to have a wide open highway to ride around on.

So that's what I've been up to lately. If this summer is anything like my Microsoft summer in terms of how I keep up with this blog, I probably will only be posting about once a month, so be warned!