Friday, September 15, 2006

ALGO'06

ALGO'06 is in Zurich, Switzerland this year. An incomplete list of what happened:

(1) It is essentially impossible to get to a flight on time in Heathrow Terminal 4. You go early enough and they won't tell you where to check-in. Self-service check-in machines are hidden behind the fast bag drop queue, which in turn is hidden behind another queue. Before going to security you need to wait outside the airport building. And of course you know the security itself. I went to the gate at 15:52 when the flight was supposed to depart at 15:50. Of course, I could still catch the flight. Half of the people would have missed it if they didn't wait.

(2) Switzerland probably has the most expensive McDonalds among the places I have been to.

(3) As everyone knows, people don't really listen to talks. So they designed something to keep you busy.

(4) Just before my talk, someone looked at my first slide which was already shown on the screen, and asked me "Is Fxxxxxx Cxxx the wife of Andy Yao?"

(5) In a reception, some girls asked me where is the "boy" that was with me. They were referring to Txx-Wxx Lxx. When they knew that he is already a professor, they couldn't close their mouths for a few seconds.

(6) As far as I can remember, I have never been to a conference together with the professor mentioned in (5) above. I should try to do it more in the future. You just hang around with him and some girls will appear and talk to you. I mean, it never happened like this before and it couldn't be me getting more handsome, right?

(7) How many more times do the officers in passport control in London airports like to ask this: "What do you do here?" "Lecturer." "Lecturer! What do you lecture?" How could they sound like surprising when the thing is written on both the visa and the landing card? And should I say "algorithms"?

1 comment:

hkeric said...

HKPost staff also ask "What's your surname". Am I supposed to read the name on the card before "stealing" my won parcel?