I have fallen way behind in writing, and now find myself teaching a parallel algorithms class to 35 students, so I might never get caught up.

Hong Kong Interlude

As a break from India, Casey, Nancy and I spend a week in Hong Kong. Nancy and Casey were on there way back to the US for Christmas and there was an algorithms conference in Hong Kong, so it was convenient for me to accompany them half way.

Almost all international flights to or from India arrive or depart in the dead of the night - our flight left at 1 AM. (This really angers some Indians, not because of the inconvenience, but because it is treating India in a second class manner.) Since we arrived in Madras at about 6 pm, we had plenty of time to kill. We took a taxi to a beach front restaurant and Casey was reasonably well occupied playing in the sand. My two main observations about Madras are that driving anywhere involves passing through a slum, and there are always strange festivals going on. On this trip the driver got lost in a beach side slum on the way to the restaurant and had to back track substantially. We passed by a number of groups of people singing and chanting with large banana leaf shrines set up. My return to Madras at the end of the week also featured a middle of the night drive through a slum, and when the plane was landing I could see large statues covered with multi-colored lights moving down a street. Madras continues to feel like an utterly alien place.

Departing India involves more formalities than leaving other countries. Since we are on long term visas I had to secure exit permits in advance. There was confusion over whether or not we had to identify our baggage prior to it being loaded onto the plane. I noticed one of our bags set off to the side with other packages - I asked about it and was told it was set aside for Malaysian customs. When I pointed out we were not going to Malaysia, but to Singapore the bag was put on the conveyer belt. Our two other bags were nowhere to be seen, presumably already on their way to the airplane. (One of the bags was routed via Kuala Lumpur, taking several days.) While waiting to get onto the airplane, I had a long conversation with a man from Singapore who had just spent three weeks travelling in India. He was quite shocked about the disorder and filth in India and commented that you would never see a person "easing himself" on the street in Singapore. He also told me all about one of Singapore's social ills - apparently juvenile delinquents would put chewing gum on the door sensors of the new mass transit system - the solution to this problem was to ban chewing gum. He was all for the ban.

Hong Kong Hong Kong is an amazing place. It is crowded in a different sort of way than India is. I had been justifying part of the chaos and aggressiveness of India as being a function of the population, but that can only be a partial explanation given how orderly Hong Kong is inspite of a far greater population density. Another striking aspect of Hong Kong is that it stays open late - India shuts down very early at night. What was the strangest thing about Hong Kong? That's easy, it was the snow making machine that was set up in a plaza and for 50 HK$ you could make a snowman and have a snowball fight. Second strangest? Seeing the city go apeshit over Christmas, the buildings had tremendous display's of lights. Third strangest? The ISAAC program committee's karaoke performance. The big downside to our Hong Kong visit were health problems. Casey arrived with a fever and the doctor we saw ordered us not to leave the hotel until Casey had recovered. Later in the week Casey and I came down with a devastating 12 hour flu but fortunately recovered just in time for our continuing flights.

Return to Bangalore I returned to Madras late at night, and put myself at the mercy of a taxi driver to find me a hotel since I didn't have anything booked. I ended up at the hotel Picnic, which was rather spartan (but not very clean). Everyone insisted on a little bit of Baksheesh. The next morning I went to the train station and felt like I had descended into the fourth or fifth world. (Nothing like a visit to Hong Kong to cause a fresh dose of culture shock). The station was crowded, dark and dirty with people bathing on the train tracks. My trip to Bangalore was straight forward - I spent a long time talking with an IIT graduate whose dream was to build a robot controlled motor cycle, although he was currently working at a Mig plant hidden in the remote jungles of Orissa.

I arrived back at the apartment which was fine except for a week's accumulation of dead ants. The power went off within a few minutes of my return, and the auto's went on strike the next day, so it was comforting to know that Bangalore hadn't changed. The auto strike was a moderate inconvenience since we rely almost exclusively on them for getting around town. The one day token strike stretched into several days after the police clashed with the strikers and arrested the leaders.

Jubilee Workshop I had returned to Bangalore to attend the computer science department's 25th anniversary workshop. I did not have particularly high expectations for the workshop - I expected that it would consist of a group of invited speakers (myself included), sitting in a room, giving talks to eachother, and feeling too guilty to skip out because of the small audience. However, the workshop was extremely well organized and well attended. I must have had close to 200 people listen to my survey talk on astrophysics. This was the first chance that I had to talk to a general audience at IISc, and I did manage to make a number of contacts outside of the computer science dept. My talk was followed by a talk on Lambda Calculus. My experience has been that giving a talk on Lambda Calculus is roughly equivalent to shouting FIRE in a theater - people can't get out quick enough. However, there was no rush to the door - even Lambda Calculus went over at the workshop! One of the amusing (yet tedius and boring) aspects of the workshop was the formality - instead of introducing the speakers, it was necessary to introduce some else who then introduced each of the speakers in turn. This was carried a step further at the cultural program. (The cultural program was a survey of Indian dance, and each of the individual dances were short enough so that it was quite interesting.) Prior to the dance there was an awards ceremony. The awards were being given to a set of dignitaries who received awards all the time and had minimal connection with the workshop. Each award required a chain of at least three introductions before a long winded speech was given and the dignitary received a bouquet of flowers.

Hyderabad After the workshop I was going to spend some time working at IIT Kharagpur (located about 150 km west of Calcutta). I decided to travel via Hyderabad and Orissa to do some sight seeing along the way. I had a morning flight to Hyderabad, and left for the airport a little on the early side just incase something went wrong (what if the autos go back on strike . . .) and arrived at the airport more than an hour early. I checked in and killed a little time brousing at a bookstall and then cleared security and discovered that it was time to board the plane. The schedule had been changed, and the flight was leaving an hour earlier! I got the last seat on a boeing 737 that belonged in the museum of flight. I have never seen less legroom - I had to have my carryon on my lap since there was no possibility of getting it down by my feet. IA flight attendants are not particularly picky about carryon or seatbelt rules.

I arrived in Hyderabad an hour ahead of my schedule and checked into a pleasant old hotel. The first place I went to visit was Charminar, a tower in the center of the city which was billed as "second only to the Taj Mahal as a building which represents India" which is about as extreme a boast as I have seen in the Indian tourist literature. However, the interesting thing about going there was that I ended up in the middle of a densely populated muslim neighborhood, with various streets devoted to bangles, pearls, and metal work. It had an extremely different feel than other areas of India I have visited. (Although given the size of India, maybe I shouldn't be surprised at its variety.) The number of people there was mind-boggling. After spending several hours walking around aimlessly, I went off to the zoo which was very spacious and modern. The highlight of the zoo was a collection of dinasour sculptures hidden in dense foliage which match anything that Spielberg could come up with.

Day two in Hyderabad was Christmas. The only reminders of the holiday were a slice of christmas cake with my omlette at breakfast and a christmas tree with santa claus cutouts in the hotel restaurant. I planned to spend the day at Golconda fort. Golconda was a massive city/fort which was wiped out in the 17th when the Deccan Sultanate refused to pay tribute to the Mogul Emperor. I planned to take an auto to the fort, so I waited for one outside the hotel. Finally an auto showed up, although it looked as if it dated from the Deccan Sultanate and could barely make it up the hill. The driver couldn't understand where I wanted to go, so stopped to ask someone - I said "Golconda", the interpreter said "Golconda" to the driver, and the driver said "Golconda" and took off. This ended up working out very well, since the driver became a very enthusiastic tour guide and showed me around the sites and gave detailed explanations. (However, the explanations were in Telagu, so they were of little use to me). One advantage to having the driver showing me around is that it was easy to avoid picking up another tour guide. Since guides are often very inaccurate, and to be honest, I didn't really care which pile of rocks was the royal stable, and which was the harem, I was just as happy with the Telagu version. One of the myths about Golconda fort is that it was accustically designed so that if you clap at the bottom, you can be heard at the top. However, since everyone is told this, there is a continual clapping of hands over the entire fort, so it is a little hard to test. A visit to the fort consists of a long walk up to the top of the fort. The driver spent his days on the streets of hyderabad, certainly breathing in more diesel fumes than oxygen and as far as I could tell, his only form of nourishment was from cigarette smoke. Needless to say, it was I, and not him that was out of breath when we reached the top. The fort had a tremendous bat population in the surviving store rooms.

The rest of my time in Hyderabad was spent at museums and walking around town. I ended up going to the airport several hours early to have a quiet place to read. My next note will describe my visits to Orissa and West Bengal.