meeting

Had my meeting with Professor, where I showed him the latest results. We decided to meet on friday afternoon - my last day - to sync up. Also told him I would be taking off the next day to my sister's place.

More of Lugano

Today, we checked out of hostel, and to our dismay discovered that only 1 bus leaves from this place to Lugano every 2 hours. and we just missed ours. So, we made the long walk to Lugano. Halfway through it, I discovered I had left my passport behind, with the girl behind the counter. And instead of going back decided to collect it later. Went to mini switzerland, a place where they had built miniature versions of all the touristy places in Switzerland. Somewhat for the children, I must say. Roamed about a bit more of Lugano, savouring the lake front beauty. Took some cool photos too. Went back to get my passport and was back in time to catch our 7 pm train back home. After 2 changes of trains, going through the longest tunnel - Gotthard tunnel - in Switzerland, we were back at 1 am in Lausanne. The waether change was amazing. The moment we left sunny ticino, the weather became damp and rainy. No wonder, the Swiss just go in hordes to Ticino.

Ticino

Went on the long 4 hour journey to Ticino. The jouney was beautiful, and appreciated it as much as my sleepy eyes could allow. Changed trains in Domodossla, which is actually in Italy and was off to our first stop at Locarno. It's a pretty town, mountains and a huge lake. Very similar to Nainital in some respects. There was a wine festival going on. You can buy a glass for CHF 5, and taste the wine from different local vineyards that had put up stalls. Got a good deal of information about the speciality wine making process in broken English. Here people hardly speak any French or German, only Italian. And people are very belle to. :-)

Went on to Belinzona next, to visit some nice castles. And as usual, there was another fair going on there with food, music, gymnastics, and fun. From there went again by train to Lugano. Each of these places are 20 minutes apart by train and very similar. We had a hostel booked in Figino near Lugano. Dint get anything there itself, as there was the Lugano Jazz Festival going on. And to our surprise, the last bus to/from figino to lugano was a 6 pm. We caught the last bus to Figino and checked into out hostel. And thankfully, there had a couple of bikes we could rent. I got a cool racing bike for myself. We took the Swiss national bike route - Nord-Sud Bike route 3 - along the lake lugano. It was a beautiful route. But halfway along the route, we had to take the highway to Lugano. That part was a bit scary with little space on the side of the road, and cars just whizzing by. Anyway reached Lugano after 2 hours of toil, but fun. Had some of the awesome italian pizza in a restaurant, mostly stopping there for the belle waitress i must admit. And then we parked our bikes nearby and went into the various - 5 or 6 - stages were live performances were going on. All the piazzas - yeah, Roma style - were packed with people swaying to some terrific music going on. And not just jazz, but all sorts of music. Around midnight, after 2hours, Gaurav was feeling immensely tired from the whole day - starting 6 am - of activities. We decided to go a back. And this time took another mountainous road back. Getting lost or almost lost a couple of times at 1 am in the night was quite some fun. Finally, managed to locate our hostel and promptly slept off.

Onto Ticino

Today, was just fixed planning up the trip to Ticino, Italian part of Switzerland. Went with Gaurav.
Had planned to take the 6:15 am train on saturday morning, so dint do much partying today and slept off early. Gaurav slept in my house, as its much closer to the station. And probability of both not waking up is lesser than one not waking up. :-)

Photos !!!

Finally, got the enthu to create nice thumbnail pages and post my summer's photos on the net. A nice thumbnail and html generator of course helped matters quite a bit. Some photos, specially the hiking and Vienna ones are real nice. Check them up at http://www.cs.rice.edu/~santa/pics/

But, again faced this unknown strange problem. All my French Riviera photos came out too grainy. I was thinking maybe this was because it was a fuji film, and I did kodak photo development - Amit confirmed that he had asked a technician about it and it can't be the case. Or, maybe it was a high speed speed(yeah, ISO 400. Normally use 200 but this was a left over film) - but, it was a bright sunny day, and should not have happened. The third option which I think is the case - the film was passed through the x-ray machine at airport. It affected the film; high speed films are affected and not the low-speed ones - I read it somewhere. Hence, my ISO 200 photos came out fine. Films should always be kept in hand bags, where lower intensity x-rays are used.

Evian les bains

Today evening, Gaurav and me took the boat from Ouchy to go to Evian across the lake. And we were in France. Both of us had proper visas, but was curious to check if we would be checked. Sure enough, while boarding the boat, the police just pulled us up from the crowd and checked out passpost/visa. My US driver licence dint work; tried it while entering france by road, and it had worked. So, had to show passport and visa, et. al. Boat trip was 45 min, and it was a fascinating view of the lakes and the shores.
Reaching Evian, we went around the city, entered a casino, had some amazingly bad and costly Thai food, and then it started raining. Spent an hour under a tree by the lakeside before catching the ferry back to Ouchy. Gaurav commented - that the people of France did not seem very friendly, even compared to the Swiss people. I guess in small non-touristy towns, this happens. Encountered it in the villages of wild west Texas too.

Get together

Tonight Vibhor, Gaurav, David and I got together in my house for dinner and bridge. David studies at EPFL, but had spent a year at IIT Delhi as an exchange student, and hence knew these guys. I made some pretty tame pasta. And we also realized we did not have cards. So, we spent the better part of the evening chatting up.

Lausanne Buses

Should put on record my observations on the city buses here. The buses run on electricity through overhead cable. Hence, they follow special lanes. On nights, these buses shorten (as do the trains) - by cutting short one of the two boggies. Even then there had been quite a few times, when I was the only passenger on board. Today, there was an accident on the road between a bus and car. bumber to bumber really. But, the vehicles had stopped on road, and 2 policemen were taking pictures with a digital camera. As our bus could not follow the lane, the driver came out, pulled down the rod which connects the bus to the overhead wire, and drove around the lane in petrol. Got to the other side, came down again to put back the rod to the wire. Had seen the same thing being done in Kolkata in the trams too. But, by quite a few people there. Here, just one driver, cum conductor, cum repairman. Swiss efficiency, huh !

Yet another bad day

Had to cancel my hiking/biking plans to France. can't really go with my full pants and shirt and feeling absolutely stupid. The concierge is on vacation and hence I cant get the keys even today. Need to wait for tomorrow morning, pay 50 Sfr fine and then get the keys.
Did some more shopping having nothing else to do. And went to a movie at night in the Orange Open Air Cinema. The movie was Bourne Supremacy, and quite a bit of the movie was shot in Goa.

Lost key :-(

My troubles never seems to stop this week. Tonight I lost my house key. Had gone out shopping in the old city of Lausanne with Regis today afternoon. But, everything is so expensive here - dint end up buying much. Then in the evening some friends came over, and I went out with them for dinner at their place. And reaching there I realized I did not have my key in my pocket. Searched a lot all around the way and everywhere. dint find it. And hence spent the night outside my room, in the drawing room couch.

Final Countdown !!!

Or so it seemed. Friday at 10 am was my meeting with my professor here. He was coming back from a 3 weeks vacation, and I was meeting him after almost 1 month. Had promised to deliver my package when he comes back. And was working non-stop over the last few weeks to meet the deadline. Needed to finish it anyway with just 2 weeks to go.
So, anyways. Yesterday after slogging whole day and even missing my last French class, all my prayers were answered. (Dint pray stupid, I am a commie, you see). Code started running around 9 pm-ish. Very happy, and forever careful, I tried to make a backup in my cs.rice.edu machine. I had a backup there from a few days back. And Horror - I did the opposite. scp-ed from rice to epfl. And overwrote my code. Sat in stunned silence for a few minutes. Did not know what to do. Searched for some open editors to maybe retrieve a few files. None. Gave up. This was the third module of my project, and I was to showcase this tomorrow. Then I discovered that the backup was pretty old, and hence had only 4 files instead of the current 12. And the rest 8 files are still okay. Faint glimmer of hope. As I was braindead, i loaded up my laptop and went home. Worked till 1 am, and finished 2 of the 4 files. But, 1 major file was left for tomorrow.
Gave alarm and work up at 5 am, and was in office at 6 am. Then, to my horror my laptop wireless would not work. It had happened a few times before, but did not expect to happen now. And of course, moor's Law. The DHCP server just would not respond. Tried doing it frantically for 30 min, and then gave up. 6:30am. Started hand copying the code from the laptop to my machine. Finished copying. 7:15am. Stared with the main file, pretty complicated too. Doggedly worked on it and debugged. And it finally started running. 9:15am. A few more bugs. Fixed. 9:35 am. Just 25 minutes before my big demo, I was redone with my code. Of course, coding the second time was much faster as I remember parts of it, and the logic was already worked out. Then gave demo to my boss from 10-11 and 1:30-2:30pm. He was very pleased with what he saw. And said "excellent" and "very good" several times. And hence, I felt "very good" too. This was a very close call. Promised myself to take the pains of creating a cvs repository even in a new place.

And now, since the afternoon, have been chatting with friends, browing, blogging, and planning the weekend. :-)

About Languages

For quite a while now, I am vexed by languages. Started with discussions about "All Indians speak English, right?" And then the electronic scripting and printing in Bengali and other Indian languages. How come I have never seen one single bengali keyboard in my life, but only the glorious literature? So, did some investigations.

I very much hate the idea of being educated means knowing English - what had become in India now. native tongue is so much better for beginners. Higher education, I agree is better in english because of our multi-ethnic population, as well as so much of science and technology being in english. Anyway, but need to do away with this stupid notion of english=>educated. I found only about 5-10% of Indians know English. Rest don't, or can barely speak a little. I had assumed atleast 20%, and hence was very pleasantly surprised. Next, more than 40% people know Hindi, and a majority can understand or speak. So, this is very good news. But, hope those hindi-ites don't go about imposing Hindi as the mode of government as they tried to do with the Official languages bill in 1963-65. Pride in diversity.

And about Bengali - it is the 5th most spoken language in the world. And, still i cannot read anandabazar.com on mozilla. I have to open using IE, which I had to reinstall. (I had removed it from my windows laptop). This is such pathetic state of being. All because of this stupid fascination with english. Found some people from Bangladesh working on a project to put bengali script on mozilla. Will surely try to contribute my bit. So the saying is true - Bangladeshis are keeping the language alive. So, my next project is to learn about rendering of fonts.

In office....still

Leaving office for home at 10:15 pm. Need I saw more, why I don't have anything to blog today. Unless you want to see tons of lines of code and my shred hair, of course. Anyway, coding majorly done. Should be done by tomorrow, for big demo to boss on friday. Met Jun Luo, one of Prof. Hubaux's students for lunch today, and discussed work with him. Well, to be frank - I am glad I am doing PhD in an US university. Because, most of the students graduating from Europe need a stamp from US anyway (in computer science, of course) and hence end up doing post-doc there.

La Poste

Today I got a mail from out secretary informing that I had some mail. They happened to be mails sent more than 1 month back to my earlier place of residence, and redirected here. And pretty important stuff too. The Swiss govt wanted to see proof of my health insurance, and a reminder after one month of that saying that they will put me on some compulsory health insurance if I did not respond by 19 Aug. Rushed to speed-post them my health insurance proof from La Poste - the post office. Also, I need to go to the immigration and tell them that I am not extended my permit B to work in Switzerland. Such a hassle.

La poste is pretty cool though. You can pay any merchant in there. The other day Kodak sent me a bill for film development. I went to La Poste and paid the bill. They will credit it to Kodak through the account number on the bill. In fact, I can also pay my house rent in the same way.

Indian Mathematics

An email discussion with my friend, Amit, who had just attended a lecture on the topic:

Yeah, I agree there is definitely some jewel of mathematics that was done in India from Aryabhatta to ramanujan. There was the vast period of dark ages in India though, from 0 AD to 19th century (right after Vikramaditya's Golden Age), coupled with Muslim and British invasion, which is said to be the Indian dark ages (except for the development of modern number system. Which makes me wonder, how can a development so profound take place in such a disconnected fashion. Do we then don't know about all the developments in that period?) It completely ruined much of our advancement as well as our self-confidence in ourselves. And it is so heartening to see us rising the wave again.

I am actually in the midst of reading a exceptional book on number thory and mathematics - The man who loved only numbers - a biography of Paul Erdos as well as a history of mathematics. Only ramanujan is mentioned amongst Indian mathematics. And that the number systems and zero was from India. A LOT of work was done in Egypt, Babylon, Persia and of course Greece over the last 2000 years, which India majorly missed out on. Or, maybe they are not as well-publisized, and that's why people why what Dinesh Singh are doing is so important.

Amit Kumar Saha wrote:

The talk was pretty good and if the speaker Dr. Dinesh Singh is to be believed than many of the great things in mathematics were found out by Indians much much before the European mathematicians found them out.
Examples are :

1. Pythagorus theorem - with constructive proof.
2. Pascal's triangle - almost the binomial expression. The actual
expression was later found when going through the notes on Pascal's
triangle by the Indian mathematician. It was of course found out by
European mathematicians later.
3. sine, cosine, differential of sin = cosine. Lots of trigonometry stuff
4. Calculus was very developed, much earlier than Newton.
5. Many numerical series analysis were done, in particular, 1*1 + 2*2 +
3*3 ... as well as 1³ + 2³ + 3³ +...
6. Value of PI was known to 5 decimal places and a series was given to get
the value of PI to as much detail as required.
7. Decimal notation and system of numbers (10 numbers)
8. Concept of infinity, even different levels of infinity and that
dividing by zero is not a good idea.
9. Sets, countable, uncountable.
10. That the earth is round, spins on its own axis, and that it goes round
the sun - Aryabhatta. He also gave an analogy - a person sitting on a boat
feels the bank of the river go past him, whereas actually the person is
moving.
11. Ramanujan gave some formulations of number of prime numbers which are
less than a certain positive integer and later gave an exact proof.

And all these happened over an era of around 3000 years and with many mathematicians involved. Basically, many of the fundamental advances of maths were already there in India, starting from the Indus Valley civilization. Makes you wonder, it is not for nothing that the Indian civilization has survived for so long.

On-the-beach

Today, I was supposed to go to Interlaken for canyoning. Alone, as noone else I could find who wanted to risk both so much money and life on this effort. But cancelled it as I was dog-tired, and just unable to get up after yesterday's hiking. And there were quite a few guests in our house, Monica and Aaron from Italy and USA respectively. We spent the morning chatting, having lunch with pasta (what else?), and went in the afternoon to the beach on the lake opposite our house.
They infact reminded me that today was India's Independence day. I had completely forgotten. Jai Hind! Had a nice time swimming in the cold lake waters, with quite a few ducks and swans for company. One problem going to the beach on a sunny day with Caucasians is that
they prefer staying on the beach to work on their tan, rather than enjoy the water. Watched a movie - Chronicles of riddick - in the Orange Open Air theatre at night. It was one of those science fiction movies, and I don't enjoy them much. But, the environs with lake waters lapping at your feet and open air was very nice.

Hiking

Today Vibhor and I went hiking. Left by the 8 am train for Montreux. Walked for an hour by the lac to see the chateau de Chillon - a medieval castle on a man-made island on the lake. Then we changes some buses and small trains to reach Les Diablerets. It's a beautiful place surrounded by still-snowy peaks. And took a long hike along the mountainous trails and ups and downs. We had packed our lunch - sandwitches - and had it on the way. Did not go up the ropeway to Glacier 3000, as it was very cloudy and hence the 54 CHF to go up would not be really worth it - we can't see anything. On a clear day one can see Mont Blanc (highest peak in europe) and Jungfraujoch (highest peak in Switzerland) clearly. It is also famous for skiing in winter. The trail back was along a beautiful mountain river, with rapids and little waterfalls. Came back home at 8 pm, exhausted after more than 8 hours of hiking, but thoroughly enjoying it. Slept off immediately.

Fondue

Fondue is supposed to be the most exotic Swiss dish. And had heard about it for a long time. In fact a friend who had interned in Switzerland last year had told me, "whatever you do, don't forget to have fondue". So, today I and Balu went to have it at a special fondue place near the cathedral. The waiter turned out to be from Bangladesh, and specially recommended choosing the fondue and accompanying wine. And the fondue was served with boiled unpeeled potatoes and bread. And fondue was --- a deep pan of cheese kept liquid by a flame from beneath. That's it. They just liquify cheese and you are supposed to dip the potato and bread in it and have it. Soo cheesy. Though my roommate promised that he will treat me to proper home-made fondue which I am bound to like. But, cooking fondue? Just take some gruyere cheese and liquify it. Viola ! fondue is ready.

Finally about some internship :)

After another long day working today, had one more part of my summer project done. Started the third and last part today. And guess what. Software designed it on paper. Rarely do it for programs, unless it is really hard. But, I don't want to take any chances, and want to do this the proper and nice way too. Summer internship are actually good coding exercises for me. During the academic year in school, one gets to do mostly things within a simulator. And, hence these summers are refreshing changes for me.

At home all 4 of us talked for a long time. Cleared a long time doubt of mine - why do Germans allow American soldiers on it's soil even after the end of cold war. The reason Philippe told me - they were completely segregated from German life anyway and hence they didn't mind. Also, no politician in Germany is willing to take this step because of their history. But, now with so much of injustice, they are rethinking. Like countries like Philippines, Japan and Korea did or are doing. Then Philippe and Regis started playing guitar. Both play pretty good. And I again felt sad at not knowing guttering. :( Ok. Will learn it after I go back to Houston. Atleast, I can play some chords and stuff

King Arthur fizzled out

Today was the premiere release of King Arthur movie. And one of my roommates, Christian from Peru, had gotten tickets for all of us. Though it was drizzling, we went opposite to the Orange Open Air theatre at 9 pm. But, the show was cancelled due to rain and winds. They gave us a plastic poncho too for wearing, but the screen just would not come up. This orange cinema happens every summer for 2 months, just by the side of the lake; where they put up a screen and seats, and show a new movie every day. And this was the first day it got cancelled. I think I am bad omen for orange cinema - first time i tried, it was house full. Second time, it turned out to be original version german, and third time, was tonight. But, they refunded back the money and also gave a free ticket for any other day. So, if I want to spoil another show, I might as well go another day. :-)

Also met Balu again, and had a walk and drink along the lake. He is going on sunday back to rice, so might go somewhere on saturday.

Fahrenheit 9/11 finally

Tonight, finally got to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in one of the europlex theatres at Lausanne. Somehow it fell off my priority list after having missed the opening night. Anyway, had heard a lot about it and the way it is sweeping the theatres worldwide. And frankly, I was disapointed. It spent way too much time on some arbid people talking about loss of their son and stuff. I mean give it a break - killing of 15,000 iraqis and maiming and humiliating and orphaning hundreds of thousands only get some footage, and the killing machines - that is what i call the American military - gets so much of teardrops for loosing all of it's 821 men. Shameful.
But, then Moore is a much better business and showbiz man than I am. And clearly because of all these, his film has become so popular with Americans too. And hopefully will convince some of them to help US rejoin the world. But, I was looking for that burning-little-girl-in-Vietnam image captured in this documentary, so as to change the public opinion definitely as that image had done in Vietnam. And it failed.

Lazy day in Lausanne

My first dimanche in Lausanne. All other sundays, I was out somewhere travelling, hiking, biking, getting burnt in the sun and sand or something like that outside of Lausanne. But, not today. Today was bright sunny. Not that I saw the sun before almost midi (noon). Went out to sit and read by the grassy lakeshores with hordes of people. Had a four hour siesta after that. Made some excellent pasta before that for lunch. Become a proper pasta expert, after having been sufficiently trained by roomies. Then my whole evening was spent in doing some work for the GSA yellow pages. I am the webmaster of GSA, and anything that goes on the site, I have to manage. And read some more at night, and went to sleep afterwards, thought sleep was hard to come by after such a long siesta.
Oh, forgot to tell. In my visitation by the lake side today evening, suddenly I heard my name being called out. It was Regis, calling me from his parked yatch. Entered a yatch for the first time in my life. Very cool interiors with wooden panelling and leather and all that. And of course it has GPS and tv and stuff. It even had 2 beautiful bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a open deck on top. Very impressed by it.

Geneva fireworks

Spent a lazy saturday today at Lausanne. Went out and sat by the lake - filled with hordes of people - reading and enjoying the sun and lac. Went for a long walk along the lakeside and reaching EPFL in 90 minutes. People were playing all sorts of sports in the meadows by the lake, sunbathing, swimming in the lake, sailing, kayaking, what not. The place was buzzing with activity.

In the evening went the geneva to see the greatest fireworks show in Europe. The lakeside was crammed with people, part of a week long festival celebrating the national day of Switzerland. As if they needed a reason to party. Barely got a foothold in the place. Food was there from throughout the world. The theme country was Vietnam this year, and so there were lots of Vietnamese culture and food and items on show. And Vietnam is one of my most admired countries too. Wanna hazard a guess as to why? :-) Lately had started liking Paella and Sangria - Spanish food and drink - and had it over there in the fair. The fireworks were very cool, musical one, so the fireworks pattern danced with the music. Had seen musical fountain before in kolkata, but first time musical fireworks. Returned with a full-to-capacity train load of people at 1:30 am back to Lausanne, and promtly fell asleep.

Lausanne nights

In the evening went to see Beach Volley Competition that was going on in Ouchy. Lots of teams from all over the world had come to play in this event, including teams from Brazil - I could assume the reason for them being so famous.

Tonight, my roomie was urging me to go visit the nightlife of Lusanne. We went to a variety of pubs and micro-breweries in the centre of Lausanne - Place de'la europe and centre city. Then went to Amnesia near the lake. It was jammed with people - being the most popular - in 4 rooms. And came back late at night.

Inscrutable Americans

Over the last few weeks, discovered a nice way to wait for and travel in buses and trains. I have to take a bus to the metro station, and from there take the train to EPFL. Waiting times are not all much, and I can reach door to door in 30 minutes. But, there being a schedule, I found myself initially trying to follow the schedule, and rush to the bus stop just in time of the bus.
Then, like other people, I started taking my time. Leaving the house at my sweet will, book in hand. And while waiting at the stations and reading, wishing that the bus come late.

And finished The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur. It was such a funny book, about an Indian Village bum doing studies in USA for 1 year, and his experiences. Gopal, the chief protagonist had amazing insight inspite of his poor English Grammer. A quote from Gopal after watching his first American football game - they should play more of it maybe. Then they will be beating up themselves, and would not have time to beat up the world anymore. But, the end was so pathetic, so very kind of insulting, that it did not feel just right. But so many of the situations and comments I could identify with throughout the book, it was hilarious.

work..work..work

Need to finish quite a bit, so all day work. And part of my program started working too, cool.
In the evening, had my french class. And then continued with my lessons at home with Regis.
It is very late tonight and should go to sleep. ciao.

Meeting

Today I had a meeting at 12:45 pm with a professor here, Jean-Pierre Hubaux. We discussed my work and related research and other stuff over lunch for an hour. Then he had a phone meeting with some collaborators at IISc, Bangalore.
Talked a great deal with my new roomate, Regis Chatelain today. He is swiss and from Lausanne. A very ernest and nice guy. Invited me to see the Geneve fireworks from his fathers boat this weekend. Also, told me a lot about his personal life and troubles in all it's eighteen glorious years. Almost felt like an elder brother advising. He is learning english, and can get by. But, of course conversation between us was slow. So, we converted it into a session of learn-French and learn-English for each other, and it was a hit. My other German roomate had told me that he had learnt French in just 1 year by interacting and speaking always in French. Maybe this will help.

Monday blues again

Did not get much sleep. Had to get up again at 7 am - all of 3 hours of sleep - to drop-off the car back to the rental office before they open. Then went to EPFL and tried to work with tons of coffee. But, program bugs seem very hard to fix with a tired mind. At 5 pm, my french class started. Yeah, I had registered for a class. last thursday, I have a test and had to pass it, as this class was not the absolute basic one. With my previous summers class at Rice of french 101, some luck, and good guesses I had passed the test. The French teaches was an elderly lady who was like a Hitler, scolding and berating us. But, she is the best teacher around, I heard, and you can learn a lot. So, every weekday except friday, I am booked for french from 5-7 pm for the next 3 weeks.