Dilip Simha's blog world

My second paper gets published and its big, its ASPLOS! I was all set to travel to London to present my paper at Royal Society near Piccadilly Circus, London.

Though London is one of the most charismatic cities in the world and I was all excited to be an active tourist, my primary goal was to make an excellent presentation and build contacts with experts who attended the conference from across the world. ASPLOS is one of the premier conferences in Architecture, Storage field and I was very curious to know what type of work gets published in such conferences and what type of people are working on them, etc…..

I landed in London on a fine Sunday Morning(March 4th 2012). I took the Heathrow Express train from Heathrow to Paddington(Central London) which is costly but takes just 15 minutes against the inexpensive alternative local train which takes more than an hour and waiting time is 2 hours!

At Paddington, I took a taxi to my hotel which which was around 1 mile from Paddington station and I started realizing how expensive it is to stay in London. The taxi meter read 5.1 Pounds!!! The message was loud and clear “Welcome to London”

I stayed at Mornington Hotel, which is located a few minutes walk away from Underground Tube Station at Lancaster Gate. The hotel rooms are extremely small and one cannot expect much for a budget hotel(100 pounds a night!!) in London. I could stretch my legs and hands to almost touch all corners of the room, that’s how small it was. Bath tubs(Showers) have only half glass doors(cost cutting). So a strong stream of shower will make the entire bathroom messy! Luckily the A/C in my room was not working and hence I was promoted to another room which was much bigger, but half doors in bathroom still existed.

I attended the poster session on Sunday evening and then went around Piccadilly Circus. By the way traffic circle is called circus in London.

Next 3 days went on with intense technical discussions and presentations from brilliant people across the world. On many occasions I just couldn’t fathom the idea behind those successful papers. So I went back, read the papers again and again until I was convinced to appreciate their idea.

To me, one thing is for sure, if a paper is not accepted, it doesn’t mean its bad.. it might be hard luck. But if a paper is accepted in a big conference and I don’t understand why, then I am a BIG failure. This failure is bigger than not getting a paper accepted because the committee members who are involved in deciding the fate of the paper are no laymen. If I don’t respect them today, who will respect me tomorrow? So it was an arduous task to concentrate for 8 hours at a stretch daily and remember those 8 hours are geeky times…

It was my D-Day on Wednesday(March 7th) and there were butterflies running all around in my stomach. First time, I was standing in front of a crowd that consists of experts in professors from CMU, MIT, Harvard, ETH, Berkeley, Stanford, etc and fellows from Microsoft Research, Intel, etc…

I was nervous, but also very eager to seize the opportunity and make myself visible.

Presentation went good, received good feedback and accolades from many people. That was a huge burden off my back!

I made some nice friends on the way. Learnt a lot about UK and education in UK from a Phd student from University of Edinburg: Mr Bhargava Rajaram.

I then went around London with a few friends: Dushyant Bansal from IIT Delhi and Mehul Chadha from Rice University. 

I stayed in London for 2 more days to go around London.

I booked a tour with Evans to visit Windsor Castle, Stone Henge and Oxford City. Its expensive, but was totally worth it. The guide: Mr Phil was excellent with his non-stop commentary filled with intellectual comments and knowledge about historical facts about UK. He was talking like a professor with utmost confidence and he seemed to be a voracious reader citing from several literatures. There was one interesting story which goes as follows:

Have u ever wondered why we say: “Don’t take it seriously, I was just pulling ur legs”

There was once a cruel king in England, who believed all kinds of wrong doings should be dealt with equal punishment and that’s death! So irrespective of whether its a murderer, rapist or a child who is caught lying, they are all dead! Obviously some of the kids were extremely skinny and when they were hung, they didn’t have enough body weight to squeeze their veins and choke them to death. But it didn’t leave them happy too… It only caused severe injuries and hence they had to be hospitalized and once they were healthy, they would be bought back for hanging. Only if they escaped death 3 times, they would be pardoned. Now, think who pays for their hospitalization and associated costs? Its the tax-payers money. King is only a mirror of the society…. so there were several foolish laymen, who used to swing on the legs of those convicts thereby ensuring the eventual death! That’s why the phrase: Don’t pull someones legs … meaning don’t make a mockery of someones death!!!

This is quite a moving story and even if its not true…… it is atleast logically believable.

Our tour started with Windsor Castle. Its simply sooperb! It has huuuuge collections, gathered from across all the British colonies. Sometimes I felt so bad that some items that should have been in my home country are now sitting pretty in this place. But, in my opinion they didn’t steal it; they took it after winning the battles. Hard fought or not.. fair or not… that’s a different argument. Atleast I am glad that those masterpieces are well protected and displayed with fair acknowledgements. Anyway, the castle is filled with gift collections from across several different colonies that british empire ruled for several centuries. The way the items are presented is simply outstanding. I was awestruck.

After spending 2 hours at this castle, we moved on to our next destination, Stone Henge.

That’s a mysterious place which is still posing open ended questions to historians as to why the huge stones are laid out at this place, what does it say? why here? who did it?

There are some huge stones… which is known to weight in tonnes. Most people believe it acts like a calendar telling us what time of the year it is depending on when the sun light falls on different stones at different angles at different parts of the year.From there, we moved on to Oxford City, which has one of the oldest standing universities in the world. I can’t imagine how popular would Takshashaila university be today, had it withstood the destruction from Huns and other foolish invaders.

There are some nice monuments in this city which is still preserved today.

Like for example, there is a small building which has multiple floors which has the upper floors larger than the lower floors as shown here. 

That’s quite surprising, but it was built that way, because in those medieval times, landlords had to pay tax based on how much ground was occupied. So often the higher floors used to touch neighbor’s building! Quite clever isn’t it!

I also met a US military officer: Carl, who was very social and helpful to other tourists in assisting them to take pictures. He had a huge 6.8 frame which made me look like a dwarf. Hey… I am 6 foot tall by the way!

This is how I looked from his eye:

and this is a photo with Carl.

We then went to a fudge shop which was spreading its aroma like a wildfire.

Me being a sweet addict could not refuse to enter the shop. I was quite thrilled at seeing a young entrepreneur preparing the fudge all by herself. She has quite a smile and I couldn’t even afford to blink. She was sweeter than the fudge and I can’t believe she made me buy the fudge which was crazily expensive(4 pounds for a slab) and it was so sweet that even a sugar pill would have died of inferiority complex. Anyway, I don’t regret… whata smile!

Here she is:

We then returned to Victoria Street, London.

The guide told us that London is quite famous for Fish and Chips and so I decided to give it a try to Chips if not for the Fish.(I am a vegetarian).

The chips were OK…. nothing compared to the Hot Chips in Bangalore! Thats how u make chips!  Anyway, I can now claim….. Chips on the bank of Thames can’t even be compared to the Hot Chips from Bangalore on the same graph… not even logarithmically! Sorry for the pj.. I can’t hold it back.

The next day, I went to Wimbledon, which is in south of London. I have been to Flushing Meadows at NY, but Wimbledon is something very classic. It has its own charm and the feeling that you are in some sacred place. There is a beautiful museum out there and then I was allowed to the center court. Of course, I was restricted to a glass window cabin, but it was quite an experience.

I then went to Lords cricket ground, which is in Central-North of London. Unfortunately, authorities at Lords didn’t let me in because they think I can carry a bomb and blast it off! They were quite rude and so strict on some goddamn rules. They only allow 3 batches a day with guided tourist who can ensure that U don’t blast the ground. Thats what they told me in verbatim.

So basically any tourist cannot just visit the ground, not even the museum without the tour guide.

But after persuading, I was allowed to take some pictures off the practice pitches.

There was a huge statue of some guy called Taylor, about whom I never heard. Quite amused that his statue is put up so bold and clear and there’s no Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting, Bradman, Grace, Boycot!!!

Shame to Lords…..

That’s the end of London trip. It was indeed an amazing trip. Learnt a lot technically, historically, saw fashion on streets of London… Truly an experience to cherish.

Now back to Stony Brook.

work, sleep, eat, work, sleep, eat……. and then a paper and trip!!! I luv this life…

Lots of pictures can be found in my picture gallery:

http://dilip.nijagal.com/PhotoGallery/gallery3/index.php/Friends/London-trip

If you know me well, you know the username/password.

If not, please contact me.