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4 of us in Lindos
Here are the two Andres and Michael (from Germany) as well as myself all hanging out in Lindos. Greetings all. So I am officially leave Greece heading towards Marmaris, Turkey in 4 hours. I'm taking a ferry there that supposedly takes between 45 minutes to an hour and a half, so it seems pretty reasonable. I don't have an exact plan but I know I'm flying from Antalya to Stuttgart in the middle of the night on May 15th, so in the least, the endpoints are defined. I haven't purchased my ticket to Zagreb yet but I'll either be there at 11am on May 16 or May 18.
(NOTE: COOL link below of Mike playing music!)
This week has been pretty eventful, needless to say. Sara (who is actually Sarah), the Canadian backpacker from the last addition, was really cool to hang out with. Most of the others at Mike's were couples that kept to themselves so it was nice to have someone to run around with. And once the conference got going, the list only grew. As it turned out, the conference was at some super resort hotel that was several miles from the middle of Rhodes town, so often people wanted to go into town. Having arrived early and stayed in the part of town
full group in Lindos
Our fully group at the Acropolisin Lindos. everyone wanted to get to ended up to be a big advantage because people would always be wondering where to go and how to get there. This just meant that overall I was hanging out with a lot of conference people once it began on Tuesday, their names I'll get to.
As far as the presentations themselves, I was actually quite nervous mostly because they were two completely different talks that each had to be delivered with 2 hours of each other. I didn't have a room at the main hotel so I was practicing by the pool talking to myself. This made it a little awkward when 6 year old Greek boys walked by, but I made amends. The talks were actually well received and I got a chance to meet some great researchers that I had really wanted to establish a contact with, so professionally it was a successful experience. But those stories aren't so juicy so I'll stop there. It may sound like I'm having nothing but fun (which is true) but I had days of attending countless talks as well. I didn't sleep much but I didn't come here to do that.
The first
appreciating Lindos
Nature calls for Andres, haha night of the conference, I was really happy to be over so I met Sara at a cool bar (actually I'm typing there now). This Canadian couple Will and Janet came along because they were meaning to go into town. We ended up running around and eventually we made it to a restaurant that was showing the Champions League games. Another group was watching it too and as it turns out, they were at the conference too. They were a pair of Andres's and they turned out to be people that I hung out with every night thereafter. They were both from Columbia and in fact, the same university for undergraduate, but since they were spread out in grad schools in various parts of Europe. It wasn't until they met each other in the airport that they knew the other one was coming, so that was a pretty cool story. That night, we ran around to different bars in the Old Town and the next night we explored more of the bars in the New Town. Our crew grew as the days went on so in the end we had people from Germany and Spain amongst us as well, so
me at the IPDPS banquet
I'm at the banquet here being very respectful, of course. it was cool to meet people from various parts of the world with various opinions but all there because of parallel computing. It really brings people together. So does Ouzo (Greek's national liquor).
I had mentioned that Mike, the owner of where I was staying, was a respectable man whom I'm currently writing a biography for. Amidst all the conference action, I saw him less and less. One evening, he accused Sarah of something rediculous and more or less kicked her out. I decided I didn't need his complaining and his baggage so I figured jumping ship was the best way to proceed. I didn't owe him anything and I felt I helped by listening and understanding him but the point is my life isn't about Mike so he can do his own thing and I'll wish him the best; I can't let negative people bring me down. So long story short (you can read my book for the full version), I left the next morning silently bringing my entire pack to the conference. Thankfully I was able to store it in my new friend Tim's room for a bit. And thankfully after that, Andres found out that it was simple to add me to his room, so in the final nights I actually stayed in the conference hotel with him (I can't thank him enough for making it so easy!), so that was incredibly convienient. In fact, I just left there and am doing laundry now as I wait for my ferry.
On Friday, our crew of Canadians, Columbians, Germans, Spainish and an American rented a pair of cars and made our way to Lindos. It is the second largest town on the island and is on the east coast. The town itself climbs a hill with a beautiful beach on the bottom and an ancient acropolis at the top. Soon there will be pictures galore of that town and that wonderful day of hiking, fun, crepes and "ruins" ((inside joke) thanks to Tim's photography skills ;-). We all exchanged emails so hopefully I can add some of their pictures too, once I get ahold of them.
I'll try to put some pictures up again soon but it might not be for a while so you'll just have to wait! In the meantime, Yuksel, who I mentioned in the last post, sent me a video of Mike playing a song. It is in a strange format, but I put it up online
here (the "COOL link") so feel free to check that out! I know you can get this strange file to work in Real Player but I also read you can convert it to whatever video format you want.
I'm probably missing something but that's the general theme. I'm overly excited at the awesome people I met at this conference. I feel several will remain friends and professional contacts together at the same time for a long while. It's exciting to know that the official backpacking portion of the journey is only just beginning. So next time will be from Turkey. Thanks a million once again for your emails and comments.
brad
p.s. good luck to the Vancity crew at Coachella! Let me know how it goes! I might be seeing Coheed and Cambria in Europe in June and/or July; evidentally they will be in a couple festivals in Germany and Denmark. I'm thinking of going to both.
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visiter-az
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presentation
Hi Brad, In 2000, the greeks completed renovation of all major tourist attractions. Lucky you for seeing Athens post-expensive modern repair. If you haven't had a shot of Uzzo, you haven't been to Greece. I demand the word Uzzo show up in your blog. Did you present on behalf of UBC? Also, do you have any video of your practice sessions near the pool? And what makes a backpacker really cool?