MistarOblivion

Another week has passed since my last post - time flies, I guess. I know it's been a while, but now that everyone is busy with their projects, things have settled down a bit. It's been mostly work, eat, sleep, aside from a few notable happenings. Also note that aside from the pictures here, I am now linking directly to Cathy's Yahoo photo gallery, which is updated daily (wow!), and Robert's photobucket page, in the bar at the right. Anyway, the picture above is from his gallery, and it hangs above the entrance to a store that sells manga, anime, videogames and figurines in Den Den town. 'Otaku' means something like geek or nerd in Japanese.

We've been attending a series of Grid Computing talks in the mornings for the past two weeks. It means waking up extra early and taking a bus ride to the other campus, but they're interesting enough. Last week, Wilfred Li, the director of the NBCR, gave a lecture. It was mostly a cheerleading session for his software and the concept of Grid Computing in general. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, grid computing deals with aggregating computing power from many different places. Instead of using a very expensive, centrally-located supercomputer, grid computing means using smaller sets of supercomputers communicating together over the internet to run business applications and solve scientific problems like the docking simulation I am working on now.

Last week Marshall and I took Dr. Li out to dinner after his talk, which was fun. We got to chat with him about biology, computing, and advancements in the field. It turns out that he did his post-doctoral work for my PRIME mentor (and boss) at UCSD, Phil Bourne. We had a great time, and after quite a bit of searching through downtown, we found great place for dinner. It seems that we're getting pretty good at navigating around the city.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to entertain this week's speaker. His name is Rajikmar Buyya, and he's from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He's creating a worldwide grid computing system loosely analogous to the Internet, where all programs are run on one (or a few) massively distributed supercomputers, and people pay for the distributed computing power they use instead of buying personal computers, as is the case now.
Its an interesting (crazy?) idea, and there are many challenges (political and economic ones, not just technical), so I can't say that I'm sold on the idea. Maybe the ARPANET detractors had the same misgivings? He's been all over the 'E-Science' and 'E-Business' news as quote "someone to watch in 2006", so somebody takes this stuff seriously. I'll have an opportunity to 'watch' and discuss some of these misgivings with him tomorrow, so maybe he can convince me. I had to chuckle a bit when he listed Worldcom, Enron, and Compaq on his list of corporate partners (circa 2002, of course).


I know I mentioned our 4th of July plans last time, so I'd better recap. Luckily, we were able to enjoy the occasion with a proper fireworks display. Here, it seems, you can just walk into storefronts along the subway station at any time of the year and buy baskets full of the stuff! Nothing too large or dangerous (don't worry Mom...) was acquired, but there were some notable ones that I hadn't seen before. My favorite were 線香花火, or Senko Hanabi, which are difficult to describe. I guess you could call them Japanese sparklers. They are thin and delicate, and you hold them upside down. When you light the wire at the bottom, a white hot ball forms, and travels up the fuse. As it burns, it goes through many different stages. First it flickers coyishly, then becomes like a tiny aerial firework on a string, then for the finale, it becomes an amazing, almost organic, fractal structure with forking and twisting tendrils, like something between nerve endings and ball lightning. You have to hold the stem very still in your hand, despite the excitement, or the ball will shake loose and drop before it gets to the top. I'm told that because they are affected by humidity, Senko Hanabi burn differently depending on the time of the year, and are at their most exquisite in summer. I didn't take this picture, but found it on Flickr. It's a good one, but you really have to see one in person to appreciate how absolutely beautiful it is.

The weekend was fun. Marshall went to visit a friend in Tokyo, so Cathy, Robert and I spent Saturday in Den Den Town again, visiting all the electronics, video game, and comic book shops. I was on the lookout for a video game that my friend back home wanted, but everywhere, even in never-ending Den Den Town, was sold out. Luckily, "soldo outo" is how you say that in Japanese.
Aside from that bit of bad news, it was a fun day. Cathy found us a great katsu restaurant down an alley in Dotomburi. Katsu is a way of breading meat. It's usually served over rice, and sometimes mixed with with egg. Finding new restaurants is definitely one of my favorite things to do here...




Sunday, Ichikawa-san took us to America-mura (mura means village), which was interesting. It's mostly a shopping district, and despite the name, it wasn't very American at all, except for a few souvenier shops. We had some excellent takoyaki though, for which Osaka is famous. Takoyaki are little fried balls of batter filled with tako (octopus), mayonaise, and green onion. Quite delish.

All the prices there were pretty outrageous at the shops there: 40 dollars for a T-shirt, 60 for a collared shirt, and 180 for pairs of jeans. We managed to find a thrift-store in the expanse of trendiness, eventually. There was some crazy vintage clothing along with the normal stuff (bright purple cordorouys, "1978 Bass Fishing Championship" wife-beaters...), and they were selling most everything, including used American license plates, for 300 yen (3 dollars). The 'Pay-by-Weight' section was what really floored me. They had large scales with baskets set up, and you just loaded clothes onto them for 5 yen a gram. This converts to about 20 dollars a pound, so it wasn't exactly a steal, but interesting all the same.

For lunch, we went to a ramen-ya in Dotomburi called Kiboken. This was probably the highlight of the day, but not because it was especially delicious or fancy. If you order the spiciest thing on the menu (bottom left) (there's a printed warning next to it), and finish it in under 15 minutes, broth and all, you get your picture put up on the wall. Needless to say, this was something I had to do. It was good - more scalding than spicy - and it really didn't get to me until I had to slurp down the dark red soup at the end. My 6 minutes was well within the 15 allotted, so I now there's a grinning picture of me and my empty bowl on the wall in the cramped little shop on the river. Marshall's been craving spiciness since we arrived (most Japanese can't really handle spicy things) so I'll probably go back there this weekend... and race him to the bottom of a bowl.

The past few days have been uneventful, other than the lectures, and have mostly involved lots and lots of work, punctuated by (good) food and (insufficient) sleep. We went to dinner with some guys from the lab tonight; Takeda-san (who helped us set up our parallel processing) is leaving on his own international research trip to Singapore for the rest of the year, so the dinner was to see him off. We had Okonamiyaki - those pancake things I described earlier - except this time, we had to make it ourselves! They gave us a bowl of ingredients (batter, spices, veggies, ginger, various uncooked sea-creatures...) to mix together and pour onto the grill in the middle of the table. We were kindly assisted by our hosts, who knew what they were doing, but it was a struggle nonetheless. Still delicious, though.

Work is going well, and I have to send another progress report back to UCSD at the end of this week, so maybe I'll have some more cool science-y pictures for my next post, which hopefully will be soon. We've got a lot of great things planned - Peter Arzberger, the PRIME organizer and all around superhero, is paying us a visit, so we'll probably party in his honor. Then Cathy's 21st birthday is on Saturday, and we're planning something (maybe karaoke) for that. We'll see. It should be fun!