Hamburg is a beautiful city, full of trees and parks, crisscrossed by canals, a river, a lake, and the third-busiest harbor in the world.
I had to present a paper at the ACM WiSec conference. Because of constraints back home I could only stay at the conference long enough to present my own talk, but I arrived in Hamburg at noon the day before and spent an enjoyable five or six hours strolling around the city. Read on!
A few sights that I had missed on previous visits to Delhi.
I had an extra day in Delhi so I decided to see two of the many sights that I had missed on previous visits: Purana Qila and the National Museum. Read on!
Finally, a visit when I can actually see the historic tower.
On my first visit to Delhi, in December 2008, I was disappointed by our visit to this monumental piece of history. It was, as so often happens on December mornings, densely foggy. We could barely see higher than our own heads, and thus the towering minaret of Qutb Minar, 73m in height, was virtually invisible. Today I finally got to see it! read on…
The Olympic Peninsula of Washington state is a magical place.
I was in Seattle for a workshop and decided to stay for the weekend so I could go out to the Olympic Peninsula and visit my advisor, Carla Ellis, for the weekend. What fun it was to see her and her new retirement home. It was a gray and even drizzly weekend, but I had fun taking some photos from a state park where we went for a stroll.
The Olympic Peninsula of Washington state is a magical place, which in its low slopes is much like a rainforest. Here, near Port Townsend, is a fantastically moss-green forest, quite a sensory experience coming from snowy NH. Above is a shot of the eery, mossy woods in the park. The peninsula gets a lot of rain and fog, so the woods are green year ‘round.
At right is a close-up of the bark of a madrona tree, which sheds its bark annually.
See the photo gallery.
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I was fortunate to be able to visit Bangalore once again, to attend the COMSNETS conference.
It is so nice to be back in India, in Bangalore. I came so I could attend COMSNETS, a computer networking conference, at which I had organized the NetHealth workshop. Those were great, as was an afternoon spent visiting Microsoft Research. What was best, though, was a chance to visit some of my favorite places, including MG Road, Cauvery, Infinitea, Sampige Road, the IISc campus, and friends in our old IISc neighborhood. Read on…
A few days in Avignon and some of the surrounding areas, under sunny skies and in fantastic weather.
I had a chance to spend a long weekend in Avignon, one of the most beautiful old cities of Provence. Read on!
A chance to return to Bangalore, for 8 days.
I had many reasons to return to India. There are the professional reasons, of course – I had a paper accepted at WISARD (a workshop associated with COMSNETS in Bangalore), and I was invited to participate in an Indo-US workshop on infrastructure security, held at IISc. But, personally, I was really missing India. The friendly people, the fantastic food, the sights and sounds and smells, and let’s face it, the nice weather this time of year. Read on for more…
Almost a year away from home.
We’re home! After just 24 days less than a year away from home, we’re back. According to the airline, we flew 29,000 miles, from Boston to Paris to Bangalore to Sydney to Auckland to Fiji to Charleston to Boston, not to mention all the layovers in between.
It’s nice to be back, although a little strange. The house is pretty much the same, though I now see it through different eyes. It seems huge, and we seem to have so much stuff. The cat recognizes us, and seems to he happy that we’re back. We’re buried in boxes, having shipped home almost two dozen bags and boxes as well as the 10 checked and 6 carry-on bags we brought with us (and which, believe it or not, I managed to fit into my Prius along with all five of us, to get home from the bus stop.)
I’m not sure I’ll be adding much to this blog for a while. I think it will be nice to not be traveling. If I find some time, I might dig through some of the videotape I shot while in India; although I focused most on still photos, some of the videos might be fun.
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My favorite non-fiction about India so far.
I’ve just finished reading this excellent 2006 book by Edward Luce, a journalist who lived in India for five years as the South Asia bureau chief for Financial Times, and who is married to an Indian. His prose is wonderful, his insights fascinating, and his anecdotes amusing. Definitely my favorite non-fiction about India so far [though I still recommend Nilekani’s more recent book Imagining India.] It is a must-read for anyone who wants to begin to understand India.
In his conclusion, Luce cites four major challenges that India must face in order to thrive:
Indeed, he quotes Vijay Kelkar in noting that “The twenty-first century is India’s to lose.” Huge challenges, and huge opportunity.
For a more extensive (and professional) review of the book, see the NYT reviews [Macintyre, Grimes]; the NPR interview with the author is also very interesting. The book is available on Amazon.
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The best of the best.
With 5,662 ‘keeper’ photos from India, it was awfully difficult to narrow them down to my favorites. I tried to select a dozen in each of several categories, based on a mixture of criteria – trying to represent the diversity of people and experiences, and also an amateur notion of what makes a nice photograph. I hope you’ll enjoy them!
[nature] [people] [children] [farms] [streets] [sights] [IISc] [universities]
This post was transferred from MobileMe to WordPress in 2021, with an effort to retain the content as close to the original as possible; I recognize that some comments may now seem dated or some links may now be broken.
David Kotz 