A nice medium sized airport

 I have flown into Chicago Midway many times. My usual journey to the midwest would be flying into MDW, and then driving a rental southward about a hundred lonely and dark miles on the I65 (mostly night flights) to West Lafayette, Indiana - a delightful wee college town. Not as delightful as Ann Arbor, obviously - but it does have its charms.

The thing is, life and times change and I now have no more occasion to make that particular journey. Future travels are likely going to take me through the mountains of Central Pennsylvania, through the understated, yet very cool Lehigh Tunnel and suchlike. However, I find myself retaining a certain fondness for Midway. The city of Chicago itself - I like a lot. But the Midway airport - well, it is a tad unfashionable to speak of an airport such - especially not one as beautiful and resplendent as Singapore or Dubai. But Midway is special.

For one thing, this airport (operational since the 1920s) was renamed in 1949 after the epic Battle of Midway in WWII, where US carrier battle groups dealt a crushing blow to the Imperial Japanese Navy. This airport has been through several ups and downs. The somewhat seedy neighbourhood doesn't help too much, however the location is quite central.

So, here are a couple of pictures. One of a US Navy WWII warplane. Also, I noticed that instead of murals and advertisements, Midway airport has chosen to decorate its walls with images from scientific institutions in Chicagoland. Microscope images, fossils and so on. Says a lot about the city.

The giant in the field

Last September, I was in Chicagoland and the neighbourhood with the missus. We made a trip to the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park which is a collection of strange and beautiful esoterica. A few examples are below. The Park is part of the Governor's State Uni, a small 4 year school located a short drive south of Chicago. Most of the works are outdoor pieces which both confuse and impress.  worthwhile expedition, even if it was in the sweltering heat. We called ahead to ask for directions and the Park Director himself came out to meet us. He brought a couple of chilled water bottles for what was obviously a lunatic photographer and his long suffering wife.

Museum hopping in Austin

So we wanted to go to the Blanton Museum of Art. A long-ish while ago, mah sister drilled into me  the semi obsessive museum hopping while visiting new metro areas. Haven't really had any regrets about that. I would say that the Washington DC experience is somewhat special (in the continental US, that is). Europe and India is a whole other thing.

However, the Blanton was inconveniently closed - and we had an hour to kill. It was also sweltering outside, so we sought refuge in the Bullock Texas State History Museum. As we simply did not have the time(or energy) to explore the exhibits, I ended up trying to get a few shots of the beautiful mural on the lobby floor.

The Austin Art Wall

I took the missus up to Austin this last weekend (MemDay). One of the more interesting things we spent a lot of time looking at was the Baylor Street Art Wall. This is a patchwork of concrete walls and floors set into the hillside. Anyone with a can of spray paint and a moderate inclination to climb can spend a weekend Michaelangelo-ing their personal manifesto. Of course, since this is a public space, your contribution may be painted over the very next day. So it goes. Parking is iffy on Baylor Street, which is itself accessible only by a somewhat steep, though thankfully short ride. Austin roads are  full of surprises - crest a small hill and find yourself rollercoasting down a much nastier slope. But this ride was worth it. Here are some pictures.

Remember that time - 3

Pittsburgh.

Court and Chamaree planned this during Spring Break. That happy time is not bereft of snow. So the drive down to Pennsylvania was not quite as pleasant as it might have been in summer. The city though - is quite something. The number of bridges is quite impressive. This is a place I wouldn't mind staying medium term. We stayed at this place rented by Court's friends - who ran a co-op coffee shop. I believe that venture didn't quite work out, more's the pity.

Here are the girls planning the day's events.

The CMU campus has this rather impressive piece on campus. Looks like a crowd of somnambulists taking the stairway to heaven. Very trippy.

 I felt compelled to go visit the Hindu temple on the outskirts of town. Quite a nice place. The first purohit to worship here(the closest equivalent would be a consecration, methinks) was also coincidentally, a Bhattacharya.

We did the usual Mt. Washington climb, shown here.

There is this thing called the Mattress Factory which is more hipster than Williamsburg. But it does have a quaint midwestern charm to it. Unfortunately, my fingers were more or less frozen stiff on the snow. So, no pictures. Or atleast, no decent ones. Was a nice trip.

Doha: the travelogue continues

So turns out that all these years of staying outside the vatan have made me.. umm.. somewhat racist. Allow me to explain. Frankfurt airport is full of sweaty white people. Most of them don't even speak my language (apart from that one awesome security bloke who turned out to be an old, chainsmoking Trekkie who turned out to be an expat WestCoaster who claimed to be from the Republic of California - go look at the Cali state flag.. but that is a different blogpost). Anyway, I found myself drifting through the swirling palefaced masses in Frankfurt completely unfazed. As if it were my (Gawd-help-us) comfort zone. This is the same me - which would have suffered minor panic attacks if set down in the middle of Dilli. You know what, I would still panic if I found myself in Dilli. So Frankfurt was so very normal to me.  Right down to the hick in front of me who couldn't quite work the Euro system. Said hick was also wearing a stylized Confederate flag shirt, so well... 

But then I ended up at Doha. As you, dear reader, have been following my travelogue with barely concealed impatience, you obviously know of the circumstances which brought me here. In comparison to Frankfurt, this place was alive. Western European airports are marvels of clinical efficiency, throughputting millions of jetlagged people with calm thoroughness. Now what does that put me in mind of? Nevermind, moving on. Doha terminal is this huge agglomeration of sweaty, tired humanity, complete with spilling baggage and squalling children. And somehow, this puts me in mind of Ashtami nights out near Ekdalia (that is a Durga Pujo reference to you Awbangalis). The point, of course being that being up close and personal with your fellow human being, such a basic, not-even-thought-of criteria of survival in our part of the planet, has been largely turned into a memory by the West. Even to me. 

And that was a rather frightening realization.

The trip out

Ya' know, I had planned to write this, and several other blogs while in India. Leetil did I know that vacations can be so strenuous. So here I find myself writing up the collected experiences of a midsummer trip to India, where amongst other things, I got hitched.

But before all that, way before all that - the trip outbound. 

Drrr Kovalskyy and his family had very kindly agreed to drive me to Houston - a rather longish trip. The conversation veered to the study of English and its comparison with various European languages. And somehow, I found myself frantically googling Past Perfect Participles and Gerunds. I have managed to spend half my life steering clear of the nuances of grammar (having studied at CBSE schools helped), and being asked such perplexing questions were causing me to have Vietnam-like flashbacks. Of primary school, that is. 

I must mention Dr. Dan Streetmentioner who had compiled the most comprehensive and authoritative handbuch of grammar - one equipped to deal with the very complex situations arising out of time travel. There was, I believe, something called the "Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Subjunctive Intentional". Grammar Nazis, or Gnazis (the 'G' is silent, just like the 'P' in Psmith) as I like to refer to them can rarely be reasoned with. Flamethrowers are recommended.

Anyway, we made Houston in excellent time and the plane toodled off. Shortly after take off, I found out, to my deep disgust, that United (and apparently most other US based carriers) have now begun charging for the booze on international flights. The shame of it all! Will airlines never learn? Here is a simple lesson. If you are an airline exec, please take it to heart:

1. Free booze makes people happy.

2. Free booze makes people sleep on flights.

3. A flight full of sleeping passengers, dreaming nice dreams is a good flight. People will not loiter around the walkways and the restroom.

4. So please serve free booze on international flights.

Ok, enough with the booze. When you fly long distance, I recommend the "Hindu meal". Hot veggie food, and it is always served before anyone else gets their meal. Alright, so after hopping over the pond, we finally made it to Frankfurt. Where the plane landed and then spent a cool 45 minutes chillin' on the tarmac. Of course they didn't bother giving us any gate info about connecting flights, 'cos that would have been too convenient. So I ran a brief obstacle race to my connecting Lufthansa flight to Mumbai which was pulling away from the gate even as I got there. 

Things were getting interesting.

Battleship New Jersey

This day is propitious. Or it was, almost six hundred years ago, for the British. For on the 25th of October, 1415, in a recently ploughed, rain muddied field in an entirely undistinguished place in France called Agincourt, the English won a battle. The English monarch, Henry V's inspired leadership and exhortations aside, this battle was won by the English commoner, in the form of the most effective European artillery of the time - the longbowman. And in turn, this battle was lost by the nobility of France, their knights in armour - the very flower of French society and the natural leaders of their state. The event lives in memory through the words of the bard himself. This is where the 'Band of Brothers' speech on St. Crispin's Day comes from. But that is not why we are here. The reason for this extremely complicated start to this discussion is because this battle heralded the end of the age of chivalry and the beginning of a process which I can only describe as the democratization of war itself. Armor would not show itself to be superior on almost any European battleground for more than 500 years, when these two former enemies would join hands at a place called the Somme. But for the moment, Agincourt had shown that heavily armoured knights were easy targets against the massed firepower of poorly paid common archers.

The naval parallel is almost too easy to make. Battleships are as the armoured nobility of the high seas. When these capital ships engage, the engage as did the knights of yore. They move in close and slug it out like heavyweight boxers magnified a billionfold and encased in unbelievably thick armour. Smaller ships, like minnows, get out of the way of these orcas. The art and science of battleship warfare came to its stunning climax off the coast of Jutland in midsummer 1916 where the two greatest fleets in modern history, the British Grand Fleet and the Imperial German High Seas Fleet met, and sought to annihilate each other.

With this engagement, the day of the battleship was over. Unfortunately, no one had mentioned this to many of the naval strategists of the world powers. What few doubts remained about the obsolescence of battleships were put to rest on a Sunday in December 1941 by the Japanese. The future belonged to carriers and now, as we know it to submarines. But battleships continued to be built, if only for the remaining years of WWII. And they continued to be marginally useful as giant gun platforms, but as smaller vessels increased their firepower, even this role was usurped from them. Still, the very word "battleship" evokes a very special feeling - that of awe. With that immense scale, that terrifying firepower, battleships were the last titans of the ocean - when they fought, the heavens stood still and watched.

In the days following the debacle at Pearl, the US Navy scrambled to replace the losses it had suffered. The Iowa class of capital ships formed part of that plan. The USS New Jersey was commissioned in 1943 and saw service throughout WWII in the Pacific. Later it was decommissioned, then recommissioned in time for Vietnam, the mothballed again, then brought back - well you get the picture. Suffce to say that this was one of the longest serving battleships ever and was probably the last such vessel to sail the seas. Today it lies moored quietly off a pier on the Camden waterfront, just across the river from Philly. This was where I spent my Sunday midday with my friend Rudra - and I have a few pictures to show for it. Here goes.

Cambridge

Kalyan and I were hopping around Harvard Square, looking for a suitable pub. It was drizzling with that half-hearted melancholia that I have always associated with North American rain. The hour was half past six, and the summer residents of Cambridge, graduate students and other bums were making their way wearily home. We found this tiny pub which actually had some garden seating. The equally tiny waitress was nice enough to clean up a table for us. We sat back and the pils gradually brought in this blissful feeling of well being. The first three songs played (off the tiny waitress' iPod) were a Metallica, a Queen and an Eminem. This piqued my curiosity. I ambled over to the bar and demanded to know if she had flicked my playlist. We struck up a conversation about the relative merits of Eminem and why Kanye West is awful... and then I felt that abandoning Kalyan to his beer was not nice, so I headed back. Then, the next thing I know, this bloke is at our table and wants to know where I am from. 'Michigan', I reply. 'Michigan? Fuck Michigan!' says he.... to which I raise an interrogative eyebrow. He lets me know that he is from Connecticut, and I should know that people from the Constitution State have issues. (I did not know this for a fact). Anyhoo, our friend (turns out to be a local pastry chef) hands me his iPod in a spirit of cross-broder cameraderie and insists that I listen to Eminem's latest album, which, I have to confess is not that good.

Just another reason why I like Cambridge. Oh, and that tiny waitress with tha rad playlist is Nepali. Practically Indian, except for a few mountains.

Me back

The last two weeks have been very exciting. Two weeks ago, I was at Keystone, Colorado, presenting our lab's research (on behalf of my boss, I should add, who was at a conference in Croatia). Presenting the whole lab's work, and not just my own was rather terrifying. It was very exciting to see that our work was very well received. Keystone itself is a wunnerful place to visit, with beautiful vistas and great hiking. After the morning of the talk, we (I was fortunate enough to become friends with a great group of peers) we drove up to the continental divide, which was at 11990 feet, and then legged it up to the nearest summit. That was lung-bustingly painful, but awesome. Then we drove back, at which point someone pointed out that I should have a poster. I was totally unaware that short talk presenters were also supposed to have posters. Who knew? Anyway, I slammed together something with a giant Post-it and a few marker pens. Which turned out to be quite a hit. The next day was even awesome-er, with more hiking. The conference ended with a party at which there was some dancing and cartwheeling. Yeah...

Back from Colorado

The conference was awesome. I had the opportunity to interact with some really great researchers, especially with this comp-bio group out of Pittsburgh. We (our lab's work) was very well received, and I got a lot of great personal feedback. The high point of the meeting though was making friends with a bunch of great people who will probably be members of the scientific cognoscenti (read: people who will review my future papers, [massive dose of optimism in that there will be some future papers]). Yeah, great time.

I was especially excited to see that progress in coarse grained modeling and elastic network studies on fairly large proteins. And this one talk on GroEL by Horovitz which blew me away with the coolest FRET experiment I have ever heard described.

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