Crossing the Road

In Thailand people drive on the left side of the road. As a pedestrian this took a little bit of getting used to. There are three stages to this process. The first couple days you keep looking left first until you realize that you are looking “with traffic” and, as you don’t actually have eyes on the back of your head, it isn’t helpful. The next few days your disoriented brain orders you to turn your head left-right-left-right then right-left-right-left as quickly as possible, until the traffic pattern finally sinks into your subconscious.

The Bangkok Sky Train (BTS)

Thais have an amazing ability to line up in an orderly fashion while waiting for the BTS, which in turn arrives in a timely fashion in approximately five minute intervals. The platform’s tiled pattern hints (and at some station blatantly points with yellow painted arrows) at the locations of where the doors of the stopped train will be and the locals line up in two single-filed lines at the sides of the doors, as if trying to convince the passengers that their air-conditioned, scenic journey has come to an end and it is now time for them to get off the train. Even more impressive are people wearing yellow shirts while lining up for the BTS!

Compare and contrast II

This is a view from the balcony of JR's friend, Tess', apartment where we stayed through last night. This view is particularly interesting because you can see the mixture of well kempt apartment buildings that are towering over the shacks of the poor. When walking on the street such barracks are blocked off from view (in some cases by fence-like dividers, which sometimes are falling over).

Greetings from Bangkok

About a week ago we landed in Don Muang International Airport. We took an air-conditioned Toyota Camry taxicab into the city. Riding in the taxi was very much a surreal experience (partially due to the 16 hour flight and lack of sleep). Even though part of me recognized that I have traveled literally half way across the globe, looking out of the taxi windows it still felt as if I was watching a show on the Travel Channel.

Visited Countries

This is a neat tool I found through Google, though I would prefer to have a visited cities map (so someone please get on that). The ones in red are the countries I've visited. Don't miss Vatican City!

Now here's a map of Thailand, not Taiwan, which is where I'll be this summer. (Taiwan is where my dad is now for a conference.) I hope to add another red blob to the map above at the end of the summer.

Left and Right Unite

A few days ago the gay parade held in Moscow resulted in the arrest of 120 people (not surprising). However, it managed to bring together (for the first time in history?) the communists and fascists. The Left and the Right "voluntarily united to clean the center of Moscow of gays and lesbians" Pravda reports.

Chicken and egg

NERD-SPEAK ADVISORY! If you are allergic, please refrain from reading further.

Well I am glad to know that the very important question of what came first is answered for the chicken and the egg. And all for promoting "Chicken Little".

A Slashdot reader asks "So, does this mean we can now solve P=NP?"

Well I think it could. The Cornell CS312 course staff has long argued that this question should be posed to students on an exam, but professors (in fear of being outdone by a student?) inevitably reject the idea. I believe that given the success of the chicken and the egg problem, posing this question in a high-budget promotional framework will quickly produce a solution. Now the question remains, what should be promoted? That's easy: 24, which instantaneously solved many a hard problem, rendering the research of several of my professors obsolete.

Compare and contrast

SUBJECT: yards

This is the backyard of my home in Ithaca.

This is a photo of me and my mom's first husband in front of my apartment building in Novosibirsk. Though I lived in about four different apartments, those were the days of communism and all the buildings looked the same. Many a time I accidentally wandered into the wrong building on my way home from school.

A Look into the Future

In order for you to recognize me upon my return from Bangkok, I wrote a simple program to project the effect of the Thai climate on my appearance. With input lenOfStayInDays = 60 and avgTempInF = 86, the simulation predicts that with probability 0.67 this is what I will look like at the end of the summer.

Meet Zita the Ligress

This is a picture of Zita from last summer when I met her and she was only one year old. I don't know about feisty... But “it is hard to say, whether Zita is more of a tiger or a lion. She is just a huge cheerful kitten, playful and sociable" according to the deputy director of the Novosibirsk Zoo, where Zita lives. Just a sweet, adorable, little kitten... don't you want to take her home?