Home sweet home (other side of the Atlantic)

07/30/08 at 08:12 AM | In California, Trips | No Comments

After a long day of traveling with a fair amount of delays, I arrived back in Irvine yesterday night. In spite of the ongoing strike at Lufthansa, I flew from Dusseldorf to Chicago — with a 2 hour delay due to the strike (it seems I was still lucky, Lufthansa started canceling intercontinental flights today). My flight from Chicago to Orange County was also 45 min late, after waiting in the takeoff line on the tarmac with dozens of other planes. In addition, one of my two checked bags didn’t make the connecting flight and will be arriving here today.
But given all the uncertainty beforehand (due to the strike), I am quite happy to be back in California in one piece and more or less as scheduled. :)

For those of you that heard of yesterday’s earthquake in the Los Angeles area, I was still in the air when it happened. The epicenter was reported to be ~50km northeast from Irvine. From what I hear the earth shook quite a bit for 30 sec, but there was no significant damage to buildings and structures. And more importantly, noone was hurt (in Irvine as well as elsewhere).

Home sweet home

07/14/08 at 04:31 AM | In Trips | No Comments

I write this from my parents’ house, were I arrived late yesterday night, after flying in from Helsinki. The conference was over on Saturday, so I had most of Sunday to explore Helsinki as a tourist. I walked and saw a lot, it’s a really pretty city, reminding me of Gothenburg — in the end my feet were really tired and I slept until noon this morning. :)

Anyway, I will be in town for a little over two weeks, and I hope to run into a few of my old friends. My German mobile phone number for the time is 0163/6845919, so give me call or send me a message if you are in the vicinity!

Summer time is travel time

07/10/08 at 05:04 AM | In Trips | No Comments

I am currently sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Helsinki, where I am attending the UAI’08 conference. I will have a poster presentation of some of my research work later today, and I am also involved in some things that my advisor is presenting here. Accordingly, the last few weeks leading up to this trip were very busy with preparation.

The conference will be going on until Saturday afternoon, after which I will have one day to explore the city on my own time, before I fly to Germany late Sunday, to visit family and friends for two weeks. (If you happen to be in the vicinity at that time, drop me an email!)

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