Get ready for the smack down, HANES! 

Pounce! You can see their living room in the background. They would like you to compliment them on their ikea entertainment center.

Can't keep away from Germany

Well, we ate breakfast at the doner kabob place again. That seems to be the staple cheapo food over here, so I am getting used to it :)

I tried to look for plane tickets to Rome and couldn't find much, so I just looked into Eurail stuff. Couldn't find much on the internet. It turns out that you have to be a non-EU citizen and have to buy it in person or wait a long time for them to mail you stuff. And there are only a few places in each country where you can buy eurail stuff. Luckily, one of them is the Schipol Airport station, so I went and bought a ticket immediately before checking in for my flight (hoping that I had time). I bought it for 3 countries: Germany, Switzerland, and Italy and it is good for any 5 days of travel within the next 2 months. Then I went to check in for my flight and the self-service wouldn't work for me and I got scared. Then I waited in line only to be told, we don't have a seat for you, but go and see if we can squeeze you in somewhere. That wasn't too reassuring, but I went to go stand in the more lines. Well, thankfully they squeezed me in and I made it to Nurmberg! Doug was waiting there when I exited the terminal.

Then Jen drove us out of the airport and I found myself on the wonderful autobahn! I felt a little less special when I figured out that the autobahn was not a single road, but the name of the whole freeway system in Germany. But we went through a stretch with no speed limit and I got Jen to hit 100 (proof below), except that they call that 160kph here :) Doug found the time to get excited in between studying his flash cards in the back seat.

We stopped in Vilseck and ate some good pizza. I had mine with tuna, artichokes, and mushrooms on it just to be weird and it was actually pretty good. The tuna smell also helped out when confronting the attack cat they have, aptly named Kat. She gets a bit wild sometimes, but fun to play with nonetheless.

I took a nap on their couch and then woke up to a dark 3 story house at 1am, so I went upstairs and played with their computer stuff so that I can blog here too now :) Tomorrow I will look at the calendar that Jen has planned out and see what we want to do.

I will leave with you some shots of Kat during her favorite game, Keep Away. Description: Jen and Doug pass the sock back forth above Kat's head. Hilarity ensues.

Waiting for the kill... 

I think this is Vilseck. Will make sure with Jen.

With just a little peer pressure, we are cruising :) 

Autobahn! Why are we in the slow lane? 

Forgot to post a Van Gogh museum pic. They don't allow them to be taken on the inside :) 

NH Utrecht. I am in the top floor right now and everyone is asleep. 

Amsterdam

Well, it was all I cracked it up to be. We went to Amsterdam and on the way I had food items of note: (see pics below). Once in Amsterdam, we took a canal cruise tour and then went to the Van Gogh museum. I learned that you pronounce his "Van Goff" and about his struggle as a painter. But even more importantly I put an end to a week old, internal struggle: the quest for public tap water. I had to travel all the way to Amsterdam in order to find the oasis in the desert (see pic below). I knelt down to it and began praying; praying to the water gods for allowing me to realize how much they do for me.

In our little tour thingy, we found out that all Amsterdam houses have this support beam sticking out of it for hoisting objects up to the higher building stories because the stairs are too narrow to carry up anything big.

I check out tomorrow from the great NH. I say good night to you, NH.

Nathan

Why are there beams sticking out of the tops of houses in Amsterdam? 

Amsterdam Central.

Metropolis. A concert hall 

PUBLIC WATER FOUNTAIN!!! (i stayed here for a while) 

Frite Met (previously known as patat met on this blog, however, I have seen frite met more often now.) 

They don't have diet coke!!! So I drank this instead. I think it has different sweetners, but I can't tell the diff. 

Main conference lecture room. Dutch Theta. 

Bikes, bikes and more bikes. Everyone rides them and I hear pedestrians often get in their way ;) 

Honestly, who shops here? 

Here is valuable dutch to learn: We don't serve tapwater! 

Can you look through the rain and see the rainbow? (pic and caption soon to be an inspirational poster)

Still Sleepy...Headed for Amsterdam

Okay, I am up a little early and waiting for us to leave for Amsterdam so I will try and catch you up on the happenings of yesterday. AAMAS came and went. I gave a poster session and 3 or so people came by, but I spent about 20 mins with each of them. I got to see Pradeep gave his talk as the last paper of the last session of the last day and it was good, but he just got a little nervous. They showed us a little bit about next year's conference site: Hakodate, Japan. I am excited to visit that part of the world :)

So then we said our AAMAS goodbyes and Janusz and Jon took off, so it was Praveen, Pradeep and I again. Steve and his friend John and Mei came along with us to go do some Utrecht sight seeing. This allowed me to visit, but not enter, the waterworks museum and some of the other random things (see pics below). At last year's teaser to this conference, they bragged that Utrecht was the birthplace of Miffy, a European children's book and TV show revolving around a rabbit. Well, turns out Miffy is 50 now (see pic below).

We did some girl watching (rating) and argued whether the Utrecht girls look nicer than LA girls. We didn't really talk to them or anything, just watched ;) I got sick of that after a while and so I invited everybody up to the hotel room for a movie. I had a few on my computer, but they opted for a slow moving subtle comedy, The Life Aquatic. Needless to say I fell asleep at parts and will have to watch it again in a better setting. After that, Alessandro and Vittorio text messaged us to let us know that they were going to be at this night club downtown. Praveen, John, Steve and I met them there at midnight, but on the way, we had to stop and get some good pre-party food. And what works better than a Pitamac from McDonald's (see ad below). It was actually pretty good.

Aside: When rating girls on a 10 point continuous scale today, Praveen commented that he had only seen one 9.0 this week, which was our waitress at the pancake place we ate at on the first day. And as we entered, I being obsessed with girls in service, recognized that very same girl, which made the enterance fee more than worth it for Praveen. Didn't even have to talk with her.

The night club, started off kind of slow, but we ended up joining a larger group with 3 more guys and 3 dutch girls. I ended up talking with them each for a while. I got about as far as I could in conversation in a club. It was nice to talk to some girls and it was easier that we were all part of a group so I couldn't get shot down as easily. It was also nice to have Praveen stay out and dance with me for the whole time. We all went out to eat a snack after dancing continuously for hours. I was soaked in sweat. I finally tried 'patat met,' which someone had recommended :) It means 'potato with' and what it is with is mayonaise. It was good. When parting, one of the girls even winked at me ;)

Well I am also strongly considering going to Rome now, following the Italians. I will check out tickets from Nurmberg.

I will just plaster you guys with a bunch of pics now :)

Sleepy ...

I am really tired right now. Short story: AAMAS is done! I will explain the pictures and what I did today in a post tomorrow. I figured I would send in some pics to whet your appetite.

Real dutch food ;) Mmmm good. 

Dutch Waterworks Museum. 

Those crazy dutch and their public ping pong tables. 

Happy 50th Miffy! 

That is a LONG Dom clock tower. 

Can we get 12 beers and a social life?

I had my demo today. It went pretty well and a couple of guys stopped by that want to distribute it (take it from me and make money off of it). But a lot of people seemed interested and I hope it continues tomorrow for my poster talk. The highlight of it all was when this local man and his son came by. I was introduced and told that he had just read about the conference in the newspaper and wanted to show his son some of this stuff and decided to stop by. So I immediately introduced myself to the child, who was about 7 and his name was Detre (or something close). Then I started talking to him in a pretty high level about what was going on. All of a sudden, his Dad started translating and I figured out that this kid didn't know english at all. So that's how it worked for a few minutes and then I could tell that the kid was not satisfied. Then I had it: "Would he like to try and use the 3d viewer?" His dad started laughing and said, "Of course!" Detre began zooming in and out of fires and fire trucks and playing with different views. He was mesmerized. It was fun to watch and I would want to do the same kind of thing one day for my hypothetical child.

Well the Stroop Waffeltje was good, but the real reason I put it up was to signify how much we waffled early in the night as a large group. The larger the group, the harder it is for that group to coordinate (which is actually very close to most of what we research on). But not that we actually learn from any of our work, we attempt to have these immense groups of 18 (tonight) try and meet and go get something to eat. We had to wait for some people for quite a while, but we ended up all finally meeting by the canal and picking this Indian food place. Now I saw someone go over and ask if they could accomodate such a large group and the fellow seemed to gesture something like a yes. Boy was he wrong. They stuck in the back of the restaurant where it was hot and humid and no ventilation, yet adjacent to the kitchen. The guy that we waited for to join our group ended up quickly ditching us to follow a girl to another restaurant. Everyone had to take turns walking outside to cool off. We didn't get our drinks until 30 minutes after ordering and didn't get our food until an hour after that. I finally convinced them to let us sit outside for dessert. I don't think that they got much tip.

Well after that we did a bit of bar hopping. We made our way over to a section of bars for the university students. Vittorio and I tried our luck with the chicks and it didn't work out. I sat the bench to wallow about my girl problems, but Vittorio took on Jay as a new wing man and they got a succession of shut downs, my favorite of which was: "Can't you go and talk to some other girls?" Though I think we all learned a valuable lesson from their brave exploits: The first rule of AAMAS is, 1. You do not talk about AAMAS! (when approaching women remember this, as much as you make think that mentioning AI is a turn on, it's not) I think the second rule is 2. Don't tell them that you are from Italy, but I could be wrong.

Luckily, I don't have to get up that early tomorrow.

Dutch-style Demo. Notice the beamer where the projector would normally be.