Turkey, India, and Thanksgiving

This weekend was Thanksgiving. As always, holidays in the US are designed to create long weekends, and Thanksgiving is no exception. Scheduled on the third Thursday of November, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the winter holiday period. As I did last year, I went to the traditional Stanford Thanksgiving dinner, which was nothing too fancy. I spent black Friday playing boardgames for nine consecutive hours, winning almost all games I've played (except Pandemic and Stone Age).

This Thanksgiving, I couldn't avoid hearing the news about Mumbai, India. I thought to myself this is not the first time Inidans are killed on Thanksgiving, though this time they weren't native Americans. That also made me think about the traditional Thanksgiving dish -- Turkey. In almost all modern language this bird is named after some far away land. Many languages refer to Turkey, many others, including Hebrew and Turkish, refer to India. The interesting this is, the Turkey, like the American Indians, is in fact a native American, a fact most closely reflected in Vietnamese, referring to it as "Western Chicken". For more information, see Wikipedia.

In exactly one week (and 3:30 hours) my parents will be arriving here for the first time since I moved here. I'll get to show them my office, my room, and play games. We're also going to go on a road trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon! I'm happy!

For those of you who asked what  I got from Tanga Trash. Here's your answer: 20 Questions card game, The Fabolous Fifites Shaped Jigsaw Puzzle, and a Space Alien Test Kit, I kid you not.

A hard day’s night

So, as I wrote earlier, I am in charge of an NSF grant proposal, and today was the deadline, which meant me and my professor had to work the entire day from 10 to 9 on writing the proposal, which meant I had to arrive late and miss on playing Agricola with my awesome new friend. We did play other games though, and I came back home tired but happy.

You could have known all this in real time, because I have signed up for Twitter, where I make short updates on my whereabouts and actions. You can follow my twitter by signing up, by looking at the twitter box on the right of this blog, or by signing up for the RSS feed.

For example, if you read my latest Twitter, you'd see that Tanga has sent me trash, which I paid good money for. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

Quake 5.6

Yesterday night, I have felt an earthquake of magnitude 5.6 on the Richter scale. At the time, I was playing boardgames in Mountain View and all the tables started moving slightly and then stopped. No damage or injury was caused by the earthquake, but immediately people called their friends on cellphones to check on them and to tell them they are OK. I didn't call because it was 4 AM in Israel. I decided I'll blog on it when I get home. When I did get home, I started writing this post, but I fell asleep due to jet lag.

In other news, I'm giving a talk today at the group lunch as the person who was planned to talk today had to cancel. I'm giving the same talk I gave at Dagstuhl, so it should be easy for me.

Yahoo! Games

On Monday I spent my evening playing board games at Yahoo! If you are thinking I spent my time staring at a computer screen, then you are wrong. I drove to Yahoo's campus in Sunnyvale (about 16 minutes from my house) and joined a meeting of South Bay Boardgamers, a group that meets every Monday on Yahoo!'s campus to play board games.

Today I played Vegas Showdown and Clippers. The former has (surprisingly enough) nothing to do with gambling (but a lot to do with bidding), and the latter features ships of different colors that do not belong to any of the players. Both games were interesting and full of strategy (Clippers more so).

This is the second time I attend such a meeting (last time it was Silicon Valley Boardgamers). In both times I've learned new games I've never seen before. I'm enjoying myself very much here.

Certified

Yesterday I paid and got a letter confirming that I have completed all requirements of my degree and faxed that letter to Stanford.

I am not used to not having dorms nor an office, but having a car, so I didn't bring all that I needed. Specifically, I didn't bring my laptop. As I had an event that evening I had to burn most of the day. I decided to go to the pool (even though I forgot to bring my pool card) and swim a bit.

After the pool I went to the CS faculty hoping to meet some friends. Which I did. Then, I joined him to the games night (I forgot to bring my games with me, but there were lots of games there). I especially liked the game Dork Tower, with all the cute illustrations, 3D tower, and interesting gameplay. So, I played it twice (with two different groups). I didn't win, but it was fun anyway.

BISFAI day 1 - Jet lagged

The Bar-Ilan Symposium on the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence was last Wednesday - Friday at Bar Ilan University. I arrived at Bar Ilan right after my visa interview. As I noticed I arrived on time only for the lunch break, I decided to go and grab some lunch and meet with an online friend of mine who studies Biology at BIU.

After this very short but fun meeting, I made way to the main conference venue - the new Brain Research Center at BIU. The afternoon sessions were about Planning and Modeling, which are not my field of research. Moreover, I had trouble staying awake due to the early wake-up hours. So, I spent most of the time outside socializing with other people in the field. Many of them I have never met in Israel before, even though they were all Israelis.

I had a paper in the conference, which was presented by co-author -- Avivit. I missed the presentation, but I heard from others that it went well.

After the conference day ended, I took a bus to Azrieli Center in order to meet with my brother and his wife and play video games. I arrived one hour early and looked for something to do, but all I could find were stores who sell clothes or food. So, I sat down on a bench and continued correcting Avivit's paper.

When they finally arrived, we played many video games at the center and finally returned to their home in Hertzeliya to go to sleep for the second day of the conference.