Visitors! (Parents edition)

So it's August and it's the season of retired parents on travels. Andddddddd pig feet. Ok I'll spare you of another picture (i.e my dad took the picture and i don't have it anyways). So my parents spent the first half a week wandering around Berlin.

 They bought this guidebook and did some very thorough homework on all the exciting things they wanted to see and gave me advice on what i should see later. I fail as tourguide obviously.Friday morning we boarded the blazing fast ICE towards Munich.

Our quick tour of Munich consisted of all the essentials of Germany: churches, sausages, and 1.0L beers at the Hofbrauhaus (royal beer house).

Saturday we woke up bright and early to try to beat the crowd to Neuschwanstein Castle (I was thoroughly mocked by the Germans in lab for pronouncing this wrong. Ok really only just one German and one Austrian) Well it turns out we didn't beat the crowd. So we headed to our fancy hotel at the foot of the mountain. Mom decided that if there is a day to splurge on this trip, it was gonna be today. Here is the view of the castle from our hotel.

Ya, not bad huh?

Since we didn't quite beat the crowd and didn't want to wait in the massive line, we had the hotel concierge book a visit to the castle for the next morning. We then went about taking our time chilling in Schwangau for the rest of the day. We had some left over salami and bread from the day before so we took a boat out into the Alpsee and had a picnic before we visited the Hohenschwangau castle, which had a much shorter ticket queue.

So Neuschwanstein! Sorry not the best picture

I thought the castle exterior was quite magnificent but didn't find the interior quite as exciting. Maybe it was the pace of the tour and the stuff that was exhibited? Either way, quite the impressive castle. I suppose Ludwig II did kinda spend all the money in the land to build this castle and messed up the whole country... but at least he has a hell of a castle to show for it?

And finally this past weekend we made our way down to Prague for one last adventure for my parents. Aside from the numerous glasses of beer, we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of site seeing in our short time in this beautiful city. Our stroll across Bridge Charlie was probably the most exciting. There were a variety of crafts and artwork being sold. Turns out the artists had to register with the government and get a certificate of approval for their art form(?) We ended up really liking a watercolor of Bridge Charlie done by the old man. This shall be hung up in my new place in Seattle when I return!

And I also found a piece of my roots. The boyscouts of Germany were singing at the end of the bridge in an attempt to make a few bucks. They were pretty good. 

We ended the night by heading towards the Old Town Square and took some poorly lit pictures. 

So the next day began with us getting a bit lost on our quest to find the castle quarter. With a Chinese guide book in hand, questions asked in broken English, and some nice Czech lady giving directions in Czech, my dad somehow got us there. 

So it turns out the "castle quarter" is actually not a castle. It's more like a fenced off district with the massive St.Vitus Cathedral in the middle. 

There were some interesting pieces of exhibit and statues in the castle quarter. Allow me to feature a few of my favorites (definitely not representative of what was actually there, but it turned out I didn't take pictures of normal stuff).

The golden penis boy

gun sword??? I didn't realize these were real!

Cage of torture

Ok I lie, I did take some normal pictures when I went into the cathedral. The stained glass here was amazing! I thought these were much more impressive than any of the other cathedrals I have been to this summer.

 

Though my favorite part of this cathedral is this decoration on the fencing. The merge of the church and militia and ruling is so clearly demonstrated in here. It's amazing (and scary) how religion is so effective used in ruling people. 

That mostly concludes our short trip in Prague. We took a short visit to the national museum, which was under renovation so only had a small collection on exhibit in the side building. The focus of the exhibit was on the monarchies.

It was raining on our way to the station and dad took care of mom of course :)

..... wow that was long....

Visitors! (Brian and Juju edition)

So my exciting Germany trip has been populated by visitors every month. Brian started his Euro trip in Berlin in June, Julien came in July from France, and now my parents are here for 2 weeks doing a grand tour of Germany.

So basically these visits for me means a time to explore Germany as a touristy tourist which I am usually too lazy to be. So….. picture time!

Brian came first week of my Germany stay so it was a perfect time to eat some big fat chunks of pork feet!

Oh and some stupid syrup mixed with weissbeer….. my lab mate Alex would disapprove strongly.

And off goes Brian and Cassie to explore Germany

And Juju came with an offering of Canailles. Too bad he didn’t bring a bottle of Bordeaux Wine. Owell, I am in my quest to regain some appreciation for sweets so it’s all good.

And well July is also a good time for some more pig feet, so… more pig feet!

Okok, I didn’t only eat German food and call it being a touristy tourist. Juju had a guide book from Lonely Planet which had some good suggestions on where to go.  We started off with a visit to Schloss Charlottenburg, the palace dedicated to Sophie Charlotte, mother of Friedrich the Great, the king of Prussia, conveniently located about 10 minutes from my apartment by foot.

Sorry no pictures allowed inside as I found out after being stopped. Sad. 

so small break and bought some picnic food at a local farmers market for lunch. Delicious Pesto Rosso and Organic bread. 

Then we went to the DDR Museum and learned about the fun life of Eastern Germany under Soviet control.

Natural Beauty

Gourmet food

Then we went to visit the hip area of Neukolln and Keurzberg. We weren't hip enough to appreciate it I think so we ended up just eating food. So we visited the most famous Currywurst store, Curry36. It was quite delicious. The sausages were a bit different from the normal ones. Just realized that picture just looks like a plate of fries with ketchup... I promise there were sausages in it.

Finally we visited the Berlin Zoo. Alrighty non Germans, try pronouncing Zoologischer Garten. Ya.... freaken took me 2 months to learn this word.

So Juju had a few more days of wandering around but I had work so we just ate dinner and stuff. We weren't very exciting so no pictures. 

Germany's first Makerfaire!

This weekend happened to be the first Makerfaire in Germany and I got to tag along with Stefanie to go check it out! Super thrilled. Still not entirely sure what the occasion was, I think it was a trip organized to broaden the perspective of those students who are into hardware hacking? The event was in Hannover, about 2.5 hour drive from Berlin.

So I finally got to experience the famous speed limitless Autobahn. I was really impressed actually. Not particularly by the fact that Stefanie got us there in ~2 hours averaging 100mph the whole way, but by how well the lack of speed limit worked. Everyone on the road averaged about 80-100 mph. Even with a big speed difference, people were very good about using the lanes and letting people faster pass. I thought it was most impressive when a Ferrari zooms by at 140 mph and the cars just peacefully got of the way so the Ferrari could continue at the speed without any breaking. People were also very good about following rules when it comes to temporary speed limiting due to constructions. I guess they know that the moment the "forget about the limit now" sign shows up they can go zoom zoom again.

So back to the Makerfaire! It was a bit small, about 80 booths (though half were repeats) but was still pretty entertaining. Saw alot of 3D printers and robots obviously. As expected the print resolution is still abysmally low but at least now its multicolored. I am really curious about how the maker community will respond to the laser sintering patent running out in 2014. For those of you who don't know: http://www.tested.com/tech/3d-printing/456856-laser-sintering-3d-printing-patents-expiring-2014/

The robot was actually really cool. It was a huge thing driven with pneumatics and played the guitar. It was straight up intimidating but quite awesome. 

There was also a robotic cooker. It was basically a pressure cooker with a cutter and mixer. It made a hell of a risotto I give it that. I was quite impressed. 

It seemed like a big theme was about exploring how to incorporate engineering into the learning environment. There were alot of showing of programs for gradeschoolers building hardware hacks which was pretty cool. There was a hover craft, some wearable input device, and starwars robots. 

There was also some focus on trying to market 3D printers to families with young kids. The cutest attempt I thought was a monkey puppet that mimicked the user by recording the kid's movement with a kinect. Funny thing was when an adult tried to use it, it didn't work because he was too tall and the kinect couldn't see him. 

And of course there was a cosplayer maker

My favorite part of the makerfaire was actually about the food. Or rather the container for the food. We ordered some grilled potatoes that ended up being served in a bowled made of waffles! It was brilliant. You eat the potatoes and then eat the waffle bowl with the left over sauce. Apparently they also do this for fries at the beach, but in a waffle cone. Cool stuff.

Overall it was alot of fun and thank you Stefanie for driving and not getting us killed on the Autobahn :)

The lab that makes the "Future" video

So I’ve mostly been writing about my weekend excursions in Berlin so far and I have one in the back burner for my Paris visit. But I think it might be more interesting to talk about I’ve learned from HPI over the last few weeks.

So it’s been about 4 weeks since I’ve started! Oh wow… So far it’s been great working with this wacky group. Coming here was a great decision. This is my first foray into HCI research and it’s been both refreshing and utterly frustrating at times. The group’s agenda is to project what the next thing in 10-20 years will be. It’s almost as if they are building the next “What the future will be” concept video that Microsoft loves to make. Patrick Baudisch is relentless on his students when it comes to not settling any less than the super future. He seems to veer towards that once he understands a new concept and has demonstrated it to the world, it is time to throw it away and work on something else. I'm not sure if I fully agree with this way of working, but it does seem to force the lab to always continue to discover instead of polishing an old idea just to have another paper for the next conference. There was actually a series of lecture/invited talk yesterday talking about what is worth publishing and what is a good research topic. Highly thought provoking, but I will save that for the next post.

Something that also is completely new to me is their process of brainstorming. Almost every other day there would be a brainstorming session. After a quick overview on the topic for the session, everyone would have a stack of 3x5 index cards and 5-10 minutes to draw and fantasize about the topic. Everyone then presents their ideas and group them in a way that somehow weaves a complete story.

 I found it really difficult to force myself to think of ideas that were none obvious and actually found this process to be kind of annoying. I tend to enjoy a more organic process of discovering ideas, either through random hall way chatting or simply when I’m sitting around and have an interesting revelation. Nonetheless, I have gained some interesting insights through forcing myself to think outside the norm. It is particularly beneficial for finding a different research topic however. Through this engagement, sometimes you spark conversations outside the meeting or,and find a solution to a problem that’s been bugging you. Often times the conversation tend towards a philosophical nature, which is quite interesting. There is definitely merit to this method and I plan to incorporate this. Probably more sparingly though.

That being said, after 4 weeks, I have yet to completely converge on a project because of the high expectation for a project that is “worth doing.” It does seem like I have more or less decided on a project to do with the other intern from Austria, Alexandra Ion. We shall see how it goes.  

The Berlin "Bratswurst"

So I promise I will stop updating my blog in bulks. But for now, I am going to update you all on my last weekend before I chat about my wonderful weekend in Paris.

Last weekend was quite lively in Berlin. On Friday there was the Fete de la Musique, which I unfortunately missed out on since I got out of work way too late. But I heard that there were concerts all over Berlin and it would have been amazing  :(  Saturday was the annual Christopher Street Day, which is one of the biggest pride parade in Berlin each year. But the festivities didn’t really start until midafternoon so instead I did another skateboarding tour of the city. The roads were cleared out for the parade, so I took to the middle of the road.

Street musician. Sorry about the blurriness....

I made my way to Potsdamer Platz, where the old Berlin wall use to stand (aka. Super touristy area). There was a “officer” manning a booth where you can get all the passport visa stamps you needed for Berlin back when it was divided. As I passed the guy I vaguely heard him speak French. Immediately after, he turned around and spoke Spanish to a group of teenagers. And looked at me and started speaking English. I was quite impressed. So I stayed for a bit and chatted with him. Turns out he used to be a skateboarder, but after some serious injuries decided it wasn’t worth it anymore. So because of that, he told me I was smart to wear a helmet and should definitely keep wearing it. HAHA smart…right… I already had to spend 2k doing that CT Scan back in Freshman year after getting that concussion… 

Afterwards, I decided to head to a German/English Language exchange. Figured it would be good since I’ve been in Germany for 2 weeks and still only know the bare minimum to show that I am not deaf. The exchange was hosted at this very hipster café by these two British teachers, Tom and Cilia. Turns out there are alot of British people hanging out in Berlin. Most of the English speakers were British musicians trying to make a life in Berlin. We did our language games for awhile and then had some beer and chatted. I had one of the most memorable beers ever. It was called Bier Bier. 

Anyways, so it was finally time to go to the parade. Turns out the parade part was done, and now it’s just a massive street party. Well still cool I guess.

Anyways, forget the parade, I got a better story. So as I was walking towards the parade, an Asian guy came up to me and asked for some direction to the parade. I told him I was headed the same way and we can just walk there together. He gave me a surprised look and said “oh, I don’t see many gay Asians.” And I laughed and said, “oh no, I’m not gay.” But Rommel, the guy, said “you mean not yet ;)” oops…. Miki, who was on the other end of the phone at the time laughed quite hard at this exchange. Anyways, I kept chatting with Rommel, figured it would be more fun going through the parade with someone anyways. But as we walked, he started making me quite uncomfortable. He kept asking if I wanted to try things like going into the bush and that he knows a bunch of guys who would be into me. Now, I am very open minded about homosexuality and am good friends with a bunch, but this I thought was definitely overstepping some boundaries. I decided it was too far when he offered some “Bratswurst,” which I now think aptly describes the Berlin gay scene.  Well I sort of booked it out of there after that. Turns out my lab mate, Sean, has had a similar experience in the park. He was reading one day till quite late on a park bench when a guy approached him and asked if he can suck his cock. Turns out it was THE gay park that sees a lot of sexual activity at night. Not sure what’s up with this, but something seems a bit off… Well as awkward as that was, at least I have some interesting story about Bratswurst.

Brian's is in Berlin!

So Brian and Cassie are visiting Germany for the month so we met up for some drinks and dinner last night. Don't think he had that in his plans when he first planned his trip for Germany, but well, I think he's accepted by this point that  I would pull some random crap like ending up in Berlin for the summer. Anyways, I bailed from work a bit early and joined him in Friedrichstrasse. Saw a bunch of Asian people on the way actually. I definitely get the feeling that when the asians see each other in the train, we take a few looks at each other thinking "huh, I wonder what you're doing here..."

Anyways, so we met up and had dinner by the river. Brian, who supposedly knows German, completely drops the ball on the first round of bier ordering. Some how we ordered a beer that was mixed with green apple syrup. It was more like italian soda with a beer after taste. Needless to say, I did not like it. But at least I finished it. Cassie refused to drink even half of it. So for the next round we went with the safe bet of Hefeweissen.

As for the meal, we got pretty adventurous. Cassie ordered this "Grilled black pudding" which turned out to be made of pork blood. Brian ordered Grilled pork knuckles. I ordered some "sour beef" with potato dumplings. I didn't get the picture of all our dishes, but here's a group shot. Once I get the picture from Cassie I'll post another one of each of our dishes.

I would definitely say my favorite dish was the blood sausage. It was quite delicious. Well, we parted pretty early since Brian and Cassie needed to catch the 6 am train to Prague and they still needed to do some laundry.

To end this post, I think I'll talk about my ride back from work today since it didn't seem to warrant a post of its own. So after a pretty normal day at work, I came home on the train early again but this time was to avoid the impending thunderstorm. Well, on my way home, some Turkish street musicians got on the train and began playing music for the train. I'll post their jovial tunes in a bit. I tipped them a euro since it seemed a bit sad that no one else seemed to gave a shit about them. So all in all, pretty good week. :D