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.