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Friday, May 05, 2006

Jet Lags and Free trips

I have been back at Champaign for 5 days now and am yet to completely get over my jet lag. In the past 4 days I have gone to sleep at 1:00 am on Sunday night to wake up at 7:00 pm on Monday; not slept the on Monday night; gone to sleep at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night to wake up at 7:00 am on Monday, a false feeling of having overcome the jet lag. On wednesday, I came back from the lab at 5:00 pm, and dont remember when I fell asleep. I woke up at 10:00 pm, went again to sleep at 1:00 am on Thursday, to wake up at 7:00 am. On I finally managed to keep myself awake till 10:00 pm yesterday but am awake now typing this blog (local time 4:15).

This is very new to me, as in my many visits to and from India I have rarely had any jet lag. This time the trip was to Rhodes Island in Greece. Boy, it was enjoyable. Somehow I had managed to get a research paper published in a respectable conference, IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, and had gone there to present my paper. I got to meet many important and interesting people, hang out with my co PhD students from many different Universities. The people I hung out most with were Avery Ching from Northwestern, Amitabha Bannerjee from UCD, and Adam Oliner from Stanford. I dont mind repeating that the trip was great.

Getting back to the theme of jet lags, my time in Greece wasn't free from them either. I got to Rhodes at 9:00 at night on Tuesday after an amost 27 hr travel trip, had dinner with Avery and went to sleep. I conked out immediately, but not before calling the hotel reception for a 7:00 am wake up call (wanted to attend the Key note speech at 8:30). The next morning I was wide awake at 4:30 ( a huge jet lag for someone used to going to sleep at 1:00 am and waking up at 9:00). As if my attempts at getting some more sleep werent failing badly enough, a rooster in a farm right next to our Hotel (it was a 5 star hotel) started crowing at 5:30. Any dreams I had of going to sleep for a couple of more hours were completely gone by then and I was wide awake. The good thing was I able to watch some Greek TV (which was well Greek to me, but the soaps seemed equally corny) and replay of World Snooker Championship matches (something that I thoroughly enjoyed). Well the tradition continued and I woke up every day between 4:30 - 5:30 even the last day. That day I checked out at 12:00 pm Greece time (4:00 am Champaign time on Saturday), went to the Rhodes old town. Then went to catch my flight (Olympic Air), leaving the hotel at 9:00 pm (2:00 pm Champaign time). The flight as usual was delayed and took off at 1:00 am. Through a circiutous root that took me to Athens, Paris, Cincinnati I got to Champaign at 10:00 pm, traveling a total of 32 hrs. Now this was one tiring journey with very little sleep in the planes. I dont know why I wasn't able to sleep in the flight this time around. Usually as soon as I sit on my seat in a plane and the plane starts moving I just conk out. I do not even recline my seat. I rarely feel the plane take off, and wake up only when the thrust of landing hits me. But this time around I just wasnt able to get any real sleep. But well, did I tell I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.

Now that the rantings about jet lag are over let us hear about the free trip. For the first two days I stayed at the confrence site, attended 6 different sessions, including the one where I was presenting my paper. People seemed to like the idea and had a few questions to ask. All the key note speeches were enjoyable. The conference center did not have internet access in the rooms, only the conference lobby having internet access. As soon as the sessions would break, all the delegates would connect to the internet, speeds we were getting were about a 1 KBps. Have I told you I enjoyed the trip thoroughly. The food was great, people friendly, and I got to stay at 5 star hotel for free (my advisor sponsoring the trip).

On Friday I finally managed to get out, and went to Lyndos one of the ancient Greek city states. The trip was a part of a tour organized by the conference (though it cost us an extra 30 Euros). Went there with Avery and Amitabh (Adam's talk was in the afternoon so he could not make it). Caught up with Sameer there, and ate some lovely crapes. Bought a few gifts for family. Came back that afternoon and attended Adams talk. Went to dinner with the other three (despite staying there for 4 days I ended up eating at only two restaurants outside of the conference hotel). Finally fell asleep at 4:00. Got up early, got ready had break fast and browsed the internet for some time, I was having such strong cravings for the internet that I decided not to go to any of the sessions, and enjoy a much better internet access. In the afternoon I went to the old town of Rhodes (an World Heritage site). Finally got back in the evening, had dinner alone at the beach (met Dr Subhash Saini there). Took a few beautiful pictures. And finally returned to the Airport.

To see the pictures of beautiful Greece go here.

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