SEATTLE, Washington, USA: August 1-10, 2001
The primary reason for visiting Seattle was to receive the CRA's Undergraduate Research Award of 2001, which was being presented at the IJCAI'01 conference. I was also attending in a student volunteer capacity at the conference, and as a tourist.
Since I was at that time living in Paris, I took a morning plane on Wednesday August 1 out from Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport to Seattle, with a change in London. When I arrived, I was not noticeably jet-lagged, but by the evening it had set in, and it took me several days to get over it. This was the worst jet lag I have the recollection of ever having, and I think it is due to the inordinately long 12-some hour in-transit time in a westerly direction. Even on the return flight, which was just as long but to the east, it only took me 1 day to be cured of my jetlag, which is more normal for me. I was in Seattle alone for 3 nights, my mom arriving to join me on Saturday and my advisor from Drexel (Dr. William Regli) also arriving for the conference on Saturday.
I was holed up in the hotel room to recover from my jet lag on Wednesday, which due to time changes I ended up having to live over again, and Thursday. We stayed at Executive Extended Stay Suites (one of their many monikers, a little weird that a hotel have like 4 or 5 different current names, eh?) on at 300 10th Avenue, in a 1 bedroom apartment-like suite (with a pullout couch in the living room) for $79/night. It was a great deal, although the housekeeping services apparently took random days off from cleaning our room, which the management was duly surprised and apologetic about. I watched a lot of sitcoms and the SciFi channel. As I recall there was a Fantasy Island marathon, the new FI with Malcolm McDowell, not the old one with "de plane! de plane!".
On Friday, I met up with my old roommate Wendy, who was working at Boeing, from my summer in DC and scouted around town with her and her friends, which was great fun. We enjoyed reminiscing about the crazy things that had taken place in our apartment the previous summer. We went to Pioneer Square, took the Underground Tour, saw Pike Place Market, and ascended the Space Needle (so I ended up seeing everything in Seattle twice because I again went with my mom when she got there, but shh don't tell!) That night, I stayed at Wendy's apartment after she cooked an amazing home-cooked meal of lemon-pepper chicken, mixed peppers, corn, and fruit salad (I helped with the fruit). Guys: this girl can cook!! ;) The next morning she was leaving to go camping and the next was her last week at Boeing, so we said goodbye - until next summer?? :)
Saturday morning I had got my hair cut at a trendy city salon in the Convention Center (I admit to being rather afraid of trying to describe my desired cut to French stylists - I can barely get my concept across in English!), so it was quite short. Then my mom arrived, and the conference began. As a volunteer I had to work at 7:45am on Sunday morning, and 9am on Monday morning but not until 2pm on Tuesday afternoon. In the between times of working at the conference, and with the exceptions of Wednesday and Thursday, my mom and I tried to go out and see some sights in Seattle.
On Sunday when I returned from working, my mom and I took the Underground Tour near Pioneer Square (my second time - it was better the first time, although there were some hot guys on the second tour). We stayed pretty close to the Pioneer Square area, it was quite hot that day, and we had to be back to meet up with my advisor and the rest of the group for our special conference treat on Sunday night: a tour of the Boeing manufacturing facility.
Thanks to Dr. Regli's and Jan vanderBrande of Boeing's generosity, both my mom and I were able to attend the tour. We saw several assembly lines, including planes in various stages of construction. Quite awe-inspiring. It was the closest I'd ever been to a plane on the ground, standing under its wings, sticking my head in the (empty) fuel cells. The tour was quite long, and since it was late Sunday evening we were given opportunities to see all sorts of extra special stuff, including the inside of a nearly completed 777.
Monday morning I worked again, but in the afternoon my mom and I went to Pike Place Market to see the guys throwing fish (boy is that fun to watch, for no particular reason either!). Then we took the Monorail down to the Space Needle and rode to the top. We did not spend a lot of time there but got to see all of the Seattle "stuff". On our way back to the conference center to meet up with the bus transportation to the reception, my mom bought a magnet in the shape of Washington state. We have a lot of those stuck on the fridge back home :) I am in the process of collecting pillboxes from all the interesting cities I have been in - I so far have Paris, London, and Seattle. I suppose I ought to get one of Philly too, since I live there and all.
So the reception was Monday night in the Museum of Flight, which is very near Boeing, and actually has onsite the original "red barn" out of which Boeing first operated way back when it made planes out of wood. The reception had a lot of really good finger food, and I got to meet some interesting people, but the coolest part was the museum exhibits themselves - they have plane cockpit mockups which you can sit in, and a whole bunch of practically-air-ready planes hanging up. The kicker was the stealth plane tho, which they said could expand up to 7 inches in length due to the temperature increase of the plane moving above the speed of sound.
Tuesday morning marked an interesting event in my life: I saw Bill Gates speak for the first time. He was surprisingly, human. He had three of his subordinates give demos of their lab output and one made a mistake entering data in her form and got a Big Scary Error message. So of course the audience clapped and laughed (which I felt almost guilty for partaking in, perish the thought of me developing sympathy for the man). Anyway, I think Microsoft would not get so much flack for stuff like that if the error message was not so scary and incomprehensible to outsiders. So after the speech, that aftenoon, I went to work at the conference. After my shift, my mom met us at the center and Dr. Regli treated the GICL affiliates or former affiliates (5 of us) and his former advisor from College Park to dinner at a *very* fancy restaurant with excellent food by which I stuffed myself near to bursting.
Wednesday was taken up by a visit to the University of Washington. Since I was going to be in the area anyway, it made sense to go visit, as I lean more and more toward Ph.D. pursuit every day. Drs. Anna Karlin, about whom I'd read in a book GICL acquired (Journeys of Women in Science and Engineering: No Universal Constants), and Steve Seitz took my mother and me to lunch at this neat little hippy place in the cultural area near UW. Again, much food was served, but this time, I did not force myself to eat it all, as both our hosts had quit eating long before they reached their own halfways points. After that we went back to the university and the dep't of computer science and engineering where I met with the department head and several of the professors. It was the first graduate school I had visited and a bit overwhelming to receive so much information in such a short period of time, but I think the visit overall went well.
That Wednesday evening was also the night of the fancy conference banquet, which was held at a touristy Indian reservation called Tillicum Village. They served us wonderful tender salmon and salad and veggies and wine and put on a show of traditional dances and chants. The boat ride from Seattle harbor to the Village (about 8 miles) was pleasant because we could see Mt Rainier clearly on the way there. On the way back, I was falling asleep - thank god for taxis, I'd never have made it up the hills to our hotel!
Thursday I spent the day at the conference doing my duty as an academic. That night my mom and I went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, and the next day went to the Frye Art Museum (free!) in the morning before going to catch our evening plane. At the airport, one of my mom's oldest friends, who has since settled in the Seattle area, met us with her husband and everyone caught up on old times (it was the only time they could arrange a meeting that week).
Anyway, Seattle is a beautiful city (although quite hilly - all that walking!), and we were lucky with the weather. It did not rain at all while we were there really and "the mountain was out", as the locals say, (Mt Rainier was visible) on several days. One strange thing is that they have these huge (artificial) pigs on most street corners which have been decorated by local artists and sponsored by local businesses. They are *everywhere*. Truly a bizarre addition to the landscape. A second thing is that coffee is ubiquitous. Not just Starbuck's, but Seattle's Best, and some other place called Tully's, and a myriad of one-offs. Coffee coffee coffee - worse than in Paris :)
Some of you might be interested in the presentation ceremony for my
award, which took place bright and early at 8:25am PDST on Thursday morning,
August 9. It was a short little ceremony where the presenter - an Important
Guy
The flight from Seattle to Paris went via London-Heathrow. I had a terrific migraine the entire flight, which was unfun and made it very difficult to sleep. Also, the plane (a 747) had one of those antiquated movie screens which is in the front of the cabin instead of there being one on the back of every seat, and the flickering light from the screen (especially worse since we were only 2 rows from it) also contributed to my inability to sleep. But the flight passed uneventfully, and we landed in Paris after our half-asleep transfer in London, without incident.