New York and Amherst

10 August 2008; 2130hrs Amherst, Massachusetts (USA)

I’m in the dorm room of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass). It’s a suite! There is a common kitchen and living room, and two shared bath and toilets. All in all there are four single rooms here. Compact but sufficient. The entire place is also fully air conditioned. Luxury! It’s certainly something we need since this is literally a prison. There are very little ways of getting around. It’s another small town.

We toured NY yesterday. After settling the train tickets issue, we went to queue for tickets to see the Statue of Liberty. But the queue was too long! (Word of advice: buy tickets online in advance!) In the end, we went for a harbour cruise that went past the island, and much more! Brooklyn bridge, Ellis Island, Downtown Manhattan, and so on. We saw them all! Ha! It was worth it!

We went to the Empire State Building as well to look at the view from up above. 86 floors above, and we climbed the final six stories up. Our day ended with a visit to the Metropolitan Museum. Now that was fun! It was too bad we didn’t have enough time to walk about all the exhibits slowly. I would have loved to spend the entire day there. Next time, next time…

We went to take the Amtrax train to Amherst from New York’s Penn Station. Unluckily there was a freight accident between Amherst and Springfield so the train couldn’t continue. We had to transfer to Peter Pan (a bus company) to complete the final leg of the journey. It wasn’t bad though. I got to experience both the train and bus in America. (And the NY subway and bus systems.) At least the Peter Pan seemed much better than the Greyhound.

The dorm at UMass has no internet and it’s irritating the hell out of me. None! Not even some wireless to tap. Even the LAN points can’t be used unless you have a student account. WTH… there is no guest account.

Coupled with the horrid conference timings. Whoever heard of conferences going on until 2230hrs??? and the prison like situation… Sigh… It’s going to be a long three days. Not all the sessions are interesting, so I won’t be attending all of them. But what can I do in place of them???

Hey! Song Lianfa is here! Dear Fa-ge is going to give a presentation. Hope I don’t fall asleep as I usually do for his lectures!

The conference starts at 1830hrs on a Sunday and ands at 1230hrs on Wednesday. Their planning sucks big time. Oh well… I gave the first session a miss in order to get some food down into my stomach. Surviving is more important.