Category: work

Hong Kong trip recap: days 3 and 4

My third full day in Hong Kong was the first day of the conference. The conference is a very high-quality international meeting with hundreds of phoneticians presenting their cutting edge research. The program looked fantastic. However, I found myself resenting the conference for keeping me from exploring more of Hong Kong. (Not very fair to the conference, given that it’s what got me over to Hong Kong in the first place.) I got over my grudge and plunged in. I started to enjoy myself, attending talks and poster sessions and catching up with people I typically only get to see at conferences. By the afternoon, though, the tiredness kicked in big time. Rather than falling asleep during the talks, I ended up skipping out of the conference for a couple of hours to go back to the hotel for a nap.

The fourth day was better, and I managed to attend sessions without risk of falling asleep. It was also the day of our group’s presentation, and then a follow-up dinner with some of the other participants of the special session we were in.

Day 3: Wednesday, August 17

  • headed to conference at the HKCEC
  • sat in talks, attended poster sessions
  • got really tired by afternoon
  • went back to hotel for a nap
  • returned to conference for reception
  • had dinner with a group of linguists in a Vietnamese restaurant near my hotel

Day 4: Thursday, August 18

  • more conference
  • late for my own group’s talk (but happily wasn’t the one presenting)
  • attended organizational meeting for a professional society
  • saw that the conference venue had windows!
  • had dinner with special session organizers and speakers at a Cantonese restaurant in the HKCEC


There was apparently a visiting VIP at the HKCEC (the convention center) or nearby. There were swarms of police officers.


The cluster of police officers from the previous photo were standing near this set-up. I interpreted the scene as some sort of protest or demonstration, but I am only guessing. Can anyone read the signs?


Since I was pretty tied up with the conference, I didn’t get out and about much these days. But the walk between the hotel and the conference venue was pretty long (~20 minutes), and there were still many interesting sights to be seen. This was when I was returning to the conference after my afternoon nap on Wednesday. I was quite taken by the patterns made by reflected light on the building in the center of the photo.


This fire station was across from the conference venue.


Look! Here I am again. I ended up wearing my hair in a braid most days on my trip, which I don’t do at home. (Usually I wear a ponytail.) I was inspired both by the comfort of keeping my hair of my neck in the heat and humidity, and by the extra time I had to get myself ready in the morning since I had only myself to get ready.


A typical Hong Kong scene: colorful buildings, bamboo scaffolding, and laundry hanging out.


Another view from a pedestrian overpass heading to the conference. It seems like a very large percentage of the vehicles on the road were either cabs (all red in this part of Hong Kong) or buses.


The view of Hong Kong harbour from the conference venue was stunning. (No wonder they kept the drapes closed during the day; people would have just stared out the windows slack-jawed instead of attending to the talks.)

I’ve got a few more photos from these 2 days up on my Flickr site.

Next up: 2 days when I really got out and about.

salut de Montréal

Did I mention that I was going to be going to Montreal? Maybe not. Anyhow, I’ve just arrived for a conference. Yes, another conference. (Didn’t I just get home?)

I tried to type up a post earlier today on my iPad, but failed to finish it in time to send it before heading out of my 3G plan territory. So it will have to wait. Or more likely, will just not happen, as I can just summarize here: My passport isn’t feeling neglected. Off to Montreal for a conference. Driving up with the 3 professors I work with. Like a 7-hour lab meeting on wheels. Happily, this is a good thing, seeing as I enjoy our lab meetings. Except it was on my iPad, so at one point, I may have said it was a good thong. The end.

So, tomorrow is the conference. I do hope to get to see a bit of Montreal, but I fear I won’t have much time for much beyond the conference. It runs all day tomorrow, all day Saturday, and then it lets up mid-day Sunday, at which point we plan to get back on the road. I do hope I can squeeze at least a couple hours to see a sight or two, and may lobby for delaying our departure on Sunday an hour or so.

Off to bed with me now.

p.s. I have still been trying to get my photos and thoughts together to post some recaps from my Hong Kong trip. I’m getting closer. Though currently further away.

packing my bags

In just 6 days, I’m going to be on a flight to Hong Kong.

Yup. I said Hong Kong.

I can’t even express how excited I am about this trip.

John, wonderful partner that he is, will be single parenting while I am away. I’ll be attending a conference in Hong Kong, and will be staying for 8 days. However, seeing as travel to and from takes such a long time, I will be gone largely for 11 days. In case you are unable to do the math in your head, 11 days with 2 small children and only 1 parent equals a really freakin’ long time. But John was willing and remarkably supportive, if not necessarily eager to be rid of me, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. (It also would have been unreasonably expensive for all of us to go.) I wanted to try to minimize my away time, but seeing as I will be travelling to the other side of the planet, I decided not to skimp too much on my end. Hence the 11-day absence.

The conference is 5 days long, which leaves only 3 days of being a tourist, at least some chunk of which is likely to be eaten up by jetlag. (It looks like I’ll be cheating a bit, though, and ducking out of the conference one of the 5 days.)

I have yet to work out the specifics of my plans for my non-conference time. Among my goals for my stay are:

  • A trip to Macau, the nearby former Portuguese colony that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
  • Seeing a Hong Kong action movie in Hong Kong
  • Eating obscene amounts of delicious food that I can’t easily find at home
  • Taking obscene amounts of photos that I definitely can’t take at home
  • Going on some sort of hike or excursion to a green space (YTSL of Webs of Significance has been taunting me for years with gorgeous photos of her hikes around Hong Kong. You might be amazed at the lush nature that can be found there!)

I am very excited that I’ll be getting to meet up with YTSL herself. (She’s one of my earliest blogging friends. We coincidentally started our blogs on the same day almost 5 years ago, and “met” only a month later through our mutual love of movies with kick-ass women characters.) I’m also happy that I will get to see a friend from highschool who now lives in Hong Kong.

I am very much looking forward to the conference itself, too. It is the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, known informally as ICPhS (or “ick-fiss”). It takes place only every 4 years. I went to the last one, in 2007, which was how I ended up in Saarbrücken, Germany. It was a fantastic conference, and I’ve been wanting/hoping/dreaming about going to the one in Hong Kong ever since.

As you might expect, I have a huge number of things to go before my trip. For a start, I have a lot of work to do on the presentation my research group will be giving at the conference. (I won’t be the one speaking, but I tend to be the one who does graphics for our presentations.) I also have a variety of home and trip-prep things to do. Unfortunately, the timing of my big trip coincides inconveniently with our daycare provider’s own vacation schedule. She’ll be closed this Wednesday through next Tuesday. This means that I will have Theo on my hands for the 3 days before my trip, and also Phoebe on one of those days. This leaves 2 full working days, one of which I have committed to meeting with my advisor to discuss my own research “progress.” (Though likely we will also talk about the Hong Kong presentation, as my advisor will be the one presenting.)

I’ve been wanting to write about how much I love travel, and was thinking that it would be one my “40 things I like” posts, but I don’t see myself having the time to invest in that right now. I have too many things to pack in during my next few days.

Did I mention that I’m going to Hong Kong?

I liked the gingerbread plan better.

So, I see that it has been 9 days since my last big whine of a post. Consider this post a continuation of the last one. And let me start by giving a warning: there will be mentions of vomit.

I had a commute day last Wednesday, for something work-related, but not something that leads to any sort of progress towards my degree. Thursday I miraculously managed a full day of work, finally making progress on the list of things I’d been trying to do the week before on a group project. Friday was going to be another commute/meeting day, so when we were all snowed in again, it didn’t feel like a huge loss in productivity to have my lab meeting by conference call instead. (Though it was a bit awkward, as John had a conference call at the same time, so neither of us was available to corral the kids. We put on a movie, which contained Phoebe pretty well, but Theo wandered in to contribute to my conference call several times. Mostly asking me to go watch the movie.) Then there came the weekend, during which I typically end up completely wiped out by the time the kids go to bed. But I wasn’t too stressed. The following week there were going to be 5 days of childcare, two days of which (Monday and Tuesday) I had no meetings or doctor’s appointments scheduled, and surely I would be able to get back to my own research project.

When Phoebe woke me up before 6 on Monday morning with a fever and an earache, I considered dropping out of my PhD program right then.

Happily, Phoebe perked right up with some Motrin, and John decided he could take her to his office for a few hours. However, with their late-morning departure coupled with other home and family things I had to deal with, I didn’t manage to start on my work till noon. That theoretically gave me about 4 hours to do work before it would be time to pick up Theo, but my focus pretty much sucked.

Tuesday I had the day with still feverish Phoebe, which included taking her to her preschool for picture day, and taking her to the doctor’s office. In between, we went out for lunch and went to CVS. Afterwards, we had a bit more than an hour before it was time to pick up Theo. I squeezed in a few work-related tasks while Phoebe re-enacted picture day with my camera, John’s tripod, and a whole lot of stuffed animals.


Yesterday, Phoebe still had her fever, but John was able to stay home. I took Theo to daycare, and rushed off to a doctor’s appointment, which had been rescheduled from the afternoon in anticipation of the upcoming snowstorm. I drove into Cambridge for a work-related thing right after, and then back home just ahead of the snow. When I picked up Theo from daycare, I was optimistic that he’d be able to go to daycare again in the morning, as the snow was expected to be stopped by early morning. (Phoebe would still need to be home, as daycare policy is that kids need to be fever-free for 24 hours before returning.)

As we waffled about what to have for dinner, Theo sat on my lap and we looked at some pictures on my computer. He complained that his stomach hurt. Then he threw up. All over himself, me, the couch, the floor. (Happily, my open laptop was mostly spared.) The rest of the evening was spent cleaning up, and tending to miserable children. Phoebe didn’t want Theo in the same room with her, as she totally dreads vomit (not that any of us like it…). She ended up going to sleep in our bed. After a change of clothes, I sat holding Theo, empty yogurt container and towel-like things at the ready. I realized that we weren’t likely to fall asleep, and I certainly wasn’t going to be able to do work or read. So we watched a movie on the couch (the couch that wasn’t torn apart for cleaning),which distracted Theo nicely. My dinner ended up being some bread, eaten on the couch while I held Theo. Eventually, Theo and I went to settle down for the night on Phoebe’s toddler bed. (We didn’t want him alone in his crib since we were still expecting more vomit.)

Today, though home sick, both kids have seemed largely fine. But there was so much snow that we probably couldn’t have gotten them to daycare and preschool anyhow. It took most of the day to shovel out, as we had to take turns staying inside to referee the kids. The day was remarkably uneventful, if completely unproductive. (Not counting snow removal and additional vomit-related damage control.) And I was very regretful that all of these events didn’t even leave me enough time to bake more gingerbread.

As of now, both kids are asleep in their own beds. I am fully looking forward to sleeping with my legs fully extended in an adult-sized bed.

Theo asked for “the drum” (our nickname for the big empty yogurt containers) several times today, but didn’t end up needing to use it. Actually, what he said was “I need to put some corn in the drum.” (Apparently he’d had corn for lunch yesterday.) He’d sit with his face over the drum, cheerfully half-singing, “Here it comes! Here comes the corn!” Then he’d say “achoo!” (Clearly he is not as traumatized by vomiting as Phoebe.)

Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring to keep me from getting my work done.

After an hour and a half of shovelling with the snow still accumulating as I shoveled, coupled with not seeing any signs of a snowplow on our road till almost 10:30, I realized that it was not feasible for me to get the kids to daycare and preschool this morning.

Yesterday the kids had a late start due a dentist appointment, and for related reasons which I may get into here later, I ended up keeping Phoebe home with me while I tried to do work. (I managed some, but not a full day’s worth.)

Last week, as I mentioned, I did not get home, as scheduled, on Tuesday night. (Due to the snow in Boston.) And while I did get home reasonably early on Friday, it was following a pretty hellacious red-eye-with-a-connection during which I probably got about an hour of sleep (cumulative). All night. (The “overnight” flight from San Francisco to Chicago was about 3 and a half hours long, starting at midnight. I had trouble falling asleep, but finally managed to about half way through the flight. Only to be awakened shortly thereafter by a man in the row behind me, who was apparently watching the in-flight movie, and forgot that he was wearing headphones when he very loudly asked the flight attendant for a beverage. (Tomato juice.) (Two cans of tomato juice.) (Which he then proceeded to slurp.) (LOUDLY.) I was so annoyed that I didn’t fall back asleep till the descent, and woke up on landing. Then I had a 2-hour layover, which isn’t long enough for a nap, and then a 2-hour flight to Boston. I dozed off a couple of times during that flight, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been in lecture classes during which I got more sleep. Seeing as I had an hour of driving to do to get home, I caffeinated myself up at the airport before going to my car.

By the time I got home a bit after 1:00 p.m. on Friday, I was tired and wired, and while I theoretically had about 3 hours to work or sleep before John brought the kids home, in practice I successfully managed neither.

While I have managed to get some work done here and there over the last 2 weeks, mostly at night, I have not had a full workday.

I was completely caught off guard by today’s snowstorm. Having only checked my weather widget, I saw a forecast high of 38, along with the icon for a mix of rain and snow. I hadn’t realized that these events would be after a night and day of cold temps and heavy snow. Right up to the point when I came in for a break from shovelling once I’d seen the snowplow, and saw how late it was, I really and truly thought that I would be able to have a productive day. In the end, I realized that the universe had other plans for me.

The universe wanted me to bake gingerbread.

snowed out

As you might have heard, Massachusetts was hit by a major blizzard Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency. Pretty much everyone was snowed in, with schools and most businesses closed. People all over the state spent all day Wednesday shoveling out.

Not me.

This is the view that greeted me Wednesday morning:

My flight back on Tuesday was scheduled to arrive at around 10:30 p.m. in Boston. It was cancelled. Along with, as far as I can tell, all Boston flights on Wednesday. On Tuesday it looked like the earliest I could get back home was Friday night around 10 o’clock.

So much for trying to minimize my time away from home!

I did eventually manage (my third rescheduling with the airline) to get a reservation for a flight that is scheduled to arrive in Boston just before noon tomorrow. Assuming the weather cooperates (which is a pretty big assumption, seeing as I’m going through Chicago), I’ll be getting home a few hours before the kids get home from preschool and daycare. I’m just hoping I can at least get home well before their bedtime. And time a nap would be nice, seeing as my flight to Chicago is a redeye. (Didn’t I say I didn’t want a redeye? Sigh.)

I’ve been enjoying this bonus time with my mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephews–3 extra days. Actually, I had trouble really enjoying myself on Tuesday until I got my flight plans worked out. I was distracted by trying to figure out my travel schedule and my work schedule, worrying about the impact of this on John’s work schedule, and missing John and the kids in a much more intense way than in the previous days. I had really been looking forward to getting back to them. But once I had some reservations on flights that were not likely to be cancelled (unlike the airline’s initial move of bumping me to Wednesday flights, which I knew would also be cancelled), and once I’d talked with John and the kids, I settled in to enjoy the bonus days here. (I’ve also managed to do some work–my research group is submitting a big paper in a few days, and I’d committed to doing a lot of work for that this week. After I got home. Ahem.)

In all, this has been about the best possible major travel delay. I’ve been safe and comfortable, and not stuck in an airport with crowds of cranky people, sleeping in chairs or on floors, and not having access to a shower. (Yes, I have experienced that sort of delay.) The expense to me is moderately small, limited mainly to the cost of airport parking for 3 more days. I don’t have to worry about paying for a hotel. And even better, I’ve been with people that I love. (It’s been a really great visit, by the way.)

Now I’d best get back to work!

packed

I’m out in California now. I got in yesterday around noon. I wrote the stuff below over the course of yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to post any of it. (Warning: this post is rambly and largely unedited.)

—-

I’m on my way to see my family in California. My flight’s about to board. It’s a full flight, and they announced that there usually isn’t room for carryon bags of passengers boarding in groups 3 & 4. I find this really irritating. (My boarding group is 3.) More people are avoiding bringing checked bags, since most airlines charge for checked bags. So more people carry on bigger bags. (I also find it annoying that I could have paid an upgrade fee to get “priority boarding,” which I guess effectively guarantees room for a carryon.) Anyhow, I just checked my bag at the gate. Here I was feeling so pleased with myself for having packed light enough to not need to check a bag. It’s a pretty small bag, too. At least I didn’t need to pay to get it checked.

—

I was up really late packing, which is a pre-trip tradition for me. I always overthink things when I pack. (I pretty much always overthink things in general.) Being determined to pack light, I wanted to maximize the coordinatability of my clothing. (I realize that is not a word, but I am taking advantage of the productive morphology of English, and packing on those derivational affixes.) I spent a fair amount of time tracking down and laundering items, some of which I ended up not selecting anyhow. (It was good to get caught up on the laundry, in any case. John doesn’t need to add hunting for tiny socks to his daily wrangling activities.) In the end, I probably both over- and under-packed. I will probably end up doing the same thing I do at home, which is mostly wearing the same stuff over and over again.

—

I’m on board now, and glad I checked the bag, seeing as the overheads were completely packed. For that matter, I’m not sorry to have passed on the boarding upgrade. It looked like at least 60% of the flight was boarded before group 3 anyhow. (I guess really the upgrade just bought space in the overheads…and I just saw someone’s bag bumped out to be checked, anyhow.)

—

I’m traveling alone again. John, Phoebe and Theo are staying home. I hope we can all get out to see my family together soon, as I can’t wait to get the 4 cousins together. The last time we were all out was when Theo was only 7 months old, and my little nephew Mateo was only 7 weeks old. Now Mateo is almost 2. But it makes more sense to wait till things get more stable.

It’s never easy for John when I’m away. (Not that it would be easy for me if I were the one home, but we’ve been lucky–I’ve been lucky–in that John hasn’t needed to go away in ages.) Even though the kids are in childcare full-time, the actual windows of working hours are pretty small. Even when we work from home, the drop-offs and pick-ups take close to an hour, and when you add in a commute for work the day shrinks even more. With two of us, we split the kid-wrangling routines such that I get the kids up and out in the morning, and John gets the kids bathed and to bed at night. We vary who picks up the kids depending on our work and commute schedules. Phoebe has karate classes 3 evenings a week, and we try to coordinate things such that one of us can get dinner going while the other is either at karate or picking up the kids. Otherwise, dinner is invariably late, which sets back bedtime, which takes away from kid-free evening time, and then leads to tired and harder-to-wrangle kids in the morning.

John usually also works (from home) after the kids go to bed, often staying up till the wee hours of the morning. This is trickier when I’m away, as he’ll need to get up with the kids.

In all, John’s schedule will be packed.

—

It was hard to pick the dates for my trip. On the one hand, I’m going 3000 miles and really want to maximize my time with my family. On the other hand, I want to minimize the impact on John’s schedule. These two hands are not compatible. I decided to go for a week, which with the two travel days will feel too short on the far end–only 5 full days. (I considered taking a red-eye, but I can’t recover from those as quickly as I used to…)

I have no doubt that my own trip will feel packed.

I’ve missed blogging.

I don’t mean that I was sad to have missed putting up a post yesterday. I mean that even though I posted something every day in November, it really didn’t feel like blogging to me.

While I managed to carve out a few minutes to post something (and to take a few photos for Project 365), I was spending about every available hour working on projects and commitments for work and school for the last month. While I gave up on tracking the time it took me to post, with the exception of a handful of posts, I did really limit myself, and probably didn’t spend too much more than my goal of 10 hours for the month. The trouble is, I didn’t find time to reply to comments, or properly visit other people’s blogs. I ended up with a couple hundred unread posts in my reader, and I skimmed many of the posts I did read. I think I left 5 or 6 comments all month. I missed things going on in other people’s lives.

I’m not sorry I did NaBloPoMo again this year, as I know it would have irked me to have missed it, but it was hardly a satisfying experience. I didn’t get to all the drafts I’d wanted to revisit, didn’t find time to do write some of the things that have been rattling around in my head. I didn’t even manage to share much of my digital photo hoard.

I would have to describe the results as spectacularly lackluster.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who still came by to read, and even leave comments. I really, truly appreciated it. You are wonderful.

—

In other news, I didn’t make that December 1st deadline. I came to my senses on Friday, in the midst of that exhausting visit to my in-laws’. I realized that there was too much to do in the few days I had left, that I didn’t have the energy left to push myself even harder in the following days, and most importantly, I realized that there were some kinks I needed to work out in my study. It was disappointing, as I really felt that given another week or two, I could have had my project at a point where I could submit a solid abstract. But another week or two I didn’t have. And yes, I also thought about all the “what ifs.” What if I hadn’t gotten sick? What if Theo hadn’t gotten sick earlier in the month? What if I hadn’t spent time with friends who were in town for the conference? What if I hadn’t spent all those hours making Halloween costumes? Well, maybe I could have had enough time. But I’m not sorry to have spent time with friends, especially since I see some of them so rarely. The costumes? Well, who’s to say I would have invested that time in my project. And it’s highly doubtful that those hours would have been enough. There were other work deadlines, too, and other obligations.

I am really glad that I did push hard to work towards that deadline, though. I made real strides in my own research, which had been largely stagnating since that conference in Barcelona last year. Hmmm…my mixture of metaphors makes it sound as if I just walked through a puddle. The puddle of research has definitely been splashed in. I jumped up and down in it, and got myself soggy.

I’ve been taking a few days to dry off, and stand back from the puddle. I got caught up on a few things I’d left hanging while I was playing in the puddle, and I’ve started some holiday shopping.

I just need to make sure I jump back into the puddle soon. There are other conferences coming up, and I’m really optimistic that I can have something more substantial together for those deadlines.


A puddle.

blah blah blah

Yup, once again it’s a few minutes before midnight, and I have yet to fulfill my NaBloPoMo duties. It’s the 29th, so it would be a shame to give up now.

I really don’t have a lot to say now, or at least not a lot that I can say in 7 minutes or less. It’s been a really long day. There was no daycare today, and John and I both had meetings. In the end, I had my meeting by phone from the conference room at John’s work, while John wrangled the kids into his office. They even sat quietly in there for a bit by themselves while John and I were both tied up. (No, not tied up in any interesting sort of way…)

After my meeting was done, and I’d eaten some lunch, I took the kids back home. Theo thankfully fell asleep, so Phoebe and I played Candyland and bingo. Then the three of us went to karate, then we came home and had dinner, then John got the kids to bed, then I went out grocery shopping. I did not buy carrots or peas.

I’d say more, but I have less than a minute before midnight now…