I'll have more of the lamb please...

So much to tell - so little bandwidth (I'm pretty sure this computer is using like a 8k modem). I got to New York today at 2pm and hung out in LaGuardia airport for a few hours while I figured out what I was going to do until 9:30pm when I was supposed to be at JFK. I thought about going into the city, but I had my large duffel bag and I didn't figure that would be any fun, so I had some lunch and headed over to JFK. When I got there, I needed to use the restroom, so I put my duffel bag next to a cement column and left it unattended (key work here) for five minutes. When I came back, there were TSA officials with walkie-talkies walking around it while keeping their distance. When I walked upto it, they asked me if it was my bag and I said it was - at which point they called the people on the other end of the walkie-talkies and told them to stand down. So, lesson number 1 - turns out they're serious about all that "don't leave your bags unattended" stuff. They really didn't seem very annoyed with me considering the trouble I had caused - they just smiled and asked me not to do it again. I thought about saying something like "don't worry - I'm Lebanese" but something in me told me that wouldn't be a good idea ;-)

I had dinner and around 7pm, finally ran into the first of my colleagues - Stephanie and Shannon. Shannon is a junior at the Carlson School of Management and does the type of aerobics you see in Cirque du Soleil. She is really cool. Stephanie is 19, Canadian and earning her A/C repair technicians degree in Canada. Five minutes after meeting her, we were giving each other crap and laughing...she'll be a good friend on the trip. Over the next few hours, all 14 people showed up and they all seem really nice. Marion is the most beautiful 40 year old I have ever seen who is looking for a new career after years as an investment banker. Mike is the other engineer on the trip - easy going and a looker to boot. Doug is my roommate tonight - he is 41, has two birds and has been on three Global Village trips before this one. Luke is Canadian and this is his first time out of the country - he had never been on a plane before today! Jared works to raise money for an AIDS organization and is so passionate about his work - I think I want a job like his. Eden is one of the most un-assumingly confident people I have ever met - I really like hanging out with her. Her friend Timberlee lives in Houston and works for Sprint - together, they are two of the most entertaining duos I have ever met. Betsy is in her sixties and works for the EPA - she is very intelligent and very comforting...like the grandmother everyone needs to have on a trip. Dave is from northern California - a fact you could deduce within a minute of meeting him (sandals, long hair and says "word" a lot :-) He is twenty and goes to San Jose State University. Bonnie and Joy, the trip leaders, have their act together and are very energetic...just the type of people you want leading you into the jungles of Africa.

Around 10:30, we headed for the terminal and got on-board our plane. Now I have flown trans-atlantic flights many times and am used to a certain amount of cool-stuff aboard aircraft, but this blew me away. We crossed on an Airbus A340-500. Each seat has a personal television screen which has, among other things, the following capabilities:

1) A selection of over 100 movies in seven different languages

2) Dozens of games

3) Over 100 channels of music

4) E-mail (yes - you can e-mail from the plane)

5) The ability to see the view out of cameras located on the nose of the plane - one pointing forward and one pointing straight down

And I'm just getting started. Each seat also had a telephone. If you picked it up and dialed a seat number, it would ring the phone at that seat. We may have had a little bit of fun with that one. Each seat bottom was made of a two-segment cushion. The front segment could rotate through about 30 degrees so you could adjust it such that your feet didn't touch the ground. Couple that with the foot-rest which swung out from underneath the chair in front of you and if you leaned your seat back, rotated the seat bottom up and put your feet on the foot rest, you felt like you were practically horizontal even though you weren't even close. Last but not least, the plane actually had Wi-Fi...I should have brought my laptop! :-)

We took off at 11:30pm and were served a lite snack almost immediately. It consisted of lamb chops in a gorgeous sauce with rice pilaf and pita bread, a greek salad, cous-cous, wine, cheese, biscuits, fruit, juice and seconds of anything we wanted. That was the snack, mind you. We had two more meals (breakfast and then a late lunch). If the snack was that sexy, imagine how good the dinner was! So I spent my time eating, watching movies, flirting..err..talking with my teammates on the phone. I figured e-mailing was going to be really expensive, but it turns out they are trying out the service and are offering it at a price of $1/e-mail. Still very expensive, yes, but not too expensive to try. So I set up and account and starting writing messages. Only one problem - I don't know anybody's middle name...something I need to write them at work! I knew Sarah's is 'Royston' and Becca's starts with an 'M', but I couldn't remember Cari's. So I write those who I could and hope the others will forgive me.

We landed 13 hours later and it seemed like the flight was a few hours long at most - time flew! We got to the airport in Dubai, collected our bags and headed to the hotel. We have a tour set up for tomorrow morning - we are going to see the city and spend an hour at the markets (gold, spices, etc...), but some of us wanted to do something tonight (after all, it was only 9pm when we got to the hotel). So we went to a bar called 'Barj Al Arab' - located on the roof of a really tall, beautiful building which is the token skyscraper for the city. We hopped into cabs and drove over there only to find out you couldn't get in without closed-toed shoes and a collared shirt. No worries - we went to this beautiful resort next door and had $10 drinks while chatting about why each of us was there and what we hoped to get out of the experience. Finally, we came back to the hotel around 1:30 and as soon as I finish this, I'm off to bed.

So far, the trip has been a blast. Dubai is definitely a place I would like to come back and visit when I have more time, but for now, I am trying to enjoy the high-life while keeping in mind that tomorrow, I am going to sleep in one of the world's poorest nations and over the next two weeks, try to make it a little more enjoyable for a few people.

Off to bed now - I probably won't get a chance to update tomorrow, so this might be the last one until I get back. Hope all is well back home - wish me luck!

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go...

Well, this is my last posting for two weeks - tomorrow I leave for Uganda! I'm so excited/nervous! I know some of you (read: my mother) want to know exactly where I will be over the next few weeks, so here is the itinerary.

August 11th - Houston - Chicago - New York - ...
August 12th - ... - Dubai
August 13th - Dubai - Nairobi - Uganda; arrive in Entebbe; spend night at Kolping guesthouse
August 14th - drive to Muterere (3.5 hours)

August 15-17th - (a typical day)
7am wake up and dress for the day
7:45-8:00am breakfast
8am depart for work site
8:30am start house construction
10:30am tea break
11am resume house construction
1pm lunch break
2pm resume house construction
5pm wrap up house construction
5-7pm cultural activity/rest as planned by affiliate
7pm dinner
8pm team meeting/debrief
10pm bedtime

August 18th - travel 2 hours to Jinja; Visit AIDS clinic; see Bujagali Falls and source of Nile; return to Muterere
August 19-20th - typical building days
August 21st - attend local church service/rest
August 22nd - typical building day
August 23rd - travel 3.5 hours to Kampala; picked up by Safari company; travel to Lake Mburo National Park (4 hours)
August 24th - safari
August 25th - game drive/breakfast; drive to Entebbe; depart Uganda - ...
August 26th - ... Dubai - New York - Chicago - Houston (arriving around 10pm)

Also, in case of an emergency, here is a contact sheet (Mommy - I love you very much, but "wanting to hear my sweet Nicholas' voice" does not qualify as an emergency :-)

I hope you all have a great couple of weeks - I'll update if I have internet access in Dubai, but either way, look for a big trip summary when I get back!

Kwaheri! (good-bye in Swahili)

Farewell Peter

In my house, there were two things you could always find in my mother's closet - a bottle of 'Paris' perfume and a picture of Peter Jennings. He was my mom's dream guy - the man she welcomed into her living room for half an hour every night. It always breaks my heart to hear my mom cry - especially when it is because of something I tell her. So tonight, it was with particular trepidation that I called her to tell her the sad news...Peter Jennings had died from lung cancer.

It's funny - having heard his voice in my living room throughout my childhood, I feel as though I've lost a part of my youth tonight.

Peter Jennings

1938-2005

We gave it to them

I'm home in Oklahoma City for the weekend. Today, my mother and I went about our day, shopping and preparing for the dinner she is holding tonight. At one point, we pulled into a gas station to fill up. It was quite busy and there was a line for all of the pumps...all but one. So, we swung around and pulled up to it. It wasn't until after we had finished filling up and were pulling out that I noticed the big "Enter From Other Side" sign which I had blatantly disregarded. Here is the conversation that ensued:

Nicholas: Mommy - that's why there was no line...we went the wrong way.

Mommy: So - we're entitled.

Nicholas: Why are we entitled?

Mommy: Because we're Arabs - we gave them the damn gasoline in the first place.

I love my mother :-)

MATLAB!

I love days when I get paid to play with MATLAB for eight hours! Today, I worked on a visualization of a region known as the ICB for the rendezvous of the HTV (Japanese vehicle) with the International Space Station. Anyway, I can't imagine anyone cares about that - but you might find this animation kind of neat:

(click on the picture to start the animation)

freaking puzzle!

This is one for the engineers who read my blog.

Have you ever had one of those days when you can't stop thinking about something totally un-work related, so you decide to just figure it out and get it out of your head...only it ends up taking most of the day? Today was one of those days. Worst of all, after spending way too many hours trying to figure it out, I still couldn't so now I feel both dumb and unproductive!

My officemate has a little wooden puzzle, pictured here:

In this picture, it has been solved. However, normally, it sits in some level of disarray. It lays on the side-table next to my desk and every once-in-a-while, someone will pass by and fidget with it for a few minutes, then give up and go on their merry way.

Yesterday, while driving back from class, I started to think about a possible mathematical solution to this puzzle. When I got to work this morning, I tried for a few hours to resist the temptation to put it to the test, then finally gave up and set out to solve this damn puzzle once and for all.

My theory was simple. The puzzle can be represented by a 10 by 6 element matrix in which a '1' represents a square of wood and a '0' indicates an empty slot. Naturally, when the puzzle is all put together, the matrix would be a 10 by 6 matrix of ones. Each individual piece can be represented in the same way as shown in the following figure:

Matrix (a) shows the numerical representation of the top-left piece in the puzzle alone on the board. If I were to move it to position (4,2) on the board, it would be represented by matrix (b). Of course, each piece has up to eight possible orientations (four directions, two sides if it's not symmetric), so matrix (c) shows this piece rotated to the left by 90 degrees. Using this method, I developed three dimensional matrices to represent each piece in each possible position and orientation on the board. Within these matrices, each layer represented the portion of the board which one piece took up in a particular position and orientation. Using a simple for-loop, I created twelve such matrices, one for each piece, and I was ready to start calculating.

The calculation is rather simple. Using a twelve layered for-loop, add every possible combination of layers from these twelve 3D matrices until the sum yields our goal of a 10 by 6 matrix of ones. When this occurs, break out of the for-loops and query the code for the layers used out of each of the matrices and display them on the screen. Then place the pieces on the board and begin gloating.

...not so fast...

I wrote up the code, started it off and continued working, thinking I would check back in a few minutes and find the answer waiting for me. Instead, I found a blank screen and a very slow computer. It was at this time that I decided to do a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Although it varies with the shape of the piece, each piece can be placed in approximately 30 different positions on the board for each of its eight orientations. Six of the pieces are symmetric about at least one axis, so flipping them yields no new orientations, so half the pieces can take up 30 x 8 = 240 different portions of the board and half of them can take up 30 x 4 = 120 different portions...we'll assume an average of 30 x 6 = 180 portions/piece. There are twelve pieces, and I have to add every possible combination to guarantee a solution.

180^12 = 10^27

10^27 calculations required. On my computer, MATLAB is able to process about 16,000 calculations each second - pretty fast, right? So assuming there are no power outages, hurricanes or other such hindrances, I will have the answer in 1,900 trillion years. That's right, trillion. Raise your hand if you feel stupid...anyone else with their hand up...no, just me? Ok, sounds about right.

So my brilliant little plan to solve the simple wooden puzzle will end up coming to fruition about the same time I have all my student loans paid off - pretty nifty. Now I know how Arthur Dent felt. To add insult to injury, a few minutes after I realized how ridiculous my method was, my officemate solved the GD puzzle. Maybe I should stick to dance!