RoboCup 2008 Day Three, Four

• Scrambled eggs with pork today. So it was just bread and boiled eggs for us.
• Had to go to the Expo Center early today for our presentation.
• All the presentations went well, very nice ideas.
• I feel Professor Takahashi's idea deserves the Aladdin Prize, will have to wait till Sunday to see who wins.
• Met the team from Jacobs University from Bremen. They had implemented a flood simulator. Their team leader, Narunas (I believe that is the spelling) - a Lithuanian and a Top Coder, who apparently started working on it last month thereby putting us to shame (Not that we put in our 100% in the first place) - is a pretty cool guy. Then we met Nour, an Egyptian, from the same team and exchanged contacts.
  
• We will get to work together in the near future, sounds very exciting!
• Infrastructure competition was not received with the warmth that we were expecting. First of all, the stupid dance programs were creating a lot of disturbance and we could not really hear what the presenter had to say. No one really bothered about the complaints made by the volunteers, who tried their best. Finally we got into a small room which was OK. Also, all the agent teams were supposed to come to our presentations to see what progress was being made, etc. However, only a few team leaders showed up. They are the ones who decide which projects wins. None of them even came to see the demos after the presentations. They were too busy tweaking their own codes. We found this a bit discouraging. Yaso did tell us that this would happen. But then Sir had a point. There had been no significant changes in the server for quite some time now, so the agents teams had also become very passive about it. Hope to create a disturbance with the launch of our DDRRS in a few months :)
• Simulation in general, as in Rescue and Soccer, did not get enough audience. People did not find the screens on which the games were projected, that interesting. True, even we got a bit bored after the second day, just watching the same old screen.
  
• New measures have to be taken in making the event more interesting. Made some notes on that too.
• Made a couple of rounds around other leagues. The small, wheeled robots are very cool. Good control, aim and speed. Very nice passing. The rest have become very boring now. 1 week is really long for such things. From next time onwards, IF there is a next time, I guess I will head out for "tourism" after the third day.
  
• Homesickness is another thing that is killing me! Just two more days and I will get back to my home, sweet home :). Tried calling amma on the day we arrived. Unfortunately they did not have calling cards for India. Excellent!
• Went to a Chinese restaurant yesterday. After some sign language, we finally got them to understand that we wanted vegetarian food. The waiter pointed to some rice rolls. I was trying so hard to control my laughter! He then told us that he would prepare the usual food minus the meat. Nice! The pizza, fried rice and spaghetti turned out to be good. The rice was different, fat and sticky grains but good.
• On the way, we saw a worker holding out 3 dead tortoises for sale. Come to think of it, those dead tortoises were the first animals, other than humans, we got to see in China. And today we came across a pet store, LOL. I saw an Alsatian waiting in its cage to be bought by someone. Little does it know where it will finally end up :P. Did not come across any stray dogs in China, is the recent "ban" on dog meat related to this in some manner? :P
• The seats in the auditorium are very comfortable for sleeping. There is good WLAN reception, so chatting is pretty comfortable too. The dim lights and the speaker's boring voice is enough to make one go into a deep sleep, as was the case with half the people in the room. The keynote address was very interesting.
• Our paper got selected as a Poster in the Symposium and yesterday was our turn. They had the poster session running during dinner. Who the hell came up with that idea? As expected, people just went round the buffet table, filled their plates and went back to their respective seats. We waited for about ten minutes and then left to get some food. We spent about forty minutes waiting for someone to show up. But looking at the rate at which new dishes were being put up (formula: {pork, beef}{vegetables}* minus {spices}) it was clear that no one will ever show up.
• Anyway, a very funny thing happened during the dinner at the Symposium. We could not find any dishes that "we" could eat. So we just asked one of the volunteers if there was any vegetarian food. This was how is went:

Us: Ni Hao! Is there any vegetarian food here?
Volunteer: Vegetarian? Is that Halal?
Us: No, vegetarian. Not Halal
Volunteer (She put a really confused look on her face): Uhh, what is vegetarian? Is that Halal? (I am not able to recollect the exact pronunciations :P)
Us: No MEAT. Only vegetables.
Volunteer (After consulting another volunteer): Sorry, no vegetarian. We have Halal though.

WTF.

• We finally got to eat some french fries with popcorn chicken, chicken and macaroni salad with some curry made with corn. No second helpings, because those were the only chicken dishes available. Had some pieces of watermelon after that, awesome (Yes, even watermelon feels awesome now :D).
  

• One thing that is very noticeable in China is the hospitality provided by its people. Apparently it is common only in Mainland China (NO, not MLC - Banjara Hills :D). The people try their best to help others out, which is very nice.
• Went to an Indian restaurant today, Southern Cross. Had some Dal, mixed vegetable curry, naans and of course, biryani! Tasted good, given the fact that we had been living on biscuits and chips for the past three days. We finally got to see what a busy place as in a market looked like. The dormitory and Expo Center are very far away from the main city. So it is very difficult to go out.
• Trip to The Great Wall is out, because there is not much time and Beijing is more than a thousand kilometers away. However, we will be going to the local sightseeing tour. And then there is a grand banquet dinner in the evening. Really looking forward to that, especially after the amount of hype Yaso has created :D.
• Have to leave for the airport on Sunday itself because our flight is at 0800Hrs on Monday and the first bus to the airport leaves at 0730Hrs. =((
  

RoboCup 2008 Day One, Two

• Woke up on time, even though we were 2.5 hours ahead of IST. All those nightouts did pay off :D.

• Breakfast was OK.
• Bland scrambled eggs.
• Bread and butter.
• Boiled eggs.
• The rest were too horrible looking to even try.
• On the way to the "mess", I saw some kids ferociously training in the NCC way, can only assume it is for the Red Army.

• The communication problem has become a big headache. People here just do not understand simple English. We are using sign language and specific keywords to make any sense to them. However, there are some people who do know some English.

• China reminds me of America, the lifestyle here is so similar to that of the Americans. How ironic, given the diametrically opposite nature of the governments.
• For example, take the road system which is "right" oriented.

• Completed team registration and entered the exhibition rooms, and my first conference. Apparently the International Expo Centre at Suzhou (pronounced as Sew-Joe) is larger than the one in Hitex, which I have never been to.

• Covered the entire ground in about 45 minutes.
• RoboCup Rescue Simulation.
• Some teams were already there, working on their codes.
• Had the opportunity to finally meet Mr. Tomoichi Takahashi. It is a privilege to even sit beside him.
• His team has come up with a component by which one can import Google Maps and thus use real map data for simulations.
• Met an Iranian team for the Infrastructure competition. They introduced emotions for rescue agents which, as pointed by Harith is bullshit because robots are used for the very reason that humans succumb to their own fears and other emotions. We will just have to see what they have to say tomorrow.
  
• RoboCup Rescue.
• Real life scenarios, limited to finding the civilians placed at some places in the map. Interesting!
  
• 2D Soccer.
• Virtual Reality Rescue.
• Aibo Soccer.
• Looked dumb, however some of the goal keeper's saves were cool.
  
• Small Soccer League.
• Small wheeled robots, quick, high speed passing including long balls, observable team work.
  
• Medium Soccer League.
• Big wheeled robots, a lot of "Cronaldo" behaviour (which means SELFISH game). Then again, it must be the teams right?
• Humanoid Soccer League.
• The smaller humanoids looked cool, well balanced.
• The life size models required a person to hold on to its back while walking. Purpose served?
• Water Polo with fish.
• Unlike the original game, the ball in this game is never in the air. The fish looked a bit real from a distance, until the familiar sounds of whirring gears caught out attention.
  
• Home Assistant.
• To server us coffee, clean rooms and prepare dinner. Boring!
  
• RoboCup Junior.
• School kids putting their creativity at battles with one another in Rescue and Soccer.
• Robo Dance.
• By far the most pathetic competition. Maybe the teams are to be blamed because all I saw were a couple of robots simply rocking back and forth to some stupid beat while humans danced around them trying to make it look like everything is SO spontaneous.
• Good Stalls.
• Many commercial robot manufacturing companies showcased their products.
• Got a cool poster from the RoboCup 2009 @ Graz (pronounced as Gratz), Austria stall.
• Small demo of the NAO robot, looked nice. Apparently the usual price of one such humanoid is 10000 Euros. However, for the "sake" of RoboCup, they put up a special offer, "Buy 1, Get 3 FREE!".

• Bathrooms stink! Well that will never be the case if the guys try to "aim" rather than you-know-what!

• Some of the girls are very pretty, mostly Iranians and some Europeans too.

• "Zee Germans" have pretty good physique, so it is not just Schweini! Well that kind of applies to all those Nordic descendants. A prefectly _straight_ point, no comments.

• The food, OMG - where do I even start!

• Fish sandwich, pasta (looks and tastes like crap), pizza (local bakeries in India bake better that these) and some Chinese buffet provided here, costing an average of RMB 35.

• Walked around the Expo Centre (more than 2km) in search of some place to eat. The map was of no help to us because even the locals could not make any sense of it. Finally ended up eating at the stupid "food court" in the centre.

• Living on stuff like biscuits and ice tea, SAD!

• Might be going to an Indian restaurant the day after tomorrow, yippee!

• There is a KFC approximately 7 minutes away and the nearest Pizza Hut is twice as far (McDonalds is much farther and Subway is not even on the map), so I guess tomorrow it will have to be KFC :)

• The opening ceremony could not have gotten any geekier, with a Star Wars theme in the background. And then there were robot dances, lame!

• 2D Soccer looked really interesting, one particular team was playing a sexy short pass game just like Arsenal :).

• Observed a couple of through ball passes made by actual robots, looked very impressive, although it was just a mathematical equation :)

• Very weird people around.
  

• The RoboCup Junior party hosted the day before kind of sucked because the electric guitar was not working properly. Apparently the person who was supposed to play it was really good at it.

• Had some Lays chips for dinner, tried to swallow them with the help of some stupid tasting lemon ice tea - sucked!
• These Chinese people have no extremes at all. I actually found "Blueberry" and "Litchee" flavoured Lays chips. WTF!!! Samba on the other hand would say, "Cool!". LOL.
• Being a non-vegetarian, even I feel so repelled by the odours that come from their kitchens. I wonder how Sir is taking it =)). What is wrong with adding a few pinches of salt and pepper? All these people think that food must be tasted in its natural flavour, or else it must be sweet (Wrong sentence, lite).
• All I could see in the lunch menu was pork, cow, sweet pork, shredded cow, duck, blah, blah.

• Enough of complaing and LOLing for today. We have our presentation tomorrow. After that it will most likely be a trip to The Great Wall. I read a quote on men somewhere which went somewhat like this, "If you have not seen The Great Wall, then you cannot call yourself a man". LOL.
  

RoboCup 2008 Day minus One

I am so in the BLAH zone right now that everything here for the next few days will be very discreet.

• Bad journey.
• Tough luck for Harith, this being his maiden flight experience.
• Flight to Bangkok got delayed by an hour.
  
• Why do all flights other than Air India to and from India are inferior to every other flight in the world in every aspect? I did not consider Air India because it is too fucked up.
• Hyderabad-Bangkok - Food, environment and hospitality were pathetic.
• Bangkok - Food was OK and the rest was great.
• Bangkok airport is beautiful and HUGE. We had to walk a little more than a kilometer to get to our connecting flight.
• Slept in the plane for the entire time.
• Shanghai airport feels like a really big Begumpet airport.
• Had to wait for 2 hours for the "special" RoboCuppers bus.
• The bus then did not move for another hour.
• Had to experience the humid climate of Shanghai, worse than Visakhapatnam.

• Reached the dormitory 3 hours later.
• Some Iranian team was too "busy" to reserve rooms in advance and so we had to stop at every damn hotel for them to check for vacancies. They finally ended up at the dormitory.
• Saw countless men, and I repeat - MEN, just lying on the roads and lawns, without shirts. The reason became very clear the moment we stepped out of the AC bus.
  

• The hospitality team is awesome, very friendly people.
• Special thanks to a girl named Kenny (do not remember her Chinese name), who gave us a very warm reception and helped out whenever possible.

• The dormitory room is excellent (Will update with pictures later).
• Able to accommodate 4 people in a room, with all the necessary furniture, which is 1.5 times the single room in GHEB.
• Attached bathroom and a very powerful AC, what more can one ask for?
• Rent is RMB 180 (INR 1260) per day, which is pretty good for the quality of the room and service we get.
  
• Had Oreo and Chips Ahoy! biscuits for dinner.

• Slept peacefully after a very tiring day.