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.