San Francisco (CVPR 2010)

I have to say, at this point I am pretty annoyed... I had this post practically complete, but somehow failed to save it before the last revision, and now I have to start all over again!

Oh well ... here goes! Little-by-little... the update continues :)
Unfortunately I still don't have the pictures from Portugal's day cocktail at Sagres (the camera was not mine), as such I will skip that and jump into my trip to San Francisco.
Let's start by it's climate. "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,'' this saying is already a SF cliche, it is often attributed to Mark Twain, but it seems to be an invention of unknown origin.

The main purpose of this trip to SF was to attend a conference; IEEE Conference in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. This is one of the most prestigious conferences in the area of Computer Vision; besides it was my first participation in a major event, hence I was thrilled.

The conference was held in a "multiple sessions" format, rather than single thread. Meaning that it was up to you to choose the most interesting talks to attend. I have to admit that, in the beginning, I was a bit overwhelmed with the whole thing. The conference started on a Sunday with some tutorials, but the interesting stuff started only on Tuesday.

Any event, this allowed me to get to know S.F. a little bit ahead of schedule :) Most of the folks from my lab were there for the conference; hence we organized and set on a bike trip to have some lunch at the fisherman's wharf. A very popular popular spot in SF.

Thinking ahead, we decided to hold on to the bikes for a day. This way, we thought, we can get to know SF a little better. Although this is not a very bike-friendly city, it is for sure faster than walking.
There are several touristic activities in SF. One of them being a trip to picturesque town Sausalito (North SF, crossing the golden gate). Because I had some sessions to attend in the conference, I interrupted the bike tour after lunch, and head back to the hotel where the conference was being held, and resume later in the afternoon. Sunhyoung and Kritika headed back to the hotel with me. We decided to go to Sausalito later in that afternoon. Vijay and Hamed continued the bike tour, since they had no plans for the afternoon.

As I was saying, the "usual" ride comprehends a bike tour through the golden gate towards Sausalito, and once you're there take the return ferry to the fisherman's wharf passing close to Alcatraz. But because we were departing a bit late for this, and didn't want to be left stood up in Sausalito (the ferry stops at 7pm), we decided to do this tour on the exact opposite direction. That is: Fisherman's Wharf > Ferry > Sausalito > Golden Gate > SF downtown.

The Golden Gate is one of the most pictured places on the planet... and I guess I gave my contribution to increase those statistics :)

As the conference was entering it's climax (I would say Thursday), my personal excitement curve was going downhill... tiresome was taking over I guess. Because there was a lot of interesting material in the venue.

By Friday I had enough of tutorials, talks, poster sessions and coffee-breaks. I was in desperate need of a relaxing weekend. At this point I changed from the Hyat Regency - SF business district - to the USA hostel close to Union Sq. Although the hostel experience was quite good, I have to say this was quite a difference...

The above picture, as you can imagine is from the Hyatt Regency. There was this huge football-like structure close to the bar, to celebrate the FIFA World Cup 2010. I don't seem to have any comparable picture of the hostel, but take my word... it was slightly more unpretentious :)

Arrived at the hostel, I was paired with two Swedish girls and a German guy. They were coming from a tour to the Yosemite National Park, but had just met a couple of days back. As in many other hostels, the environment was pretty layed back and rapidly I befriended my new roommates, and we set on to have dinner (the whole Yosemite gang and myself) in a Thai place, somewhere close by.

After dinner, the hostel had organized a small get together in a bar close by, where an Italian friend from UCSD that had been there for the conference as well, decided to join us.

Before coming to San Diego, I used to work in Alcatel-Lucent in Lisbon. Where I had some occasional business trips to Antwerp. Thankfully I met lots of nice people there, in particular two chaps: Diego and Robert. They both worked in Antwerp at that time, and they're now working in Moutain View (South of SanFran). I though it was funny to arrange for a beer-meeting with the guys, and so I called them and we had a nice lunch in a sunny afternoon at the Cheesecake factory. Here it is, for posterity:

The few days left that I had on my long weekend, I spent visiting the city. I have to say SF is a lovely city, with lots of nice things to offer... but the weather is certainly not one of them. You could be nicely walking around with just a t-shirt, and around the corner be blown away by a freezing windstorm. Still I do believe it's worth a visit, and to prove that I'll leave you with a couple of pictures I took:

rock'n'roll marathon

I'm so late in my writing. Actually, "so late" is an understatement... I want to write about the marathon, my trip to San Francisco, my first paper, ... too much for a single post. I'll just write a few lines about the marathon, and will leave the other subjects for upcoming posts!

Roughly one month ago, I've completed my 3rd marathon, the first one completed abroad.
I had been practicing hard for the last four months and I had the expectation of achieving a record time lower than 4 hours. Unfortunately I was unable to get there... still I improved my personal best in 30 seconds or so ... "always look at the bright side of life" :)

As you might imagine, in such a big race, there is plenty of time for lots of stories. And indeed, many things happened during the race. I remember a couple of guys that were handing out beer for contestants (mile 8), Juan and Anna (a couple of spanish friends) were cheering for me at half way point (mile 13) as the race was going just outside their place, and the most embarrassing episode: how I accidentally spit another contestant... I'll come to that!

I have to say I was tricked by my mind. I was doing an absolute all-time record (for me, that is) at the 17th mile. I got so excited about that, at that moment, I've totally slacked off. By the 20th mile I noticed how slow I was in the past 3 miles (maybe 10m per mile or so), and tried to get again into a good rhythm... but my legs just wouldn't respond! This was an absolute nightmare, and it was the toughest part of the race. First, I was just reaching the "wal", and second, there was a lot of wind against us. I honestly thought about walking for a while. My legs resembled two heavy logs, my right knee was killing me and I felt this excruciating pain in my left foot. I was a complete rag at the 21st mile. And 5 miles is still a very long way to go! At this point, I had to use all my veteran experience... I was running close to the right hand side of the track trying to put my feet on the floor very carefully to avoid further pain or injuries. As I had one of my last passages for a supply post; finishing my energy drink first, and water later, I spit to my right hand side, as there was nobody there. Surprisingly, the spit turned back (with the strong wind) passed close to my right eye and hit a lady that was going behind me. I think I've never felt so embarrassed in my life. I really didn't know what to do... either run faster, or much slower... I just couldn't stay close to her. None of us stopped, but I approached her and apologized. Come to think of it, this was not my fault but the wind's. Either way I was very annoyed with the whole situation, and still struggling to finish the race. She understood that, at that time, I was more dead than alive, and even if I wanted to do that on purpose, I could never do it! She was faster than me, at that time, and soon enough, I was alone and back to my growing problems of several aches in my lower members...

Eventually I was able to control my pain, and maintain a steady pace until the 25th mile. As soon as I saw this plaque, something released my energy reserves and I boosted for a very nice last mile (in roughly 7m30s) pulverizing my previous record for the marathon with a strong finish!!

The feeling of finishing such a race, is not possible to describe through words. I had just reached Olympus, and Zeus was expecting me.

As for the organization of the race, at this point, everything was going smoothly. However, in the return trip all hell broke loose: it took me 4 hours to run 26.2 miles, and more than 2 hours just to take the bus back to the parking lot reserved to participants... this was poor organization. Completely avoidable, and everybody was extremely dissatisfied with this. I'm sure they lost a few competitors for next year...

ps- this post is too big to be re-read, and I'm tired now; hence I apologize for any mistakes you might find!