Foreign Conferences

In 2008 I got to go to two international conferences. the first, in July, was the Fpi8 conference in Graz, Austria. The FPi series alternates between Europe, the US and Japan and Fpi8 marked my attendance of the complete set - Ithaca 2004, Osaka 2006 and now Graz. I was going with Martin, Mustafa and Pete from Chemistry and Torsten from CDT. While the others opted to fly down to Stansted and then out to graz, I thought of my FlyingBlue miles and flew to Austria via Amsterdam and then got the train to Graz. Both options turned out to work well and by the end of the Sunday we were all sitting down to a large Austrian meal under a large canvas roof. Soon, the rain developed into a full blown storm which made sitting outside interesting.




The difference between this and other conferences I had been to was that this time I was making an oral presentation rather than just defending a poster. Before that though I sat through 4 days of talks on functionalised pi-systems. Since Ithaca, academic interest has shifted from OLED materials to transistors (OTFT) and solar cells (OPV). Infact, most OELD talks were towards the end of the conference. The talk went well, even though I was introduced as "mister" grrr. The first one is supposed to be the hardest, so that boded well for the next conference. Instead of going on the organised excursions, Pete and I wandered around graz - which is a fairly small city - taking in all the sites from the weird "alien" buildings of the culture centre and the river-slug to the Schlossberg and clocktower that overlooks the city (taking the hillside train was a much better option than walking).




The second conference was at the start of September in Dresden. This time I was the only chemist in our visiting party made up of Andy, Olivier, Ben and mot of Andy's Ph.D. students. A flight via Dusseldorf left us in the tiny Dresden airport trying to figure out the ticket machine. It ended up stumping us. Our hotel was next to the train station and, apart from registering at the conference site, out first day and a half was free so we made good use of it wandering around the reconstructed Dresden.
Unlike blitzed cities in the UK, Dresden took a long time to be rebuilt and the extra care that's gone into it is evident - the buildings have been rebuilt to maintain a traditional feel rather than just throw up concrete buildings like we did. The end result is a much more pleasant cities than somewhere like Coventry.



A with Austria we enjoyed some excellent food - and took advantage of Andy's knowledge and contacts to get to some restaurants most tourists wouldn't including a Thai restaurant on the edge of the city and a chicken restaurant. The conference ws solely focussed on OLEDs with an emphasis on device physics and engineering, but there was still a bit of chemistry. The session my talk was in lost most of it's participants as the first 2 of 4 speakers hadn't shown up, but some of the audience had returned for my talk - which was a more complete version of the one from Graz. A Special mention has to go to the conference banquet which had some awesome food on offer, including the very moreish veal slices... Hopefully 2009 will bring a few more conferences my way.

Two Weddings

In an effort to get the rest of last year blogged, here are a couple of big events from 2008. The first was the Wedding of college friends Matt and Mel in Melbourne near Derby. A group of us from Durham drove down on the Friday night to the East Midlands' Airport Travelodge (actually built into the service station). Luckily, our room didn't overlook the Burger King. Not only was I a wedding guest, but I had also agreed to act as one of the two photographers for the day. When we rolled up to the church I was handed a d-SLR and some memory cards and had a few minutes to get used to how it worked and figure out the different shooting modes before I was off taking pictures of the area and guests. I won't go on about the ceremony as I'll just post some pictures (more on my Flickr site). I will say that as a photographer I didn't get the chance to relax and chill out until the meal, after which I handed over the camera and became just a guest again. Of the hundreds of shots Caz and I took, a lot turned out really well which I'm happy about.






The second wedding was over the summer in Durham and saw Alan and Lucy get married. This time I was involved as an usher which simply involved shepherding guests around at the church and then the reception. This time it was a pretty miserable day with rain and drizzle throughout the ceremony. As we arrived at St Mary's College for the reception the sun broke out and the afternoon and evening was very sunny and warm so the drinks reception took place outside. Again, more pictures are on Flickr.

A review of last year's tech predictions

There's more 2008 updates on they (and more photos have made their way onto Flickr. In the meantime, here's a review of how I did with my 2008 tech predictions.

Small computers

In many ways this prediction hasn't come to fruition as the new Mac Mini isn't scheduled to be launched until next week and the only other supplier, Acer, hasn't really pushed it's small systems. In fact, it's looking like small computers will arrive in the form of "all-in-ones" such as the iMac and Dell One and, more immediately, laptops which have started selling in larger numbers than desktops. The days of the massive, loud tower case are definitely numbered.
As a side I mentioned the Asus EEE PC - a cheap, small "nettop" laptop that I predicted would take the world by storm and this was a success - you can't move now for 9-10" low powered laptops in the £2-300 range. Their success has certainly annoyed a lot of people. Sony complained that it meant they would lose profits trying to sell a small laptop for over £1000. It also meant that people started to question the need to upgrade their computers when all they wanted to do was surf the net and run a word processor which panicked Microsoft who have had a keep extending the life of Windows XP.

E-Paper

This one is split across the world. In the US, E-paper is very popular thanks to the Amazon Kindle - an ebook that allows you to buy books from Amazon anywhere via a built-in shop. Unfortunately, E-book pricing still doesn't seem to reflect the lack of materials compared to a paper book. Sony released a new Reader that was better than the old 505, which may explain why the Reader was finally launched in the UK. Of course, the model we got was last year's 505 model (no doubt collected up from the rest of the world) and at £200 it's not exactly cheap. Still, it's apparently selling well through Waterstones. Next year will see the release of the Plastic Logic Reader and no doubt the gradual reduction in price to where they might actually be worth it.

Personal GPS

A hit. As expected, the iPhone3G featured built in GPS. Out of the box, you've got Google Maps to use, but thanks to Apple's innovative App Store a large number of "location-based services" have sprung up allowing you to find just about anything where ever you are: ATMs, restaurants, nearby friends, public toilets... This has resulted in every other smartphone from HTC, Nokia, RIM etc coming with GPS and most mid-range Nokia phones. In the next year this will filter down to the low end phones from Nokia, Samsung, Lg and SonyEricsson. But to be honest, the iPhone is the one everyone wants.

Splashpower

This one is a massive failure. After years of failing to get any manufacturers on board, Splashpower went under in April. However, their patents have been bought up, so we may yet see products based on wireless charging.

Smartcards

Another slow-burner. These are being rolled out across transport networks throughout the country. With the credit-crisis, the banks haven't kept up the momentum in rolling out contactless payments outside of the City of London. Nevermind.

As a side, it seems most of my 2007 predictions have come to fruition in 2008. Digital photo frames have hit the mainstream, even if most of them use cheap screens. The next generation using OLEDs are now available (for a price). HSDPA is now built into almost every phone released and personal GPS is taking off and the Wii is running away from the XBox360 and PS3 in terms of sales.

I'm still thinking about my predictions for the year 2009, so until then Happy New Year!

Hong Kong part 3

Our last full day in HK dawned and Emma and I headed back to Hong Kong island to have a look at the escalator to the mid-levels. The mid-levels are up the hill from the Central district and accessed via very windy roads. The escalator is the world's longest outdoor escalator rising a vertical distance of 135 m over a length of 800 m. There's only one lane of escalator which changes direction running downwards until 10 am and the upwards till midnight. There is also the normal option of stairs for when it's running the wrong way for you. We stopped off for breakfast at a small cafe a few hundred metres up the hill. The place soon filled up with rugby 7s fans from around the world dressed up in a variety of wacky costumes. After a fry-up to be proud of we set off back down the escalator to see one of the wet markets - traditional street markets selling food.



There was loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, more live seafood for sale and all sorts of meat - including chickens' feet.

At the end of the market we finally caught one of Hong Kong's old trams through Central to the Bank of China, the iconic "triangle" building. The trams are pretty jerky and very narrow, but they keep going.



The Bank of China has a viewing platform which afforded us fantastic views over Central and Admiralty. Even more surprising was that the bank was open on a Saturday! More importantly though was that the fog had lifted for the first time.





For our final excursion we took a bus to the south of the island to Stanley. As the double-decker bus started climbing up the hills the roads started getting more winding and narrower. As we came down the other side of the hill, the road quality deteriorated and the ride became more akin to a roller-coaster with as we worked our way past the luxury houses to Stanley. Stanley is famous for its market and once again the area turned out to be full of knock-off shops and overly priced restaurants and westernised bars along the China Sea front. We went for a dim-sum restaurant, tucked away behind the market, hoping it might be a hidden gem. We even went for the chicken-feet. We were disappointed on both fronts. Chickens' feet are probably the most pointless food ever - there is more bone and gristle than meat.



The bus back came through a tunnel rather than the hill-top road and was much less hair-raising. We traversed the bay on the Star Ferry again to wait for dusk and the symphony of lights. This time I was able to get some nice photos without fog.





We took the ferry back to the island for our final meal out in an very old restaurant that slowly descended into farce. The waiter seem confused by our order (two different set meals), but seemed to grasp the idea in the end. After a while the first meal's first course (bird's nest soup) arrived. A few minutes later, nothing else had arrived, so we questioned where the other meal was. The waiter got across that he'd thought only one of us was eating, but we convinced him we both wanted food. He came back a few moments later and thrust a spoon at Emma and then went away again. After a few minutes it became clear he wasn't coming back with any more food and had assumed that we were being cheap-wads and sharing one meal between two. After calling over a different waiter we finally got the message across and soon were tucking into roast pigeon. Unfortunately, the main dish was pretty rank. As as final "insult" to the restaurant, their oldest waiter - who looked about 80 - nearly tripped over whilst serving our desert. We gulped down the desert, paid up and ran before we caused any other mishaps.

Hong Kong is like a real culture smash between east and west - the British influences are clearly there and they fall away quickly the further into Kowloon you go. It's a very good starting point for people who want to explore east Asia for the first time. There was so much we didn't have time for - notably the New Territories, but these are more Cantonese than British and off the main tourist trail. Maybe next time.

The next day we got up and took the MTR for the final time to Hong Kong and got the skytrain back to the Airport for the flight back home. This time, Air France had remembered our seat bookings, but of course there had to be a problem and that was that the already mediocre entertainment system refused to play any films leading to a 12 hour flight where we had to entertain ourselves. Still at least we'd get home in one piece.





Or were we? Despite have a 4 hour layover in Paris, which was extended by an hours delay, we arrived in Manchester to find an entire crate of luggage had been left on the tarmac in Paris. Nevermind, Air France had the pleasure of couriering my bag from Manchester to Durham. Take that!

Hong Kong part 2

After exploring Central and Admiralty, our 2nd full day started off walking around Kowloon. There are two main roads that run north to south and are rammed with electronics stores. We walked north on Nathan road taking in all the sites and sounds. Unfortunately a lot of these were Indians offering me suits and Emma Thai massages. Seriously, every 20 metres another one popped up with an offer. We found another out-of-the-way restaurant downstairs in a random building. Unlike the packed Town Hall dim-sum place, this place was practically empty. Once again, we ended up ordering far too much - the mixed noodles we thought was a side turned out to be a full dish so in total we'd accidentally ordered four full dishes for two of us...



After lunch we carried on before heading across to the Museum of Hong Kong. The fixed exhibit was the traditional "history of..." exhibition charting Hong Kong from perhistoria to modern (well, the 90s) times. As ever, Britain played a large part in Hong Kong's history by breaking down the Chinese by importing drugs to the area and advancing towards to capital until the Chinese capitulated and signed over first Hong Kong island and then Kowloon and the New Territories to Britain.



The second exhibit seemed to be about banking (and HSBC in particular, of course) so we skipped out to go to the adjacent science museum to finally see the National Geographic young wildlife photographer of the year exhibition that we'd missed out on in London last year.

Once we had finished browsing through the impressive collection, we headed back to the docks. As we waited for night to fall we popped into an amusement arcade and went head to head on Mario Kart GP2, which was as fun as ever.

Hong Kong is famous for it's night-time harbour sound and light show a symphony of lights which holds the world record for the longest daily sound and light show. Every day at 8pm music is piped onto the Avenue of Stars in Tsim Sha Tsui and the lights on buildings on the island flash and lasers shine into the sky in time with the music. It's pretty cheesy, but every day crowds line up, people set up camera tripods and everyone waits for the show to start. The mist still hung over the island so the view wasn't as clear as in the pictures. We wandered up the Avenue of Stars - the HK equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame and stopped off for a drink in one of the many quayside bars and then wandered back while taking in the light show.



Also on the avenue was a display of the Olympic mascots, which seemed to all be pandas. Some of the sports they were partaking in were obvious, but some were more confusing...



Once the show was over we decided to cross the harbour and take the train up to The Peak. The train runs on a pulley system, but even so the track was seriously steep. Starting at the base of the hill the journey ran uphill at steep angle. We started out at "ground level" and soon were rising above the sky-scrapers towards the summit. The Peak is predictably tourist trap-esque and the centre is full of tacky over-priced souvenir shops and places like Hard Rock Cafe. We went to one of the over priced restaurants which was pretty nice, but seemed to be lacking the live music indicated by the guide book. We got a seat with a view (again foggy) and a menu full of the promise of freshly cooked food. After ordering, the waiter returned to inform us that Emma's choice had run out so a replacement was ordered. After a few minutes, our meals turned up. A few minutes later another waiter arrived with Emma's original choice. He seemed very confused that we both had food, but unfortunately didn't decide to leave the extra meal with us.



After we got back to sea level we decided to go for a walk over the many elevated walkways back to Central, stopping to get some "lines of lights" photos along the way.



The next day we took the MTR out to Lantau island, adjacent to the new airport and took the cable car out to Ngong Ping, home of the world's largest outdoor bronze Buddha. There seem to be so many of these things around that there needs to be multiple categories to have records in. Biggest/smallest, indoors/outdoors, bronze...



The journey takes about 20 minutes and gives an aerial view of the new airport, before going over the hills of Lantau island to Ngong Ping village. If the Peak was a tourist trap, then Ngong Ping is a tourist death-trap. The entire cable car complex has been built to look old, but they did a pretty poor job as everything looks like it's made out of plastic. Overpriced cafes and souvenir shops line the path to the monastery at the foot of the steps up to the Buddha itself.



Apparently Buddha like oranges, so there were plenty of orange bushes around and small piles of offerings in front of the statues. Then we started up the hundreds of stairs. I know I'm not that fit, but daaaaaaaaaaaamn there was a lot of stairs.



After getting the cable car back to Tung Chung, we walked around the shopping centre there taking in another supermarket, complete with more live fish tanks and piles of durian fruits.

That evening we ventured back to Yau Ma Tei to take in a night market. Essentially, it was a market along a street full of stalls selling tat, knocked off toys and clothes. Afterwards we were guided into another random building, up a staircase and into a first floor restaurant, practically invisible from the street (in fact, it took us several attempts to find the building). This was another traditional place, full of Cantonese where very few of the waiters spoke English. We ordered the duck pancakes and a whole sliced duck arrived.



Afterwards we wandered back towards the harbour. As we neared the harbour we passed the Sheraton hotel. After my experiences in Frankfurt and Sheraton Preferred Guest card in my wallet I dragged Emma inside for a drink. The bar was on the top floor with an amazing view over the harbour. Of course, the drinks of choice were cocktails - margaritas, daiquiri and other strong vodka drinks that looked pretty space-age under the mood lighting. Very Lost In Translation