Christmas & New Year's Letter: Winter & Spring 2011
Dines Bjørner
November 20, 2011
Thanks to DTU Informatics for kindly hosting this Web page
Previous years:
This year:
Some might peruse this travelogue cum diary.
Some may "feel" them toe-cringing.
Some might not.
Bless all.
The winter & spring diary entries:
- I am a 5-year member of the 6 person group of
the ACM Infosys Foundation
Award
committee.
- So I attended my first meeting there Thursday February 17.
- ACM was kind enough to fly "an old man" business class return
and to cover four nights at the 43rd St./8th Ave. Westin
Hotel.
- Besides "recovering" from the jet lag,
that gave me time to walk around places I first visited in
October 1964 -
and have visited many, many times since: The 5th
Ave. and St.Patricks church pedestrian walk
where I first met Kari,
the Sardis Restaurant, the Katz Delicatessen and the Grand Central
Oyster Bar
to which I took her then, and where we also came in 1973.
- I had a delightful lunch with Karen Backus (the daughter of
John
W. Backus
(see also))
-
her own company office was two blocks from my hotel.
Gd.Central Oyster Bar / Katz Deli / Sardis
- Thursday evening I hosted Kari's sister Anne Dagny's daughter
Kjersti
and her roommate (at Atlantic Nordic College in N.Y.)
for a drink at Bemelman's
Bar
at the
Carlyle Hotel
and for dinner at the Grand Central Oyster Bar.
- Paris was Kari's tour: to peruse and buy P&Q textiles.
- And did she peruse and buy?
- Every morn ing, 3-4 hours, for 5 days!
- Then visits to the post office to ship home boxes and boxes!
- Meanwhile Dines strolled for hours
- arondissement after arondissement,
- enjoyed quiet aperitifs (and coffees),
- took a few photos,
- and otherwise reminisced on many, many visits since 1958.
- Then we met for lunch at selected brasseries and bistros.
View from our room / Montmartre / View from our room
Brasserie Terminus Nord / same / "The" Patchwork Store
From our room / Nikolaj and Kari / Kari
posting P&Q fabrics
- On our last day Nikolaj was in town:
- had arrived the evening before,
- attending and giving talks at an MS conference,
- and kindly having lunch with us at "Le Grand
Vefour",
- a restaurant which Dines first visited in 1958 and subsequently
perhaps 2 other times.
The tour to China was economically sponsored, travel and hotels, by
Shenzhen and Peking institutes
of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
and the Peking University of Aeronautics and Aerospace
and by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
My wonderful student at NUS
Dr. Yang ShaoFa
had organised that I should visit his institute
SIAT, see below.
He organised "luxurious" air tickets Peking-Shenzhen-Peking, hotels,
lunches and dinners.
So after my Sat. noon arrival at Peking airport I walked over to the
Shenzhen departure and was received by him at Shenzhen airport.
Stayed in a comfortable hotel that night,
Next morning early up and early jet foil to Macau.
My two night hotel in Macau was covered locally.
I was received at the Shenzhen (Skekou)-Macau jet foil by
Wendy
(Mrs. Hoi Iok Wa, the director's assistant in my time)
and I had lunch Sunday at the Westin Hotel on Coloane with the
two families of Miss Hoi Iok Wa and Annie Chan.
I met "the ladies", staff from UNU-IIST whom I hired in 1993 and still
at UNU-IIST, Sunday afternoon.
I visited UNU-IIST Monday morning.
And met with former UNU-IIST colleagues for dinner at Afonso III.
In between I sauntered around old Macau and recovered from the jet lag
in my sumptuous rooms at Posada Sao
Tiago
In the morning of Tuesday 19 April with jet foil ferry to Kowloon.
http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/
- After checking in at the very nice YMCA
Hotel
I visited
my tailor: Lee and
Barron
and ordered a new suit:
jacket, 2 trousers, 3 shirts, all in light blue.
- Then off, by taxi, to
CUHK's Dept. of
CS&E
where Prof. Lee
("Jimmy") Ho Man
hosted me.
I gave a talk mid afternoon
and had delightful talks with Jimmy and Prof. Ho-Fung
Leung.
- That evening we had an early dinner in Shantin attended also by
Prof. Tien Chi Chen ("TC"),
a colleague from IBM Research days
and a friend ever since.
- The photo below is from my room early that evening.
- Next morning a "sail down memory-lane": The Star Ferry across to
Hong Kong Island and back.
- Then lunch at one of our many favourites, the Swiss restaurant
Chesa at The
Peninsula.
- Then a fitting with the tailor -- and off, from Kowloon to Shekou.
- Again Shao Fa Yang received me.
- The next two days I visited SIAT and gave two lectures.
- Shaofa also showed me a bit of
Shenzhen.
- When Kari and I first visited Canton and took the train
from Canton to Hong Kong there was a village
- where there is now a probably 10
million
people city!
- of which 1/4 has "citizenship" status (in Chinese
"hukou").
- And sent me off Saturday morning back to Peking.
- Saturday: I was received at the airport by Ms Zhongyi Zhang from
the CAS Institute of Software
and taken to my hotel, the 5 star
Jade Palace Hotel.
Rested the rest of the day.
Had dinner with Prof. Lu RuQian
and 4-5 of his colleagues.
- Sunday: I also rested and spent mid-late afternoon with
my former JAIST
student Dr. Liu Bo Chao
and his wife (she took the
left photo below).
- The building is the Birds
Nest
National
Stadium
by the artist Ai
WeiWei.
Liu Bo Chao / Xi Hai Lake
- Liu Bo Chao had translated my three volume book into Chinese
- started when I was at JAIST (Kanazawa, Japan),
- but finished only after I left.
- Monday: Took a taxi to Palace Hotel and, from there, to the
new financial district of Peking.
Had lunch at the luxurious Italian restaurant
Prego at the Westin Hotel.
- Tuesday and Wednesday: Attended a symposium in honour of a US
scientist cum technologist: Barry W. Boehm,
and read a paper in his honour.
- Taking taxis around Peking is a way of seeing a city I have
visited more than 60 times in the last 31 years.
Slow, ever so slow - but you get to see the cyclists hauling their
often volumnious packages.
- Thursday: I visited Prof. Li Wei, Beijing
Univ. of Astronautic and Aerospace School of Comp.Sci. and
Eng.
and gave a talk.
- Friday: Gave a talk in the morning at CAS's Software Institute
had lunch with the Zhou ChaoChen family;
saw their spacious house;
and watched TV with a royal wedding in London!
- Saturday: Took a taxi down to the north east corner of XiHai
lake - see photo above.
Walked along that and the Houhai and Qianhai
lakes.
Had lunch at restaurant
Kao Rou Ji
where also Kari and I lunched, first time in 1981.
Then down to
Beihai park and taxi home.
Farewell dinner with prof. Lu RuQian
and old colleagues from my first visit to China, hosted also then by
Prof. Lu.
- The trip to Rome was just an excuse to get away:
walk around the inner streets of Rome.
- As is shown by 8 of the photos below we focused
on lunches and dinners at quaint, old and cosy trattorias.
- One day we took the bus to Tivoli, walked around the Villa
d'Este and had lunch locally.
... / Tivoli: Villa d'Este / ...
- First evening dinner. Friday 13 May, was at
Ristorante al Galetto (Piazza Farnese 102).
- Saturday lunch was at Ristorante Sora
Lello.
- Sunday lunch: Pierluigi.
- Sunday dinner: da Francesco, Piazza del Fico.
- Monday (after excursion to Tivoli), and best dinner was just
around the corner: Ristorante La
Campana.
- Tuesday, and best, lunch was at Ristorante al
Moro.
- We had two errands in the UK
- Dines to read two lectures at University of Swansea
while also seeing to it that five boxes of "old" computing
literature had been properly received.
Dines had collected these documents, some of them "rare",
since the later 1960s.
Now they are more properly handled by the
History of Computing
Collection
founded by
Prof. John
Vivian Tucker.
- Kari and Dines to visit Dines' cousin Lise
and, with her and her friend, Stella, to attend the
Mozart Don Giovanni opera at the
Glyndebourne.
-
Swansea, Monday-Wednesday 13-15 June:
We
flew to London Heathrow.
Rented a car and drove to Swansea.
Had dinner that evening with Peter
Mosses
and his wife Joanna.
Lecture next day and dinner with colleagues.
Lecture on last day morning and off to Bath.
Peter Mosses had arranged very local very carefully - so, for
example,
Kari got to see many interesting things.
-
Bath, Wednesday-Thursday 15-16 June:
- Drove straight, Wednesday noon, to Bath.
- Checked into lovely Dukes
Hotel,
- Dines had been twice before in Bath, in the early 1960s and in
the mid 1980s.
- So Kari spent an afternoon seeing The Royal Crescent, the Roman
Baths,
and many other sights while Dines enjoyed a great room.
-
Salisbury, Thursday 16 June:
- A brief stop in Salisbury.
- Kari had never seen the Cathedral.
The Cathedral
-
Winchester, Thursday-Friday 16-17 June:
- One night, at Hotel du
Vin.
- A wonderful room.
- Saw the Cathedral close, Cathedral and Winchester High Street.
- Dinner, of course, in the hotel
bistro.
The Cathedral
-
Eastbourne, Friday-Tuesday 17-21 June:
- Next morning a walk around to Winchester
College.
- Then off to
Eastbourne
along the coastal road.
- Dines' cousin Lise has a wonderful, large weekend/summer apartment in
Eastbourne.
- Along the coast, 7th floor, great view of the English Channel
and the Downs.
- Lise's friend, Stella, lived, for the weekend, in a hotel
around the corner.
- Lise cooked a delicious fish dinner that night for us 4.
- Next day, Saturday, we shopped for fresh fish at the Eastbourne
fish market.
- Then Lise drove us to
Litlington
from
where we walked to
Alfristonhttp://www.alfriston-village.co.uk/index.html
- Kari and I visited the Alfriston Clergy House
- Kari and I hosted the lunch, on the terrace, at the
The George
Inn.
- Dines bought some wonderful books in the village.
- Again Lise cooked a wonder fish dinner.
- Sunday was the day: at 2pm we had dressed up, smartly, the
ladies in long dresses.
Lise drove us off to the
Glyndebourne.
We first had scones and tea, then saw/heard the
Don Giovanni, during
the break we had dinner at Nether Wallop, and were home by 9pm!
A wonderful opera, great singing, great orchestra.
- Monday the ladies returned to London and Kari and I toured
Eastern Sussex,
visiting Rudyard Kipling's House Bateman's.
The tour was beautiful and included Hastings.
- Tuesday we drove back to Heathrow, returned the car and were at
home, in Holte, before 7pm.
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Christmas & New Year's Letter: Winter & Spring 2011
This document was generated using the
LaTeX2HTML translator Version 2002-2-1 (1.71)
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Nikos Drakos,
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Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,
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The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 0 -toc_depth 6 diary2011A
The translation was initiated by Dines Bjorner on 2011-11-20
Dines Bjorner
2011-11-20
