Table Of Contents
As I write this I am 2 hours into my first flight from Winnipeg back to Aotearoa via Vancouver and Sydney. That is 3 + 16 + 3 hours, with 9, er, 8 hours in Sydney. This is towards the end of my month of travel: 5 weeks, 3 tournaments (consecutive weekends), 2 conferences (2 days at each), 1 judo course (6 days). Now I have my last two months in Aotearoa before teaching starts in Winter term, which I can devote mostly to research, with just a bit more teaching prep.
Presentation I gave:
- Mohammad Mahdi Abdollahpour, Jens Dietrich, and Patrick Lam. SCAM 2024: Enhancing Security through Modularization: A Counterfactual Analysis of Vulnerability Propagation and Detection Precision. [bib, slides pdf, google slides]
Mohammad also gave his master’s seminar on this topic while I was in Waterloo (on the last day for 50% tuition refund for Fall).
Presentations I advised:
- Alex Le Blanc and Patrick Lam. HATRA 2024: Surveying the Rust Verification Landscape. [arXiv, bib]
- Karoliine Holter, Juhan-Oskar Hennoste, Patrick Lam, Simmo Saan, Vesal Vojdani. Onward! 2024: Abstract Debuggers: Exploring Program Behaviors Using Static Analysis Results. [bib]
Unfortunately, due to a schedule conflict, I couldn’t attend HATRA, which was on the Sunday of the Ontario Open. We did do a pair of in-person practice runs and I was able to debrief my PhD student Alex on Sunday evening in Pasadena, before he went to his second conference for the week, presenting work from his master’s. Busy week for him too.
COVID
I paid a modest fee (US$150) to get this year’s COVID booster in Arizona. I tried to get it while I had 5 hours in LA, but failed to get it as a walk-in on a Saturday. The US healthcare system is broken (reason #4873): showing a screen from goodrx results in a lower cash price than not. So far, lots of travels and no COVID, so that’s good. I continue to hear about people having long-term aftereffects of COVID infections. Is it worse than the flu? Well, in terms of deaths, yes. In terms of aftereffects? Dunno. I’ll continue to mask on the bus and on the plane.
There has been some talk, though not much, about protective nasal sprays. The nitric oxide spray is approved in some other parts of the world, including some of Europe, but not in NZ or North America. But the iota-carrageenan spray is available in NZ.
Professional
Basically all of the serious professional work I did was attend conferences and prepare presentations for them. I’ll describe the trips below. Also I resubmitted my NSERC Discovery application. Hope it works this year.
Worked on 17 days. There are 22 work days, but there is reading week, which counts as work days but also is usually a bit more relaxed.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
I finally met one of my Estonian collaborators, Karoliine! I also met with my students in person as I was passing through Waterloo (and took them out to lunch). And chatted with Brian, who I haven’t collaborated for in a while, at SPLASH. Apart from that, I had calls with collaborators, students, past students, and mentees on 5 other days.
Collegiality/Service
Got another TOSEM paper to review. Was encouraged to help organize an East Coast SPLASH in the future. After November 2024’s election, not keen on organizing a SPLASH in the US.
Trips
Fun fact: I was on Old Route 66 in both Flagstaff and Pasadena.
October’s Flight Delays
Out of 16 flights, the last few flights had some pretty severe delays. Sometimes, but not usually, they made up some time in the air.
- AKL - LAX: 50 minute delay on departure, 13 minute delay on arrival
- LAX - PHX: 30 minute delay on departure, same on arrival
- ROT - WLG: 70 minute delay on departure, same on arrival
- LAX - YVR: 3 hour delay on departure (inbound flight 1h plus 2h “equipment stuck on tarmac”), same on arrival, which was 2am
- YWG - YVR: 90 minute delay on departure (inbound flight), same on arrival
- YVR - SYD: equipment swap; 1h30 delay on departure, 21 minute delay on arrival
Flagstaff, Oct 5-9
Well, we got a paper accepted at SCAM, Mohammad has an Iranian passport, and Jens couldn’t take time out of his semester to travel, so it was up to me to travel to Flagstaff. I could have done without that travel, but I believe in this work, and I do believe that presenting work in person has more impact than not, so here we were.
I wrote many words about this trip. Here are some of them, as well as all the pictures.
A selection of them:
I managed to get some sleep on the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, but it arrives at 4am local time for someone from NZ, and I often go to bed around midnight. Not the best for sleep, despite comfort. I think schedule is at least as important as seat in terms of getting sleep.
The Flixbus from PHX to Flagstaff was good, cheap (US$28), and not too busy, as long as the timing works. It did, for me, on the outbound, and left me at the Flagstaff train station, a 15 minute walk away from my hotel after sunset. The 30 minute delay for LAX-PHX didn’t interfere with my bus connection.
Overall, no travel issues. It’s just far: still about 27 hours door-to-door, even without crossing the continent. To be fair, flying just from Auckland to LA, for instance, or even Vancouver, is much quicker. I usually use the rule that each connection adds about 4 hours.
Maybe I’ve said this before, but it seems that people get COVID when travelling or from their kids. With all the travel coming up, I really thought it was a good idea to get the booster. It does protect somewhat vs transmission for a short time. So I walked to a Walgreen’s, waited for the pharmacy to open at 10 on a Sunday, and paid up for the vaccine. There was also another person getting the COVID + flu vaccine, plus an unhappy woman who the staff de-escalated.
The Mount Elden lookout walk is a half-day walk with 2000’ of elevation gain. You walk through the forest to the fire lookout tower. It is possible to see a couple of birds, as well as Flagstaff from above, including the occasional long freight train. I think I like Aotearoa’s native forest more. It’s more green, rather than being dry scrub and conifers.
Not far from the trailhead I saw a bunch of firemen milling about. At that point I’d spent some time taking pictures of birds, sunset was getting a bit close, and so I had started walking faster. One guy said “maybe you want to go that way” (points to some rocks a bit off the trail) “but don’t hurt yourself”. I replied “but you can rescue me right?” and he said “no, we’re busy at the moment”. Yes, there was someone being rescued. Presumably they were organizing a litter to carry the person out.
Mohammad did a great job with the slides and I presented them.
I was thinking of doing two things in Phoenix: going to a (nice air-conditioned) climbing gym, and going to the Nina Mason Pullman Rio Salado Audubon Center to see birds. Downtown Phoenix is not a happening place, and the closest gym is a $20 Uber ride (or an hour of bus) away. So, birds it was. The bird sanctuary was a much shorter bus ride from downtown, although some guy wanted to get on the bus between stops or something, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle until some other guy (not on the bus) talked him out of it. Phoenix is kind of dysfunctional I guess.
Then it was time to get back to Rotorua for the NZ nationals, via 24 hours in airportland again. Except for the last segment, this reversed my itinerary to get to Phoenix. Especially with lounge access, I’m pretty good at coping with airportland. It is significantly worse without status.
NZ Nationals, Oct 11-14
Flew into Auckland, took a shower (yay), met up with MP, flew on to Rotorua.
After landing in Rotorua, we started walking towards town, and got offered a ride by a nice lady who had dropped off her partner at the airport. Thanks! We dropped off our stuff and went to get a pie at Patrick’s Pies and walked around the mud pools in central Rotorua (Kuirau Park and the Geothermal Walking Track).
Outside the centre, SH5 is not super walkable; also, the distances from Glenholme, where I usually stay, and the Energy Events Centre, require 30 minutes of walking. Ah well.
Is Rotorua a nice place to live? It’s OK, I guess. A bit small. Can get around with a bike from Glenholme, though some things are still pretty far. Getting out of town seems hard. And maybe you get used to the volcanic smell.
NZ Nationals runs 3 mat surfaces (most other NZ tournaments run 2) and day 1 went until 6:45pm, in part due to there being (relatively) a lot of fighters, and in part due to wait times due to people fighting in multiple divisions. Thanks to the organizers for taking us out to dinner!
Oh, also I won the Veteran Men 40-49 in -66, against one other fighter. I had hoped to fight SM-60 but couldn’t make weight while travelling.
On Day 2, MP tried for McDonald’s for breakfast, but it was slow. Then she went to Hobbiton again. She loves it every time. Now they have built a whole hobbit hole, which we didn’t see last time. After getting back from Hobbiton she was in Rotorua for a bit before flying back to Wellington. I sent the camera back with her.
In the morning, I had another banh mi at Malfroy Bakery (the discovery of this trip; Malfroy is named for the street it’s on, but seems owned by Vietnamese people) and then coffee at Scope—obviously the local hangout—for a while, bfore taking the bus to the airport. There were no other passengers on the bus.
This flight was also delayed by 70 minutes due to inbound aircraft, but there was nothing to be done. (Maori phrase: Kāore e taea te pēhea). There certainly weren’t earlier flights to take.
The Big Trip: Toronto/Waterloo/Scarborough, Pasadena, Winnipeg, Oct 16-29
Some of the Canadian judo circuit tournaments are back-to-back; it makes sense to make the trans-Pacific trip for two tournaments at a time. In this case it is the Ontario Open and the Manitoba Open. Since I am now registered with Judo Ontario and on the provincial refereeing committee, I kind of have to go to the Ontario Open.
Plus, we had a paper at Onward! and I wanted to be there to talk it up to people. It would have been better to also be at HATRA, but I couldn’t do that.
So, the itinerary was Wellington to Toronto (to Waterloo), where I’d stay till Sunday, and then to Los Angeles for the week, and back east to Winnipeg for that weekend, then back to Wellington. Nine flight segments over 5 days (counting days is sort of complicated).
- Full trip report: Ontario, California, and Manitoba, October 16-29 2024
- A gallery with not many photos yet
I don’t actually have that many photos from this trip, but here are some.
Outbound to Toronto, October 16
It’s always the 6am flights to Australia for the connections. Online checkin didn’t work, so the Uber on Wednesday morning was at 0354. I guess the other options were walking (starting at 2am?) or biking (leaving my bike there for almost two weeks?). But I also had lots of luggage. Anyway, I was in the international lounge by 0420, where I posted my September report on October 16. Let’s see if I beat that this month (nope!).
Three flights later, I found myself at Pearson in Toronto. The “fun” part was bringing my stuff from the UP Express station to Marco’s place. Getting off the train is fine. Lugging skis and two big rolly suitcases 8 minutes from the Bloor station to the Dundas station, not so fine. Anyway, I managed.
I once again took a shower at Marco’s place and then Marco, Blake, and I went bouldering at Rock Oasis, where I also met up with Jeremy from the OAC. (Blake has gotten pretty good at bouldering pretty quickly). Late-night food in Toronto is not as obvious as one might hope, but we did have some Korean at the Yummy Korean Restaurant (yes, that’s the name) at 10:30pm.
Stop in Kitchener/Waterloo, October 17-18
I took the 9:42AM train to Kitchener, so not too early, but not sleeping in. After getting a ride to my place from my tenants, I put some air in my bicycle tires and was off to do all the errands, starting with the dentist. Props to the passport office in particular. I brought them passport pictures taken the previous day in Toronto, plus my pre-prepared application, at 2pm on Thursday, and they had my passport by noon Friday, despite some broken computers on their end on Thursday.
Thanks also to Jon for hosting me in Kitchener for a night.
I also took my students out to lunch at the new Vietnamese place in the plaza, ran through practice talks (2× HATRA) and MMath seminars, returned my bike, got a flu shot, and caught the bus back to Toronto. I also gave away a (big heavy) natural history book that I’d impulse purchased to an audience that will surely appreciate it.
Fortunately, my luggage was subsequently reduced to one (heavy with paper) backpack and sometimes one suit jacket bag (when not inside the pack). My mobility greatly increased for the rest of the trip. It’s fortunate that Waterloo was right near the start of the trip.
Ontario Open, October 19-20
I did, however, have intense dysphoria driving around the GTA on Friday night. It was so terrible. Gerry had invited the Ontario Open referees to visit his judo club at the JCCC. In a case of user error, I programmed the airbnb and not the dojo into my GPS, causing an extra half hour of rush hour driving. Afterwards, there was drinks at York Mills, which was easy enough to get to, but horrendous to leave, due to the 401 being closed. The drive from there to the airbnb would normally be 14 minutes but took 46 minutes and felt like an hour.
| Trip | Distance | Time |
|---|---|---|
| YYZ - Scarborough | 38km | 51min |
| Scarborough - JCCC North York | 17km | 26min |
| JCCC North York - York Mills | 5km | 8min |
| York Mills - Scarborough | 22km | 46min |
The tournament itself was good. The big Canadian tournaments (Ontario Open, Quebec Open, Edmonton International) are continuing to get bigger and I think they are now above pre-COVID numbers. Back in the late 2010s there was some concern about tournament numbers, but at least at the Canadian Circuit level there is reason for optimism about sufficient numbers. The flip side is that we were refereeing from 8AM (roll call 7AM) until 21:30 on Saturday. Hopefully we can have 6 mat areas next year.
I’d looked at the timings from last year and figured that I should be able to get to the airport just in time for my flight to California. I often give people rides from the Ontario Open; this year’s ride was to Sandra flying to PEI. I’d reserved the rental car start on Friday for 19:00 but actually got to YYZ at 17:52, actually getting the car keys around 18:15. They adjusted the start time to 18:00 (though I sucessfully complained about the extra hour charge they had added with a 19:00 return) and I managed to return the car at 18:28, after checking typical drive times throughout the weekend (there’s always traffic). There used to be an extra hour of grace time but Alamo now has it at 30 minutes. Not a great rental experience, but what is?
SPLASH, October 21-24
Onward! Well, that’s where I had one paper with my collaborators from Tartu.
Monday was light on scheduled activities, but not light enough for me to really be able to explore the area. There is a tradeoff between carrying more clothes and doing more laundry. Anyway, I had to do laundry again.
I registered for two days of SPLASH, Wednesday and Thursday, but was also around a bit on Monday and Tuesday. SPLASH is an order of magnitude bigger than SCAM (though that was a colocated event and I can’t speak to ICSME which it was colocated with), and I know a lot more people at SPLASH than at SCAM. It was nice to catch up with people who I haven’t talked to for years, what with this pandemic and being in New Zealand and all. The layout of the conference hotel was one of the better ones I’d seen for encouraging the hallway track; sometimes the venues feel spread out and there is no concentration of people.
Our talk was on Thursday afternoon and I had to leave right after it. But, my flight to YVR and then (next morning) to YWG was delayed, so I didn’t have to leave immediately.
Manitoba Open, October 25-27
The final significant stop on this trip was a return to Winnipeg, where I’d spent a long weekend last year, for the Manitoba Open. The last Onward! session on Thursday ended at 1730 and my flight was originally scheduled for 2035, with one to two hours (depending) from Pasadena to LAX on transit. Having received a flight delay notification, I actually left the venue at 6 and arrived at 1945.
LAX-YVR-YWG is a triangle, so I had 6 hours of flying instead of 3√2 hours. I wouldn’t really expect nonstop service LAX-YWG. YWG isn’t exactly the biggest city in Canada.
Some events are larger and some are smaller. The Manitoba Open is definitely smaller than the Ontario Open, running 3 mats instead of 5. Perhaps it’s about as big as the New Zealand Nationals. The Quebec Open is even bigger than the Ontario Open, with 8 mats. In any case, the Manitoba Open was well-run, and we finished at 12:15 on Sunday. We had 74 matches on our mat on Sunday, plus I picked up an extra 3 in a three-way tiebreaker. In addition to the hospitality suite on Friday, Judo Manitoba took us out to sushi on Saturday, and we finished early enough for that to happen.
Then I took the bus (pretty full on a Sunday afternoon) to downtown Winnipeg (not as much of a place as one might hope, but better than Phoenix) and walked from there to the airport, managing to get a haircut ($25) along the way. I tried to get change for a tip but the guy was like “oh you have a $5 bill, I’ll take that”.
Sydney, October 29
Since my bag was checked anyway, I was lightly loaded for my 9 hour visit to Sydney. I tried to visit the Eve St wetlands but there was a pretty blunt sign about it being a “NO GO ZONE” at the moment. The Landing Lights wetlands had some new-to-me birds though, along with lots of pied stilts; worth a visit. I got a burek and eclair (the latter from yet another Vietnamese bakery) and then took the bus back to SYD a few hours early, where I did more OAC admin and tried to catch up on 3 weeks’ backlog for the te reo Māori course.
The flight from SYD to WLG arrives at 2340. I hadn’t left my bike at the airport for 2 weeks, so the options were to walk or to take an Uber/taxi. I took an Uber.
Travel Planning
Did some more planning for upcoming trips to French Polynesia and the Tour du Mont Blanc, but fortunately I didn’t have to do any en-route travel planning; that is, my October trips were fully planned by the start of October, except for finding restaurants and routings.
Summary: Life maintenance in October
- COVID vaccine (Flagstaff)
- Passport photos (Toronto)
- Passport (Kitchener)
- Dentist (Waterloo)
- Smoke detector and furnace filter (Waterloo)
- Flu vaccine (Waterloo)
Movement statistics
Here’s a list of flights. Basically, there were 7 trips in October, with 3 of them being 2-stop and 1 being 1-stop. The two nonstops I took were from Rotorua back to Wellington, and from Toronto to Los Angeles.
- Oct 5: WLG-AKL, AKL-LAX, LAX-PHX
- Oct 9: PHX-LAX, LAX-AKL, AKL-ROT
- Oct 14: ROT-WLG
- Oct 16: WLG-BNE, BNE-YVR, YVR-YYZ
- Oct 20: YYZ-LAX
- Oct 24: LAX-YVR, YVR-YWG
- Oct 27: YWG-YVR, YVR-SYD, SYD-WLG
And the usual movement statistics:
- 🚶 Walking: 110km on 25 days (pretty good for so much travel and few hikes)
- 🚲 Biking: 68km on 6 days, including 8.8km ebike; half in Waterloo
- 🚗 Driving: 217km on 10 days (bad GTA driving, plus Winnipeg and Rotorus)
- 🚗 Taxi: 43km (WLG ×2, YVR, Pasadena)
- 🚌 Bus: 700km on 15 days (471km to/from Flagstaff, 91km to Mississauga)
- ✈ Plane: 64659km on 13 days
- 🚆 Train: 111km on 2 days (UP Express; GO to Kitchener)
- 🚇 Subway: 18.5km (Toronto)
- 🚆 LRT: 61km (Phoenix and Pasadena)
That makes 830km of transit.
Walks
- Elden Lookout Trail No. 4, 10km, +/-740m
Pictures
These sets are certainly not uniform. The pictures-processed count was quite low until the last few days of October, since I was on the road for much of the month. In the end I still processed less than half as many pictures as I did in September, though more sets.
I removed 12 sets from the queue and added 11 sets, so definitely ahead, especially since the added sets should be easy.
Picture logs still available. As always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures posted: 12 (September: 8)
- Total pictures posted: 284 (346)
- Total pictures in selection pool: 767 (2037)
- Accept rate: 37% (min 16%, max 69%) (July: 17%)
- Pictures posted on this page: 69
October posts
Hopefully I can write an Overland Track post this week. One post: book review. I wanted to bring the book back to Canada so there was some deadline pressure.
(There is a lot of November content on the blog though!)
Miscellaneous
I was in technically in Wellington on 11 days in October, though some of those days really don’t count (e.g. leaving for the airport at 0345, getting back at 2347). Really 7 useful days.
Courses
I had a large backlog on the te reo Māori course at the end of October (but I finished it in early November).
Acquisitions
- black Arc’teryx Bird Head toque (Flagstaff REI, expensive, not quite the same as the lost one)
- ecobee smart thermostat
- smoke detector
- new notebook, Castelli Milano; this is where I write raw data for these reports.
Sports
Not as bad as one might think. 6x judo, including one dojo visit in Toronto, plus two matches at the NZ nationals. Climbing gyms 5×, including once in Toronto (Rock Oasis) and once in Rotorua. It really does take time (30 minutes each way) to get to a gym in Toronto. Probably barely broke even on the Faultline membership this month.
Food
LA/Arizona
- Niko’s Red Tacos (LA): great quesadilla and soup, portion huge
- Shrimp bowl at Flagstaff market: tasty, it is what it says
- Banh mi at Beaver St Brewery (Flagstaff): good for a White People place, though fries?
- Caesar salad at Pizzicletta (Flagstaff): the right choice when I didn’t want something big
- “Everything croissant” in Phoenix: no
- Sliders and meatballs from Phoenix United Club: pretty tasty, but seats all taken
Rotorua
- The Moon Indian Eatery and Bar: reasonable korma
- Malfroy Bakery: best banh mi I’ve had in Rotorua so far, a find
Ontario
- Taste of Seoul (Kitchener) : correct salmon poke bowl
- Pho Anh Vu (Waterloo): pricey but quite good Phở Dặc Biệt
- Tahini’s (Toronto): chain, unremarkable gyro shawarma
Pasadena
- BC’s Donuts: surprisingly good breakfast sandwich by a Vietnamese-owned place (no banh mi on the menu)
- Phở Bánh Mì Chè Cali: OK banh mi, though I wouldn’t write home about it
- “Viva” Tacos La Estrella: looked like good tacos, though again I found them less tasty than I hoped
- Mama Lu’s Dumpling House: I quite liked the crunchy chow mein and soup dumplings, though this place didn’t get universal acclaim.
- The Luggage Room Pizzeria: fully satisfied with my choice
- Yard House: hard to find somewhere for a dozen people later in the evening; had a burger
Winnipeg
- Banh Mi House: superlative banh mi
- Umaido Donuts: one of many mochi donut stores that are around Winnipeg now; bought one got one free coming 30 minutes before closing
- Banh Mi House: pho not as superlative as banh mi, though still excellent
- The Burek Brothers: Macedonian burek, good stuff
- i Bake Rockdale: another Vietnamese bakery with an eclair that I did not need but that I definitely enjoyed
Oh dear, that was a lot of meals on planes.
Air New Zealand
- (J) Amuse-bouche; beef main; eggs, bacon, and hashbrown breakfast
- (Y) um, some chicken thing?; eggs; more eggs and sausage
Air Canada
- (J) Tuna tartare; beef with lots of dies; cheese plate; chicken pot pie; breakfast part 1; breakfast part 2
- (J) pasta; sausage and egg
- (Y) shepherd’s pie; sandwich; omelette
Air New Zealand
- (Y) saag
The TheWorks meals on Air New Zealand are actually pretty good too.
Volunteering
Not too much. 3 new leader interviews for the Scouts. Some AGM planning for the OAC.
Conclusion
I do like travelling, even if I could have done without the Arizona trip. It’s really not the same as virtual conferences, for instance. Judo is a whole different story and you can’t do that much virtually. Didn’t do too much new work, but did get some work presented, and advertised it at conferences.