Am I me?

Well the sport facility did not accept my letter from the provost! They said the letter said I was offered a position but doesn't say I'm here! What? Am I here?! Am I me? I hate people who create bureaucracy out of nothing. Can you imagine this situation? I'm offered a position, I come all the way from Florida to Boston but I'm actually not working here. I came here just to join the sport facility illegally because that was my dream! One day I'll join the sport facility at NEU!! 

Chess

Jerry is kicking my butt in chess. I'll have to think carefully what
to here. :)

Breakfest in the house.

OMG, It was hard. I've bought a bag of bagels an cream cheese yesterday hoping to eat breakfest in the house. Well I did but the kitchen is so dirty that I wonder if it was better eat in the
bathroom. Anyway it is just too disgusting to be talking here.

I'm again in the T going to work and today I'm taking my squash racquet with me. I hope I can start practicing. I still have to convince the people in the sports facility to accept the letter I have from the provost. Let's see what happens.

Here Be Dragons

Thai was nice. Good restaurant. I'm at home and just watched a documentary called "Here be Dragons". A very go documentary on skepticism. You should watch as at it teaches how to use critical thinking. Here is the movie link. 

Thai Dinner? Maybe...

I think I'll try a Thai restaurant today. A guy from the lab asked if
I wanted to go to dinner. I really don't want to go but I think it is
important to socialize with the people here. After all I'm staying
here 6 months... Let's see what happens.

Fortaleza

I'm here in Boston but I can't forget my Fortaleza (soccer team). This morning the sub-15 team beat Gremio 2x1 and has advanced to the semi-finals of the tournament. Our forward was called to join the Brazilian squad. :) The sub-18 years old is playing now against Flamengo and we are winning 1x0. Let's hope the result continues to be in our favor. And later today the professional team will play Guarany in the state cup. I want 3 victories today!

(UPDATE: Fortaleza won on sub-15, sub-18 but only manage a 1x1 on the professionals. But it was okay!)

Got my card

Hurray!!! I got my NEU card (see picture) but no luck on registering for the gym/squash. I now have to find a letter with my visiting offer to take to the people there. Just bureaucracy. They say they need the letter to confirm I'm working here. But I have a NEU card! And I had to use the letter to get this card. So isn't the card enough proof?! Go figure! But I think tomorrow I'll be able to go to the gym here... and then I can also use the shower here and don't have to worry about it in the house.  

Pictures of the Lab

Since I was the first here this morning (and BTW last one to leave yesterday), I took some pictures of part of the lab. I'll post one of the conference room sometime in the future. The first picture is from one side of the lab where two offices (each sits 5 people) can be seen. The second picture is my office which I like quite a lot because it has a lot of natural light. The last picture is from the common room area. You can see the two printers on the back and a white board that is always being used. 

The labs are always full meaning that they have plenty of people working and more trying to work. Today they have more interviews for a post-doc position. One curiosity about the picture on the wall is that it is bio-inspired. All the art here relates to cells in the human body. Quite nice I think.

Different world! Right World?

The longer I stay here the more impressed I get with people living here. Take for instance the situation now here in the T. The guy sitting in front of me is reading a book on Gödel's proof while the other next to me is reviewing a paper from IEEE transactions. We rarely see here people just doing nothing or reading Oprah's magazine. They read a lot and concentrate on things that matter.

Just now both people reading the book and the article left at Kendall station. Do you know what is on Kendall station? MIT. Everything is explained now!

Research ideas

The first research ideas are starting to appear and I haven't even yet talked to the people in the lab. But the presentations yesterday and today were good to show me some indication if what can be done.

Now I'm going home to do a bit more work there.

Talk at CS Department

I just came back from a talk from David Lazer from Harvard. He gave the talk at the CS department here at NEU. The talk was very interesting and was about Computational Social Sciences. It relates to how computer science is helping social sciences people do a better job understanding human behavior. This is done via the concept of networks and the analysis of their characteristics. I spoke to him after the talk and I hope he can help me with some questions I have related to the research we're doing with the Enron email dataset. 

If you'd like to watch his talk, Google video has a copy of (almost) the same talk he gave here. The link is here.

(Sarah he looks a lot like Marcos André!!! lol)

Slow today

It's kind of slow today. I'm leaving to a talk in the CS department.
Maybe after that I'll fell like writing the paper I started. It's due
on the 16th. Currently I'm struggling trying to find the concept of
clans in Networks. I know what is a clique but "clans" I've never
heard of. Do you know? :-)

Brazil

Called my father-in-law and he is felling well. That's good news! Told me he might go home this weekend.

A bit late

My idea to work until 1:30 and then wake up today at 7:30 did not go so well. I got up at 8:30 instead. Then I had my shower and ate my cereal bar. I wanted to get out of the house soon to see if I could find a key ring. Yes, I'm still looking... The local dollar store had none but at least I got a mug to drink coffee at work. I'm kind of giving up on this key ring.

Now I'm again on the T going to work. I still have 35 minutes before I get there.

Photos of my Room

Before going to bed, I thought I'd share some pictures of my room. Everyday I clean it a little bit. Just now I got rid of a dying old plant that was here (you can see in one of the pictures). The bed is nothing more than a mattress on the floor but I have to say the bed is okay and comfortable. The rest is not good, the table is wobbly, the chair is okay but since the floor is not leveled, the chair keeps "sliding" backwards when I sit. Anyway, I only spend 8 hours (max) of the day here and 7 of these I'm asleep. 

In any case, today I wrote to the landlord and complained about the shower of the upstairs bathroom that doesn't work. He said he is going to fix. We'll see. He claims he didn't know but the guy that has the other room in this floor told me the shower has been broken for months. The problem with the shower is that we get only hot water and the water is very hot. Sure it cleans but you also burn your skin. 

First Meeting

Today I had the first meeting with Prof. B. Very nice meeting and lots of interesting stuff. I'm more confident that this may actually work. But the result is that I may have to give a seminar on Friday. 

Key ring, not Kiwi!!

I went to get my soup and after I went to try to buy a key ring to safely put my keys. I get quite a few keys for the NEU and need to make sure I don't loose them. However I went to this store inside the NEU where all the employees are Chinese. Anyway, I made the mistake to ask if they had key rings.... it went more or less like this

- Excuse me, do you sell key rings? 

- Kiwis, yes we have kiwis! 

She then shouted to the back

- Pum Lao, did we get kiwis today?

to which I said, 

- Sorry, not kiwi, key ring. 

- Yes, we do have kiwi, go to the back, it's over there!

- No ma'am, key rings, to put keys.

- No, you can't put keys on kiwi, you eat kiwi!

- I know. I need "something" to put keys on it.

then I show her the keys

- Ahh you want "kiring". No, we don't have "kiring"!!

- Thanks!

I had to control myself not to laugh because it was quite funny. The result is that I don't have a "kiring" nor a "kiwi". I'll try to find later and hopefully the people there won't sell kiwis.

No soup for you!

No luck. No soup (husky card) for me yet. That means no squash or gym for another 2 days.

Husky card

I'm in line to get my Husky card. Hopefully after this I'll he able to  play some squash or at least go to the gym. Tennis doesn't seem to be  an option. I got an email yesterday saying that the only indoor tennis  court has been transformed into a baseball indoor arena!

Good morning. First Monday!!!

First Monday here in Boston. I decided to wake up early to see if I can get to work before 9am. It's kind of hard because I still have to face the bathroom (the dirtiest in the planet) and get 45min in the T. 

I don't have a camera here but guess what? I have a mac with camera!! Cool! So here is a picture of the "view" from my room.