Mark Carroll's Journal

I find railway travel to be fairly pleasant overall, especially as it means that I need not drive or park. This morning, my seat on the carriage affords me a view of sunrise over the North Sea, there are some lovely coastal routes for quite some distance north and south from here.

One thing that didn't amuse me was that one must pay to use the station toilets. Unfortunately, this seems common at bus stations as well as railway stations. I am all for their covering maintenance via what they charge operators or whatever, money for overheads must come from somewhere, but charging people in transit who may have many small children or continence issues or whatever just seems mean to me, especially where they demand exact change. I find this as disappointing as town councils who like to encourage visitors at times when they have locked up the public toilets. I am not going to be lingering in your retail area if I don't have easy access to toilets.

Another bother is that the wrong train came: the seat reservations are a mess so I may lose a chunk of work time in giving my seat up for somebody more deserving, we shall see. This train is slower than the one planned but I am not on a deadline. It tends to be ScotRail with the issues, I usually have more luck with LNER, but I am not a frequent traveler so the sample size is small.

This year, I am short of time off work, also busy with plenty of non-work things, both largely related to my relocation from the US and my wife's relocating from here in SE Asia. Between that, and my not presently being near anybody or anywhere that has historically celebrated Thanksgiving, I am barely marking it this year. A somewhat more normal service may be resumed next year in Scotland but, in the meantime, I certainly wish everybody else a great holiday.

It is strange to no longer expect to live in the US. It had been my long-term plan, and it was very nice to be back there for a while. School shootings may have been the last straw. Rural America might have worked for me alone but Scotland feels a rather better and safer place for my family. There is a lot to appreciate about life in Aberdeen. No one place has All the Things, at least no place I can afford, so every choice brings tradeoffs, lives not lived.

This year, I am thankful to have my wife right here in the room with me, and for our having plenty to look forward to. I easily grow attached to places. Perhaps next Thanksgiving we will all be happily settled in our new home and will take the opportunity to appreciate that.

This afternoon, I achieved some goals. I walked to the local Sainsbury's and bought everything on my shopping list, plus some extra bagels, I also thought to look for insect repellent but they don't offer much of a range. I also walked to the beach and dipped my feet into the 13°C water a couple of times. On the way back, I happened upon both the Masjid Alhikmah and the nearby Aberdeen Multicultural Centre so at least I know where those are. I was on my way to a fish and chip shop. I notice that the curry sauce locally is darker and spicier than I am used to from England. I don't know if that reflects changes in time or place or that they have more South than East Asian influence or what. At least in SE Asia I don't think they have the concept of British Chinese curry sauce which I think at least includes five-spice.

This Saturday, I set off back to Taguig, we should hear about the visa applications while I am there. I belong with my wife. Happily, tomorrow I get to take my children to the Japanese Garden at Cowden Castle, it's well over a hundred miles one-way for me but worth it, though I'll be out of the house early as rain may move in later in the afternoon and my eldest will have evening D&D. This Wednesday, I'll take the train back into our Edinburgh office while an electrician replaces some emergency lighting here in the flat, then my goods and effects from Eastern Tennessee should be delivered shortly before I leave the country.

Once back in Taguig, Riza and I may resume our habit of morning walks. Often, we head over toward Arca South and buy some groceries on Maharlika Road on our way back. Not much further is the weekend market, Saturdays being the best for that, it's kind of temporary stalls but mostly covered by tarpaulin. Occasionally, we venture in a different direction to Laguna Lake. I hope that the visa applications are approved, that we get to walk together here too, unfortunately the UK immigration process is even worse than the US'. Naturally, I converted my savings largely into pounds sterling just in time for historic lows, I remember the days when £1 bought over $1.60, though also when gas in Ohio was 99¢/gallon and it made sense for me to own a 5ℓ V8. At the beach today, the cheapest single-scoop cone ice cream I saw was £2.50, I guess the usual beachfront price-doubling applies up here too. So, I didn't achieve the goal of ice cream at the beach but the important one was the feet-dipping.

I came home to mixed doubles snooker on the television, I didn't know that was a thing. Now I am here, I shall catch up on the latest of the new LotR show while treating myself to pista kheer. I have badam halwa for another day.

The past week was generally dreich so it was lovely to find the weekend opening with a sunny day, it got up to maybe 17°C which is just fine for walking around. I visited the usual couple of parks, first treating myself to an ice-cream and briefly watching the end with the skatepark, plenty of activity and spectators. This break was especially welcome after a long workday yesterday, with travelling into our Edinburgh office, around four hours door-to-door, at least I can work on the train.

(Readers who don't think it's yet autumn can … well, differ.)

It is wonderful to be back with my wife. At the moment, we can both work from home on similar schedules and be together just about all the time. My flights to Manila were with Qatar Airways via Doha which was just fine, a previous trip with Emirates via Dubai was good too, both make for an easy connection.

I heard an airliner even before 5am, I guess they may fly just about anytime. By that time, I also heard muezzins, quite a difference from the church bells that I became used to in England, I enjoy them both. There are maybe four mosques near enough to hear but I think it's mostly just a couple that are clearly audible. Another early sound is roosters crowing, and it turns out that the lot next door is now full of goats. Of course, the geckos are silent.

It was strange to leave campus yesterday afternoon, having handed in my badge. Many workplaces are fairly easily revisited but, with my having being working at a large government laboratory with a well-guarded security perimeter, I knew it to be a world that, once left, is not easily reentered. Seeing my office, the approach road, etc., yesterday might very well be the last time. I was careful not to leave anything behind accidentally.

Many colleagues were kind enough to take the trouble to tell me individually and privately that they had appreciated working with me and would miss me. I was touched.

Earlier this week, they bought me a farewell lunch, I chose a barbecue restaurant with covered outdoor seating, which seemed optimal for weather resistance during a pandemic. I find it an interesting place: it is a converted gas station where the building is staff-only and, along one side, the gas pumps have been replaced by picnic tables, where we sat under the overhead canopy. The other side has been adapted for drive-through service.

Today at work, I have been creating a diagram with TikZ. It's going fairly well, somewhat frustrating but the kind of thing I like to do. Years ago I would have rather preferred to use Basser Lout, that is a thing of beauty that, like Haskell, does what one hoped, LaTeX tends more to disappoint with various quirks when things interact badly, e.g., this works unless you're using beamer or whatever, however Lout never gained much currency and is now overly long in the tooth. This diagram's for a poster due on Friday. I hope to get at least another diagram done tomorrow, around other tasks.

Anyhow, I was thinking about a technology talk that I am to give on this coming Wednesday. I have plenty of freedom to choose the topic. I am tempted to try comparing a typical imperative solution for longest common subsequence with a purely functional implementation using lazy evaluation, I wrote one taking the latter approach maybe fifteen years ago as part of deciphering hand-typed locations in police reports. I don't know how easily my thinking on that comparison will make it into slides so a safe fallback is to give rather more detail about our CI/CD plans for our code repositories on one project that expands the simpler story that fits on this week's poster.

And, in considering what to talk about, it occurred to me that another thing I could still explain in plenty of detail is techniques for programming a forty-year-old graphics chip^*, my thinking partly being, Would this audience even be interested? Which, on the one hand, reminds me to be annoyed at the many recruiters who significantly penalize one's experience for having been back in the mists of time. I mean, I probably last used TikZ for something non-trivial at least a decade ago. On the other hand, it made me feel, goodness, forty years?! I sound like an old man, is the chip really from that long ago?

^*the MOS 6567 VIC-II, in case you were wondering

Today is lovely and sunny. There was snow in the air last Saturday lunchtime but this afternoon had temperatures in the eighties (Fahrenheit). At work, many turtles sat on the logs.

I am more worried about COVID-19 since everybody else seems less worried. Today was back to campus for me. I tested negative this morning before leaving, even after my travel. Negative tests are great, especially just before planned travel, long-haul is now even more stressful. Anyhow, I placed my air purifier in my office and wore my mask and goggles. Everybody else acted as if there were no pandemic, except for the cleaner who wore a surgical mask, I think they're Chinese. On the way out of the office, at the end of my workday, I felt the instinctive warning, you're leaving with your goggles still on, left over from many years of weekly school chemistry laboratory classes. I don't mind being the odd one out.

From next week, those in my workplace will no longer be required to mask and, indeed, I suspect that many won't. The workforce is largely vaccinated, maybe half received a booster. ( I fear long-term effects from contracting SARS-CoV-2. )

While we were all masking, my approach was to remain comfortable in eating with people outdoors ( and I suspect that the risks, now higher, largely arise indoors. )

Perhaps it can suffice for me to wear an FFP2 during meetings and to try to sit far from others, off at the side or back of the room rather than around the table, or similar. ( Air purifiers may help. )

The gym's another concern, people may become more contagious in working out hard. I should like to continue using it, perhaps I shall escalate to both FFP2 and safety goggles, I haven't worn the latter at work before.

In short, I do not know what to do, nor do I have good numbers, perhaps nobody does. I wonder what tradeoffs make sense.

To my considerable surprise, I was one of maybe fifty-ish people to be invited to a two-day national workshop related to my current job, all expenses paid by the Sloan Foundation. However, it happens in-person, this spring in another state. The workshop was originally slated for a couple of years ago, it has already been repeatedly postponed due to the pandemic, I guess they decided to finally hold it.

Not only does my personal life remain in some disarray but, more significantly, we have varieties of omicron stalking the land now, possibly even more variants by then. In interacting with attendees in a university and hotel setting, I do not believe that I could have properly immersed myself in it and felt safe, my place is better offered to somebody less risk-averse who can contribute wholeheartedly even in these conditions. Regardless, goodness, I would have loved to go; I communicated my regret accordingly and hope to be considered for future events.