DC recon
By jp 14 Apr 2002
so I just got back from Washington DC, after successfully being oriented for my upcoming trip to Osaka University this summer. For those of you who don’t know the deal, there’s a sweet NSF program available for students in the biomedical sciences and engineering to go to Japan, Korea or Taiwan for 8 weeks in the summer, fully on the gov’t dole. look into it.
<p>the cool upshot was that I had plenty of free time, so I got to see some of the old crew, including colin, lani, bri & alex, and sara. it dawns on me that despite living next door during all those years I was growing up in bawlmer, I know jack shit about DC. it’s actually kinda a nifty town, with a decent metro. I only went to shows in the bad part of town when I was in high school, and I guess it set the mode for my impression of the city. it’s come time to guess again, I guess. </p>
<p>fun fact: there are not one but <u>four</u> Mariott hotels in Crystal City. and I guess there are enough John Connolly’s around such that another one had a rez in the <span class="caps">REALLY</span> nice one, so for 10 minutes I was checked into the wrong suite. damn shame, cause the room I ended up in didn’t have the high speed data jack, whirlpool tub, balcony or 50” TV the first one did. the $585 temporary authorization on my credit card is sure making me nervous though… could be the most expensive 10 minutes of my life. crystal city is interesting. it’s an endless strip of <span class="caps">HUGE</span> hotels, conference centers, nameless government buildings, and nothing that looks like it would support human life at all. it looks like a level from unreal tournament or something, I’d expect to see rockets screaming at my head rather than people walking around. my theory is that it all transforms in a giant robot with the pentagon as the head to defend us when all hell breaks lose. kinda like the <span class="caps">SDF</span>-1. </p>
<p>the speakers at my orientation included Dr. Junku Yuh, whom I learned is not only a male (whoops) but is also an underwater robotics expert. him and another one of the speakers were pioneers in <a href="http://www.snakerobot.com">Snake Robots</a>. pretty cool things, used in the september 11th tragedy and other S&R operations. the presenter actually showed some grusome images taken from inside the rubble including a severed arm and a head, which I thought were in somewhat poor taste. but I digress. also there was Dr. Rita Colwel, director of the <span class="caps">NSF</span>. a member of my thesis committee was a post-doc in her lab, so I got to shake hands and convey a greeting. I touched a famous person, wow. she was telling us about how the <span class="caps">NSF</span> was looking to increase graduate stipends to ~30K per year, which seems like a rediculous sum of money. but I ain’t complaining. she was also telling us about the new <span class="caps">NSF</span> initiatives to ramp up spending on nanotech and biocomplexity integrative studies; all in all the <span class="caps">NSF</span> is doing some good work. too bad dubyah was looking to cut their funding. hope he doesn’t. </p>
<p>and finally, on a dismal note, this dartmouth kid who has stalked several of my friends, and is a notorious asian fetishist, is being sent to korea on our tax dollars. sigh. creepy kid. </p>
<p>anyhow, that’s my week.</p>