GD03, Day Two
Woke up to attend the two plenary talks in the morning. The second one was one that I looked forward to since the speaker, Leif Kobbelt, is a very good speaker, and his topics are very interesting. The first talk given by Michael Leyton, however, was disappointing. The exit polls were dismal – it ranges from confusion to ridicule. Personally I think it wasn’t what he talked about was horrible – he wanted to use apply group theory to classify commonality in the generation of shape elements, and beyond. Arguably it was confusing. However, there was this thing about his tone or how he came across during the talk that was the issue. Reading the abstract one understands that he is very proud of his books, politely speaking. And since this is such a foreign subject to the audience in attendance, he had to spend a majority of his talk to explain the basic theory behind it before he can even get into simple applications. To me the talk itself was quite a drag, and I decided to skip the session he was involved in later in the day.

We went to a very nice café in the Pike Place Market that noon for lunch. It has a very nice view of the Elliot Bay, and the food was excellent. I had an albacore tuna sandwich, with an ice tea. The tea was made with some special blend of tea that was positively floral in smell and in taste – wonderful. The sandwich was also wonderful. On the way back we went under the elevated monorail in Seattle that travels between a mall and the Seattle Space Needle. Since it was sunny and not hazy at all, I managed to take a picture (or two) of the Space Needle. I missed the monorail though.

I waited until the 4:30 session, and attended the “Geometric Modeling using Point Samples” session. Can’t say there are many applications that I can think of immediately, but there I’ve identified a few older papers and basic techniques that I have to investigate further, later.

Dinner
I went to 727 Pine again for dinner. This time the maitra'd offered a menu called 25 for $25, which is a 3 course meal -- 2 appetizer choices, 3 main course choices, and 2 dessert choices. With each choice there is a pairing of wine, by the glass in addition to the price of $25. I took the offer, and ordered the smoke salmon appetizer, the kobe beef main dish, and the trio of sorbet as dessert.

The smoked salmon came, and what it is is a 3-layers of smoke salmon slides, with a dab of unsalted butter between the slices. The trimmed stack of salmon slices was placed on top of a bed of froth sauce, and topped with a salad made of fennel and watercrest. The froth sause was excellent, and the salad toppings was good. The salmon itself was ok -- nothing spectacular.

While I sipped the carbinet savignon, the kobe beef that was paired the wine came. This dish was a bit of a disapointment for me -- not that it wasn't tasty, but I thought the sauce was a bit overpowering, and I wasn't sure I can taste the beef. Or, it can just be me being used to a low-sodium diet at home with my folks.

The sorbet is quite good. The first taste immediately screams "freshly made" but I suppose anything but is a big no-no. :) All in all, I think the $25 price is fine for what I got. Those of you who are, by now, screaming at the screen for my lack of pictures -- the restaurant was way too dark for my dumbo Pentax OptioS to focus.. Doh.