GD03 Day Zero
Woke up way too early, at 6am PST. Had tones of time to explore the room some more. Took a nice shower, and then realized that there is this big tub-to-ceiling mirror in the washroom that offers the most unflattering view of oneself -- a gentle reminder that I should go to the gym tonight on the 4th floor.

I walked into the 727 Pine restaurant downstairs to have breakfast. For $12 USD I had the "Forager's Mushroom omelet". The mushrooms are very nice, and I even got a healthy serving of fresh goat cheese inside the omelet too. However, the egg itself was disappointing.

Morning session was ok. Some useful information, but mostly the stuff goes over my head: too much math. The Luncheon was interesting. Met with one of the conference organizers (Mike Neamtu), a person who used to work with Alias, Robert Blomgren, and also Tor Dokken, one of the speakers in the morning session.
The afternoon session was a bit more interesting. It was on meshless field simulations, and it involves heavily the idea of approximate distance fields.

Met up with Steve when he was setting up his poster in the foyer, and invited him to come visit my room so he can check emails and such. Chatted a bit.

In the poster reception, I had some professionally done gravlax, tasty!
Met Ken Sloan(link) apparently a faculty member in U(wash) when Steve was a student there. He explained his views on why there should not have been a proceedings for this conference, and that was an interesting point, (elaborate) and though I do not agree 100% it was interesting nonetheless.

We had dinner at Von’s (link) and they serve very nice angus beef roast. Tastiest roast I have had, and the price is reasonable given that it is angus beef.

Finally got to watch “The Transporter” starring Shu Qi. The movie itself was horrible.. and it didn’t have too much of the car-chase scenes I was looking for.. oh well. At least the guy fought well (i.e. very good kung-fu choreography).