A Complete Guide to the Dann Carlton Hotel (Cali, Colombia)

Yesterday, Diana and I visited the Dann Carlton Hotel to taste the food that will be served at our reception, finalize the layout for the ballroom, and to check out accommodations in each of the various room styles. This was our first time seeing the hotel in person--prior to this, we'd only seen photos and web pages. All in all, we were quite impressed--and we think that you will be, too.

Lobby and Front Desk


The lobby area for the Dann Carlton is small, clean, and decorated for Christmas. When we came in, there were plenty of staff handy--three behind the check in counter, a few security guards, and the wait staff at the small cafe in the lobby. We forgot to check if they spoke good English, but they should.

Any of you who are still a bit nervous about the safety of Cali should be happy to note the uniformed officer standing outside the building with the bellhops at all times. Both the police officer and the in-house security are quite vigilant: they didn't even let us take photos without advance permission.

Rooms

We visited a single with a queen bed, a single with a king bed, and a room with two beds they call twin beds, but Americans would probably consider full beds. All of them were quite comfortable, clean, et cetera.


Here's the room with a single queen bed. The same room from the opposite corner:


The rooms with the single king bed are essentially identical, but with a bigger bed and therefore less free space. They still have the sofa.

The rooms with two beds are fairly similar as well: comfortable, clean, and relatively minimalistic.


Amenities

The Dann Carlton seemed to be pretty well set up in terms of amenities. There is a nice outdoor pool, located right next to a restaurant. There's a gym just off the lobby. There seems to be ubiquitous WiFi throughout the hotel (don't know if it is free or not). There's a money exchange at the front desk, although the rate is not very good, so we don't recommend you change your money there if you can avoid it. Finally, any of you who are nervous about the food (which you shouldn't be--the food here is delicious) may be glad to see that there is a Tony Roma's restaurant in the building, just in case you need a fix of gringo food.

Nearby

As most of you already know, Cali is in the middle of a giant festival--La Feria--that runs from Christmas Day through New Year's Eve. It includes decorations, parades, bullfights, and massive, world-famous salsa concerts. A big part of la Feria is a huge path that winds through the city, full of decorations, lights, music, vendors, and people. That path starts just a block or two away from the front door of the Dann. There are also several good restaurants and stores nearby, should you need anything. The closest CVS-type pharmacy (or drogueria) is about one block away.

Prices

After some confusion with the various different names for bed types, et cetera, we have final prices for the rooms at last. After a fair amount of haggling, we've worked it out so that all of the rooms will cost the same thing: ~$125 per night. The only rooms available are the ones shown / described above: rooms with a single bed (which can fit one person or a couple) and rooms with two full beds (which can fit two people). There are no rooms for 3 or more.

The hotel already has your names and your room types (based on the information you provided us on our survey, et cetera), so all you'll need to do is show up at the front desk with your passport and credit card.

Schedule Note

The meeting time for the festivities on Dec 28th--the first planned part of our wedding celebration--is 10am in the lobby of the Dann Carlton.

You should all receive an email from us soon (as soon as possible) with specific information about your transportation from the airport to the hotel--we've got everyone covered, we're just matching up names to timeslots et cetera to give you the most accurate and detailed information possible.

We can't wait to see you all! ¡Feliz Navidad, y hasta pronto!

Arriving in Colombia - A Complete Guide to the Cali Airport

Diana and I have made it safely to Colombia. We've actually arrived in the airport in Cali twice--first on our international flight from Miami, and second on a domestic flight from Bogotá as we returned from a quick family trip to the lovely beach city of Cartagena. We took advantage of these two trips to take some notes about what you can expect when you arrive in Cali

Arriving on an International flight

A quick note: neither Diana nor I have entered Colombia from any country except the USA--so there's some chance that those of you connecting through Panama or Guatemala may have a slightly different experience... but in any case, this should be pretty close.

First of all, expect to receive a customs form from your flight attendant while you are still in the air. It should look like this:


Everything should be relatively self explanatory. Note that you'll definitely want the address of the hotel, as this is requested on the form. To remind you, that address is

Hotel Dann Carlton
Carrera 2 No 1-60
Barrio El Peñón
Cali, Colombia
Phone: (57) (2) 8933000

They don't ask for the phone number on the form, but in our experience, they did ask this later--so keep it handy.

Once you exit the plane, you'll be directed towards customs. Cali's airport is pretty small, and the international terminal seems to consist of only one or two gates, so it should be very obvious which way to go. Just in case, you'll want to follow these signs.


You'll note that most people are standing to the right, while a few people walk forward on the left--diplomats, folks with kids aged 3 or younger, and the elderly get to skip the line. We ended up waiting in line about 40 minutes, so you probably want to wear comfortable shoes, and use the restroom on the plane before landing.

Eventually, you should make it up to the front of the line, where you'll need to speak to the immigration officer.


They'll probably ask you a few questions. For us, they asked us both what we do, how long we would stay in Colombia, and where else we would be traveling within Colombia. They will probably look at your customs form, but they will return it to you when you are done; keep it handy, you'll need it in a moment.

After you make it past the immigration officer, walk down the stairs right in front of you (or follow the signs to the elevator--ascensor--if you need that). Once again, there shouldn't really be any confusion here; there's pretty much only one way to go.


At the bottom of the stairs, there will be a single luggage carousel. In all likelihood, by the time you have cleared immigration, your bags will already be out. Collect your bags, and head towards the exit.


There will be people there to help you with your bags, if you want, like the three gentlemen in light blue shirts in that photo (you should probably tip them somewhere in the neighborhood of 5000 pesos--$2.50). You'll hand your customs form to the customs officer (who may not be wearing a uniform), who will also check your bags against the luggage tags / receipts you received when you checked in for your flight at your point of origin. Next, walk through the vaguely-metal-detectorish thing, and out into the main customs area. There will be a few officers there randomly selecting folks for a more thorough search. Statistics are on your side, but even if you get selected, it shouldn't be too painful. The good news is, you are basically out of the airport now! You'll exit now, and will be funneled out into an outdoor patio area where you'll see a big crowd of people waiting to collect their guests and loved ones. Skip down past the "domestic flight" section to see the last bit of info: what you should do once you are outside.

Arriving on a Domestic flight
The Domestic terminal of the Cali airport is slightly larger than the international, but still pretty small. It's also well marked, with signs in English and in Spanish.



Just follow those signs and should be fine. They'll take you right to Baggage Claim.


Baggage Claim is very small--you shouldn't have any problems finding your bag. Once you've got your bag, you should walk outside--they will funnel you through one door. At that door, an airport employee will check your bags against the baggage tags / receipts you received at your point of origin, so be sure to keep those handy.

Once you've cleared that check, you'll be outside of the airport!

Outside of the Airport - Getting to the Hotel

Once you've exited baggage claim (and customs, if you are arriving on an international flight), you'll find yourself outside, in a covered area where passengers meet their friends and loved ones. There should be some fencing that separates the passengers from the waiting crowd, which should also serve to funnel you in one direction.


That photo is taken from just inside of the domestic terminal's Baggage Claim -- you can see the fencing and the crowds towards the background of the photo. The view from the international terminal is pretty much the same.

Step outside, appreciate the lovely weather in Cali (it's currently projected to be about 79 degrees Fahrenheit on the days most of you will arrive), and start looking for us. A note: the ride from the airport to the hotel is about 45 minutes or so (potentially more, if you hit traffic), so you may want to hit the restrooms before leaving.

You should be looking for one of the following:

Diana and I will be picking up some guests directly. By now, you should have a good idea of what we look like.

Diana's brother will be picking up others. Here's a photo:


From left to right, that's Shäiel (Diana's sister, pronounced like "Child" without the d), Lucho (Diana's brother, pronounced "Lewch-o"), Diana, Pipe (Diana's brother, pronounced "Pee-pay"), and Eduardo (Diana's father).

The others will be picked up either by an employee of Diana's father or by a driver we've arranged through the Dann Carlton. In either case, they'll be carrying a sign that says something like "Pomerantz Trujillo Wedding". If possible, we'll post a photo of the sign(s) here soon.

Please keep an eye out an email from us soon telling us who will pick you up. We've been able to arrange transportation for all of you who requested it, with minimum wait times, so we should be pretty much good to go!

With this information, you should be all set--entering Colombia will be a breeze! We can't wait to see you!

More Wedding Info

Much to our amazement, our wedding is now less than three weeks away. Less than three weeks! How does that happen?

We've got some more key pieces of information for you.

Arrival Form
While you are on the airplane to Colombia, you should receive a short form that will be used as you go through customs. It will ask some standard questions--your passport number, if you are carrying very large sums of cash, et cetera. It will also ask you for a local address and phone number. Assuming you are staying with us at the Dann Carlton Hotel, please enter:
      Carrera 2 No 1-60
      Barrio El Peñón
      Cali, Colombia
      Phone: (57) (2) 8933000


Dress Code
We already touched on this a little bit, but for those of you curious for more information, here are our recommendations.

      Welcoming Ceremony (December 28th): please wear summer colors with comfortable shoes. Note that you will likely be walking outside on grass.

      Wedding and Reception (December 29th): Men should wear a suit, with tie recommended. Women should wear a cocktail dress or similar.

Upon Your Arrival
For many of you, we'll be arranging transportation from the airport to the hotel. We will send you each an email confirming that we have arranged a shuttle for you and, hopefully, sending you a photograph of the place where we'll meet you (we head to Colombia on Dec 18th, so look for photos on the 19th or 20th.

For those of you that are arriving at unusual times or that are not going to the Dann Carlton, you should be able to find a ready supply of taxis at the airport.

Money Exchange
Although there will be places to exchange money in Colombia, we recommend that you change money in the US if you have the opportunity. You can look up an approximate exchange rate here; as of December 9, one US dollar is worth about 2000 Colombian pesos.

Also note that the Colombians use the same symbol ($) for Colombian pesos as Americans use for US Dollars. So if you see prices that seem about two thousand times too high, don't panic!

Budgeting Example: Food prices
Just as an example to help you budget for any side expenses:

      Dinner for one in a very fancy restaurant, e.g. where local celebrities would dine: 62,000 pesos (~$30 US)
      Dinner for one in a good restaurant: 30,000 pesos (~$15 US)
      Dinner for one in a fast food restaurant: 15,000 pesos (~$7.50 US)

If you are coming to Colombia for ~four days, you might want to bring something on the order of $150 US (300,000 pesos) -- more if you plan to spend a lot on souvenirs.





More info coming as we have it!

Music Countdown lalalala……We need you inputs!

Hi Guys, I know that you all usually do not hear much from me, and instead you hear from Will! He is the official guests interface and I am the wedding planner. It is a pretty good team :)

This weekend Will is having his bachelor’s party and I am here in LA. So far, I have had 5 hrs long skype wedding conversations with venders in Colombia, learned how to do an awesome banana pudding through skype with my maid of honor (Tiffany Russell) who lives in Huntsville AL, and now I am at one of my bridesmaids house (Andrea ) reading about my Mars Rover Project --Work--after we went for a 2 hrs hike.

Ok! But let’s get back to the point of my post…..Despite the warnings that I got from Will about some of his friendsJ, I am asking for everyone’s help! Will and I have not decided what songs we are play on the reception while the band is on break, soooo I thought that it will be awesome if you guys help us pick. What would you want to hear? It could be a song that you dedicate to both or one of us, or something that you just want to hear to have fun! I will start!

Kiss from Prince--- We need a sing along from Will and his groomsmen with this song! We might have to wait until really late for this to really happen…..some drinks first

Your turn!

Information FROM our Guests

Hello friends!

By now, wedding invitations should have arrived, at least to all of our guests in the US. Given the location, we weren't able to invite everyone we would have liked to--and we also know that traveling to attend our wedding will be a bit demanding. Still, we're hopeful that many of you will be able to join us in Colombia this December, and we are very grateful to those of you who have already completed and returned your RSVP cards.

For those of you who will be joining us, we ask you to please fill out the brief survey we've created to solicit information from our guests. This shouldn't take long (it's only 10 questions), but it will provide us with critical information that lets us help you book a hotel room, arrange for transportation to and from the airport, et cetera.

We've also made some minor updates to the Wedding FAQ we posted a few months ago.

If you have any questions about the survey, or any difficulty with the forms, please feel free to email us!

Buffalo 2009

As most of you already know, I was born in Buffalo, NY. My family and I left our Williamsville home just before my eighth birthday, and I've only been back once or twice since.

This Labor Day weekend, I had a chance to go back--and to bring Diana along. We were invited to attend the wedding of a friend and former colleague in Buffalo, and we were excited for the chance.

It was a short trip, but an eventful one. In addition to the wedding itself, we went to the 2009 Buffalo Wing Festival, Niagara Falls, my childhood home, and the home of a key comfort food from my youth.

Here's our trip in pictures:

Grand Canyon

When we moved out to the West Coast, I was really excited about the opportunity to show Diana some part of the country she'd never really been able to explore. Little did I know that she'd be the one showing me!

As a nice birthday surprise--and thanks again to all of you who sent me birthday greetings--Diana took us on a really fun trip to the Grand Canyon this past weekend. It was a bit of a drive (about 15 hours driving round trip), but absolutely worth it. We had some great conversations in the car, saw some amazing scenery, watched a beautiful sunset, and practiced our photography skills. And now, thanks to the miracle of the internets, we can show those pictures to you!

Video Interlude: Sea Urchin

The weekend before last, Chhay--one of Will's college roommates--paid us a visit here in Los Angeles. He has cousins down in Orange County, and added an extra day on to his trip to come up a see us.

In addition to some of the standard LA activities, we went with Chhay down to the Redondo Beach Pier to meet one of Chhay's cousins along with his wife and daughter. It was our first time there, and we're really glad we went! We had some nice food, enjoyed a fun boat ride, and got to see some sea lions.

There was also a bit of a culinary adventure... captured on Will's cell phone for your viewing enjoyment!

ZERO-G: Our first weightless experience!

As many of you know, a few weeks ago, both of us had an opportunity to float in zero gravity courtesy of ZERO-G. Both of us are employed as coaches by the company, which is the only company in the US to offer customers that chance to experience weightlessness via parabolic flight, the same method used to train astronauts and to film zero gravity scenes for movies, et cetera.

As coaches, we'll fly with the paying passengers, helping them get the most of out their experience by showing them fun tricks and by making sure everyone is comfortable. To complete our training, we had to do a 'shadow flight'--where we flew as something between clients and employees, able to enjoy the experience but also trying to get a feel for what it's like being on board in a customer service capacity. Each flight gives passengers about six or seven minutes of reduced gravity--starting with Martian G (about 40% of what you are used to), then Lunar G (about 17%), then zero g.

We just got copies of the videos of our flights, which are posted below for your viewing pleasure! Will's flight and Diana's flight are in separate posts just below this. Because the video embedded system is not working very well for me at the moment, here are direct links to the two videos--you may want to click these to make sure you are watching the right video: Diana and Will

Both of us had an absolute blast on the flights, and would recommend that you check it out. Neither of us is an official spokesperson for the company, but if you have questions, let us know!

ZERO-G: Diana's First Flight

If this is the right video, it will begin with people doing push-ups in Martian G. If it starts instead with a camera flash at around the two second mark, you're watching Will's video. Blame the terrible Fliqz video embedding process, and click here to view Diana's video for real.

ZERO-G: Will's First Flight

(Yes, I did eventually catch that M&M I missed right as that video closes).

If this is the right video, it will begin with a camera flash at around the two second mark. If it starts instead with people doing push-ups in Martian G, you're watching Diana's video. Blame the terrible Fliqz video embedding process, then click here to see Will's video for real.

Purchasing Airfare to Colombia

As promised, we've been checking into the possibility of getting some kind of group discount for airfares for guests who will join us in Colombia this December. After some searching, it turns out good group rates only kick in if we get at least 16 people on the same flight--and even then, the discounts aren't that large.

However, we've also been monitoring flights online, and prices are indeed starting to climb. We recommend that you seriously consider purchasing your tickets now. As mentioned previously, you should probably consider flying through Miami--that's the only city in the US that has direct flights to Cali, Colombia. Other flight options may work better for you in terms of schedule or price, but would require you to connect through another city in Colombia or Panama.

Specifically, we'd recommend the following flights:

• Avianca Airlines, Flight number 39, leaving Miami (MIA) at 4:30pm on Sunday, December 27th. Returning on Flight number 38, leaving Cali, Colombia (CLO) at 10:15am on Wednesday, December 30th.

This round trip ticket is currently available for $464 through a variety of websites (Orbitz, Cheaptickets, Priceline, Vayama, Expedia, and Avianca itself all have the same price, plus or minus $10). The same set of flights on the surrounding days have quite similar prices, until you get to returns on or after January 1, when the prices go up.

Again, we recommend that you consider purchasing your tickets right away--the prices are much more likely to go up in the future than they are to go down or stay the same.

Note: We also updated our Wedding FAQ with this information, as well as a few new answers about currency, attire, and transportation to and from the airport.

How We Met

We met for the very first time in the summer of 2006, when Diana was a student and Will an alumnus and a guest lecturer in the NASA Academy at Goddard Space Flight Center, a NASA leadership training program with a very tighter relationship between alumni and current students. Academy custom is to have alumni kick off the summer’s evening lecture series, and in 2006, Will was one of the very first speakers, talking to the group about his work at the X PRIZE Foundation. Will thought Diana was smart, cute, and quiet; Diana thought Will was accomplished, handsome, and arrogant.

We met one or two other times that summer, always as part of a large group. The first picture Will has that includes Diana is below, from a NASA Academy trip to a Washington Nationals game, which Will and one other fellow alum helped arrange as a free and fun outing for the students. Note the typical Washington Nationals attendance (aytipcally, the Nationals actually won)!



Although we hardly got to know each other at all that summer, there were two very important outcomes from Diana’s term as a student in the program: she decided to transfer from the University of Florida to the University of Maryland, and she was selected to return to the Academy as staff for the summer of 2007. Without these two changes, perhaps we would never have met again.

The next major milestone in our relationship also occurred thanks to the NASA Academy. In the spring of 2007, both of us attended the Admissions Board selection meeting. Arriving late, Will had no choice but to sit next to Diana in a seat cluttered by the power cords for the meeting’s computers and projectors. Will thought again that Diana was smart, pretty, and quiet; Diana primarily thought that Will was clumsy, as he kept unplugging the power cords with his feet.

But there must have been some magic in the air, for as Diana got up to leave, she grabbed Will’s winter coat instead of her own. To this day, Diana claims that this was an honest mistake—Will, however, does not believe this, and points out the fact that his coat is insanely, comically too large for Diana for anyone to possibly make this mistake. But somehow, Diana managed to make it out of the meeting and off Goddard’s campus with Will’s coat instead of her own, and with her own coat and purse still back in the meeting.

Will tracked Diana down and arranged to meet her just outside of Goddard to exchange coats. Upon return the coat, Will asked for a hug and a dinner date. The first request was begrudgingly granted, the second was denied, as Diana had an urgent date with Chipotle and a library.

Thankfully, though, things didn’t stop there. We continued to correspond via email, with Will offering to show Diana around Washington DC, as Diana was new to the area. After a few missed opportunities, we finally met up in downtown DC, starting with a tour of the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian. We talked for hours, had a wonderful time, and basically have never stopped having a good time since.

One year into our relationship, we took a trip to Vienna, Austria. Unbeknownst to Diana, will had a special surprise in mind. At the end of our first day in Vienna, after a day of touring the city and a lovely evening at the Opera (where we saw Falstaff), Will proposed to Diana. Thankfully, neither Chipotle nor libraries were mentioned in Diana’s response—just a simple, delighted, and profound “yes”. Although, truth be told, Will was so nervous that Diana had started packing bags, thinking that there was some emergency that was going to require both of them to leave Austria in a hurry.

And now, one year later, we’ve managed a move across the United States, a new job for Diana and a promotion for Will, and have planned our wedding. We sincerely hope that you will be able to join us in Colombia this December as we take the next step in our adventure and commit ourselves to an everlasting love.

Lonely Planet Colombia

Thanks to my dad, we learned that just this past week, Lonely Planet released a new and updated edition of their Colombia guidebook. Actually, Dad din't just tell us about the book--he shipped us a copy. It arrived at the end of last week, much to our surprise.

We haven't had too much a chance to flip through it yet, but hope to do so soon. We'll pass on any thoughts and reviews we've got. In the meantime, any of you thinking about planning some vacation time in Colombia and interested in picking up a guidebook would be well served to consider this one: we can't yet say whether or not it's the best, but we can certainly say it's the freshest.

Here's an uncensored reproduction of the introductory section about Cali, the city where we're getting married (and Diana's hometown):

Population: 3.5 million
Elevation: 969m

Cali is not an immediately likable city. For one thing, it is muggy and hot. For another, it's an industrial and transportation hub whose business is business, not tourism. Caleños shrug off criticism about their city with the saying "Cali es cali, y lo demás es loma, ¿oís?" (Cali is Cali, and the rest [of Colombia] is just mountain, ya hear?).

Those who dig deeper and spend some time here will find a welcoming, friendly city with great nightlife, good restaurants, and plenty to do, especially in the evening, when a cool mountain breeze dissipates the heat of the day.

Go to San Antonio, the old Colonial Center, and linger over a beer or ice cream in the park, or better still, a champú or
lulada both fruit drinks made with lulo, a unique Colombian fruit typical of the Valle de Cauca, of which Cali is the capital. Wander through Barrio Granada's many upscale restaurants and boutiques, or hang out at Chipichape shopping mall and marvel at the local plastic surgeons' prowess.

Nowhere are Colombia's racial diversity and harmony, and the incredible beauty of the Colombian women, more apparent than here. Cali women are nationally renowned for their sense of style and beauty, and the way they carry themselves.

HISTORY
After helping Francisco Pizarro conquer the Incas, Sebastián de Belacázar (also known in Latin America as Benalcázar) quarreled with his former boss and moved north to strike out on his own. After founding Quito and Popayán, he arrived in the Valle de Cauca in 1536, where he dubbed his new settlement Santiago de Cali.

Over the centuries Spaniards shipped in thousands of African slaves to work the valley's sugarcane and cotton plantations. The Valle remains a major agricultural producer, and in higher regions also produces grapes and coffee.

Cali was a small town in orbit to departmental capital Popayáan well into the 20th century, when railroads, and later highways, overtook the rivers as the dominant form of transport. To this day more than half of Colombia's exports pass through Cali on their way to Buenaventura.

ORIENTATION
Cali is built along the western edge of the wide Valle de Cauca. The city center is laid out in a grid plan around the Plaza de Caycedo. This is where you'll find most of the historic churches and museums.

Southwest of the center lies San Antonio, the colonial heart of Cali. North lies the bustling, upscale Av Sexta, and nearby Av 9, where you'll find Granada, the city's dining district. Further north along Sexta is Chipichape, one of the largest shopping malls in Colombia

Not Bad for a Week's Work

I try not to let work spill over onto this blog, but there were a few points this week that seemed worthy of mention.

On Monday, I had my second ever piece published in the Huffington Post. Check it out: Our Robotic Overlords. I hope to publish more pieces here soon, now that I got my own author account re-activated.

Today, there were two more news articles of note. The Wall Street Journal ran a piece today called The Science Prize: Innovation or Stealth Advertising?, by Pulitzer Prize winner Rrobert Lee Hotz. My hopes for a signature WSJ portrait were dashed--I'm not mentioned in the piece at all, in fact--but it's great to get some exposure for the Foundation and for my prize specifically.

Lastly, the Herald News of lovely Fall River, MA ran a piece called Adults at Play, which is largely about the panel I'll be on at the Boston Museum of Science next week.

Not too shabby! All in a week's work...

Catching Up: Another Concert, Las Vegas

We haven't had a chance to update this blog in quite some time, but we have been up to some pretty exciting things.

Two weeks ago, Diana and I went to another concert--but believe it or not, this one wasn't at Largo. Instead, we went out to the El Rey theatre on Wilshire, just a few blocks away from our gym, the La Brea Tar Pits, and LACMA.


The evening's entertainment? The Squirrel Nut Zippers. But actually, the opening band was just as cool. We'd never heard of them, but that didn't stop us from really enjoying the Fishtank Ensemble--a strange, "cross pollinated gypsy" band. Yeah, that's right.


A strange mix of flamenco, Romanian folk, jazz, and ... probably about ten other things I couldn't name. My best way to describe them would be Django Reinhart meets Gogol Bordello. Definitely a lot of fun--check them out.

The main act was the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Some videos--taken by someone else, but at that night's show:

Put a Lid On It


Good Enough for Grandad

The set list for the show was just about perfect. From beginning to end, they played essentially every song I could want--and pretty much none of the songs I don't particularly like. Hot jazz, calypso, blues, American roots music--it was a touch of everything. They played only one song from their final album, but that one confirmed my suspicion that that could have been a good album if produced differently--some of the material was pretty good. Diana and I are both enormous fans of Katherine Whalen's voice, and I, at least, was a bit disappointed by her performance--but that was quite possibly a symptom of my unrealistic expectations.

So, we kicked the week off with the Zippers, and ended it with ZERO-G. Diana and I both drove up to Las Vegas for a half-day training course for coaches on ZERO-G, the parabolic flight company. We're both really looking forward to becoming full-fledged coaches sometime soon! More on that as we hear it--but we're both in the corps now, and that's the key first step.

We didn't have time to do too much in Vegas--we were there for work, after all--but we certainly did have a little fun. The highlight? Dinner at Spago. Oh yeah, and this:

More on Colombian Food

Building on the theme of my Easter post about Colombian food...

Many of you are already familiar with chef, author, and travel show host Anthony Bourdain. I enjoyed a few of his books, and we've are at the now-closed DC location of his Les Halles restaurant a few times. While we don't watch his TV show No Reservations regularly, I do enjoy it whenever I happen to catch an episode.

Anyway, Tony recently went to Colombia to sample the food. Although he didn't go to Cali specifically, the foods he ate are by in large similar to what the Caleños eat. So, check it out below. It's divided into five parts:

Part 1

Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

Easter Lunch

Diana and I went out for a lovely Easter lunch yesterday--Colombian style. In addition to being delicious, the meal doubled as research for this here blog. What better way to get you all excited about going to Colombia that to post more photos like this one:


(By the way, that photo was taken from the camera on my new cell phone.)

Diana had a very nice soup called Sancocho de Gallina--a tasty broth filled with chicken, corn, potato, and yuca. It's simple and delicious, and a very typical Caleño (from Cali, Colombia) meal.

In honor of the holiday, I had the dish listed on the menu as "Ave Maria Pues." It was delicious and enormous. As you can see, it included: carne asada (steak), plantanos maduros (plantains), arroz (rice), chorizo (sausage), frijoles (beans), arepa (similar to a biscuit), and chicharones
(Similar to pork rinds), and a whole lot of awesome.

A Little Bit about Cali

Since most of you have never been to Colombia before, you're probably quite curious about what it will be like. If you're like me, it can be a bit difficult to picture life in Cali.

We found a video online that I think will help. It's produced by a local hotel--one of the ones we were considering, but ultimately didn't choose--so it's definitely designed to give a favorable impression. But it also shows the Cali I saw on my visit there last fall.

Check it out by clicking here. You'll probably want to watch both the main "Concierge Video Tour" and "Discover" at least.

And of course, to learn more, you can always turn to Wikipedia.

Wedding Photographers

At last, the first of the long-promised wedding related posts. Are you surprised that it's coming from me, rather than Diana? Yeah, me too.

We're starting to hone in on a lot of the details surrounding the wedding, although we still have a long way to go. One of the areas I've been put in charge of is selecting a photographer. Getting a good collection of photos is important to me, so it's a job I'm comfortable handling.

We're giving some thought to bringing a photographer with us from the USA--there are some advantages to being able to meet with the photographer before and after the weddding, both to coordinate and to deal with final purchases and prints. However, we're also looking at various "homegrown talents" in Colombia, trying to see if there is a solution there that would make more sense.

We've finally managed to find three good ones there. I'll be sifting through their portfolios myself, but I thought I'd take advantage of a little bit of crowd-sourcing and see what y'all think.

So, click through to the three links below, and look for their portfolios (a.k.a. galerias). Then, come back here, and use the poll just to the right of this post to vote!

The candidates are:

• Rocha Fotografia
  
• Foto Serrano
  
• Franklin Fotografia
  

If you have other suggestions or thoughts, please leave them in the comments to this post!

Earth Time

To venture away from the topic of our lives in LA and of Tuckerian dopplegangers a bit -- and to stall while we all eagerly await Diana's first blog post and the juicy wedding tidbits that promises -- I'd like to share some thoughts that came to me after a surprisingly controversial / engaging Tweet.

Last night, after a day where I was trying to contact some potential Google Lunar X PRIZE teams in a variety of time zones, I tossed off a quick tweet without much thought:

With Google Lunar X PRIZE teams all over the world, timezones are pretty annoying things. Can we all just adopt Earth Time or something?

Well, that one little tweet I tossed off last night sure garnered a lot of attention. I got something like 8 public replies, 1 or 2 private replies, and one lengthy, offline email. Not something I expected at all! A number of those replies were similar--people who hadn't quite understood the background of my post was frustration with the fact that not everyone was awake and at work at the same times I am, and thought instead that I simply was aware of UTC / Zulu time or other similar universal standards for time telling. Another response, from a proper Manx gentleman, jokingly told me that a universal timezone had been tried before (the British with Greenwich Mean Time).

But the detailed email was driving at a deeper question. It came from a friend who is just polishing off a PhD in Informatics, and who is highly interested in the scientific study of how large and/or distributed groups work together. He's done a lot of cool research at a number of impressive places, and is thinking forward to what he'll do after his thesis defense in May. He asked me:

What makes you think adopting Earth Time would solve the problem(s) you imply in your tweet? You are as globally-working a person as anyone and this issue has long been a bit intractable, so I'm interested in any thoughts you might have about it. ... Time zones have always represented a tension between local needs and global needs for interaction and coordination. The obvious problem with a single Earth Time is that it reifies 1-3 zones' inhabitants'
"normal" workdays and the other 35 or so have to adapt their work to it. One approach might be to reify the time zone that is least populated so as to inconvenience the most people more or less equally. Hard to sell that one, though. Another option is Unix Epoch Time, but non-geeks won't get it. ... However, I do think the increasing ubiquity of mobile and computational infrastructures/services can afford increasing temporal fluidity in our choices about our interactions with others ... but I'm not yet sure of how the problem might be addressed.

I thought it was a pretty interesting question, so I took advantage of a few minutes to come up with a response and some thoughts of my own about how the issue of time and timezones impacts me through my job.

In reality, I find the issue of time zones and global dispersion of our various teams / partners (see graphic at right, click to enlarge) to be a minor annoyance, not a major problem. The annoyance level has increased slightly now that I live out in LA--though that could be related to the fact that I now have to deal with a 3 hour time difference when talking to my family in addition to the time differences I have to deal with at work.

Mainly, though, the issue of time zones comes into play in conjunction with my ethical obligation to try to provide an equivalent level of service to a roster of teams that spans a wide range of longitudes. Seeking to provide a totally level playing field is probably impossible for a lot of reasons--for instance, budgetary concerns will also make us tempted to hold events such as team summits here in the USA, and our brand name and network of contents are far better here in US than abroad, especially in non-English speaking languages. That's something we and our teams have accepted and are now more or less comfortable with dealing with. But for some reason, it is much more frustrating to deal with this uneven playing field when we are arranging things like telephone calls, web seminars, and other 'virtual world' events--it is less acceptable to have a 'longitude bias,' but the longitude bias still makes planning things very, very difficult.

Again, this is likely compounded by factors like language barriers, common attendance of public events, and (least important, in my experience) cultural differences. But I seem to inevitably develop a closer working relationship with teams here in North America than I do with teams in Europe, and closer for European teams than for Asian teams. Our team from China and one of our two teams from Malaysia remain the only GLXP teams I have not yet met in person, so I haven't had that relationship-building experience--and both those teams and I have the knowledge that any telephone communication will by necessity need to be planned in advance and, even with advance planning, will be quite inconvenient for one of us.

Having everyone on the planet operate on a single time zone--or maybe even two or three time zones with a total separation of no more than ~6 hours, to ensure some level of work-day overlap--would potentially remove a big part of this latitude bias. However (and here's where we leave observations of personal experience and enter full on amateur sociology hour), I'd expect that the concurrent issue of forcing some longitudinal bands of people to operate essentially nocturnally would create much larger problems than those such a solution would alleviate. Still, I wonder if some better solution is necessary / inevitable. We're already starting to see a level of public discourse about eliminating day light savings time (a custom which, by the way, shows people's willingness and ability to adapt to a system where the noon of public record is divorced from astronomical local noon)--at least I certainly saw many more stories about that this year than in any previous.

I wonder which would be a greater driver towards a radically new time system: an increasingly flat world (more global economies, more multi-national corporations, more instantaneous communications) or a situation where we have a significant human presence off-planet. In the distant future, if we take as an assumption that there will be human colonies in a variety of orbits around a variety of stars, will residents of the Earth be more likely to accept a time system that pays little attention to one's longitude? Another potential game-changer, I'd imagine, would be extremely rapid transportation systems like suborbital point-to-point or, to get a bit more fanciful, teleportation. If our transportation infrastructure can get me from New York to Shanghai in 45 minutes--but I have to deal with the world's worst case of jet lag, how does that function? How will we adopt to increase our efficiencies to deal with that new capacity?

A note for fellow geeks: yes, the clock pictured above is one of John Harrison's the Longitude Prize winners.

Further Evidence

A little deeper investigation into the Phil-as-Violinist issue.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of Phil, looking like a jaunty pirate, and the LA Chamber Orchestra's violinist. Judge for yourself!

Bizarro Phil?

So, Diana's only met Philip -- the infamous author-cum-teacher -- once, whereas I've spent approximately a billion hours with him. However, she also has a much better memory for how people look than I do. So, I don't know, should I believe her when she says that the guy in this giant billboard looks just like Phil?

Heaven has Home-Made Crust

In case any of you were still struggling to find the meaning of life, I'd offer a suggestion: you can probably find it at the bottom of a fresh pie with home-made crust, made with love by your fiancée:

Pardon me while I go salivate...

Cinematic Geography of LA

As we adjust to and learn to love our new hometown, I'm still amazed by the extent to which LA really is a movie town. I certainly expected to have a movie culture--after all, we live just outside of Hollywood--but I was not prepared for the way that the movie industry and that the love of film has permeated the very fabric of the city. It's amazing how many people I know are or have been in the business--nothing like figuring out a co-worker was in a 1990s sitcom or realizing that seemingly everyone here is a card-carrying SAG member. It was really driven home when we went to the gym last night during what is normally a prime gym time--but which happened to be during the Oscars ceremony yesterday--and found it a complete ghost town.

The flips side is to start recognizing the city itself as a character in movies. That happened for the first time last week, when we were watching the more recent "The Italian Job" remake and spotted several locations just within a few blocks of our house.

With that in mind, I present to you these two short YouTube clips about LA appearing in its own movies:

Back at Largo: Watkins Family

Diana and I made it back to Largo last night for our second trip. The night's entertainment? The Watkins Family Hour (apologies for the MySpace Link--ugh!). For the Pomerantzes in our reading audience, I'll point out that this is not the Watkins you are thinking of: rather, this would be Sean and Sara Watkins of the band Nickel Creek. With Nickel Creek on hiatus, the band members are all kind of doing their own thing--and lucky for us, the Watkins siblings must live here in LA, as they seem to play every week or so, usually at Largo.

I had the chance to see Nickel Creek as a whole once (at Bonnaroo 2006), and it was quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. The band has a great dynamic--and it should, given that it features a brother/sister pair and their childhood friend. Chris Thile, the band leader, is an absolute phenom on the mandolin. If I recall correctly, the Watkins's dad joined them on stand-up bass for a portion of the show, and danced a little jig. And as if that weren't enough, they did a totally awesome cover of an absolutely wonderful pop song most famously recorded by one Britney Spears (this isn't my video, but I must have been standing about 10 feet away from the person who did film it):

Don't hate on "Toxic." Britney or no Britney, that's just a great song.

Anyway, the Watkins Family Hour show was a lot of fun, though it didn't live up to either the Nickel Creek show or the Welch / Rawlings set we'd seen two weeks earlier. A few highlights:

• The show was billed as the "Watkins Family Hour with Special Guests". The guests turned out to be Glen Phillips (formerly of Toad the Wet Sprocket) and ... Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. What are the chances? The Welch/Rawlings part of the show was our favorite if for no other reason than it was great to see them playing the lighter, sillier stuff after a fairly somber set of their own.
  
• At some point after they introduced a song, there was a silent pause, and I yelled a supporting "Woo!" Sara then muttered something that I'm pretty sure was a Big Lebowski quote ("No, [like I said,] Woo peed on my rug!"). Awesome.
  
  
• Sean was sick, so only sang on one song, which was disappointing. The one song was pretty fun--a very short ditty called "Hello, Goodbye"--not the Beatles song. From a different performance:

• At some point, Gillian came out to inform Sean and Sara that she and David were tap dancing back stage.
  
  
• They ended the main set with a really fun version of "Hot Corn, Cold Corn"--just a fun ol' country bumpkin song.
  
  
• They ended the encore with probably my favorite song of the night, a cover of John Hartford's "Long Hot Summer Day." Just a great rendition of a really nice peice of music, and show's off the nicest parts of Sara's voice. I wish I had a recording with the full band (including Welch and Rawlings), but here's a good recording of just Sara:

All in all, a solid show. No very good videos of the Watkins Family Hour themselves on YouTube--this is the best I could find:

LA Experiences: Arclight and Largo

Although we've lived in Los Angeles for several months now, we really haven't spent much time out and about, doing "LA" kind of things. At first, we were focused on moving in; then there was a lot of travel; then there was recovering from the travel, et cetera. Our big chance to get out and start to explore the town was over the holiday / New Year's season--and while we did indeed see a good chunk of the town, getting sick really put a damper on those plans.

So starting this week, we finally started checking some things off on our "explore LA" list.

Since I started coming to LA for business, I've wanted to catch a concert at Largo. I first heard about it as sort of an artists' hang-out frequented by Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, and a number of others musicians like--I think I was reading about Fiona when I first heard the name. Evidently, Fiona Apple--who is notoriously uncomfortable on tour, will spontaneously take to the stage at Largo every now and again during Brion's regularly scheduled Friday sessions. But I never was able to get up there while on business, and even though Diana and I live fairly close by, we hadn't found the time to get there since making the move out here.


Well, we finally made it there on Thursday. We were there to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, the alt.country musicians who found some popular celebrity after Gillian was included on on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

Largo itself was a great venue. As I mentioned, it's quite close to our house. We met up after work and drove on over there in the rain (Southern California has, evidently, forgotten how to be Southern California, at least weather-wise). Largo is (now--it relocated a short while ago) housed in an old theatre called the Coronet, and definitely has that theatre-style set up, as you can see in the photo above. The audience members are seated in old wooden chairs, starting almost right at the foot of the stage. Whoever set up the audio did a fantastic job--the mics were perfectly placed, and you could hear every sound with crystal clarity.


The show itself was great, too. I'd never seen Welch and Rawlings before, at least not live and in person, but it was clear even to a first-timer that this concert was a bit different than their usual fare. For the evenings show, they were not even billed as "Gillian Welch and David Rawlings," in fact--instead, they were listed as the "David Rawlings Machine." Rawlings, who never gets enough credit for either his backing vocals or for his guitar picking, took lead for the night. It was great to see that role reversal, and to get to hear David a bit more--but regardless of who is playing lead, the killer thing about the pair is their minimalistic instrumentation, the great guitar work, and, above all, their harmony. Their voices are so in sync, and complement each other so well, it's just unfair. Just stunningly beautiful. Check out YouTube for some good examples like these.

They played mostly Rawlings tunes, weaving in a few better known Welch/Rawlings collaborations and some genre classics like "Jackson." For some songs, like a fun rendition of "Brand New Key," they brought up other musicians, adding (at one point) a piano, stand-up bass, another guitarist, another vocalist, a trumpet, and a percussion kit. It was really a lot of fun for both of us, even though Diana wasn't that familiar with their music before the evening started. But she sure did know this song they covered for their encore (not my video, not the best quality--but good sound):

Friday morning started early, with an X PRIZE breakfast for the attendees at TED--a lot of cool people in the audience. Having started so early, I was able to cut out a bit early with my coworker and friend Mike , who is in effect my resident LA cultural adviser. A musician, foodie, and movie buff, he's given me countless tips for fun events--and one suggestion I'd been waiting to to take was to catch a movie at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood--supposedly one of the best movie theatres in the country.


Arclight isof a different ilk than some of my other favorite theatres (the Uptown in Washington, DC; the Colombus in Providence): whereas those are old theatres with single, monolithic screens, the Arclight is a mutiplex full of high technology and modern comfort. We didn't make it to their big Cinerama Dome, but even in one of the smaller theatres, it was clear why movie buffs would enjoy Arclight. Great sound, good picture (well, we saw a 3D movie, so that may not be the best sample)--and you even got a bit of a welcoming speech from a staff member! Cool place, we'll definitely be going back.


The movie we saw, by the way, was Neil Gaiman's Coraline. Definitely a solid movie--we had some issues with the pacing in places, but the story is good and the visuals are stunning. Worth checking out!

After the movie, we went out a grabbed a meal at at Thai place called Palms. The food was good, but the Thai Elvis was great!

Birthday Tradition

Last year, a well timed business trip (presenting to a career fair panel at Harvard, among other things) helped Diana and I head up to Boston for the first weeked in February--a weekend that happened to include the Super Bowl, Andrea's birthday, and Diana's birthday. It was Diana's first time in Bean Town, so it was great to have an excuse to visit family, do some sight-seeing, and celebrate the birthdays. Taking advantage of the northerly clime and the Patriots / Super Bowl fever, Diana, Drew, and I snuck off to Wachusett Mountain to get in a half day of skiing (for Drew) and snowboarding (for Diana and me).

We had so much fun that we've now turned that into a birthday tradition. Although this year we weren't able to enjoy the company of the Wuss and the Wuss-in-law, we once again flew off to a winter wonderland to enjoy cold weather, "fresh pow," a variety of snowboarding-related bruises, and the big football game.

If the company wasn't as good, that was a least partly made up for by the fact that the Mountain was a whole lot better (no offense, Wachusett Mountain). You see, this year, we managed to swing a free trip to Breckenridge, Colorado, where we were put up in the Beaver Run Resort. Our hotel room window literally looked out on the ski lifts, and the walk from our hotel room door to the ski rental shop was well under five minutes. The weather did its part and cooperated--cold enough for great, natural snow, but warm enough that we dind't suffer too much for our lack of appropriate snowboarding gear.

The trip came courtesy of the American Astronautical Society, who asked me to be one of the keynote speakers at their 32nd annual Guidance, Navigation, and Control conference. The conference--colloquially known as GNSki--always happens in Breckenridge on Super Bowl weekend, and always features a dinner speaker that's a bit more family-friendly than the highly technical talks that fill up the day (or, at least, the portions of the day not reserved for skiing). Luckily for me, I got tapped to give that talk this year, and got the travel expenses comped as part of that.

So, we flew out to Denver, and drove to Breckenridge--a gorgeous city that really looked like something out of a fairy tale. We snowboarded half a day, we relaxed, we had some good food, we did a little reading (Diana mainly working her way through wedding planning books, me polishing off Hot, Flat, and Crowded), and we checked out the exhibits from the World Snow Sculpting Championship. But on Sunday, we had a special treat: dog sledding!

Yes, that's right, I said dog sledding. And if you don't believe me, I have the photos to prove it. Check this out:



See? I told you so! (I'll upload more pictures when I'm on a faster internet connection) (Update: Done! see below. -W).

The dog sledding was a ton of fun--the scenery was beautiful, the dogs themselves adorable, and the ride was fast and exciting. Our fellow passengers were a little less adventurous than we--and were kind enough to take photos for us--so we get to handle the more advanced sections of the course, including some really fun moguls. It was a blast.

Diana headed out late on Sunday, so we listened to the Super Bowl as we drove in to Denver. The game was better than anticipated, and even Diana was getting in to it at the end!

With Diana gone, I gave my talk on Monday night, and it seemed to go over really well. They basically invited me to come back next year, so hopefully we'll be able to keep this tradition alive!

Getting Started

Assuming we finalize the wedding date we're currently considering, Diana and I are about 340 days away from being pronounced Man and Wife. I thought I'd start this little blog for us to keep track of fun memories (including the non-wedding related). Let's see if I can get Diana to blog!