Monthly Review ?

When I started this blog I was determined to continue writing continuously unless something drastically leads to discontinue. I however without any major reason have stopped writing three things (in no particular order):

• Blog Content
• Short Stories
• Thesis

So to avoid disappointment of not updating my blog for 40 days I give briefly what I have been doing.

July 20-30th
Nothing major. Creating the poster of the ACL-IJCNLP 2009.
Tweaking my thesis here and there: added one page on 21st and compiled on 22nd July. This was the last time I compiled my thesis, I haven't added a word after that.


August 1-10th
The Awe of ACL-IJCNLP.
1 week of Research, Travel, Fun.
Time spent with Vasu sir, Prashant and Umangi would be remembered forever.
Prank played by Vasu sir; I'd remember that, for next time I need to take revenge. :D (I really thoroughly enjoyed the moment.)
Bungy Jumping in an artificial setting. Oh, and there's a video of the same where we really got freaked out and look silly. :P (I will add the video soon if I get others' permission)
10Kms of Walk daily along the sides of 'clark quay', merlion, and so on. The beauty of esplanade or the complexity of the culture.
The night saffari
Little India, Mustafa Complex
The China Town (Unfortunately, we had been there for just 15 minutes. We know we missed out on a great town, we were already feeling that this was the place to be.
After coming back to hostel tired from endless walks: those seemingly endless phone calls I made. I cherished them even better.

ACL-IJCNLP was fabulous. Some talks were really well presented. My poster was a place where not many people flocked but those who came spent real time on. It went on as it was expected to be: Some agreed, some discussed, some debated against. Met some new people there: notably Annie Louis, PhD student working with Ani Nenkova at UPenn.

Summarization+NLG workshop was really really good. Some part of the afternoon session was a little dull but I think Robert Dale pulled out a great show putting together Regina Barzilay, Donia Scott, Kathy McKeown and Edward Hovy against each other on a well crafted topic of interest to both Summarization and NLG communities. Thanks Robert, Anja and Sebatian. :-)

Thanks to Girish we were able to see as much as we could in the time we had, especially with those tired legs we couldn't have gone anywhere else, anyway.
The hostel we stayed, Footprints hostel, needs a special mention. I heard somebody crib about backpacker's venues just before we were leaving, I was wondering why, and I still do.
I think it was the environment at Footprints that really relaxed us and get us ready for the next day. Everynight after coming to hostel we met new people from different parts of the world, it is always fun. :-)

Prashant would say the best part of the trip would be the food, and I wouldn't disagree. I had tasted dishes from around 8 different countries while Prashant had his hands on 11-12 dishes. From Japanese, chinese, Taiwanese, Philippines, Korean, Indonasian, malay, and so on..


August 10-28
Soon after I landed at the Airport in hyderabad, I was driving back home. Little did I realize that I had left my poster back at the airport. What caused that is a little difficult to imagine? Coming back home perhaps, or may be after 8 hrs wait at Mumbai Airport I couldn't manage a second more to pickup my poster, may be.

2 days after the trip, I went to my hometown. I must tell you that I haven't been to my hometown for 11 years. :-(
It was a nice trip, feel sort of nostalgic describing things, so I would defer the post for later if I can.

The present really, is a tough thing to think about. What have I been doing for the last 10 days ?
I have been working a little seriously yet at a slow pace on TAC AESOP task.
Since then I have been working on small things that I had earlier thought would work for this task. Again, like the Update Summarization task, I might not be able to get the best evaluation system ready but at least it would be a nice dry run for participating in future TACs.

Mostly based on AESOP task but largely due to curiosity towards summarization evaluation, I have initiated some joint work with Suman Yelati and Ravi Kiran. Hopefully we would be doing well. :)


And I hope to start writing again, soon. :-)