Italian Travel

I went to SIROCCO at Castiglioncello, Italy. The travel gave me the blues:

I asked for Beef and got Chicken, sat squeezed next to big peoples;

My flight left and arrived late without my bags, let me miss many trains;

The machines wouldn't sell me tickets for even the near-empty cars;

My dog left me and I couldn't find a cafe... (just kidding).

It did not matter, I was in Italy, a land of great friends and great food, how can one remain blue for long?

SIROCCO, I came to know, has a history tracing back to PODC and DISC, and had a strong distributed computing presence. I did some homework to tilt my talk towards communication complexity, but could have done more to show the relationship between streaming and distributed computing. I made amends by talking in the open problems session, discussing two of my pet "new directions" for distributed streaming research: the MUD model for mapreduce, and distributed, continuous model for sensor networks; one stuck with the crowd and the other didn't.

It was nice to see Fabrizio Luccio, Alberto Marchetti Spaccamela and others at the conf, asking questions, formulating open problems, mentoring students. Also, it was fun kibbitzing with Guy, Shay, David, Shmuel, Tamir and others, people who can instantly translate across cultures, nations and experiences over dinner conversations.

Finally, I got a scooter ride in Rome, and time with the inimitable extended family of Luigi Laura who sent me off with home made limoncello, as usual.