On that scale, perhaps it’s not as terrible as Athens in April (it’s a shorter flight — the shortest I’ve made out from Australia — for a slightly longer stay), but it is another quick-and-dirty conference trip. I’m out of Sydney for 10 days, for the Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics. (The astute will note this is similar to the last conference title, but lacking “European Chapter of the”.)

While slightly up on the flight efficiency, there is less reason for me to attend, as I’m not presenting any papers, just supporting my co-authors who are. I have my name on two papers in the ACL Workshop on Collaboratively Constructed Semantic Resources, which, for the jargon-uninitiated, basically means “research using wikis to help computers understand language”.

But I do hope to see and taste a bit of the city too. Singapore’s taste sensation is sorely limited by my choice of diet. Fortunately, there are many vegetarian restaurants which should suffice, and a Jewish community centre not far from my hostel or the conference site. At 42km long by 23km deep, about half of which is built up, most places I might want to go aren’t exceedingly far (thanks to Fisher Library‘s Lonely Planet collection for providing geography tidbits).

Sadly, I’ve booked my return flight for the morning of the 9th of August, not realising it is Singapore National Day, one of the highlights of the calendar. If only I’d arranged to stay a few more hours… (and maybe it still can be arranged? is it worth it?)

As a perk on the side, I had not realised that I would also be travelling further west in Australia than I’ve ever been. On the flight, I happened to want to know the time, and turned on the only reliable channel on the barely-renovated 1980s inflight entertainment system of Singapore Air’s Boeing 737-400, which pinned its pixelated aeroplane icon at Uluru. This surprised me, as I’ve previously only travelled northward to Asia. So I’ve finally been to Central Australia (not that I could see it from row G). Next time I should make a stop-off.

Conferences are all about communication and learning, but I feel like the main thing I’m learning is how to attend conferences. My supervisor considers that having spent a lot of money to get here, we should make sure we see as much of the conference as possible. Other people seem to think, that having spent so much to get here, one should make sure to see as much of the city as possible. It’s a matter of learning to know which sessions to take off and get out to see the city. And I’m apparently a slow learner, and have seen almost nothing of it, which means I’ll be cramming it into the next three days.

And then there’s the idea that once I’ve travelled halfway across the world, I should at least stay here for a little longer than a week. I was bound by two major concerts last week and Pesach (which I enjoy spending with my family in Sydney) next week, but I still feel guilty to be hopping back on a jet so soon.

And of course I could do with learning a little better how to present a paper. I gave my presentaton on Analysing Wikipedia and Gold-Standard Corpora for NER Training yesterday afternoon. Having gone over-time in my practice runs, I cut it down a little on stage. Apparently too much. The session chair didn’t need to hold up a single warning sign. Still, it left more time for questions, which showed people were interested, and I’ve had many compliments on an interesting presentation. I also need to work on fluency a little, but my supervisor tells me I’m much improved…

The learning curve’s a little steep. There are many PhD students here who seem to be becoming naturals at conference-going. Soon by me?

PS: I’m not really doing much on syntax myself; nor is the conference actually at Syntagma Square, the focal point of modern Athens…
PPS: Typed on my new MacBook.

This was redeemed only a little by McGill’s library going back to their Wednesday night practice of leaving recycling bins full of books outside in the cool air, waiting for people to come and rifle through them for anything of use.

Little pamphlets only eighty pages long, paperbacks, hardcovers thin and thick. Most are in English; some in French; others on occasion in assorted languages, such as Hebrew: This evening, David Zvi came and offered me a book of Genesis in Hebrew with some commentaries. He told me the bins have been back out there for two weeks.

So I went down on my way from the library and took my turn at them. Five large bins of books. Many are cheap novels; some are classics that everyone already has; others are large textbooks and pamphlets on various topics; household encyclopedias; childrens’ colouring books and stories; a lot of books on economics (and how to succeed) from various ages; psychology is always popular, maybe because anything ten years old is outdated; others on sex and anything taboo.

And occasionally there’s something worth taking, or just amusing.

The other guy searching with me at first (before others joined) managed to find a free Agatha Christie novel, and soon a great Christmas/birthday present: “How to manage a urinary tract infection.”

I’m not sure how useful my takings are, but there’s no harm in having them, and no guilt in later throwing them away. My first find (and a good one) was a Pocket Books French/English dictionary, which may come in handy alongside the French text book I picked up from a second-hand shop in Boston, in these last few weeks of chance to learn the language. My second was a small pamphlet on “The Christian Mysteries: Prayer and Sacrement,” which might come in handy when I finish using my family’s history as toilet reading material. Then there was “How to Satisfy a Man Every Time and have him beg for more!” which falls under the same category as managing urinary tract infections (good for giving). As I was leaving, a fellow digger called out for anyone interested in learning Ancient Greek and so I picked up an introductory text. And when I came back later, I acquired Strunk and White’s style guide to American English (3rd ed., 1979).

All this begs to ask where all these hundreds upon hundreds of books come from. Well, they appear weekly outside the main library, which suggests that they were once inside. But they bear no mark of cataloguing. So the library was given them but didn’t want them in their collection. Which is fair enough: few of the books would fit well in a research library; those that do might be obsolete, others already in the collection. Most of the books seem to have come from household libraries, but wouldn’t most households try profiting by selling to a second-hand bookshop? Maybe these are even the books the bookshops rejected! But most people don’t ask. Gleefully, they just reach in and take.

And so it is on Wednesday nights that those who know, or those who are curious enough to approach, take no caution in throwing their arms into big blue bins, upturning the piles of books and scrap paper and magazines. Pulling them out, checking their spines, throwing them back. Believing that somewhere in there will be a shining gem. No one asks with any care where they came from, or who is throwing all these out, they just come with the faith that maybe this week, just maybe, the bins will contain the book for them.

These might not amount to Simon’s finds from the Fisher Undergratuate Library. But at least, when it’s warm enough, they’re back every week!

Wow. It’s a little different here from what I’m used to back home. In montreal, I’ve never entered a class to find it the sujbect of a recent “flyer drop”. No one’s even stood at the entrance of the room or building handing out their rhetoric. I’ve not experienced a Canadian “lecture bash”; not seen people bludging their classes to wear bright t-shirts and huddle in groups around footpath tables or otherwise flying from poster-board to poster-board with staple-gun and roll of bright mass-copied paper in hand. People usually wear just clothes, not stickers and badges. And there are no rabid extremist politicians calling out against the government (or any cause) as you journey on by them on the street.

The best people have here to promote their cause seems to be a handful of poster-boards around the place, samosa and bake sales in the foyers of Leacock or Redpath, the usual annoying flyer distributions (usually for clubs on Friday nights) by people on either side of the narrow Milton Gate exit, e-mailing lists, and (of course) Facebook groups.

I mean, it’s understandable that they don’t rally loudly for hours on the campus’s equivalent of USyd’s Front Lawn. After all, it is covered in snow and so not so lawny; and unless they were all rallying hard, the -10 degree weather would eventually be unbearable, at least for some. Besides, they don’t seem to have yet conceptualised the free sausage sizzle around here.

But, seriously, the main physical form of advertisement coming up to today’s event was a handful of Letter-sized, glossy, bright green posters. Much more cheery than the startling red that all year long emblazons Sydney Uni’s walkways, at least for the clubs that can afford colour printing.

As the time came around, I’d still not heard anyone mention the upcoming rally in person—only emails from SSMU = the Union—and my lecture theatre at 1:30 was as full as usual.

Sorry James J.: not the campus for you, I guess.

PS: Who says post-secondary? Doesn’t tertiary follow primary and secondary?
PPS: Then again, who says “gay” and means “jolly”? Clearly I do.