Vijay Pandurangan's blog A software blog… A travel blog… A fun blog!

Skype + iPhone = saving $20/mo.

If you have an iPhone with AT&T and you're not on the lowest rate plan, you could be throwing money away! 

Skype has a new app for the iPhone, that works pretty well, and (as you'd expect) lets you make calls using Skype!  Skype also offers an unlimited calling plan to Canada and the USA for $3/mo (or even less than this if you prepay).

AT&T's phone plans provide a lot of night& weekend minutes (5000 or unlimited), but are really stingy on the daytime minutes.  I seem to make most of my calls during the day, but I'm also usually in an area with WiFi.  So I just downloaded the skype app, switched to the cheapest calling plan ($20 cheaper!). Now, I make my calls during the day on Skype. The sound quality is good -- often times better than AT&T! Be sure to set skype up so that your callerid is displayed correctly.

Unfortunately Apple/AT&T have strong-armed Skype into not making calls over 3G.  You can, of course, circumvent this restriction via jailbreaking and installing this app.  But for me, this is more than enough.

The Skype app has a few significant drawbacks: it doesn't seem to detect when you move your phone to your head, so for the first few seconds you should be sure your cheek doesn't hang up the call. Also, I couldn't get bluetooth to work properly. Otherwise, everything works just fine.

Greece: Part II of II

As we saw before, I'd been wandering around Athens for a while, checking out cool and interesting things.

Next up:  a strange series of Greek dances at a theatre a little ways away from the Acropolis.  There was a little band and some people in various costumes performing dances purported to be from around Greece.  I didn't think the music was particularly good (the flute guy was off-pitch and the violin guy was off beat), and I couldn't really tell the dances apart.  All in all it was kind of interesting mostly for the venue, but a bit of a waste of time.  I'll have to edit some of the video I took and post it eventually, but here are a couple of photos:

After a couple of pit stops, Cape Sounio was at hand! Cape Sounio -- punctuated by a bluff  -- is the Southern-most point of mainland Greece.  Pericles (legendary politician of the Athenian city-state) persuaded the city to build a huge monument to Poseidon, the God of the Sea, to serve as beacon for weary seafarers and a statement of the power and strength of Athens.  Much of it was ruined by various attacks, but parts of it still stand.  The sunset there is absolutely amazing, as evidenced by these photos and the billion or so tourists all trying to capture the scene.

There were some beaches around there, like this one, where I read a book:

Driving around Greece, one cannot help but notice the plethora of unfinished buildings that dot the landscape.  At first I thought they were parking garages, or perhaps some kind of weird modern art, but it turns out that they're tax reduction scheme!! In Greece, partially constructed buildings somehow allow for a tax deduction and depreciation over time.  This tax break goes away when the building is actually completed!  Sounds like the kind of insane incentive structure that would exist in the USA, dreamed up by Geihtner and Bernake and co..  But my economic commentary belongs in a different post!

That's about it for my Greek trip.  Up next: Finland; then Estonia!

Greece: Part I of II

Note, my photos from my trip to Greece are here: Vijay's photos of Greece.

The first part of my three-country June/July excursion to Europe began in Athens. I flew from Newark on a nice 10 hour non-stop (not including the standard one-hour airplane traffic jam on the EWR runway). But, since I was in business class (thanks to a free upgrade Northwest gave me), I ate a pretty decent meal, with 2 appetizers, a bunch of decent pasta and unlimited refills. After reading a book ("Fooling some of the people all the time") for a bit, I popped a melatonin -- it totally cures jetlag, by the way -- and passed out. Despite my fears (I was sitting close to two toddlers), I had a great, uninterrupted 6.5 hour sleep. The children were pretty amazingly well-behaved.

After waiting in a taxi line for 20 minutes, I got a cool young cab driver who drove me straight to the hotel. (And while we're on this topic, why is it that pretty much every airport taxi rank in the world is horribly inefficient? There's no reason it should take 15 minutes to load 50 people into taxis, especially when there were about 60 taxis queued up. If I ever run an airport, I'd make the taxi contract include a penalty with for each person-minute wasted .) The cab driver strongly suggested I hit up this place called "Room", which seems to have had a series of names. "They re-name it every year to keep it fresh," he said.

Upon hearing of my trip to Athens, Gabor (and others) told me about this brand new, highly anticipated museum: the new Acropolis museum had just opened the previous weekend. As luck would have it, I arrived on the first day that entry was permitted without prior bookings (which had been sold out for a long time). The museum is pretty striking; designed by some Swiss architect whose name I've forgotten, it looks nothing like the surrounding area: it's totally concrete and glass.

It's built atop an archaeological site -- this required them to use a number of pillars to vault the whole thing over the dig site, and has a many glass floor panels through which one can examine excavations. The interior design is quite open; one can see most of the interesting areas from at least two floors. There are many fascinating statues, carvings, and other historical artefacts. However, most of the marble statues and carvings that adorned the acropolis initially were stolen/borrowed/preserved my the Scottish Lord Elgin, and currently reside in the British Museum in London. There are a few plaster casts that were sent back to Greece in the 1800s which are displayed in this museum.

Walking around the "plaka" (a.k.a. old city) is kind of interesting. Lots of little shops, and a bunch of tourists. It kind of looks like the Montmantre in Paris.

At dinner that night, I ended up sitting at a table next to this guy -- he was very nice, offering advice and even offering to share his drink. After talking to him for a while, it turned out he was from Edmonton, and was the president of the MS association there; just in Greece on a vacation. But that was just the beginning of the coolest random meeting I've had in years! It turns out that he used to play in the NHL!! He played as a backup goalie with the North Stars when Casey was in goal, was the backup in LA with Kelly Hrudey in the early 90s. Which, of course meant that he played with WAYNE GRETZKY!!! I was so speechless. I am now officially 1 degree of separation from The Great One!! Oh, he also played with Andy Moog for some time before injuries sidelined him. But he's dedicated his life to MS since he has a few friends severely afflicted by it. What a guy!!

The first thing on the menu Thursday was a guided walking tour of the Acropolis. I found the tour very elucidating and interesting on the whole. The guide clearly knew her stuff, and though she often stressed the obvious, did add a lot of interesting info. (note to self: ask Erin about the PhD tour guides in some country). First up was a kind of goofy changing of the guard at the parliament buildings. I'll try to find a photo of the guards surrounded by pigeons. After being pursued by some pretty aggressive stray dogs, we went to see the temple of Jupiter, which was erected by a Roman emperor who wanted to make a new Athens, but died before he could see it through.

Oh, about the strays: Athens is overrun with them. It's not as bad as India, but it's quite annoying. It turns out that the city wanted to put down all the strays before the Olympics but the locals were so incensed that they went around and put collars on all the strays in a (successful) effort to stymie the culling.

The expansion of the metro for the Olympics posed a substantial challenge for engineers. The entire area is covered with ancient Greek ruins; one place they wanted to put an air vent turned out to be the site of an ancient bath-house with important historical implications!

The Acropolis is pretty cool; I won't write too much about the history of it. Though we did see the rock on which Paul supposedly gave his famed "sermon on the mount". The whole area surrounding the Acropolis (a fort since prehistoric times) is dotted with all sorts of ruins, but they're not set up in a way that's particularly educational, especially if you don't have a guide and can't read ancient Greek. Here are a couple of photos:

The old Agora (market) and associated temple is pretty striking and the best preserved temple in all of Greece, so it's certainly worth checking out.

There were also a lot of tourists. Here's an example of a couple:

OK enough for now. Stay tuned for part II of Greece! Then Tallinn and Helsinki!

Linux is not immune from "blue screens of death"

I saw this stuck sign in a washroom in Edmonton:

biking around NYC just got waaay easier

Cary alerted me to Ride the City. It attempts to give me what I've craved for as long as I've been riding a bike in NYC: Safe biking directions.

Given a beginning and ending address, it will give you a route that is (by default) biased towards bikeways and bike lanes. You can pick between {safe route, safer route, and shortest route}. The directions are generally pretty good, and hopefully they'll get better soon. I think it's still lacking some features:

• Route dragging. Google maps supports altering driving directions by dragging a point along the route; this site should too.
• Waypoints.
• Integration with actual statistics on the most dangerous intersections would be pretty cool also. That way it wouldn't have to treat all non-bikelane-endowed streets the same and could help reduce the number of incidents.

more on textbook arbitraging

It turns out people have been onto this for a little while (unsurprising since it's a pretty easy way to save/make a boatload of money). This article in the NY Timestalks about the spread of this practice. It also turns out that according to a US Supreme Court decision it's 100% legal for American individuals, but not businesses:

There are no penalties for students who import books for their own use, under a 1998 Supreme Court decision that ruled that manufacturers who sell goods more cheaply overseas than in the United States have no protection against having their products sold back to the American market. But businesses or individuals who buy books for resale outside India could face prosecution for copyright infringement.

How to Get a Free Trip to India/Africa. (aka ‘the Great Textbook Arbitrage’)

When I was in Bangalore this past weekend (more on my trip to London and India in a subsequent post), I was helping my cousin study for some Computer Science exams. She needed to get a textbook, so I went with her to a local computer bookstore. I'd been meaning to pick up a copy of the CLR Algorithms textbook for some time, so when I saw it on the shelf, I took a quick peek at the price. I was shocked to discover that the entire second edition book went for Rs. 350, which is about $7. Inclusive of all taxes. To put that in perspective, that book on amazon.com costs $105.81 plus taxes.

Of course, this makes perfect sense; there's no way students in developing countries could possibly afford the insane prices publishers charge us in the West, so they sell them at discounted prices with a stern warning that sale of those books is prohibited outside of countries in the Indian subcontinent and most of Africa.

When I noticed the massive price differential, I could not help but pick up a few random books that seemed interesting and were priced insanely cheaply. With a little additional haggling, I secured a 20% discount over the already low prices; resulting in savings of more than $200 on the four books that I picked up at this store.

Of course this differential means that if I were in university now, I could simply book a ticket to India or Africa once a year, and just before I return home, buy all the textbooks that my classes for that year will require. The amount I could save is substantial: assuming a conservative $60/text, and 6 texts/semester, that gives us a around $700 for each year. That about pays for your airplane ticket (that's how you get a "free" trip!) If you are the type who resells your book once you're done with them, you can make an actual profit on top of the cost savings! (assuming the purchasers don't mind the stern warnings.)

As well, if you pick up another set of textbooks for a friend, your profits/savings only increase. IANAL, so I have no idea how idea exactly what the Customs folks will have to say about this little operation. I assume doing this for yourself is probably kosher, but I think starting a business doing stuff like this would be a really bad idea.

How to game Amtrak’s pricing scheme using their return policy

Amtrak really really wants to price their seats like an Airline.

They've set it up so that prices increase as you approach the travel day; this is true of both the Accela "high-speed" train and the normal "lower-speed" trains (only 30 min slower DC-NY). The train is a great way to travel between DC and NY, or NY and Boston. For example, for a seat on an Accela express:

- later today:$221.00 (2163 Acela Express New York, NY 3:00 pm to Washington, DC 5:51 pm.)
- in late April: $155 for the same train.

So, like with airlines, it really makes a great deal of sense to plan ahead. But what if you have some general ideas of when you might travel, but aren't sure exactly until the last minute? With airplanes, you're screwed because of the huge change fee, often as much as the price of the airfare. HOWEVER, the folks at Amtrak are really nice (or inept, you pick); you can refund business class tickets with no fee, for cash, back to your method of payment! So:

1. figure out when you might perhaps want to go.
2. book tickets tentatively
3. later on, cancel the ones that you don't need.
4. Buy me a gift with a fraction of the money I just saved you.

* Important: do NOT purchase round trip tickets. Their system can't cancel one way in a RT booking, and it's never ever cheaper to buy a RT over a one-way fare.

I wouldn't be worried about Amtrak catching on. It's a government-run entity afterall.

Also: if you have an Starwood Preferred Guest Amex, transfer points to Amtrak guest rewards and get a non-capacity controlled one-way on the slow train in the NE for just 3000 points. That's a good value for last second travel.

First travel post. Seoul!

I'm finally getting around to writing about some of my world travels. I suppose it's fitting that I'm writing this on a Delta flight. Thank god for in-seat power! And for complimentary upgrades to first class!

Where to start? I guess it makes sense to just intersperse 'historical' blog posts, where I reminisce about past trips, with current ones. That way I'll be able to keep sort of up to date while catching up with old stuff.

So here we go!!!!
In late January, I spent some time in Seoul, visiting Peter and Ken, friends from work.

Here's a shot of the view from Peter's place.Most of those massive apartment towers you see are actually pretty empty. At the time I figured Korea was in store for some serious real estate price correction, and from what I've heard, this is happening.

I ended up meeting a bunch of cool expats (turns out the expat community's quite small), and hanging out with them well into the mornings. If you thought New York is a town that never sleeps, you really should check out Seoul. The subway shuts down early, but the taxis are so cheap it doesn't really matter.

One of the reasons I love Korea and Japan is that there's one of the few places I've been that is really different but strangely familiar. That contradiction is quite elusive; the closest I can get to describing how I feel is that the layout, plan, and feel of the city is sort of Western which makes me feel sort of at ease, but the culture is very different, and of course, I don't speak the language. I'll try to come up with a good example of this and post it.

One day, I went to Coex, which is supposedly the largest underground mall in Asia:

It was really hyped up, but it was honestly a bit underwhelming. Maybe my being from Montreal biased me (we have a seriously massive underground mall/tunnel complex connecting most buildings in the downtown core -- who wants to go outside when it's -30C ?). All the same there were some things worth noting. For one, the preponderance of western chains was a bit disappointing. Note the Dunkin Donuts.
At the rate cultures are converging, by the time I'm 60, we'll basically have one homogeneous world culture. Very disheartening. (But maybe by then they'll have some Dunkin Donuts in California!)

But check this mall directory out! Instead of the usual stupid static map that is endemic to every mall in North America, the Koreans have come up with a technological solution.

The directory is actually a massive touch-sensitive screen hooked up to a computer. Tell it what you want to buy, or where you want to go, and it will give you step-by-step directions to get there. Cool!

They also have a escalator-hand-guide-thing sanitizer-and-ad-display system deployed everywhere. Kinda cool.

At this point I was starting to get hungry. The last time I came to Korea, I had some trouble finding vegetarian food. But this time, having memorized a few key phrases, I found it much easier. I decided to get a tomato and cheese sandwich along with some fries here, at Kraze Burger. Their food was, as they claimed, quite tasty and seemed to be prepared on site. I think it's kind of inspired by In `N Out or something. (Ironically, I later discovered that Kraze is actually a Korean chain, and there is a branch on the ground floor of Peter's apartment. Ha!)

Next up, I wandered out through the convention centre to check out this famous temple that's just across the street from this mall, the WTC, and a few other tall buildings.

It turns out that this temple used to own a vast expanse of forested land, and sold it to developers (who later built these buildings) for an obscene amount of money. It's now one of the richest temples in Asia. Or so the random tour guy told me.

When I was heading back to the subway, I noticed Timothy's coffee.
Does the logo look familiar? I couldn't help but feel that it was a direct knock-off of Tim Hortons! Some Canadians I asked seemed to concur and said it was probably because a lot of Koreans go to Canada to study English and end up craving Tim Bits. I can't say that I blame them!

The streets are all incredibly wide: Since the city was basically totally destroyed and rebuilt in the 50s, it was designed with the automobile in mind. I find the scale of the streets really intimidating as a pedestrian, not because I'm scared of getting hit (like in India), but because the thought of crossing the street seems like a huge endeavour. I like New York and old London's small streets way better.

OK I'm gonna try to keep these short, so people will actually read some of this stuff. But the next post will include my trip to a Korean batting cage, the top of Seoul Tower, a long walk along a newly reconstituted river, and some other districts. Please let me know what you think.