Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

I am finally back from my trip, and as things got really busy towards the end of my stay at RRI, I haven’t been able to talk more about articles I’ve read that made an impression on me. Some of them are really outdated by now (about a month old) so I can’t really talk about them individually, but I guess if you combine enough of them together, it could make for a blog post. So, here’s the dump of all the articles (all from WSJ, as that’s the newspaper I get on my Kindle) I wanted to comment on in the last month:

• The More, The Better: this is why I feel optimistic about America in the long run. This is a mighty country, based on a mighty continent. And we are still growing, unlike the old countries in Europe or some in Asia.
• “They recommend that doctors ask themselves honestly about their intent in conducting the search and whether the outcome might compromise the trust and relationship between the doctor and patient. Doctors, they say, should consider asking the patient for consent.”: I don’t know. If they have to ask, they probably shouldn’t. Or, at least on an individual basis, it would be a creepy question to ask: “May I google you from time to time?” Such question is better placed on a form with all those waivers, like one of those privacy opt-out things. On another note, doctors googling their patients is especially creepy—while the information they find is supposedly public, because doctors have privileged information about their patients, they may be able to piece together the whole, probably private, picture better than random strangers could.
• Basically an Optimist—Still: “Today nobody believes that, except maybe in North Korea. You go to China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, even Western Europe. Most of the economists under 50 have a free-market orientation. Now, there are differences of emphasis and opinion among them. But they’re oriented toward the markets.” A new hope? Liberal-socialism is becoming, year by year and decade by decade more intellectually bankrupt. While the tide is still against us, we may be able to reverse it—in our lifetime.
• Vallejo’s Painful Lessons in Municipal Bankruptcy: Well. Here’s a city I should remember never to move into, regardless of how attractive some rentals seem.
• Harvesting Lunar Soil For Energy Bonanza: “What’s so special about lunar soil? It contains helium-3, a non radioactive isotope that fuels clean nuclear fusion.” Sounds like science fiction. In particular, this science fiction.
• Business Bids to Shape Health Changes: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is planning a broad effort to blunt the health overhaul by trying to shape its regulatory language and spending heavily to unseat vulnerable Democrats who voted for it.” ‘Wish they started the fight earlier. Instead, Obamacare is marked with special deals for big businesses, such as Big Pharma, at the cost of everyone else.
• Militia Chief’s Mistrust Festered, Friends Say: “While he rarely attended church, he studied the Bible nightly, memorizing long passages, said Ms. Harsh, his ex-fiance.” A slight problem: For Christians, belonging in a community of believers is not merely recommended; it’s required. So by any measurable standard, this militia leader was not a Christian.
• The ObamaCare Writedowns—II: “In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama’s moment of glory. Sure.” Aye. On the other hand, investors would be wise to discount these writedowns as they do with most one-time charges in trying to predict future earnings.
• The Superstar Effect: Interesting. Would the same effect exist in a cooperative situation as well? i.e. Mr. Best will be carrying most of the load; why should we work hard?
• Corruption You Can Count On: (I also can’t find it online) “But to the discomfort of development economists and anti-corruption crusaders, some of the great economic success stories of the past half-century have taken place in the most corrupt economies on earth. In Transparency’s first corruption ranking in 1995, the two countries that ranked as the most corrupt were Indonesia and China. Yet these ratings came amid decades-long economic booms.” Not too surprising. As long as bribes are consistent, are they really different from rush processing fees you pay at various places in U.S.?
• Fire and Fumes Can’t Drive Indians From Hellish Village: “But many of the government’s more ambitious plans to help its most vulnerable citizens are failing because they are poorly conceived and executed. Even as the government has poured billions of dollars into an initiative to employ unskilled rural workers, the program has been plagued with charges of corruption and mismanagement.” Well. There’s always the saying; rising tides raise all boats. Perhaps those billions would be better spent cutting taxes and encouraging growth (and in some aspects, Bangalore seemed to have more vibrant free market than the Bay Area).
• More Americans Sever U.S. Ties as IRS Gets Tougher: “According to public records, just over 500 people world-wide renounced U.S. citizenship or permanent residency in the fourth quarter of 2009, the most recent period for which data are available. That is more people than have cut ties with the U.S. during all of 2007, and more than double the total expatriations in 2008.” Appalling but I guess encouraging: even if 2,000 people did give up U.S. citizenship annually, that’s much fewer than the number of people getting naturalized annually (although it must hurt that most people giving up U.S. citizenship must be far richer than average immigrants).
• Mr. Dimon Goes to Washington: ‘The incessant broad-based vilification of the banking industry isn’t fair and it is damaging,” Mr. Dimon said. “Punishing whole industries, whether you were reckless or not, just isn’t the way to do things.”‘ ‘Would’ve been more convincing for him to say that it wasn’t government’s business to mess with the market, either in bailing out or punishing. Instead, Mr. Dimon comes off as if he’s saying government help is welcome but its welcome has worn out when it wants to exact payments.
• In the Search for a Hot Job Title, Enter the Ninja: “In finance, ninja has a more dubious meaning—it’s an acronym for a kind of loan in which a bank hasn’t verified an applicant’s income, job, or assets. After the housing bubble, many of these sorts of loans ended up in default, with their borrowers disappearing like ninjas.” Oh, interesting. Perhaps CS ninjas will end up the same way.
• Not All Differences in Earnings Are Created Equal: “But do women really earn that much less than men? It depends on how you interpret the numbers.” Numbers always lie. When you work with statistics, you can always massage the numbers to make them give you the result you want.
• Taliban Capitalize on Afghan Logging Ban: “Deforestation, in turn, leads to soil erosion, flooding, and air pollution—which is why the Afghan government, with the support of international environmental groups, imposed the 2006 prohibition.” Yet another misguided leftist project—imposing our standards on another nation.

Well. This covers the articles I had clipped up ’til April 15th, when I got stuck at Frankfurt. I’ll look over what I missed and post another article dump, if necessary.

Here’s one depressing email from United Airlines (private email address redacted):

From: United <ema...@info.united.com>
Reply-To: United Replies <rep...@info.united.com>
To: xxx...@BKPARK.COM
Subject: European travel notification
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:23:03 0600

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Dear Mr. Byung Kyu Park,

Several European countries have closed their airspace due to
unsafe flying conditions resulting from a volcanic ash plume
that is covering significant portions of northern Europe.

Thousands of flights to and from major European airports
have been canceled, and Eurocontrol, the European air
traffic agency, has said that travel disruptions and delays
will continue well into Saturday as the massive ash cloud
moves slowly south and east. We know that unexpected flight
cancellations are difficult. However, our highest priority
is your safety and that of our crews.

 . If your flight has been canceled, we will rebook you on
   the next United flight with available seats. Check your
   flight status.

http://www.ua2go.com/flifo/FlightInput.do

 . Even if your flight has not yet been canceled, your
   travel may be covered by a travel waiver, and you may be
   able to change your plans without incurring a service
   charge.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,53414,00.html

 . If your travel plans are impacted by this situation and
   you decide to cancel your trip, you may be eligible for
   a refund of any unused portion of your ticket.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,52940,00.html

In order to provide additional assistance to our customers
who are currently in Europe, we have extended the hours of
our European reservations centers.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,50394,00.html

Please know that we are working hard to reaccommodate all of
our customers whose travel has been impacted and to resume
flying our full schedule as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

United Airlines

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What’s depressing about it? The date: it’s dated April 16th, but the volcano erupted on the 14th and the problem with air travel started early 15th. I only wish United had this attitude on the 15th—that may have lead the CS rep to agree to modify my ticket like I wanted to initially and let me travel to London by train (when the bulk of the air traffic had not yet been diverted to train).

Things still would be rough, since my main luggage would not be with me, but I wouldn’t be as depressed as I am now, stuck in the least favorite continent (Europe), in the least favorite country (Germany), in the least favorite city (Frankfurt), and in the least favorite airport (FRA) in the whole universe (I reserve judgment on Martians).

Given that this is presumably a once-in-a-lifetime incident I am not sure how well the lesson would apply, the lesson is learned: in the event of natural disaster, don’t assume things will get better, and let the customer service reps know I will hold them personally responsible for not obeying my wishes (or at least not escalating it to higher level where they know their proper place)—which, in most cases, prove prudent and correct in the long run—in the event things do get worse.

So, thanks to an act of God, my London trip this year is cancelled. This is very disappointing to me, as this would have been my first trip to England with a high chance of adding a second European country to my “good countries” list (Germany, by the way, will never make that list; at least until there is a world war in which Germany fights on our side. Actually, make that 3, first 2 necessary just to cancel out the WWI and WWII). Anyways. Here is the record of all the things that have gone wrong, and a couple things that, if I had done differently, might have changed things for the better.

So the very first thing I did wrong was being slow in reacting to the news. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to hear that our flight got cancelled (and since the flight was cancelled after they had passed through about 20 to 30 people into the waiting area for boarding, I believe my flight was one of the very first to get canceled, the people in 8:30 a.m. flight being the very lucky ones who were the last to depart for LHR). I guess the news was just too incredible to me—I spent the next 10 minutes or so playing Hedgewars, before I got it through my thick head that I probably should talk to the airline people to see what I should do. I think these were the crucial minutes which cost about an hour or two in waiting time later at the Lufthansa Customer Service center one floor up.

After that hour or two of waiting (that I could have avoided, if I had the sense to take advantage of my good fortune in hearing about the plane cancellation so early), I talked to the Lufthansa people, and they were, for the most part, reasonable, if very slow: They put me on the 12:20 flight to LHR and gave me a voucher for a hotel stay and a meal up to 20 EUR. My personal objection, of course, was that they were making me stay in Frankfurt, my least favorite city in the world (it ranks behind St. Petersburg, a Russian city). Also, this would have been half a day of sight-seeing and trips in London missed, as well as my hostel reservation check in. So, I wanted to make an alternate arrangement to get me to London faster, and since this will involve modifications to the ticket and this is a United ticket, not Lufthansa, they told me to go talk to the United people.

And that’s where I made my second mistake. After eventually being directed to the United ticket counter, I tried to explain my intent carefully (the situation didn’t need explanations; whole airports were getting shut down): I could try to arrange for my own transportation to London (probably by train). I just wanted to make sure two things: (1) cancelling the FRA-LHR segment will not cancel the remainder of my trip ; (2) I’ll not get charged for the modification (given the situation), and in fact, that I should get reimbursed somehow for the segment not used (esp. since I will have to pay for the train ticket). Well. The customer service representative claimed that she absolutely could not modify the ticket. What she claimed was that cancelling this segment will get the remainder of the trip automatically cancelled by the computer system, and that she has no way to override that. This is where I made my second mistake: I believed her—as I found out the next day, when the newfound flexibility was useless, it was entirely possible to rework the whole ticket, not only to cancel just the FRA-LHR segment, but also to modify LHR-ORD-SFO segment, at no additional charge to me. I should have believed my own sense of reasonableness and pushed her harder, and perhaps demanded to talk to her supervisor. Escalate.

Anyways. That’s all the mistakes I made; the rest were, well, in God’s hands. I got to the hotel by their shuttle in the late afternoon. My ill-will towards Lufthansa softened a bit at finding that this was a 5-star hotel (and the room was definitely the best I’ve been in so far, including the stay at Doubletree in Oak Ridge, which was fancier than I was comfortable with in the first place). Here are some pictures of the room and the area:

The front view of the Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch.

And some of the facilities that are available at the hotel … which is I guess fairly standard at most hotels bearing the name “resort”.


What was really nice was my room.


And the view from the room.

And the view of the room.

And the restaurant was pretty good—although much of that may have to do with the 20 EUR voucher; one would expect a great service at a place where you pay nearly 40 EUR for a dinner; it just felt good because I was paying less than half of what I’d pay.

So, although I might have held a grudge against Lufthansa over all the waits and rather useless customer service (about half the people I had to talk to over this whole fiasco weren’t helpful), as I do against Delta, I don’t.

Everything I did the day after was as good as it could have been done—but man plans, God accomplishes; I wasn’t to make this visit to London. I woke up at 5:45 a.m.; went down for breakfast at 6 a.m.; took the shuttle to airport at 6:45 a.m. (I guess I could’ve taken the 6:00 a.m. shuttle, so in hindsight, maybe that was the third mistake, but I’d have to weigh that against missing the complementary breakfast which was the best hotel breakfast I’ve had … that I didn’t have to pay for). The first thing I saw was a huge line at the Lufthansa counters. Imagine the polar opposite of this, 6 hours later:

Well. In any case, checking my ticket at one of the kiosks showed that my flight was cancelled anyway. So, not wanting to wait in such long lines (which, I guess, took about 3 to 5 hours to clear up, so if I had queued up, they’d probably have put me on another flight tomorrow 2 hours later or so, and maybe another night of free hotel stay, but without a perfect hindsight that everything I tried to do to get to London today would fail, that wasn’t a reasonable course of action), I headed over to the relatively short United ticket counter. And surprise, surprise, the customer service rep who was at the counter could modify my ticket. She cancelled the FRA-LHR segment, giving me a ticket for my record, and advising me to contact United after the trip to get them to reimburse me for my train ticket. Then, after filling out a form for the checked in luggage (BTW, I had wanted to carry this luggage on the plane; I only checked it in because of Lufthansa’s stupid rule about 8kg weight limit on carry-on and this has caused me more headaches than I’d care for) to be delivered to the London address where I hoped to be staying, I went to the travel center to book my train. The line was long (it was so long that it went around a staircase all the way around so that the end of the line was at the start of the line), but after 3 hours of waiting (i.e. about 11:30 p.m.), I got to the counter to book the ticket. After relatively curt exchange and long wait (this seems to be my typical German customer service experience (e.g. Lufthansa and whoever operates trains); rude and lacking in explanations, although United reps so far have been mostly nice—but they are Germans too, right? So what’s the difference?) the lady told me that there were absolutely no tickets to London until Monday. Because of that experience with United rep where I was told, to put it nicely, an untruth, I pushed her a little farther for clarification: Isn’t there anything with standing room only? What if I take a detour through another city? No. No.

And that’s when all my hopes vanished and I got to writing this post mortem. I have given up on the London trip this time around. I am glad enough to have booked for a direct flight to U.S., waitlisted for an early flight tomorrow (doubtful that I can make it) and confirmed reservation for a direct flight to SFO on Monday. If I can get out of this miserable city tomorrow morning, by God, I will. If not, as a friend suggested, I’ll take a train ride to escape this accursed city and the country (maybe Luxembourg, or even France) until I can return on Monday for the retreat to my beloved country.

After some false starts and mishaps, I finally got an organized tour of Bangalore last Sunday. I hope to go on a Mysore tour next weekend. Here are some pictures from the tour.

One of the “false starts” was that the full-day tour I was originally booked for got cancelled because of some local election last Sunday. So, I booked myself on the afternoon half-day tour instead (that actually turned out to be better, because when I looked at the stops for the full-day tour, the half-day tour actually looked better; the full-day tour was filled with museums and planetariums, i.e. places that have little to do with Bangalore). So I had to kill some time from 7 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and I stumbled upon this statue of Queen Victoria.

The first stop was this museum (and thankfully, the only museum in the list of stops):

Frankly, the outside of the museum looks better than anything else inside. Inside, you could find things like lathes and micrometers (huh, I didn’t know these common items at my lab in Berkeley were museum-worthy). There was one interesting exhibit though:

To figure out where the water is coming from, it’s important to note that here the water appears to drop straight down in a cylinder of constant diameter. But the physics of laminar flow of incompressible fluid under gravitational pull (in particular, the fluid velocity increases under gravitational pull, but the flow rate (area times fluid velocity) must stay constant) dictates the diameter must become narrower as water falls downward. I think they could’ve made this exhibit more tricky by fashioning the transparent pipe into the shape water would naturally have, and picking the right material with the index of refraction similar to water so that the underwater portion of the pipe won’t be so transparent. Then it is only through process of elimination that one can arrive at where the water must be coming from.

And we stopped by at Tippu’s summer palace,

which was fairly unimpressive, except perhaps this monument:

I really liked our next stop, Lalbagh Botanical Garden though.

It was a beautiful garden with beautiful paths

and lake.

As we had only one short hour there, not nearly enough time to look at everything I want to see in the garden,

not to mention map some unmapped sections of the footpaths, I plan on coming back later, perhaps next Saturday.

The tour ended at some Hindu temples, including the Bull Temple.

I felt a lot of ambivalence at these places, you know, first and second commandment and all that (especially at the Bull Temple, where I had a guide who encouraged me to touch the bull “for good luck” and where I also got a little red dot on my forehead, for whatever that meant). Well. I just remembered what Paul said about meat sacrificed to Greek idols: these Hindu idols also do not exist, and these gestures which could be interpreted as worship do not matter—if I do not mistake them for worship.

(If anyone asks why it took me 2 days to write this, I’m claiming that it’s taken me that long to recover from the trip.)

Last Saturday was my first weekend in Bangalore; no one else was coming to the lab (and I’m not … supposed to touch the equipments without a chaperon); so I decided to take a short tour around the city. There were some organized tours advertised on the Internet, but this being my first week (and my not being too familiar with the city’s public transportation system), I decided to venture out alone.

After a quick Google search, I had my primary objective: Vidhana Soudha. Well, long story short, I didn’t do much touring of the place (the gates looked so forbidding; I wasn’t sure if tourists were welcome in that place), and this picture was all I could take away:

But I did take a walk around the parks, both near the city center

and near the Raman Research Institute

which was nice. And I also sampled the local drinks, including one moosambi juice (bars weren’t open in the morning, unfortunately).

If I had to pick one striking difference in India so far (what some other people have been calling “culture shock”, although I wouldn’t call it that—let’s call it … a vague nostalgia, for me at least) is the different … character of road signs. I’ve been warned about lanes well before I came to India, but I wasn’t told about these:

Oh. And here’s one traffic rule I found out while walking around:

P.S. I got around this time on bus—both to the city center and back—despite the fact that I couldn’t find good information on the bus system online (or on the supposed route map at some bus stops). It turns out when you have a GPS (that instantly lets you know when the bus has taken a “wrong turn”), taking a random bus going in the approximately right direction works out fairly well. Also, it helped that I was willing to walk a fair distance (and the day pass was fairly cheap; only 32 rupees).

P.S. Oh, and haggling is very much … in fashion here. I was able to haggle a map of Bangalore down from 150 rupees to 100 rupees, and a hat from 100 rupees to 80 rupees by simply saying that original price was “too much”. Of course, the map was rather imprecise (and not as useful as my GPS) and the hat was cheaply made, but well, I bought them as souvenirs, not practical purpose (which was why any price was too much).

… and as someone who would like to return to that wonderful country several more times in the future, I do hope that we remain allies.

Just 3 more years, Poland and other American allies. Can you hold out for three more years, please?

I’m sorta ashamed that I didn’t know this already:

There is a grain of truth in every legend. One of those legends is the story of Nawojka, who is a good example to follow for young girls with academic inclinations. Nawojka is considered to be the first female student and teacher in Poland. It was about 1407 when she, disguised in boy’s clothing, entered the Kraków Academy in violation of all rules, laws, customs and tradition; defying everything that was expected of women at that time. This fact was recorded about 1429 by Martin of Leibitz, an elderly abbot of the Benedictine order in Vienna.

This is the front of the dorm (they have a bar and cafeteria within the same building):

And this is a sign for the cafeteria that’s been there forever (at least since 2007):

I don’t know why I am only now finding out about the 9/11 memorial donated by Russians to commemorate those perished in that awful attack on American soil in 2001.

Why wasn’t there any significant media coverage? Was there so little coverage when the French donated the Statue of Liberty as well? Or is this lack of coverage just another indication of their bias against covering anything related to Islamic terrorists unless it puts America and her allies in bad light?

Regardless, now that I know (thanks to this essay), this is one place I want to visit in some near future (the World Trade Center memorial would be another place, if it existed).

Airlines are raising checked baggage fees again.

Let me say first that, in principle, I have no problem with this. I like traveling light (I’ve come long way in 5 years of traveling) and I like the principle of everyone paying their own way: checked baggages do incur extra cost to the airlines, so there is no reason I, a traveler who always makes sure that he can carry everything on his back, should subsidize them.

But as with every change, there are unintended consequences. Some people, instead of packing light to make sure that they can carry everything on, simply carry on the bags (especially the medium size rollers) that they might have checked in. At least this seemed to be why overhead space was so scarce on my last flight from So. Cal. I was sitting relatively far in front (in fact, as far front as I have ever sat in airplanes that have 6 seats across), but I couldn’t find an overhead bin for my backpack: I had to trek about four or five rows further before finding a room in the corner somewhere.

Not being an airline manager or even a flight attendant, I don’t know how much this costs, in terms of potential plane delays and personnel costs as some carry-on bags have to be checked in later (and from what I’ve seen, they don’t seem to charge the fee in these instances). But if the airlines are jacking up their checked-in baggage fees, I hope they included the cost of more frequent and severe occurrences of incidences like this into their calculation.

In any case, I am not buying airline stocks any time soon, at least not until they shut down TSA.

The Poland trip this summer, I think, turned out to be relatively fruitful. Of course, how fruitful it was will be … apparent in a month or so, when the products of last two trips to Krakow will be finished. Here’s the abbreviated itinerary and impressions of various places visited during this trip. A fuller version with illustrations might be coming over the weekend (depending on how much free time I get).

The main thing about this trip is that it was scheduled in a series of round trips. Round trip from SFO to FRA. Round trip from FRA to KRK, and finally, round trip from KRK to LED. It was done to get the cheapest tickets available, and although now I think scheduling them in a somewhat different way might have been cheaper and gotten me home earlier (i.e. round trip from FRA to KRK, returning early enough for another round trip from FRA to LED for the UCN conference which was ostensibly the main purpose of this summer’s eastern European trip, I am satisfied with the result, given that it gave me an extra half-day in Krakow, my favorite city in Europe.

The trip to Krakow was mostly uneventful. I didn’t like the layover in Frankfurt as the airport appeared to have been designed specifically to eliminate power outlets that people might use for their laptops, but it was only a few hours. And my week and a half in Krakow was also mostly uneventful. It was productive, and no sight seeing was done at all at least this time around. Then, June 7th came along, and it was time for the UCN conference in St. Petersburg.

I have to say that I am rather surprised by my St. Petersburg experience. I liked the place, and compared to the reputation of, say, Moscow being one of the most expensive and dangerous place to live, St. Petersburg appeared safe—with cheap and good food (if in meager servings, at least compared to what I get in Krakow). There were some quirks, of course (the water smells funny, which I am told is due to the chlorine in the tap water, and the pollution … makes walking around unpleasant, at least in the eastern part of the city where we were staying), but overall, it didn’t look like a communist hell hole. The newspaper I read on the plane (St. Petersburg Times, English version) even had inklings of real free press.

The workshop, which went relatively well, ended in the dawn of June 14th, so I had a full day to explore the city on the Sunday, as I had assumed that we would have a full day of schedule on the 14th and scheduled to leave for Krakow on the 15th. I tried out the colonnade on the St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and then walked around the city following the rivers and channels. I have to say the river Neva (and her many channels) is my favorite thing in the city.

On returning to Krakow on the 15th, I stayed at a place called “Mama’s Hostel”. Again, this was done mostly for reducing travel expense (as hotels are, I think, at least 5 times more expensive), but I also wanted to do it for, well, the experience—if it turns out to be unpleasant or unsafe, at least it’s better done while I’m still young.

But the place turned out wonderful. It was one of the old buildings in the city square which I liked very much, the bed was clean and the room I was staying in was only half-occupied, and the common area was lovely. Oh, and when I checked in, a very cute girl was staffing the front desk, so that was nice.

I didn’t have much time to do anything on the day I arrived, but on the next day (I had to leave for airport at around 12), I took a walk along the river near Wawel Castle and managed to accomplish my personal objective for these trips since the first time I was in Krakow: to obtain the plastic “expanding ball” toy. And I finally did it this time.

And then I flew to Frankfurt for my final return trip. While this segment of the trip was mostly uneventful, this day (and the morning next) was the most … unpleasant part of the trip and will be detailed in an illustrated entry which I’ve tentatively titled “Frankfurt, the toilet of the Europe”.

And then was my 15-hour journey back to U.S. I was very tired by the end and the little kid crying in the seat behind me was extremely annoying, but at least I was glad to be in the U.S.A. again (oh, and to have bought the T-shirt that says “I love my country; it’s the government I am afraid of” during my 1-hr layover in Washington D.C.).

Anyways. Pictures with fuller story of each segment of the trip will be coming, hopefully over this weekend.