The missing pages and the return to normal

Charlotte: A pandemic era local trip

It has been five years since the pandemic was declared. Many posts are resurfacing to recall that weird period in time, the early pandemic. Hopes and fears. It took me four years to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic era. COVID-19 is a name unfair to the year 2019. Sure, the disease started in 2019. But it was not known to most of us until the last two weeks of January. The full impact of the disease was realized only in February with the travel restrictions and then March with "work from home" mandates. People eventually started to return to "normal." For me, 2024 was the first "fully normal" year. A full year with no more work from home. 2024 felt like a natural continuation of 2019. A perfect year. The stories of pandemic feel like a weird dream in the middle.

Recently, Microsoft announced it will discontinue Skype and migrate its users to Teams. No one likes Microsoft Teams. It is bundled with Windows Operating System and admins keep using it when better alternatives are available. As for Skype, its fate is sad. Skype started its journey as a peer-to-peer system. Microsoft acquired it, but still Skype was largely untouched. The pandemic time could have been a good time for Skype to pick up momentum. But somehow it lost that race to Zoom. Skype was a tool we used to communicate with family and friends. Teams was entirely for work. Merging Skype and Teams would be like merging Facebook with LinkedIn. Imagine your Facebook friends are now forced into your LinkedIn, as you have no option but to use the newly merged LinkedIn where you also have your Facebook friends. I can understand Microsoft realized there is no business potential for Skype. However, Skype will leave a gap no app can fill yet. Whatsapp and similar apps are phone-based, where Skype is available to computers across the operating systems as well as mobile phone. There are computer-based video alternatives based on computer operating systems - but they either lack mobile support or do not have the support to add friends. Having friends that you can check to see whether they are online and then calling them is a nice feature which Zoom does not have. Apps such as WhatsApp and FaceTime are also tied to the mobile phone number. Skype gives some sort of anonymity as it just needs an email address. Perhaps, that might be another reason Windows wanted to give up Skype?

Blurred memories of early 2020s

Social media keeps evolving. We had a period of "being nice" that made us all tip even the Starbucks baristas for that take out coffee order. Now, that habit sticks around, incorporating tipping in cashiers and self-checkout machines. Twitter was a refreshing part of our life during the early pandemic days. When the outside world was dark, Twitter gave us some light. Now we are back to normal. Twitter has gone dark and X. It is filled with weird people and bots. Everyone with a blue tick is focusing on engagement to get their cashback. Algorithm is skewed to incentivize arguments rather than happy memories and celebrating achievements. Most of my friends have left Twitter. I am still around although the conversations have either become boring or died down. It maybe time to quit. I am unlikely to quit while I minimize my time there to focus more on the physical world. The world has a lot to offer, and we are so back to normal.

The hope and the fear of AI

There is both panic and excitement around the AI in the tech world. Some of them, well founded. Others, exaggerated. In one side, we see celebrations how months-long efforts became an hour-long task. How a complex undertaking that would take a proper training on the topic (for example, write a modular, distributed algorithm in Erlang programming language) now can be done in the matter of minutes in ChatGPT or a similar LLM. Then, the other side, panic that AI is going to wipe off the junior software engineer roles. It is probably widening the gap. In one side, engineers paid in millions to write the tools. In the side, the fresh graduates reducing themselves into "prompt engineers." Do we even need a 4-year bachelors on computer science if all we do is becoming a prompt engineer?

When we grade the take-home assignments and open-Internet exams, it is very clear that most of the answers are ChatGPT-inspired. We do not ban the use of LLMs in assignments. We just ask the students to disclose their source and tool, and almost all of them honestly report the ChatGPT use and it is ok. We are a StackOverflow generation. When we got stuck with an error message, we would ask StackOverflow and someone from 10 years ago had the same problem and there is the solution! Then, we would copy-paste. When we did not know the answer to a question, we would ask Google and Google gave us the answers. So, Internet copy-pasta is not new. Perhaps, ChatGPT has made it easier. It still needed some serious effort and "expertise" to find the answer from Google and StackOverflow. Maybe ChatGPT has made the entire process easier by giving you the answer, entire answer, rather than bits and pieces of it. StackOverflow was a crowdsourcing human effort. ChatGPT is using that human effort second-hand. Proponents of AI would argue even the use of tools like ChatGPT need some level of expertise, what to ask. There is some truth in it. What differentiates us is the human element. Everyone has the tools. But tools are not going to give you the answer we need.

Friday Feeling

Sesimbra, 2018, before leaving Portugal

This year is going fast. That is something I often felt with many years. Some years start eventfully. This year did! Especially with the new year day. We came back from our travels by the second week of January. But then when we returned home, the momentum slowed down. Drastically. It took some time to recover from all the food overdose. The year was already on full swing. January 10th. Weirdly, Anchorage is not as cold these days, although we are in the peak winter. Temperatures at mid 40s! (that is, 7 c). 2024 was a great year. 2025 so far felt like a hangover from the remarkably fun 2024. The semester is already getting to its speed. We are planning the summer and travels for 2025 already. Although it felt like a continuation of 2024, 2025 is starting to have its unique features too.

View of Tagus River

I often wonder how travels are an inevitable expense in the life of a person who is living abroad. Even when international students struggle with their finances, they travel back home once a year or once in two years. I did. We all do. Such a long-haul trip would feel like an unwanted expense or a luxury for a person who lives in their own country (unless they take pride in being international travelers). But for foreign students and foreign employees, travel is just a part of their identity. Most of us don't even consider going back home as a "travel."

When I hear from students who just got accepted to grad school, it brings me back to 2012. A time that feels so close, yet too far. An intermediate time between now and a time when I was in Sri Lanka. It feels like a previous birth at times. Grad school is a fun experience. As grad students, we already knew how to build things, how to write proper software. We felt like adults. But we also felt like kids - we were students, after all. Things look beautiful when you look back!

It doesn't feel right that I must spend thousands of dollars to fly across the ocean to walk on the same riverside I walked ten years ago or to enjoy some bacalhau in my favorite restaurant of my 20s.

Why does the world feel big sometimes? Don't mind me. It's the Friday feeling.

A few things that made my 2024 interesting..

Shenzhen after almost 7 years

2024 is my best year so far, followed by 2023, 2019, and 2017. This post lists 30 things that made my 2024 interesting.

1. A new template for many years to come.

2024 felt unique, but I feel many future years will closely resemble this year.

2. New continents and new horizons.

Long inter-continental trips. Reaching Country #50 and Continent #5.

3. Meeting new and old friends.

The frequent conference travels helped!

4. Designing and Teaching Distributed Computing course.

Delayed flight and a night in Abu Dhabi

It brought back memories from my own time as an MSc student in distributed computing.

5. Alaska as a Google Summer of Code organization. 

The mentor summit gave deja vu, like a repeat of the last year's experience!

6. A quick trip to UNLV for an NSF workshop.

It was my second time in Las Vegas, again very briefly, with just one night in a hotel.

7. Anchorage Ganesh Temple.

The temple itself is tiny. But nice to know the community.

8. Four papers at the IEEE CCECE conference in Kingston, ON, Canada.

I presented two and two of my students presented another two.

San Andres, Colombia

9. Huge malls of Shenzhen, China.

We used to alternate between China and Sri Lanka each year: Sri Lanka (2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019) and China (2014, 2016, and 2018). But that pattern broke with the pandemic. Returning after almost seven years felt historic.

10. Food and cocktails in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Had three dinners in three different restaurants on a single day. That sounds extreme. 

11. Sunset view and the view of moving ice in Kotzebue lagoon from the hotel room. 

This Arctic town reminded me of Utqiagvik in so many ways. 

A beautiful view from Bogota

12. Crossing the International Date Line.

That made our Christmas day disappear in the sky!

13. A train journey to Seward, AK.

We have now covered the entire Alaska railroad. From Anchorage to Fairbanks in the north and Seward in the south.

14. Tavira Portuguese Restaurant in Chevy Chase, MD.

Made me feel connected to my times in Portugal (i.e., the Season 2).

15. Sharks Cove near Pupukea Beach in Oahu, HI.

Loved the weather in Hawaii. Reminded me of Sri Lanka in many ways.

16. La Jolla Cove, San Diego, CA.

Those noisy sea lions and seals looked adorable in the night!

Brighton Bathing Boxes, Australia

17. Johnny Cay from San Andres, Colombia

Traveling with a family of a friend I made in the conference.

18. Crowded buses in Bogota, Colombia.

Reminded me of my Sri Lanka days. I manage to get around without even having Internet access while in the road.

19. PAEE-ALE conference experience in San Andres, Colombia

Probably my best conference experience so far. 

20. Bogota Airport, Colombia.

The capsule hostel "Wait N' Rest" experience in the airport and the always-open restaurants/cafes that let us add whiskey or a cream liqueur (as common across Colombia) to coffee as an extra! 

Luau in O'ahu, HI

21. Luau in Waipahu, HI.

My first exposure to the Polynesian culture and the indigenous people of Oceania. 

22. Extremely hot Abu Dhabi, UAE.

But at least my hotel room was comfy and fancy-looking.

23. Whale watching in Seward, AK.

It is a touristy cute little town.

24. Airport meetups and emotional goodbyes.

Airports in three continents - Toronto, Melbourne, and Shenzhen... with many family reunions - some after almost two decades.

Melting sea ice in the Arctic, Kotzebue

25. Night walks in Little Tokyo, CA.

Staying in a hotel in this cute neighborhood has its perks!

26. Diverse cuisines of Los Angeles, CA.

Been to LA several times. But this time tried cuisines of several origins.

27. The 4-flight trip to San Andres, with a recently sprained ankle, canceled flights, and sleeping in airports.

Anchorage → Minneapolis → Toronto → Bogota → San Andres. A tiresome trip. Discomfort. But a story to share.

Kingston Waterfront, ON, Canada.

28. Christmas decorations and New Year lights in Shenzhen, China

A very crowded new year's eve in OCT!

29. Early mornings at work.

6:15 am - 6:15 pm, as a perfect morning person.

30. Cocktails in the beach in San Andres, Colombia.

The island had a great cocktail scene, many nice beaches, and cocktails in the beaches!

Every year, I have only one new year's resolution - to outperform my previous years. :) 2025 appears special. We are 25% into the 21st century. I wish you a happy new year. Thanks for reading my list until the end. You may read the blog posts of all the previous years as well.

Patterns across the years...

The familiar ANC Airport

Life is full of deja vu, and I like to see patterns across the years. I see patterns in days, weeks, and more importantly, years. As the first year fully based in Alaska, with spring and fall semesters and largely free summer, this year is unique. However, I can already see this could become a template for many years to come. I will likely say in 2025 and in the future years, "this year largely felt like 2024." This was my first 9-month work year! That allowed me to travel extensively in the summer for conferences and personal trips.