Overbooking...The Joy!

Flying is fun. I love it. Well ok, not the flying part, but the travelling bit. But airlines have their way of miraculously screwing up your entire trip...just like that! And the scary thing is, they get can away with it. Maybe I've had bad luck, but I don't think so. I've heard too many bad experiences from others, but this one I just had went a little far.

Two weeks ago I went to Las Vegas. It was a wonderful, amazing experience and I'll post more about this and my trip down to Southern California when I return to South Africa in two weeks. Unfortunately though, we missed out on so much in Vegas. United Airlines are the ones to blame for this, not us.

We were supposed to fly out on Friday evening. I had booked tickets about two weeks in advance, however, I was not able to select seats at the time, which I assumed at the time was due to the flight being rather full. I was travelling with my aunt who was visiting from London and my two roommates from South Africa, Migael and Nick. Migael and Nick booked separately as they were taking a different return flight, but otherwise we were all on the same flight to Las Vegas.

When we checked-in they told us we had to get seats at the gate. This has happened to me enough times already so I hadn't started worrying at all. We get to the gate and they tell us to wait until we're called up. Now that's when a little worry started creeping in. Some time later I overheard them say there were 16 passengers without seats and only 7 available. Soon after they started boarding the plane and still they had not started calling us up. Then only did they make the announcement that they were overbooked and they were asking passengers t step down and get re-routed through Los Angeles arriving in Vegas early the following morning, with the only compensation being out up in a hotel in LA and getting either a free round-trip within the US or $400 United vouchers.

I think I remember about 4 or 5 people taking the offer to step down. We thought about it for a brief moment, but it really wasn't worth losing one of only two nights in Vegas. Most people were busy boarding so they either didn't hear the announcement or didn't have enough time to think about it. I've seen this happen plenty times in Europe, especially at Heathrow, but they know well in advance that they might have an overbooking situation on their hands and they have signs up when you first arrive at the gate so many more people actually take note of it and they have plenty time to consider the option. This was the part about this experience that frustrated me the most -- the complete lack of organisation and prior planning. Non-existent!

Eventually they started assigning seats to those like us without seats. Migael and Nick were one of the first few to be called up and they quickly boarded the plane. However, we waited anxiously while they called up other groups. After a while it appeared as though they had stopped calling people up. They were constantly being overwhelmed by several others that were on standby for the flight after having missed an earlier one trying to find out if there was any possibility they could get on the flight. Their policy, however, was that passengers booked on the flight had precedence over those that had been booted off an earlier flight, even if it was purely the airline's fault! In the position I was in, I was obviously glad this was the case, but looking back I find it rather disturbing that those that are affected just get constantly treated so shockingly and without any consideration whatsoever. It's as if their sole priority is to reduce the number of bad experiences and not dampen the effects in any way whatsoever!

The reality started sinking in when I saw the gate close. They carried on hacking away at their computers as though there was still the slightest possibility they could make something happen, but I knew the truth. It wasn't long before the plane took-off and we were left behind. Yet still they were busy hacking away!! Finally I lost my patience and I was determined to get anything out of them. They told us we could either take the route via LA and arrive in Vegas the following morning or be put on standby for the last flight to Vegas at 22:25. Unfortunately, if we took the standby option and missed it we would also miss the LA flight and only end up arriving in Vegas Saturday evening as all the flights till then were also fully booked. And the later flight was also likely to fall under the exact same overbooking issues we had just experienced! So we were advised to take the flight to LA.

They seemed to take a ridiculously long time to book us onto this LA flight and in that time they finally realised we would be able to make this US Airlines flight to Vegas at 20:30 that evening. However, they couldn't have done a better job at screwing that one up royally. They were on the phone with someone (turned out to be the same person we were to next bump into) to try get us on that flight. They took such a long time and it appeared as though it was US Airways being a pain, but as it turned out it was actually the guy at our end... Only after booking the tickets were we told we had to run all the way to the other terminal. It ended up being about a 10 minute rush to catch the flight. But we arrived only to hear that the gate was closed. Oh dear! Apparently the US Airways staff had told United that the gate had already closed even when they were attempting to purchase the tickets! How far can these guys go?!

By this time time were four of us doing the running up and down together. There was my aunt and I, Sarah who was in the exact same situation as us and was missing a huge party that night due to this gemorse and Yousef who had missed the flight by such a small margin and was trying to follow the same flights we were being put on. When we got back to the United counter we had to start all over again as we couldn't get though security back to those who were originally dealing with us. We got this guy that I swear didn't have an ounce of personality. We would tell him to contact Michelle Hughes who was trying to help us at first, but he would give absolutely no response. But he heard us and eventually we figured he was listening. I don't even feel like getting into this guy any more as I'd just explode.

After waiting patiently yet again he finally came back to us, with the wrong flight!! Sigh...

It took him a while, but finally we got everything sorted out and we were on the flight to LA. We had lunch, waited a bit, boarded the flight and arrived in LA past midnight. You can just imagine what time we arrived at the hotel! And we were to catch a 06:30 flight to Vegas, leaving us about three hours sleep...

Never again! I will remember next time to never ever, never take United Airlines again! Unfortunately my flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt is with them when I return home and I have these $400 vouchers with them, which wonderfully last for only a year.

100 Prisoners

There are 100 prisoners each with a unique name. There are 100 boxes, each one containing a single prisoner's name such that every name is in exactly one box. Each prisoner has to select and open up to 50 boxes and if his name is not in any of these 50 boxes then all the prisoners are executed. They go through this process one at a time, each prisoner finishing before the next begins. They can communicate to come up with a strategy before beginning, however, they cannot communicate in any way after the process has begun.

What is the best strategy that results in the prisoners' greatest chance of survival? Hint: It is greater than 30%. And if that's too easy, prove that this is the optimal strategy.

Comcast Bandwidth "Abuse"

Who would have thought that leaving South Africa for the US would result in yet more bandwidth woes! Why yes, it's true...I've hit the "cap". I just got a call from Comcast this morning saying that I exceeded the limit last month and that I was being given a warning.

Let me get one thing straight first. The cable here is *far* better than the ADSL back in SA. Don't get me wrong there. However, they could be a little more upfront about their restrictions. Apparently I was in the top 0.1% of their bandwidth users last month. All I was told that if I return to this top 0.1% bracket again within the next year then my account will be suspended for a year. Wow, that's quite harsh don't you think? Especially when you consider that no-one can ever know what that limit is in terms of an actual bandwidth figure and that as much as a tried the guy refused to even give me a ball-park figure. All he said was that I had to "drastically reduce" my usage and that if he gave me a figure he would be fired.

I was rather surprised at how interrogating he was. Some of the questions I can understand, such as asking if I had a wireless network and whether or not it was secure. When he asked what I was doing that was causing such excessive usage -- man, I got a little annoyed. I told him straight that it was private. What are they going to benefit knowing what I use my line for?

The good thing is they have plenty DSL providers here. Hopefully they'll be more customer-friendly. Yes, they charge a bit more, but the other stories I've read about Comcast are a little saddening (even though they don't come close to the evilness of Telkom!) such as sending forged TCP RST packets and throttling encrypted traffic.

Stanford vs Berkeley

About two weeks ago all the NVIDIA interns were invited to watch a game of American football. It was the last game of the season with the two big bay area teams, Stanford and Berkeley, up against one another. Apparently it was virtually impossible to get tickets and we were extremely lucky with someone at NVIDIA having connections otherwise we would have never got tickets.

Apart from the odd glimpse from flipping through the channels I had never really watched American football. So this was my first time and I was rather excited since everyone was calling it a great game. I overestimated the similarities to rugby, but luckily there was a large group of interns with us, some of which were very enthusiastic about the sport and explained the basics to me. I won't go into the details, but it was rather enjoyable. I still prefer rugby, but that doesn't mean I'd never like football. In the end Stanford pimped Berkeley 20-13, with the last quarter being the most exciting as Berkeley tried to claw their way back.


Then this past weekend we spent visiting the two campuses. Stanford is fairly close to Santa Clara so we went there first. It's a massive campus, apparently considered to occupy the largest area at over 8,000 acres. At least I can say that by sticking to the sciences it doesn't appear all that bad as the science buildings are all nearby, although I think a bike would be useful. We biked around the campus and covered a fair amount of the main section of the campus. It was a very beautiful campus with lots of open land and although we didn't get to go inside any of the buildings and therefore couldn't talk to any professors due to it being the weekend, I think I'd have a hard time turning down an offer from them.

They also have their very own Stanford Shopping Center, complete with Macy's and Bloomingdales! The city of Palo Alto which is virtually right next door to the campus is also a wonderful addition to the beauty of the campus itself.


On Sunday we then went a little further out to the University of California, Berkeley. An immediate distinction was that while Stanford was completely flat, Berkeley was situated on a hill. Thankfully it was not nearly as large as walking up and down hills can get very exhausting. So we got to walk around almost the entire main campus, excluding the section way up on the top of the hill which was just a little too far for us to want to climb.

The surrounding area wasn't nearly as impressive as Stanford, although that was kind of expected. There are apparently a number of cheap Asian restaurants, although we only heard about them afterwards.


Overall, the Stanford campus was definitely more impressive, although I certainly wouldn't say no to Berkeley either. Seeing all this that they have here in America makes me so jealous and torn between leaving SA for more of this and enjoying the more natural wonders of SA...

Is South Africa Doomed?

If you haven't heard yet, Jacob Zuma has just been elected to run as leader of the ANC in the upcoming South African presidential elections in 2009. That means that for all intense and purposes he will be our third president out of Apartheid.

If you know this man's history of corruption charges that have been filed against him you'll understand why this news is making a lot of us in South Africa rather nervous as to the country's future. Mandela was and still is an inspiration not only to South Africans, but the entire world. Mbeki, while having his low moments, couldn't have been a better replacement for Mandela. Now we have Zuma...Will all that effort over the past 15 years be neglected? I can only say I hope not.

I think I know who I won't be voting for come 2009!

SACO Online Camp

This is rather (very) late notice, but starting at 11:00 GMT (13:00 SA time) tomorrow (Saturday 15 December) we will be hosting the first of several training camps to select the South African IOI team.

We're continuing on from the SACO and opening it up to the public in the form of an online contest, so you're all welcome to join. We'll be accepting submissions in any of Java, C/C++, Pascal, Python and Haskell. Haskell is an unusual one on the list -- this is the first time we'll be making it available so we'd love to see some FP gurus show us what they got! The contest will consist of three problems and you'll have five hours to solve them, followed by an online discussion via IRC.

Registration and further details is available here:

http://olympiad.cs.uct.ac.za/contest.html

On a related matter, we recently expanded the size of our training squad from six to twelve. The training has always been limited in the past to the six medallists from the SACO. This year we've invited the top six non-matrics outside the medals. Unfortunately they are not eligible to make the IOI team, but we will be trying to change that for next year. The goal is to catch the good ones at a younger age, which is what the Mathematics Olympiad is already good at doing. It's also another reason why we're opening up these contests to the public.

Google Africa Forum

Google seems to be reaching out to Africa of late and yesterday was a step in the right direction. Yesterday evening I attended the first of hopefully many Google Africa Forums. I was rather lucky to have moved to the Bay Area just in time for this event, which caught my attention when I first heard of it. I've been involved in discussions with Google earlier this year about making a move in South Africa in particular.

The event was held at the Google HQ in Mountain View. As you can imagine, just visiting the campus excited. Having worked in the Zurich office last year I kept hearing all kinds stories about the campus and so finally getting to see t first hand was amazing. Although I didn't get to see much of it from the inside I can tell you that it sure is massive! 10,000 people working there may sound like a big number, but that campus is huge even for that number of people. We have about 4,000 employees at the NVIDIA campus and the Google campus is more than just triple the size.

I couldn't really take any pictures since it was dark and I'll hopefully get another opportunity to get a real tour of the campus some time soon (my ex-manager is flying here in a few weeks). Here's a picture of one of the signs though, just for some satisfaction:


So, what was this event all about? This was the first time Google were hosting such an event so they didn't have much of an idea of what to expect. They therefore left the topic rather open. All they said in the invitation was:

Come help us understand your perspective on:

• the needs of engineers from Africa (why did you leave and what may make you go back)
• the high-tech landscape and user needs in the region
• how we can best support the region, as Google, and as individuals

One thing that is often underestimated about Africa is its multicultural diversity. Even I can't fully grasp it, but I do know that it is impossible to work with Africa as a unit. That was my primary criticism of this event and how Google deals with Africa in general. South Africa for one is in a very unique situation, although at least that is understood by most. Take South Africa away though and you are still left with a wide range in the levels of technology in Africa. Kenya is the most advanced technologically after South Africa, but the rest I myself am not too aware of where they lie.

At this event there were about 100 or so people from about 20 African countries. Most of them have been working in the Bay Area for many years. Surprisingly I was the only one from South Africa, besides one other South African Google engineer who's also from UCT. There were those from Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt and many more.

They had a panel of eight up front. All of them were from different countries in Africa, besides a professor from UC Berkeley who has lived in Africa for 13 years though. The forum was hosted by someone who knew little about Africa and so he got rather overwhelmed by the enthusiasm at some stages. During the first 90 minutes the panel answered a number of specific questions after which the discussion was opened to the floor.


The panellists started by telling how they were helping trying to improve the situation in their home countries. Each one was taking very different action, yet they were all passionate about helping their country. The one was trying to get more content from Africa on the web, another was helping to introduce systems such as number plate identification to identify stolen cars.

Then they answered the question of why they left. Almost everyone responded by saying that education was the main and sometimes only reason for leaving Africa. The woman on the left even said that as a woman wanting to study Mathematics she was told that Mathematicians make bad housewives, and so she left to study in the US. Several other women agreed with her as they had similar experiences. The matter of education doesn't apply much to South Africa as we have a high quality education system. I would say that only by graduate school does it become beneficial to study elsewhere as our undergraduate programs are sometimes even considered better.

The next question was what would make them go back. This is a difficult question to answer, at least I feel, since often you can only really decide once the change has happened. Some people answered by saying that they simply can't go back since they would end up with a useless job as job allocations are very poor. Others said they would return if they could be guaranteed a decent job -- a similar response, but subtly different. Then came the issue of governments that made it difficult for people to do what they wanted. The best answer in my opinion though was that some people felt they could make a greater impact on their home country from the US. If that is true, then that is excellent!

What about technology in Africa? The answer here varied greatly from country to country. The general feeling, however, was that it is of no use introducing technology into a developing country without educating the people how to use it. There were a couple situations brought up where computers were donated to schools and after a few years it was discovered they were sitting there unused. Many people brought up the topic of Computer Science degrees in which the students never touched a computer. That the degrees are highly theoretical and that, related to the question of why people leave Africa, going to the US they find that they can finally get a practical application of what they studied. Without these practical experiences, however, people cannot develop the technologies in the country.

Finally, the question of what can Google do to help the situation arose. Here again, the answers were drastically different. In countries where the government was a brick wall the situation is very difficult. Many African countries have constant power cuts and those that are better off are seriously lacking Internet connectivity. As bad as the situation is in South Africa, as much as we complain, the other countries in Africa can only dream of what we have. This problem of poor infrastructure needs to be solved before anything can be done about brining technology into the rest of Africa. For those that do have the infrastructure such as Kenya, the people need to be educated. Introducing a bit of new technology is great and all, but teaching the local people how to bring technology to their own country will have a much greater impact. All of these different scenarios Google is capable of helping out. It is only a question of how far they are willing to go with this.

When the discussion was opened to the floor there was an overwhelming number of people that wanted to give their input. There were so many different points of views that I simply cannot remember all of them. A couple people said that perhaps we could learn from the way India has developed, although there were several arguments against that since Africa is facing a different situation. Many people reiterated what had been said by some of the panellists, while some questioned their views. Some people questioned how interested Google really were in Africa, whether this sort of event was just a once off to please some people.

As much as I wanted to have my say, so much of the discussion was about the poorer, less developed countries in Africa and coming from South Africa we face an extremely different situation. We have a good infrastructure, a good education system and a good level of technology in South Africa. However, what we lack is large software companies or anything Computer Science related that we can go to after graduating. There are a few, such as the Amazon office that opened recently in Cape Town, Black Ginger, SKA project and a few more. However, the options are very limited and all the bright people are leaving. Who says I won't be leaving? If a company such as Google were to open an office in South Africa I wouldn't think twice before working there. I love South Africa and would dearly love to continue to live there, but with the current lack of opportunities there's little choice. If you remain behind you get left behind.

This event was definitely very worthwhile. However, it was too short and needed more control over the order of proceedings. They said then and there that they would have more follow-ups. I just hope they stick to their word as this is a great attempt to get Africans to speak up and discuss the problems back home. These people have seen what the US has and so they are in the best position to discuss how things can be improved back home.