I spent this weekend on the road. It was absolutely great! I wanted to get out of Seattle, listen to some live music, ride, smell the forest, write, think, etc. etc. It’s sooooo liberating to be on the road. It’s refreshing to meet new people, dance, philosophize, and put life into perspective :-)

In all my travels, I make a point of not going fast, of not getting stressed about seeing everything, of not falling into the “tourist traps”. I take my time, I walk, I observe. I try to create a 360 degree view of the place I visit, of the culture, of the people, of their day-to-day lives. I found a parallel earlier today while riding. I realized that sometimes the best views are those that you see in the mirror. One has to stop and look back. The experience might be surprising. The planned road ahead may not be the one that you want to capture in a photograph :-)

Isn’t this absolutely what we need to be doing with our lives as well? :-) Turn back, examine our past, cherish it, absorb every single aspect of it, learn from it, and then continue to move forward? :-)))

Anyway…

The Saturday ride from Seattle took me west on highway 2 towards Lake Chelan. I’d done that route before and, as always, the views were amazing. Some red colors are starting to appear in the forest. It’s going to be gorgeous in few weeks (I am going to visit Leavenworth with friends for their Oktoberfest celebrations there, once I get back from Europe :-).

I was planning to eat at Leavenworth but due to a detour, I ended up continuing until I reached Lake Chelan. The sun was absolutely gorgeous. I sat on the grass at a park, overlooking the little harbor and the lake, and absorbed as much of it as I could :-) Then on to lunch… while the ciabata burger was nothing special, I enjoyed one of my favorite appetizers (shrimp cocktail :-).
 

Then, I set to find the “Wild Rose Bed and Breakfast”. Despite my GPS’s best attempts (it took me to Chelan Falls… 3mi away), I finally found it :-) A gorgeous, 1800’s small house. It was a very pleasant stay but the breakfast was poor in the morning :-(
  

I walked around the town a bit. It was funny to see the locals playing a “wedding game” out in the open.

Then, it was about time to find and spend few hours at the “Rhythms of the Lake Music Fest”. It was very disappointing to see that there weren’t many people around. Apparently the night before it was packed and even though the price included both days/nights, people didn’t return. I was told that the wind had scared people away. I could barely notice the wind but, apparently, that’s not the norm so many decided to skip the second day of the festival :-( Too bad really because the music was excellent.

The setting was amazing… a small, natural amphitheater and the lake in the background.

The bands I saw...

• Champagne Sunday: They were awesome. They gave up their lives in LA to tour and try to make it big. I wish them all the best. They have great energy and cool songs. I bought a couple of their CDs to support them. Their mashup of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” with Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was fun :-)
• Red Means Go: College kids. Extremely good energy and I think very very promising. I got their CD and even have all their autographs on it :-)
• Debra Arlyn: Incredible voice. She and her band were indeed professional musicians, one could easily tell. They were headlining. We all danced to their music :-)

I met few people there and we danced for about an hour at the end. It felt sooooo good! :-)
  

And here are a couple of evening photos from Lake Chelan...
 

On Sunday, I just wanted to enjoy the long ride back home. I was mainly on highway 20 going west. I stopped many times to enjoy the landscape, to smell nature, to take it all in. It was fab!

On the way, I stopped at Winthrop and even though I wasn’t hungry, I just had to eat at the “Duck Brand Inn” :-)

 

 

Here’s the route I followed.

I am sooooo doing the Cascade Loop again :-)

I am off to Europe in few days. My previous team, External Research in MSR, is organizing a small event in Cambridge, UK, to discuss all the great technologies that they have been developing over the last few years, for some of which you can blame me too :-) I am going to focus on Zentity of course.

The event is shaping up to be a great one. As Alex said to the participants…

“… Tony will be welcoming the participants on Thursday a.m., and we plan to spend two fun-filled days walking them through the functionality, architecture, and extensibility options for 7 Office add-ins, 3 service platforms, and 1 partridge in a pear tree. We currently have participants from 5 software ISVs, 3 foundations, and 4 universities.”

It’d be great to catch up with Tony Hey, Lee Dirks, Alex Wade, and the rest of the gang while in Cambridge too! I somehow suspect that there is going to be beer-drinking at some stage :-) Now, why do I think that? :-))

Afterwards, I am flying to Greece for few days to see my family and friends. I am soooo excited (expect blog posts with photos :-). I am only going to stay there 4 days for two reasons: (i) I am starting with my new team tomorrow so I don’t want to be away for too long at the very beginning, (ii) I want to keep my days off for a trip to Latin America (probably Argentina) later in the year… we’ll see.

I am doing the Cascades loop this weekend on my motorbike. It feels sooooo good to be on the road again. I spent most of my day at Lake Chelan at the “Rhythms on the Lake Music Festival”. Beautiful music and lots of dancing. Met new people and felt totally alive!!! :-) I am going to blog about the entire weekend with many photos tomorrow.

I think the following line summarizes it quite well… The lady with whom I was dancing (don’t remember her name) said this… “you have a wonderful smile… your entire face smiles”. It feels good to smile again :-) Being out here gives me soooo much energy!

I try my best in my life to be a good friend to everyone. Sometimes I do mistakes. I seriously apologize to those whom I might have hurt. I do hope that in most times I am someone to whom my friends can count.

Over emotional times, I realize how lucky I am to have met and connected with so many people around the world, many of whom I consider good friends. No matter what time of the day or night, I will always find someone willing to hear me out, who knows me and is willing to offer a calm advice, a good word to lift my spirits up.

So... THANK YOU to all my friends who picked up my vibes and contacted me to check out on me, those whom I contacted and were more than glad to do everything to support me. Colette, Katerina, Meropi, Sofi, David, Meredith, Kostas (the first one to make my really laugh after a loooong time with his silly jokes :-), Jim, and all the others THANK YOU!!!

I am in a much better place today. I have been philosophizing under the sun at Greenlake. This past summer was fun, rewarding, exciting, difficult, challenging, full of joy but also mistakes! There is no blame and no regrets of course. That’s life! I’ve learnt my lessons and I am moving on, hopefully wiser.

I am looking forward to starting in my new role in Technical Computing, finishing the book, starting a new side project after the book (hopefully with Jim), starting traveling again, and taking care of my body and soul.

It’s amazing what a complete system reset can do sometimes.

My best friend Kostas Amoiridis is a photographer (mostly fashion) back in Greece. The photo at the corner of this blog was taken by him, for an interview of mine in a Greek magazine (plus some others for other similar occasions… the ones where I pose :-)

Kostas is absolutely fantastic… personality and talent!!! I love him.

Recently he sent me the following photos from his most recent art exhibition. I loved them so much that I asked for his permission to share them with you. The title of this set of photographs is “dinner is served” and, as he says in the introduction of his work, he “mixes tastes with people in order to showcase the unique culture of food, the people, their actions, and their humor” (translation mine so may not be very accurate). The people portrayed in these photos are all well-known in Greece, each one in their own domain… politics, theatre, radio, fashion, etc.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

I know it hasn’t been long since I moved to Bing from Microsoft Research but things don’t always work out as originally planned.

I learned a lot while at Bing but my primary goal of getting experience in delivering a large-scale service wasn’t being realized. Furthermore, the work I wanted to do around many ideas in the semantic computing, knowledge representation and reasoning space, touching all aspects of the data-information-knowledge spectrum didn’t really materialize due to a shift in priorities in my team and the current focus of the entire organization. I met many interesting people and got exposed to an organizational structure and mode of operation which were different from what I was used to until then. All valuable experiences.

When I found out about an opportunity for a brand new team in the Technical Computing/HPC space, I decided to pursue it. After many interactions and interviews, I am now ready to announce that I will be moving back to my old research discipline, that of distributed High Performance Computing. I am going to be joining Kyril Faenov’s organization to work on a yet-to-be-announced product under the leadership of Mark Schnitzer.

It is very likely that this blog will (again) see some more technical content in the coming months :-) Also, I am looking forward to interacting with scientists and technical computing experts in companies as part of our attempt to understand requirements and build solutions to meet them. The space is very exciting and I am looking forward to starting the hard work.

This move addresses the majority of “Savas blues” from back of July (check out my tweets from that time to see what I mean :-) I am once more excited about what I am going to be doing at work, looking forward to the challenges, and feel completely re-energized. Life feels positive again and I feel I can deal with everything that it throws my way, professionally and personally!

I had never been to a farmers’ fair here in the US until last Saturday, when I visited the Evergreen State Fair. It was lots of fun :-)… Many different types of animals, art stands, food, music, events, and many-many people :-)

          

Last Saturday, my summer of concerts continued with The Pretenders. It was a beautiful evening at the Marymoor Park.