Indeed, it is a play on the 1994 book of semi-autobiographical essays by VS Naipaul, A Way in the World, that I read during my recent short visit to New Delhi, and I had earlier in the visit chanced upon about this article in The Indian Express:
US Congress Recognizes Indian Americans and IIT Graduates for Contributions to American Society.
Per my (by now) usual habit, I stopped in at the Executive Lounge at Taj ManSingh for breakfast, an had Aloo Poori on the first day. Imagine my surprise when the first person I saw there was Sunil Wadhwani (also from Pittsburgh!) who was en route to IIT Madras (our alma mater): I don’t want to spoil an announcement that will come out soon as to why.
After breakfast, I strolled out of the Taj towards Khan Market – to visit BahriSons Booksellers – on my way to Lodi Gardens, and I noticed this sign on the road for Disaster Management Center that had not registered in my mind for years (and I used to live right there, behind the brick wall, an have walked on this road several times, since 1994):
As you know from Q-HOPE and Quantum GAGA, I have been working on (link will take you to arxiv with full paper that we posted only a few days back):
A Quantum Inspired Bi-level Optimization Algorithm for the First Responder Network Design Problem
GAGA (Red Curve) is a promising alternative to Branch-and-Bound, for example:
I always find it grand when the Captain comes on an International flight:
…Long taxi on the runway here in New Delhi, we will head towards Lahore, then over Eastern part of Afghanistan, make a left, fly over Caspian Sea and Black Sea, before getting into the airspace over mainland Europe. It is a long flight, over nine and a half hours. I will be back in touch about 40 minutes before landing in London Heathrow.
It was a long flight! I saw three movies, back to back, an still had more than three hours to left😳.
Marlowe: watchable. Maggie Moore: good plane movie. Magic Mike: predictably bad.
Back to Quantum. It was great to meet up with Vikesh Siddhu (now at IBM Quantum in New Delhi) and, in London, with Chander Velu, from Cambridge, for breakfast at The Wolseley. Among other things we discussed Brian Josephson, not his Nobel-winning work (see The Physics of GLIMPSE), but his Mind-Matter Unification project!
Last night I could not resist going over to Duke’s for a Vesper. ☺️ Had a delicious lunch earlier this afternoon at (Michelin-rated) Tamarind: Dry Aloo, Saag, Naan, Basmati Rice and Beetroot Raita. Waiting in the British Airways lounge, I see that the gate (at Heathrow) for the Pittsburgh flight has been announced – time to head out!
As I reached the gate, it was particularly satisfying – I teach queuing models in my Service Management MBA elective – to see the following on the TV screen:
Let me close with:
This is your Captain speaking. We have had unusually good weather conditions today and I hope you enjoyed an exceptionally smooth flight. We are beginning our initial descent to Pittsburgh. We are 250 miles out. We have light wind and the outside temperature is 52F. We will be landing from the East on Runway 2. The taxi in Pittsburgh is short. We should have you on the ground, at the gate and out the door ahead of schedule. Cabin Crew: 40 minutes to landing.
