One surreal night in Edinburgh

This week I am in Edinburgh with two students and today was the
IMC deadline: 10pm EDT on Fri, 3am on Sat in Edinburgh, and 11am
on Sat in Seoul.  We are staying at a rental apartment with no
Internet access and today we were desperate for it.

As soon as we woke up, we headed to the WWW conference venue,
Edinburgh International Convention Center (EICC), for free
wireless access. We didn't bother to check out any session, but
only wrote and wrote in a corner at the center till the conference
ended at 6pm.  Then we had to move.  I came back to the apartment
for a short run to wake up my tired body.  Seungyeop went out for
a quick dinner with students from the conference.  Meeyoung went
away to call her co-authors in the US.

At 9:30pm, I was at an Internet cafe near our apartment, editing a
section, along with Seungyeop picking up loose ends in the paper.
We could not find a 24hr Internet cafe and the one we used closed
at 11pm.  Seungyeop and I moved to a hotel on Grass Market St.
in downtown Edinburgh, where we had spotted wireless APs on
previous days.  Joined by Meeyoung there, we just settled
comfortably in at the lobby bar when we were told that the bar and
lobby area closed at 1am for non-customers.  We asked for
information on any cafe open past 1am, and was told of just one on
the other side of town.  When kicked out by the hotel staff
at 1am, 2 hours before the IMC deadline, I hadn't finished
revising the introduction, Seungyeop still had many loose ends to
take care of, and Meeyoung was desperate to settle down on a good
paper title.

(Grass Market Street in daylight)

When we couldn't find a cab to move to the Internet cafe far away,
we asked the manager in charge at another hotel
on the same street to call a cab.  Out of kindness, he called to
check if our destination was truly 24hr open.  No, it was not.
Desperate to connect to the net, we sat down on a bench in the
middle of Grass Market Street and opened up our laptops.  It was
cold and windy.  But we were desperate.  What a surreal sight it
must have been to see three Asians on Grass Market Street
in the dead of a Friday night, sitting on a bench,
shoulders rubbing against each other's
to keep warm, with a laptop each, and frantically typing.

Drunken people all around us, a few screaming and dancing.  When I
raised my head in the middle of editing, a guy passing by gave me
a look of grave concern and told me to pack up and leave
immediately.  He warned that a drunk or nasty guy could snatch
away my laptop any moment.  Frightened for the safety of my
students, I ordered to close their laptops and go back home.

It was right then we saw the kind manager walking toward us.  He
offered to let us stay in the hotel lobby till 3am.  Out of the
chilly night wind's way inside the hotel, our spirits were
immensely lifted by his kindness.  We immediately got online again
and back to work.  About 10 or so hotel customers were drinking merrily
near us.  At 3am, we were done with paper submissions.

We were finally ready for a drink.  It was only then the kind
manager told us that everything closed at 3am in Edinburgh.
Arghhhhhhhh.  Buzzed to the bone by countless cups of caffeine, we
had to turn our restless feet home.  It took only a few spoonfuls
of lukewarm yogurt for Meeyoung to fall asleep, and a few words on
recent trends at the WWW conference for Seungyeop and me.

The paper titles we wrote on this night of surreal reality in Edinburgh
were: "Are huge online social networks representative of real
social networks?" and "On AS level path diversity."  Instead, they
should have been: "For those brains not equipped with a diverse,
flexible structure for guaranteed always-on good judgment,
does caffeine overdose induce transient synapse failures and
make those infliected perform a socially unrepresentative act?"

p.s. We are immensely grateful for the kindness the hotel manager showed
us last night.