SIGIR Day 3 brought the paper session to a close, but we had some of the
best papers for the end. In fact, the best paper of the conference from
IBM’s Haifa lab (which won the $1000 award sponsored by IBM… go team!)
was the very last one, but a very good paper nonetheless. They were
finally able to get some results on predicting query difficulty — e.g.
predicting whether the query would answered with high confidence, or
determining if the results were likely not to satisfy the user. Good stuff.
Xing Xie, one of our researchers from MSRA, put together a trip to the
Pelhourinha for 30 of us (turns out there were about 30 MS people, not
20 like I estimated!) to see a show and then go to a churasscara, which
is Brazilian BBQ. The show was similar to the one we saw at the banquet,
with the difference being some of the dances. No group samba at the end
(ah well), but the second dance was this guy with a big (~24″ diameter)
bowl of burning sterno on his head and two smaller (~6″) bowls with
burning sterno in each hand. And naturally, there was fire moving
everywhere… fire! fire! heh heh… fire!
Ok, I like it when people dance around with fire. It’s a crowd-pleaser.
They also had the best capoeirha that I’d seen… about twelve guys, all
of whom were amazingly built. And I found out why — they were doing
one-handed handstands, high back flips (like you see 14 yr old gymnists
do in th Olympics, but these guys are 6′ tall and they’re on a hard
stage, not a springy mat), and all sorts of other moves to warm things
up. Then, the capoeirha, which again was fantastic.
Fantastic.
We then went to Sal E Brasa Churrascaria, which as I mentioned is
Brazilian BBQ. There’s a buffet for not-meat, where they have fish,
fruit and veggies, salad and pasta, a fair bit of sushi (apparently
sushi is big in Brazil), and some other stuff like wild rabbit. I didn’t
try that. Then, at your table, waiters come by with meat on a skewer and
offer it to you. If you say, “Si, por favor” then they slice off a hunk
o’ meat — such as a thin steak of filet mignon, rump roast, or
whatever they happen to have.
You eat a lot of meat here. I mean, a lot of meat. And it’s really,
really good. Turns out Brazilian beef (and Argentinian) is much better
than the US stuff, unless you’re talking the US organic. Beef in South
America is free-range and apparently hormone free, so it’s not as fatty
and doesn’t have some of those weird tastes you occasionally get. Turns
out that a Big Mac in Brazil has fewer calories than a Big Mac in the
USA, purely because of the quality of the meat. go figure.
Anyway, we ate. And ate. And ate some more. Mmmmmmm…. protein!
We then piled into the tour bus and returned to the conference, totally
stuffed. Brazil is just great.