Trip to Banff: Day 2

[This is written after my trip, from my notes and memory.]

I woke up early in the morning to wander down to the lounge to have breakfast before the workshop began. They were having a continental breakfast, which they would have all week: pretty decent croissants and muffins and okay fruit, as well as an okay selection of cereals. The muffins and croissants were not the American-sized overly large variety, but were relatively cute and normal sized. The cereals I gradually decided I liked over the course of the week, especially the one I made by mixing uncooked oats with an almond-based granola. But the most surprising of all this breakfast stuff was the directions on how to cook scrambled eggs in the microwave. (Beat two eggs, add four tablespoons of water, cover tightly, and microwave for a minute.)

The day was pretty full of neat talks, but I won't bother blogging about obscure mathematics that most people reading this won't care about.

The Banff Centre (yes, British spellings of everything) has good buffet food, well above the level of traditional dorm cafeteria but below the level of Google. Lunch included a good jimbalaya, peas, home fried potatoes (which were done impressively well: nicely browned and crispy outsides yet soft and full cooked but not overcooked insides -- they must know they do this pretty well because I later noticed they actually have a tray of it at every meal), pita with cucumber and hummus, and southern fried chicken which was tasty but not greasy. Dinner was cajun catfish (sadly oversalted), zucchini sauteed in olive oil (this is impossible to mess up), dutch apple pie, and more.

The most noticeable item is the care for the health of the customers. In addition to the service-people wandering around looking to pour drinks and warn you when they're going to close the buffet, they had margarine with the rolls that emphasized they contained no partially hydrogenated oil or trans fats. Mind you, this is pretty impressive because it's hard in the States to find a butter substitute without partially hydrogenated oils. So the fact that they have it in Canada really is a sign that they care.

This complex and area is stunning -- examine the pictures of the dining hall and the view from it.

In the evening we had the first round of a Konane tournament. Konane is a pretty fun two-player game, sometimes called Hawaiian checkers, and quite reminiscent of peg solitaire. I went 2-and-1, which quite surprised me given that I'd only played it once or twice in the past. But I believe the same is true of mostly everything at this conference.

Why a Konane tournament? It's because this is a conference on games, and Konane is an interesting game for which there are no experts and no known good strategies or good openings. The tournament is meant to get people to start thinking about this game and develop some results.