2019: Provincial Champions, Vovó's 80s, Junior's arrival

Our 2019 end-of-the-year blog is also available in Portuguese. Click on any picture to see a larger version. Previous editions are found here.

The highlight of the Winter of 2019 was the Windsor Park indoor soccer season. After finishing the season unbeaten in February they walked into the Edmonton City finals as the runaway favorites to the Gold Medal. But, a few unlucky breaks and lacklustre performance in some of the games put then in the Bronze position. Thus, Windsor Park was in the worst seeding position for the Provincial Finals in Calgary and came in as the underdog team. But their opponents underestimate them to their own peril. Not only they beat the invict Calgary Champions, they also beat the Edmonton Champions that had stolen their presumed City Gold. In the end Windsor Park were the 2019 Alberta Provincial Champions and Daniel ended up the season with the best record for his age/category in net. Scott got very involved in all the soccer events helping setting up celebrations, driving Daniel to Calgary, etc. I participated as much as I could, but several of my travels late in the Spring took me away from the games. I was in Brazil when the Provincial finals happened in Calgary. Daniel's efforts were recognized by the coaching staff by selecting him to raise the trophy in the end. Here is a writing from the team's coach

I spent most of the month of March in Brazil. I flew to Porto Alegre to be there for my Mom's 80th birthday. All my family was there along with many friends from my Mom's "third age" activity, literary, and travel groups. Known all the struggles that my Mom had in her life, it was great that she had decided to set the celebration at a restaurant and had ordered the cake and sweets. When I was a child, my Mom was the one catering to such parties and our house was the place where people would come to pick up her cakes, sweets, and savory pastries. Thus it was a great sensation to go pick up her cake at the house of a caterer, and then spend the afternoon with her while she rested, and then had a friend come over to her house to fix up her hair and do her makeup. The party itself was great and it was a very good opportunity to meet many friends and relatives.

After the short visit to Porto Alegre, I went to Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais where I was a visiting scholar with the Transdiciplinary Advanced Studies Institute of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. For that visit I organized lots of advice that I have developed during many years into a workshop-style course that focused on how to present research results both orally and in written format. The course was much better received than I expected and it was great to hear comments such as "Professor, you changed the way I see Science" from graduate students. From Belo Horizonte I went to Campinas for anothe week-long visit to Guido Araujo, a long-term collaborator at Unicamp. At the end of my visit, I presented a lecture to a large audience at UFMG..

I had barely landed back from Brazil in Edmonton and took off to Mumbai in India where I went to "bring home" an international conference to Edmonton. In April 2020 I will be the hosting general chair for ICPE 2020 in April. In Mumbai I danced to the sound of Bollywood music for the first time.

In May I completed my first around-the-world trip. I left from Edmonton to the West for a visit to China via Hong Kong and made my way back to Edmonton from the East after a great stay in Rio to attend an international conference and a brief visit to Porto Alegre to see my Mom, who was recovering from a knee replacement surgery. For the rest of the year my Mom has continued her travels, her physical activities, and her contributions to literature --- one of her short essays was prominent in a new book published by her third-age university class. She is also in the process of preparing a new cooking book.

In May we lost two great academic personalities to cancer: Laurie Hendren, the most accomplished Canadian research in the area of compiler development and programming languages, and Margaret Ann-Armour, one of the most distinguished professors at the University of Alberta. I have been very fortunate to count both of them as dear friends. I will forever miss Laurie's authentic belly laugh when I attend some of my conferences, and, at our house, Margaret was known by Daniel and Scott's parents as "the Scottish short-bread cookies lady" because she always brought a thin of those to Daniel's birthday parties.

Summer went by fast. We planted our usual gardens, Daniel participated in the Spring soccer season. I had some professional travels to do, Scott took a vacation on his own to the wine country in Ontario and Daniel spent some time with his grandparents in Oklahoma. After dropping Daniel in Oklahoma I spent some time in a meeting in Chicago and then was off to Kyoto in Japan to attend an international conference. This was the second trip where I went to "bring home" an international conference: in August 2020 I will also be the hosting general chair for ICPP 2020.

In September Daniel started high school in a new school in Edmonton. Even though he is in a specialized program with staff to cater to his special needs, he continues to struggle with any level of academic work. Daniel also struggles to comply with the expectations of socialization and discipline in his school. Combined with the exploration with vaping and smoking --- we are living the struggles with the youth vaping epidemy at our house --- we always quickly become intimate with the principal in any new school. After some difficult strugles early in the year, Daniel was much more stable in the second half of the year. However, his compulsive eating continue to lead him to gain weight in a concerning rate.

I was elected by the General Faculties Council to serve in the University of Alberta Presidential Search Committee. The work started early in the Summer and kept me very busy throughout the Summer and Fall. Often the meetings conflicted with my teaching. Luckily I have great graduate students that were willing to step up to teach on my stead when needed. I also took sort trips to Chicago and Toronto for academic meetings during that time.

I start playing with trying to look at interesting details with nice lighting with they eye of a photographer. Here are some samples.

Scott has been very active serving as vice president to the Windsor Park Community League throughout the year and then in December he was elected president of the league making me into a "First Gentleman." Scott will be busy in 2020 working on the implementation of ammenities for the park. This requires extensive grant writing and coordination with many interested parts.

A stomach flu going thorugh our house in August put a damp into Scott's parents visit and result in the postponement of our Summer celebration by one week. Some friends then missed the celebration, but others were able to join us for an American Feast including hamburguers with all the fixings.

Late in August the three of us manage to escape for a quick getaway to Jasper for a long weekend. That was the only joint travel that we managed to fit in our busy Summer schedules.

In the Fall Daniel joined the Saint Joseph Canadian-style football team. He was so excited and so dedicated to the team and was getting along very well with the football team members and was super happy to finally be playing footbal --- something that he had wanted to do for a very long time, but we did not allow him to because of the risks of concussion. Lo and behold, after only two games, during a practice Daniel was tackled, hit his head to the ground and suffered a serious concussion. It was the end of his season as he was off both football and soccer for a couple of months after that.

Daniel and I caught some good hockey this Fall. In November we saw a nail-biting finish of Stars vs Oilers in Edmonton. As one of the few dad-son pairs dressed in the Stars' Green at Rogers Place in Edmonton, we even ended up appearing on TV and in the official NHL highlights NHL Highlights (watch at 4:12 min). Then right before Christmas we watch the Calgary Flames crush the Stars to a 5x1 defeat at the American Airlines Centre in Dallas. We also watch some great college-level hockey watching the Golden Bears at the Clare Drake arena in Edmonton.

One of the academic highlights of my year was my student Artem Chikin receiving the prize for the best M.Sc. thesis from the Department of Computing Science. My department is very strong in many areas and therefore each year M.Sc. students graduate with great accomplishments. It was the first time that a student in my group receives this prize --- we had runner-ups before. I was able to deliver the award in person to Artem at a dinner organized by my current and former students in Markham.

Throughout the Fall we were also busy with the process of finding a dog for Daniel. After much research for a hypoallergenic small size dog we set on a dog in the terrier family. It was surprisingly difficult to find a pure breed dog in Canada. Thus we also searched in Oklahoma and we found a Highland Wstie terrier not too far from Scott's parents house. That is how we ended up with "Junior" joining the family on Christmas eve in Ardmore. Daniel is so far super attached to his new dog and much calmer than before.

Wishing you a great 2020.