Return to Berkeley

A couple of weeks ago I returned to the UC Berkeley campus for the first time since my not so memorable first year of grad school. I went for an informal workshop on algorithmic randomness, as part of a 12 PI NSF project on the topic. We met in the math department at Evans Hall, which housed computer science back in the 80's. I discovered the west side offices of Evans have tremendous views of the San Francisco bay including both main bridges. I don't remember any theory faculty having west side views back in the day.

The biggest difference I noticed was walking down the streets and not once being accosted by people asking me for money. I wondered what happened to all the homeless in Berkeley and found them during an early morning jog, large numbers of them sleeping outside of the student union. Walking by there a few hours later the homeless had disappeared replaced by a long line of students waiting for I don't know, perhaps concert tickets of some sort.

Circumstances caused me to cut my trip short before I had a chance to visit the CS department or really explore the city and university. But I'll be back and it hopefully won't take me another 23 years to return.