Regina Week 1 – GIMMC 16 June, 2008

The first week of the GIMMC is over and there is one more week left before I go back to Greece and the exams.
The past week I have been working on the problem of snow removal for the city of Regina.
Our mentor was Dr. Ed Doolittle and we were able to categorize the problem as a Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP). I performed a rough Cost Estimation to show that it probably isn’t worth of optimizing, but people should really use a relatively efficient way of solving it. You can find our presentation here.

Some highlights of the past week :

• We have been walking A LOT! Downtown Regina is about 4 km from the University, and since the transit system here is not very good it is easier to walk this distance.

• Regina has about 180.000 people and is so spread out, that almost nobody walks, even downtown.

• I’ve been 2 times at the Casino Regina, however I didn’t play. Is is interesting watching all these people being there all day long and (mostly) loosing money.

• We organized a poker tournament one night (guess who won! ) and a Mafia game another night.

• I visited some Dollarama and A Buck Or Two shops. They have a huge collection of useless (and sometimes usefull) things in ridiculously low prices (1$ )

• One night, we went to the CBC Studios, and participated in a live radio recording of a special event for the National Aboriginal Day.

My personal suggestions for Regina :

1. The Cathedral Village Freehouse - Nice bar/restaurant, with live music.
2. Bonanza – An All-You-Can-Eat restaurant with nice steaks and good prices.
3. O’Hanlon’s Pub - The place to be when everything else is empty.
4. Trifon’s Pizza – The bar/restaurant near the university. Nice meals, very cheap beer, nice atmosphere.
5. Vintage Vinyl – Great Discs and musical T-Shirts Collection.
6. Wascana Centre – It rocks! Beautiful lake…
7. The Old Warehouse District – Most of the bars are in this area.
8. Lazy Owl – The UofR’s student pub.

P.S. For the last 2 days the Internet connection at the university has some problems, so I can’t upload photos now. But in the next few days, they will be posted on Facebook, so just be patient.