Journey to the West I

Jan 20th -Jan 31st - a very special period of time in my life. Many amazing things happened during these 10 days- I went to the U.S for the 1st time, attended SPIE conference for the 1st time and explored California (actually San Francisco) for the 1st time!

It was like a dream finally coming true (remember everyone was thinking about going to the U.S since a child?) and yet i feel so real about it - nothing flimsy, nothing paticularly splendid...and everything is just...so NORMAL

The first sight after stepping out of San Francisco airport was just plain: some moutains at far away and the airport has no spciality. Only some cool breeze could remind me of the reality - that I have stepped onto a new continent (after 18 hours of flight), and a total new experience began.

I. SPIE San Jose Conference


The conference was huge - there are thousands of participants with academic talks and technical exhibitions going on at the same time. Everyday, numerous people got down at the light rail way station "Metro" from various hotels and headed into the convention centre at this little town. San Jose suddenly seemed more lively than ever. I was on the passengers taking the light rail to the conference, and we all had a huge name plate hanging around our neck!

The conference went on for 6 days - from Saturday to next Thursday. I can basically call it a "gruelling experience". Morning 9am - 6pm, all I was doing was running among different seminar rooms to catch up different talks. A basic preparation that must be done the previous day was to highlight the interesting talks the next day and plan the timeline - so that I dont miss any important ones and yet the whole day was fully ultilized. I was greedy! ")

My big day of presentation on Thursday turned out to be quite ok. I was amazingly calm and confident - perhaps after seeing numerous "disasters" in the past 5 days and mine was scheduled on the last day, where perhaps people were not so sensitive to the talks already. :P

Prof Kino from Stanford asked a simple question to me at the end and that was it! My first conference talk! Many people came to congratulate me afterwards, and some of them expressed " I wish I could understand more of your talk!"

Well, the most important thing is - just do it! I did it.

The greatest thing is that I met so many colleagues in the field - famous professors, prominent CEOs and presidents, friendly graduate students, enthusiastic college kids...