Few moments from ITALY (10-14 March 2007)

These r few pics from Stresa, Italy.(GLSVLSI-07)
Isobella Ilands, Stresa, Italy

Bike racing is passion in Stresa, Itlay

Near by Iland in Stresa, Italy

Near Confernce Hotel, GLSVLSI-07, Stresa, Italy

In Stresa, Near Milan (MILANO), Italy

In a Iland near Stresa (Chilling Temp), Italy

Started Swimming Again & Italian Memories

Joined for swimming again after a gap of 6 months. Hoping to continue. Last month it was a great experience a kind of once in a life time opportunity as I visited Stresa, Italy for presenting our (With Sai) paper in ACM Great Lakes Symposium in VLSI (GLSVLSI-2007). It was my first visit to any place outside India. Had really a nice time and really enjoyed my first flight journey. As I was alone felt little bit un easy initially but it was only in Hyderabad airport. Once I went through the procedures like security check, baggage checking, immigration check, customs, boarding pass, etc etc I was almost used to it, and then onwards it has become routine. Well in my entire journey luckily I did not face any problems and enjoyed visiting new places (Zurich, Swiss, Milan, Italy, Paris, France etc).

Coming to my experiences in Italy the people over there (Especially in the palce called Stresa near to Milan) are very helpful. You will not believe, if someone is crossing the road where signal light is not there people moving in vehicles (cars) will stop and make a way for you to cross the road. And yeah the kind of neatness on the roads, really amazing when you compare with our places even you hardly find any one cleaning the surroundings regularly.

Our stay (Luckily I could find 3 indian friends company) in a hotel in stresa was filled with lot of fun. Coming to the Italians one will wonder if they know that many of them (why many, most of them) hardly speak or understand english. Even many railway officials also are not able to speak or understand english. The climate was awesome. One will find good sunshine but the temperature will be hardly 10 to 15'C. Food :( yeah here I faced a lot of problem, during my entire stay I hardly took anything except french fries (fried potato). Even that also I could not get in many places, I was almost unable to make them understand what is POTATO when I need to order in few restaurants.

Coming to the conference, it was really a memorable experience. I could meet many professors in VLSI domain and I was really surprised the way they talk to students or the amount of respect
or attension or what ever we can call that they were giving to any new researcher. Got good feedback for my work and felt that lot more quality work has to be done. As told by many friends I could find many chinese professors (Mostly from US) and many chinese research students, and really it is correct that they are going to set up very high standars in terms of number of students, enthusiasm levels, kind of work etc which is difficult for any other country to achieve in recent times. It is no more US Phd grads but Chinese Phd grads are going to show greater impact on the entire recsearch community in coming years, they are really determined, and one has to be that way one should be energetic, determined to attain what ever one's goal is.

Well there is lot more to write but for now let me signoff, Adieu...