My trip to California

Yeeppph! I had an amazing trip to California in this winter. A much needed break from the mundane life and hectic work. I flew from Vancouver to Seattle on a warm sunny day - actually took the flight one hour earlier than the one I was originally supposed to take. Seattle airport was amazing - bright sunny winter morning with lots of people going around and having fun. After a brief lunch and enjoying the wonderful view from the large transparent glass walls (I could see the entire runways and the touchdowns from behind those glass windows). Seattle airport is shown below.

Excited on my trip, I walked towards the departure gates for my next flight flying towards San Jose. Eventually I boarded my next flight and after 2 hours, arrived at my destination at San Jose, California in the evening. I was sitting towards the rear of the aircraft, so the deafening sound of the engines were very irritating. I was happy to have completed my flight and reached my destination.

I took a cab and reached my hotel, the grand Marriott just opposite the San Jose Convention Centre. My talk was on the day after the next day, so I could relax a little bit and stop worrying about the talk right away.

I checked out the conference schedule and sketched out my plans. Next morning I reached for the room where MMCN was being held. Actually overall it was an aggregation of many small conferences and MMCN was a small part of the bigger electronic imaging conference. Nothing like the ODSI conference which was itself was a very big conference. I collected the conference materials for both me and my supervisor and checked out my laptop for the presentation in the AV room. I met a Bangladeshi guy and guess what - his presentation was scheduled to be the second presentation of the day. We became friends soon and after attending the first morning at the conference we decided to go around the city and check out the valley. Luckily, he already knew about a cheap Asian restaurant and we both had our lunch there.

After lunch, he decided to take a break and rest a while before going out and I decided to give some practice talks in my room. In the after noon, we went out together in the VTA light rail and check out the valley. We came back around 8 pm and had our dinner at the very same hotel.



Next day was the talk day. I woke up, prepared myself and gave some more practice talks in my room and then headed out for the conference.
My talk was the second talk on the second session of the second day. All second ... isn't that weird ?!! In any case, I met the guy who was to present the talk just before me. We checkout our laptops, power cables etc so that nothing goes wrong the last minute. After his talk, it was my turn. My talk went well I guess. I have practiced enough so that I was aware of all the slides and the contents and subtle issues. I guess in the end, I was much more relaxed during the talk than I had anticipated. The question answer session went well too. Three questions, all were anticipated and I was prepared with the answers.
My talk was right before the key note session, so I remained there for the keynote session which lasted for an hour. It was a good discussion, from Ramesh Sarukkai of Yahoo!. http://www.ifi.uio.no/mmcn2007/keynote.html#KEYNOTE .

In the second half, I decided to take CalTrain and visit SFO. It took me a little over one hour to reach SFO. SFO was a wonderful city. WE went around and visited some interesting places. I took some photos. Its a nice clean neat city. After spending some time there, I came back to San Jose. A photo taken in SFO is shown below:-



Next day I had to check out from hotel by 12 pm. So, I dressed up early and decided to see the city San Jose beyond the hotel. We were stying in the downtown, so lots of wonderful views around. After going around for a while, and taking some snaps as usual, I came back to hotel and checked out and started for the airport. Luckily, the hotel provided it own executive cab for me, so I reached the airport at the right time.



The return journey was uneventful. Same as before. The immigration was again a pain in the ass but finally I got over with. I reached back to Vancouver around the evening time.

Overall, a superb trip to the silicon valley!