The World of Little Little Bird

Time flies by. It is November and ICCAD again. I can still clearly remember last year's ICCAD. Well, anyway. This year, I shared the flight with many UT folks. On the flight, I realized that it was my sixth trip to Bay Area. I killed most of my time playing Suduko. Damn, that game killed me. My head ached on those numbers. I can't believe that I was fond of the numbers ten, fifteen years ago. 岁月不饶人啊。
After I checked in, I went to pick up the badge/proceedings from the conference. The weird thing happend. I can't get into my room with my key. I was like, am I that old to have forgotten my room number? I called the front desk, and they sent someone to open my room. I got the new key and turned in the old one. Then, I dined out with Kelvin for hot pot. I am kinda "earthy". Every time I visited Bay Area, I went to that same restaurant in Milpitas for hot pot. I just love it.
Monday is the day. I had a session to chair in late afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. I got up early to have the speaker's breakfast, listened to our CTO's keynote speech, attended two other sessions. I was quite nervous as I had never chair any presentaions before. At 3:40, I had all the speakers to upload their slides, collected their bio forms, learned how to play with the timer, and waited anxiously for 4pm. The session was quite good. It drew a lot of attention from the audience. There was a large attendence as well as many questions. Well, that was quite expected at the very beginning when I saw Chandu. Those questions actually saved me a lot of efforts and helped me control the situation. Some questions were tough. I struggled. On one hand, I tried to help the speakers out but on the other hand I was afraid to 惹祸上身。I finally decided not to as it was the speakers that were asked. Maybe that is the Chinese saying:不求有功，但求无过。After my session, I went to an evening panel. Rob presented a short talk and his slides were so cool. At 7:45pm, I left the conference and rushed back to my hotel room. It was Prison Break time. However, for a second time, I was locked outside my room. My "new" key didn't work. I had to called the front desk again to get myself in. It took me 10 minutes and fortunately, I didn't miss much on PB.