Day 2, pt 1

Woke up at 6:30, dressed up, left hotel at 7 thinking now I can find the right bus going uptown. It was raining and with no umbrella in hand, I refused to risk my hair. I did one heck of a flat-iron job last night and this morning. In front of the hotel, there was a taxicab standing by.

"Would you mind taking me only to the 4th St?"
"He nodded."

My hotel is just four blocks away but I ended up paid 7 buck (with a dollar tip), rush hour you see.

My presentation was not after midmorning break. And by Murphy's Law, the laptop froze on me. I had the files handy on flash drive and luckily the conference had a laptop already set up. It was all going smoothly from there. By smooth was that no one was asking questions. :-). There is one, but it was related to the information on fabrication process.

Lunch break, I was looking at the job posting board and Intel has openings. I went to talk with hiring manager, selling myself out. It was probably about a 30 minute chat.

"I am a chemical engineer, and being from TAMU, we are usually ended up in big bad oil companies. But I was never interested on the prospect. So when the professor first joint the university, I was so glad because right then I had alternative."

"Ah, you got me there. I am also a Chemical Engineer. I went to work with an oil industry, but then I found out about the semiconductor industries and immediately switched direction. I was working with TI for a couple of years before moving to Intel."

A nice chat, eh. I'm hoping it would lead somewhere.

After lunch break, I attended the sessions for the symposium I belong to. Towards the end of the last presentation, I browsed on the program and my eyes stumbled on an Indonesian name. I immediately planned to attend his presentation. On my way out, a man approaching and was asking if he can discuss some stuff with me at night. Research related. :P And he gave his card.

I talked to the Indonesian guy, graduating soon from Stanford, a class of 90 ITB. Interesting research, it looked like. Honestly, I don't understand what he was talking about. Something about the analysis of the plastic*ity of Cu in*terconnect.

Browsing through the program again, my eyes caught another familiar name. B dubbed her White Swan. When I was in undergrad, she was sort of a role model to me. Ironically, I followed her footstep into getting myself in a PhD program. White Swan is a big guy now, a chair of one of the symposium and she works at one of the respected research semiconductor company in Austin.

At around 2 PM, R texted me back, he just arrived. I called him around 5 and found out that his trip here was a mess. He missed the two flights, the connecting from CS and the IAH-SFO. Poor guy.
"Hey, don't eat dinner, they have food there at the session. And there are going to be booze."
"Good, I need a drink."

I'm going to meet him around 7 at the poster session and stayed there until 11. Poor R.