Vegas Part 2: The conference

As the Chair Dr. Jay Gunasekera mentioned at the onset, it was a truly international conference. There were researchers from over 40 countries in the fields of Materials Processing and Technology. Though I did not actually meet the authors of the papers that I had "dissected", it was quite an impressive crowd. Most of them were from academia though the Plenary talks were given by Mr. Robert Noel and Mr. George Mochnal. There were quite a few people missing which led to greater time slots for each speaker. I guess the main reason was difficulty in getting visas etc.



I did spend some time during each talk trying to place their accents. It was quite remarkable, for example, I found out that the Polish usually speak English by writing it down on a piece of paper and then reading that aloud! :) Most Europeans are so expressive, hand gestures, eyebrows flying about; it was comic at times. My brethren Asians were as always, overly apologetic for taking up breathing space so to speak. Non-Indian Asians have such great dressing sense, and what amazing hairdos! I dont know about being the frontiers of technology (they did have the best laser pointers!) but they have undoubtedly surpassed the rest of the world in fashion. I mean if these countries produce graduate students with such good taste what about the rest of the demographic! :) I am exaggerating of course, but there is some grain of truth in all this.