Meeting Day 3/4: Well done!

Panorama -- poster session, can you find where my poster was?

Sorry for not getting something to write yesterday, I went to the banquet in the evening and had no time for the blog.

Everything went rather fine. Great people, great talks, great discussions, although it takes time for someone to intergret into a group, I feel I have learn much lots of things. I still get a lot of things to do and have a long way to go, but nevertheless I have a good start, all are good.

There are a number of brilliant youngests in America, I met some during the poster session, and there was an undergraduate named Melissa Haegert who gave a talk about her YORP study and receive quite a clapping from the big-names. Woo, simply brilliant there. With a lot of brilliant guys similar to your age around you just get more energy to work hard.

Hanging around

Coconut trees and the moon

There were a couple of people came to my poster and interacted with me, it's my fault that I didn't prepared a well-organized oral presentation for them. My presentation must be somewhat scrappy, but the conversasion generally end up with "nice job" and "thank you" so I still feel fine. Prof. Bobby Bus, a big-name scientist who had a poster a few steps from mine, received a lot of attention, I planned to step forward and ask him questions, but he was so popular so I didn't even get a chance to speak! Instead I drifted around and continuely paced myself into the professional world by talk something with the poster authors, generally every conversasion went pretty fine, I was even talk something in-depth with professors from Cal Tech, MIT and JPL since I was doing something very close to them, that's great. Although still quite far from native students, my oral English for serious acadamic discussion had greatly improved. I was even lucky enough to have lunch with Dr. Alan Harris and Dr. Petr Pravec and sitting next to Dr. Peter Jenniskens during the banquet -- and have a great discussion with them!

Dr. Alan Harris illustrating how asteroid light-curve works by showing picture of ox

Marek Kozubal (left) and Dr. Peter Jenniskens

It's sad that time flies quick, we are approaching the end of the meeting, but tomorrow I would like to listen to some talks on TNO -- and try to arrange a time to a nearby small island for sightseeing and then move to Fajardo Inn since there are no spaces at El Conquistador in Friday night. I have signed up the tour to the famous Arecibo Observatory (yes, the "huge disk" which has been appeared in a number of fiction movies!). Just when I was hanging from poster to poster, Michael Nolan (chair of this meeting and one of the heads of Arecibo) step to me and ask if I would like to be listed in a limited-number platform tour waitlist. "You are coming long-way from China and certainly I'll try to arrange you a better trip!" Wow how good you are, Dr. Nolan!

Okay, my days at Puerto Rico are approaching to its end -- great day around. I will still have a week around New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, these big cities are said to be dangrous (thanks for warm-heart American friend Randy to  advice me on this) and I will take care. But most Americans are really nice people!

Stay tuned for updates.