I am so happyyy!!!
Finally I ' m back after an exhilarating trip to Daejeon, South Korea. It took few months to finalize everything and give it a Go! Usually if your trip is official, in my case academic, you have to do many formalities like applying for funding to different Govt.agencies, booking everything, fixing up your accommodation and etc. Thankfully, I got it all done on time. The only thing remaining till my day of departure was my poster which was not complete :P Usually if its an academic tour, it eventually turns out to be a recreational one because you don't have a check on you to attend all the sessions and prepare a report or something. This is funny but I just got reminded of the two great people who came from Reliance Industries from India, and how for them it was mandatory to attend all the sessions during the conference as they had to prepare some descriptive report or something. I on the other hand had all the freedom to utilize my time elsewhere and I left no stone unturned. After I landed in Delhi from kolkata, i had an eleven hours of halt at Delhi so it was great time to be at home and start the further journey from there. It was little cold, colder than Bengal in Delhi and as my senior told me it was much colder in Korea, so I had to take along with me warm clothes. Like every time, as I do all the things at eleventh hour, I did this too running here and there. Please don't blame me for being a Procrastinator. You know what, I love doing it this way, it gives me adrenaline rush. So 12:30 am I had my flight to Seoul. I reached easily and it was pretty good time for me as it was not my first international journey, so I was pretty much okay with everything.
Upon reaching Seoul, I had to take this Bus to Daejeon. It took almost 2.5 hrs for me to reach Govt.Complex stop where my senior came to pick me up. I was so happy to see him as he was the only one who arranged everything for me there and my trip turned out to be just amazing. I give all credits to him. So from there, he took me to his flat where we had dinner and had long talks after which he dropped me to my hotel. The hotel had everything for me so I was perfect in there. The next day conference started and it was good. Met some great scientist whose research articles I read or refer everytime and seeing them in front of my eyes was one great moment. For that matter, my senior is also my one inspiration as I have read all his papers and he doesn't even know I have a older of his initials in my desktop where I have saved all his publications and refer to them every time I need to. The conference was great, I was the junior most there and therefore enjoyed all the care and support from everyone ;P We went from the conference to see places and clicked so many pics. I met Prof. Pramod K Wangikar from IIT Bombay and we went out, he is such a cool prof. So different yet he is doing amazing research. He was just one youngster among us and we never felt as he is some orthodox prof. Listening to Michael Borowitzka, John Benemann, Yusuf Chisti and other great scientists in front of you, whom you follow religiously is like dream come true.
Koreans are humble people, very helping and so cultured.
And the Korean Girls!!!! My god. They are so pretty, though they use make up but they take care of their health, are fitness freak and intelligent. I then visited my seniors institute KAIST where he is the post doc, the labs were sooooo good. I wish I work somewhere like this sometime. They use LED based air-lift reactors for algal growth and use SIGMA chemicals only. Isn't it obvious? hmm..
It was so cold there, I had to wear layers of clothes but for nice pictures, I dont mind shedding few :D
The Best Best thing was I got the Best Poster Award among hundreds of other people, so this is also one of the reason to be super happy. The last day we went out totally, did shopping, lunch in an Indian restaurant called Bukhara and again shopping, and so many other things. All in all, I had one amazing time there.
