Austin Trip

Again a change from usuals. It's no more musing.
Let's begin. It was last friday,19th may. we were supposed to present our projects to NI!
We set off at 7:30 am approx! Me, Bharath (My Controls grp collegue/friend), Waqar (Dr swaroop and Dr. B's student), Indrajeet (a sitarist and a friend of Dr. B) and Dr. B himself .
On the way we had loads of coffee and a new thing called Kolache . It was okay dokay! I din't like it much!

Indrajeet was supposed to go for some radio function, we left him at someplace and went ahead to NI! The most funny thing as u enter NI is the flags, they have US flag , texas flag and an NI flag!

Well, the company was good! And we were greeted downstairs by their controls head Jeannie.
Well, not exactly the head but she was some boss! A PhD from MIT and one of the very few women in control system! The lesser the said about her the better! Hi-Fi fundoo and always excited to work.
Then came Ram, our one point contact! It seems NI is a good place for PhD's to work for!
Then our sessions started! It was almost 10:30! Dr. B started speaking about his paper and somehow the people got so interested in it that it continued till 12:15! Then we had a lunch break! People hate these lunches but i really like them! It was brown bread cheese and turkey sandwich, cookie , coke n chips! I neither had the coke nor the chips but still it was quite filling!
Then our turn came! Bharat spoke first! Then it was me! But i had nothing new to speak, as the slides i had prepared were already covered by Dr. B, it was justa repeatation! So i skipped lall that and moved into my software! There were the usual, oh, that's good and all such things but it was all hidden under the beauty of the theory lecture that Dr. B had given!
Then Ram gae some ideas of hi own as to hwo they are going to productize this and then the meting ended!
Now the usual discussions about world cup football started! And as the group assembled there had 2 argentine, 1 brazilian, one Venezuela guy and 3-4 indians, the argentine and the brazillian kept talking for minutes on all that! These american care only for American football!

Me and bharat were pretty pissed off with our efforts being wasted but as soon as we came out, Dr. B seemed to be very happy! He said it was the best resposnse they had ever given and they really seemed serious about all that unlike anytime before!

We then went to pick indrajeet in an Indian Restaurant swad! It was a gujju run restaurant! we ordered chaat and bhelpuri's!!! I somehow felt it was too spicy. That created a laugh amongst thers as to how can one change so quickly! But one thing i really liked there was a certain action by Dr. B! We were all eating from all the plates! And once i was eating bhel puri which Dr. B wanted. while handling him the plate i forgot to take out my spoon out! And he ate from that!
It wouldn't hve been very surprising if i had been in Surathkal! There, asking for seperate spoon is considered to be a disgrace! I felt old habits die hard! after all, he was alos in IIT for 4 years!!!
On the way back, we were dicussing some hifi control system stuff and i was really enjoying!
But suddenly we all heard bharat snoring!!! He was deep asleep! Coming back was fun, we were elated and Dr. B was cracking nice jokes all the way!
Overall, it was a good trip! But ofcourse, a ONE MAN SHOW