Visit of NTU on the last day

After four days of the conference, on the last day before my flight, I visited the group of Prof. Prem at NTU. We discussed ongoing projects on orbital currents more in depth and in detail and had chance to talk lots of other things in a relaxed environment. Meeting researchers in their own workplace is entirely different from meeting them at conferences. I espcially like to see how other researchers work on a daily basis and spend a day.

In the afternoon, after having lunch (we had a kind of fried noodle with ingredients that I can choose, which was very nice — lots of veggies mushrooms, etc.), we had an informal seminar session. I think the idea was to give a talk to members of the department, who could not come to the conference, and present things step-by-step. Although I re-used exactly the same slides as I gave in the ICMAT, the flow of my talk went quite differently. This time, since I had full 1 hour to myself, I tried to give enough time for everyone to ask any question, and try to explain more motivations and behind stories. I absolutely loved how it went so interactively and how so many important questions were raised during one hour. I was quite confident that most people in the lecture room were following my talk quite well and trying to self-organize the contents from their own perspectives.

Me trying to explain orbital transport 🙂

Toward the end of the day, I also had a chance to visit “The Hive”, one of the famous architectures of the NTU campus. It was indeed very impressive both from outside and inside. Inside had a kind of retro-feeling design in the color of copper or hive. I also liked all the plants inside and outside the building.

Short visit of “The Hive”, a beautiful architecture in the NTU campus.

I thank Prem very much for inviting me to Singapore and sharing lots of scientific ideas. I always felt very welcomed, and everyday was full of new discoveries (science as well as different cultures). I look forward to the collaboration and am already confident that it’s already going really great.

At the airport, I saw another landmark of the country, Juwel at Changi airport. I got absolutely amazed by the size of it and the harmonious design. Since I was already quite relaxed, the flight was very confortable and I slept quite a lot in fact. Arriving at Germany was another experience because the temperature was only 14 degree!

I think the only thing that was difficult for me was strong airconditioning everywhere. I cought cold because of that, and it was a bit frustrating because I was not be able to be acvtive as I want to be. But probably it’s also because I was already a bit weak condition because I didn’t sleep much before the flight as I was hanging out till late night… 😛