Not Quite Just Another Manic Friday

I woke up early Friday, just like the other past 4 days, still for that silly reason. The day began with the 2 seminars given by Dr. Bonnaud, of University of Rennes in France. He is a funny, energetic guy, with a not-to-heavy French accent. So it was pretty reviving to hear him speaking.

The first talk was about the CNFM (Comité National de Formation en Microélectronique) - a national tool for research and education in the field of microelectronics. It's amazing to see this organization controlling the way of French microelectronics research, distributing research fund from the Ministry of Education and the consortium of French semiconductor industries to the 12 university- based research centers across the country. The program was started with 20 students some 20 years ago, today it has more than 8000 graduates ranging from specialist i.e. student trained to use specific equipments to Phd.

They pretty much have very decent tools and a lot of experts working on the many different topics-other than the traditional Si deposition stuff-such as optics, sensors, radar, design, circuit, stuff with Si-Ge technology, you name it. The unencouraging part is the declining interest from students in general to pursue science pathway in the higher education.

So guys, if you want to study stuff about microelectronics, go to France, they are looking for students to fill up the nice facilities they have up there. Hi, Lissa!

Dr. B's second talk was much more interesting, technologically speaking. It was about the drastic improvement of the quality of polycrystalline silicon Thin Film Transistor achieved in their Groupe de Microelectronique. This kind of improvement is what we are longing for in our research group.

That last talk lasted until almost 1:15 PM. Which meant that I only had approximately 2.5 hours to start and finish the slides for our group meeting presentation at 4. My topic for today would have been about the leak fighting exercise we have performed in the reactor system. I was pretty much done with the slides, but suddenly, I found out that the meeting has been cancelled. Thank God, I haven't practiced talking a single bit.

Instead, J and I went to a 20 minutes tour (uh..uh..I want to watch some Gilligan's Island) to George Bush Library with Dr. B. He is such a fun person, furthermore, he was equipped with a v. nice digital camera. On one occasion, he asked me to take a picture of him and J posing a serious discussion up in the Air Force One replica, with seat belts on. Wasn't that cute?

Around 6, J, L, and me had a dinner date to one of the nice restaurant here in B/CS. It's called the Oxford Street, and it's not a franchise. You know how miserably I am trying to avoid chain restaurants. OS has a very nice interior decoration with antiques glass windows, hallways, short ceiling, and wooden furnitures. It feels as if you are entering one of those pubs in Europe. Well, I've never been to Europe, but based on what I've seen in movies, this is what I call an European looking set.

The food was not to pricey. For $9.95, I had a King Henry VIII, which was basically 2 of 7 oz. pork chop served with my choice of grilled vegetable and crab soup. The crab soup was fantastic, and so was the vegetable. The meat, on the other hand, was kinda overcooked.

This Friday, so far, was quite a busy day. But now, I have no big stuff planned to fill in this nice weekend. Maybe I should start writing some part of the thesis and go watch midnight show for Finding Nemo.