ICRA has begun and ended. Here are my highlights from the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2009. Located in Kobe, Japan, there were definitely perks to being able to present at this year’s ICRA.

Before heading to Nara, we made a detour to see Himeji-jo, a castle about 30 minutes by train from Kobe. So we had breakfast and bid farewell to Kobe. It’s really quite a lovely city.



The day was persistently rainy, but we still had fun. The castle is really beautiful. You can see it from a distance, almost as soon as you leave the train station.

I just gave my first ever conference presentation. The level of nervousness will never recaptured (thank God), and all things considered, I think it went quite well. Really. I was so nervous before, it reminded me of back in the day when I'd have a piano exam or a piano recital and my hands would just be shaking. The benefit here is that shaky hands can just be put behind my back. I don't think my mouth has ever felt so dry, I'm actually kind of glad now that my talk was so late in the conference, because I may have self destructed if I had a larger room of people. I even got some laughs (the picture to the right helped)...and of course, when I gave my anecdote about getting lost in Kobe last night, after Karaoke, there were some shared smiles in the audience (the people I was at Karaoke with). All in all, not a bad memory.

I keep waiting for jetlag to set in. I am kinda tired now, at the end of the day, but I don't feel completely thrown off...maybe because I messed up my sleep schedule so much before I got here. Hehe...
Edit: Kobe is very picturesque.

We first went to the conference building to pick up our registration stuff,

and found this cute little “French” cafe.