Visa Problem (!)

Well, it had to happen eventually. I was supposed to head to India to present a workshop paper on my way back to China from December 27th - 29th, but I didn't have the right visa, and so I had to reroute my flight straight to Shanghai. I have no excuse either -- I should have checked whether I needed a visa, but after trips all over Asia without needing one I guess I got lazy.

It wasn't cheap re-routing my flight and worst of all it meant that I had left England early for no good reason (my classes don't start until next week) and could have spent more time with my friends and family. Ah well, c'est la vie!

Kuala Lumpur

From December 12th to 16th I visited Kuala Lumpur for the ACM MOMM conferfence. The conference went well, and I presneted the first paper on LooCI, The Loosely-coupled Component Infrastructure, one of the main outputs of my research visit: you can check out the Sun SPOT port on Google Code. a Contiki port for more embedded WSN platforms is also coming soon.

Kuala Lumpur

I had a great time in Kuala Lumpur. Everyone was very friendly, and the resteraunts and bars were very good. It was only when I left for the airport on my last day that I realised how lush and naturally beautiful a country Malaysia is too. Unfortunately my camera malfunctioned, so I don't have any photos of my own... Next stop, the north of England.

Urbana Champaign and Chicago

Sorry its been so long since my last post. After Japan, I was super busy with teaching and writing papers, then two conferences... the first of which was MidSens in Urbana Champaign in Illinois. The workshop went very well with lots of productive discussion as well as good technical papers. It was also great to see my old colleagues and friends from Lancaster and DistriNet. There wasn't much to take photos of in Urbana, but here are a few shots from my day-trip to Chicago:

Union Station, Chicago

A Random Sky-Scraper

Looking down the 'Magnificent Mile'

Christmas Tree and Chapel on the Magnificent Mile.