With many bloggers coming back to life including my good friends Lubna and Zeid, I thought I might join in as well with an annual post. It really continues to amaze that despite the fact that I decided to post more often before coming to the UK, I practically stopped posting altogether (with the latest post being over a year old). I almost forgot how fun this thing was.

Many of you know by now that I've started a PhD last September. Things have been going really fast (not that they were going slow anytime before that). Starting my PhD brought along many changes in my life, many of which I'd like to talk about on this blog. Still, I have decided to postpone talking about my PhD experience and dedicate this post to share the details of my latest trip to France.

Me and a bunch of guys from our research group were attending the ASYNC2010 conference held in Grenoble, the capital of the French Alps. The ASYNC conference is one of the leading conferences in the semiconductor industry with main focus on asynchronous system design (clockless digital systems), which is a specialty of our microelectronics design group at Newcastle University. It spanned over three days where people from different parts of the world presented their recent work on asynchronous and synchronous circuit design, simulation, synthesis and verification. Some talks were really magnificent in terms of being related to some of the things am currently digging my head into. Also some other talks touched on the business side of the semiconductor industry with people sharing their experiences in starting their own small businesses.

The conference had many intermediate coffee and lunch breaks, which were a good opportunity to meet and get to the know the attendees; their backgrounds and areas of interest. We also got to try a finely chosen range of French food (I tried 10+ different kinds of cheese alone!).

In the afternoon, my colleagues and I spent our time walking around in Grenoble. This trip was my first time in Europe and it was thus quiet an experience for me to walk a European city. Grenoble is a wonderful city, full of high-tech research campuses and situated at the very edge of the French Alps. Mountains extend over the buildings' tops at every corner giving Grenoble a truely magnificent feel.

We were lucky to be invited to a very special dinner as part of the conference program. The dinner was special in a sense that the restaurant (La Bastille) was actually a renovated fortress located on a high hill that overlooks whole Grenoble. We took the cable car (the teleferique) to the restaurant were we had an amazing look on the area and surrounding mountains. Needless to say, the food there was amazing. Below are a couple of shots I took off the hill top.



On my way back to Newcastle I stopped for a couple of nights in Paris. Again like most other cities I've been to, I always start my exploration by taking a long walk on the quayside of any main river; in this case: La Seine. I had the chance to make it to the Eiffel tour, L'Arc de Triomphe, Les Champs Elysees, Le Louvre plus all the other monuments and attractions that our French teacher used to bug us about back in school.

I took a number of shots in Paris but I think it will be a waste of everyone's bandwidth if I shared a yet another photo of the Eiffel tour so I'll just skip it. Instead I'll put in two of my favorites:



I was lucky to be able to visit Paris at this time of the year; the weather was beautiful and the late sunset presented a long and seemingly non-ending soiree for a quayside walk.

I might not have had the chance to brush on my French but at least I learnt to speak English wiz a vary pro-per French axe-ent. On one of our metro rides, I started speaking with my friend in a heavy French accent till we got like 20 guys eyeballing us. My friend indirectly suggested that I'd shut up and try to pay respect to za French, perhaps because we're in their own country?

Seriously though, I found the French very kind and helpful. We didn't get anything except for good advice and a large smile from all the people we asked for directions. I must also say that they have a higher sense of humor!

That was one remarkable week that I spent. I figured that I remember more French from the school days than I thought I would. Would definitely come back on any future journeys.

Note to self: need to go back to have more cheese.