Denmark Pictures

I have finally had the chance to upload the Denmark pictures to my Picasa account online. Denmark was a really nice place to visit. The buildings had plenty of character, though I did find them somewhat boxy and rectangular.

The conference I attended in Denmark was the Micro-Nano Engineering 2007 Conference to present some results I had on a electron beam emission device I have been working on and had some good results with (ie. current leader in published literature with lowest field emission voltage and novel fabrication of carbon nanotubes). I had the opportunity to meet researchers from around the world and got mistaken for a PhD student quite often!

The conference experience was great and I was no less honored to be selected to do an oral presentation, which only about 20%~25% of all the accepted applicants are selected to do and that I would stand on the same stage to talk about my work with other world class researchers, as a masters student. I had done my thesis defense without even getting nervous or breaking a sweat, but to stand among these people, I definately got a few jitters. The unfortunate thing was that I spoke exceptionally quick and ended my 15 minute presentation in 10 minutes, leaving plenty of time for questions. In the end, I didn't do too badly as the chairman of talk series (fro Cambridge University) took time out after the talk session ended to congratulate and compliment me on my work. In short, I was pretty happy about how things turned out.

At the end of one of the evenings, we were invited out to a wonderful dinner show that would easily cost $200, but was supplied as part of the conference package. We ate a wonderful 4 course meal and treated to a series of 6~7 performances on stage. The show was nothing short of amazing and those pictures will be posted online.

I should make some comments about Denmark however, their cost of living is exceptionally expensive. A bag of peanuts (100g) will run you over $3, same with a small bag of chips. A steak dinner (with steak not that incredibly good!) ran me $40. It's incredible how expensive things are over there, even more than places in the UK. Of an interesting note, Denmark has a 180% tax on cars (waived for commercial vehicles, though) to encourage people to take public transit or ride bicycles. There are even lanes with traffic lights for bicycles, which I thought were pretty interesting.

I also had the chance to say hello to my friends in Switzerland after taking a quick jump-skip-and-a-hop via a 2 hour flight to Geneva and traveled by train to Neauchatel. Switzerland is an incredibly beautiful place with nice lakes and friendly people. The Swiss are particularly interesting as most of them speak either French or German due to it's proximity to the respective countries. I have to say that the Swiss cheese is pretty good!

Anyways, with out further adieu. I present my pictures from Denmark. Click on the town hall to check out the album. I hope you enjoy it.