Day 5 (17 November 2016) in Sangli, India

Today is my last day in Sangali. It is also school closing day, which is scheduled to have a fancy closing ceremony. The school participant students was prepared by professional dresser for closing ceremony.

A pause with some of the dressed up students!

The students were dressed up at the lobby of our hotel, and I tried to get myself done and took the hot seat; however, I was dragged away saying this is only for student not for the VIP. Then the lecturers were driven to a special place (I think it was the office for local government official), and they dressed us up beautifully.

  Don't I look like Indian??

If you're wondering how this head scarf can be designed, here is a professional designer who did everybody!

 VIPs for the closing ceremony! 

Some of the School attendee students from different countries around the world!

Fancy closing ceremony of the school!

After attending the closing ceremony for a few minutes, we hit the road back to Mumbai to catch my flight back home. Although it is a bit uncomfortable to reach Sangli, in my view the school was well organized and very successful. It was a memorable trip for me. Sangli is known with its rich sugarcane and Turmeric spice.  

Typical public transport city bus!

These cows reminds me my childhood life!

Day 4 (16 November 2016) in Sangli, India

Nothing new in the morning. Went to conference room and and work on my NASA LWS proposal which is due on Friday (18 Nov). The school ends early for the day. We went to our hotel and locked in my room and work on my proposal before I joined Keith for beer before we head back to the cultural dance evening program.

The evening dance program kicked off at 7:30pm, which was absolutely stunning. In addition to the professional dancers who mostly controlled the stage, some of summer school student participant also performed on the stage; some of the perform dancing and others sing a song. Especially, the only contingent from Egypt represented international school student participants and performed a stunning song in Arabic and received warm applause from the audience.

Some of the performance pauses! 

 One of the school participant, she is smart scientist but also stunning dancer! 

What do you do when you watch such magnificent dancers, except attentively enjoying the act with 150% full attention! 

More pictures of the audience who are also enjoying the performance!

Day 3 (15 November 2016) in Sangli, India

Had excellent sleep and and woke up fresh. After Breakfast I headed to the conference center and stayed at work until lunch. My colleagues, Keith, and I decided to go for shopping  (unspecified shopping), and we asked Gope our Indian colleagues to accompany us and he gladly joined us. One of the local conference organizers drove is to one of the mall, though we did not find that attracts us to buy. We then went to another shop, this time by Bajaj (as the Ethiopians calls it). Before we enter that shopping center, our backpack had to be sealed, and a security guy sealed each zippers shown on our backpack. The purpose is straight forward, i.e., not to pick any items and put it in your backpack.
We're not lucky enough to find anything attractive in this shopping center either. Finally, we decided to go back to our hotel, this time by foot. It was not that far and we walked through the village, by trusting Gope's GPS navigation. We arrived at our hotel without any issue.

Sugarcane transportation!

These typical appearance of Sangli streets!

Guess what, when we got back to our hotel after nearly 2miles walk, our dream was to have a cold beer and relaxed until dinner time. However, the hotel does not have a bar at all. Well most hotel in Sangali do not serve any alcohol. Thus, we had to walk back to one of the really found liquor shop to get beer to our room. Finally, we got what we wanted.

This is the beer you may like to enjoy whenever you visit India!

Day 2 (14 November 2016) in Sangli, India

I had a good sleep, no jetlag at all. After having breakfast, we were driven to the conference room, which inside the campus of the Smt Kasturbai Watchand College. We spent the whole day. My lecture was in the afternoon, which actually went out successful.

This how the Karitika Poornima festival celebrated!

At the end we came to our hotel. Later I picked up by a college faculty member and took me to the festival, know as Karitika Pornima (Kartika Purnima). It is a Hindu and Jain holy festival, celebrated on the Purnima (full moon) day or the fifteenth lunar day of Kartika (November-December). It is also known as Tripuri Poornima and Tripurari Poornima. On that day people went to the nearby river shore and light a candle, put it on aluminum paper (traditionally it was on the banana leaf) and make a wish and place the candle on the river. I was also asked to place one on the river, but did not make any wishes. It was a great experience for me to see such colorful festival.

I also tried my wish and placed a light on the river with one of my colleague! 

Day 1 (13 November 2016) in Mumbai, India

I'm back to India (my third visit to this country in 10 years). This time to the western part of India. My first stop is in Mumbai where I spend a night at Bawa International hotel, which is located in the vicinity of the Mumbai international airport. This is just a transit one night stay to my destination called Sangali. I'm heading there to take part at the ISWI summer school as an invited lecturer. The school kicked off last Monday, a day before the Americans surprised the world by electing a controversial president. However, my part at the school starts this week and that is why I came a week later. 

Beautiful Sunset on our way to Sangali!

Just arrived at Sangali after more than 7hr on the road. Not an.easy drive, but thanks God we made it. The good thing is we were connected throughout the journey because the car has WiFi. 

This is one of many clubs in India (a leftover British heritage) where we're welcomed for dinner!

We have been awaited by other lecturers, who came from different countries, for dinner at one of the fancy club center, "the Officers club". we had a wonderful time and dinner. Finally, we were driven to our hotel "ICON" hotel. Tomorrow we will start our official mission at ISWI school.

Day 6 (12 March 2016) in Taipei, Taiwan

Today is my last day in Taiwan. It was very tight schedule but very successful trip. All my flight schedule was as planned. Just before I concluded my blogs for this trip, I just want to say something about Taiwan. 
Taiwan (formerly known as "Formosa"), which was mainly inhabited by Taiwanese aborigines until the Dutch and Spanish settlement during the Age of Discovery, is a sovereign state in East Asia. In the 17th century the Han Chinese began immigrating to the island. In 1662, they expelled the Dutch and established the first Han Chinese polity on the island, called the Kingdom of Tungning. The Qing dynasty of China later defeated the kingdom and annexed Taiwan. In 1912 the Republic of China (ROC) was established in mainland China. After world war II, in 1945 Japan's surrender and the ROC gained control of Taiwan. During the Chinese Civil War, the Communist Party of China took full control of mainland China and founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. ROC loyalists fled to Taiwan and re-established the national government there, claiming to be the legitimate government of all of China. The ROC continued to represent China at the United Nations until 1971, when the PRC assumed China's seat via Resolution 2758. The ROC lost UN membership. International recognition of the ROC gradually eroded as most countries switched their 'China' recognition to the PRC. 21 UN member states and the Holy See (Catholic Church in Rome) currently maintain official diplomatic relations with the ROC. Numerous other states maintain unofficial ties through representative offices via institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates.
In the 1980s and early 1990s Taiwanese society transformed itself from a military dictatorship (one-party rule) to a multi-party democracy with universal suffrage. Today Taiwan maintains an advanced industrial economy and become one of the Four Asian Tigers  (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) and is a member of the WTO and APEC. Its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. Taiwan, in which its economy is the 21st largest economy in the world, is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, health care, public education, economic freedom, and human development.
Since 1945 Taiwan has a number of unresolved issues; which include: the complication about exact nature of Taiwanese national identity, its ambiguous international status, and its difficulty of maintaining relations with the PRC across the Taiwan Strait. Within Taiwanese society these issues always generate debate among political parties and candidates. Despite all these complications, according to the 2014 estimate, Taiwan's GDP (nominal) is $505.452 billion (26th in the world) and per capita is $21,571 (39th in the world).

Day 5 (11 March 2016) in Taipei, Taiwan

Today is the last day of the conference, and as usual my jetlag still alive and I woke up at 3:15am. The morning joint session talks were so nice, followed by round table discussion before the conference officially adjourned just before lunch. 
At 1230pm, the bus were outside, waiting for those of US who would like to visit the NSPO of Taiwan. This is the place where they built all the satellites the country has launched so far, FORMOSAT 1, FORMOSAT 2, FORMOSAT 3 (six of them). Currently the country is preparing two other missions; FORMOSAT 5 ready to be launched in June this year, and FORMOSAT 7 (twelve of them) to be launched in early 2017. During our visit we saw the engineers were busy working on FORMOSAT 7 satellites. We also had a chance to see their mission control room, the place where they track their satellites. It is very fascinating to see how the country really advanced in building technologies. We also see their animation room, mainly for public outreach purpose but also tell how the country has developed in producing such hightec equipments.

The first satellite (FORMOSAT 1) the country had developed and launched it in 1999!

Heading to International Space Station :)

 

Part of the group who visited the site with me!

Humm! see how global warming is real!

Part of the country outside Taipei!

Finally we drove back to our hotel. It is about excess of an hour drive. This actually gave me a chance to look at the country's structure outside Taipei, which I would say is well developed but highly populated. According to Wikipedia Taiwan is one of the most populated country in the world, i.e., 649 people per square km.
My Friday in Taipei concluded by having dinner with group of people from UCAR, Australia, Poland, and Taiwan. The Taiwan guy was the supper star of the night.