After over 11 hours of flight from London in Virgin Atlantic, in which I caught up with movies I had not seen yet, I arrived in San Francisco Saturday, September 10.
Being as I am a sucker for all things Japanese, I got a room at the Hotel Kabuki, located in the middle of Japan Town.
I was tired from the long flight, but I took a walk around the Japan Center, and I`m glad I did, because I enjoyed going into Kinokuniya Bookstore, Daiso, Ichiban… so hard to resist not buying everything!
August 22-24 my wife and I went to Madrid, since she had not been there before.
We stayed at the wonderful Hotel Villa Magna, in Paseo de la Castellana. A very discreet luxury hotel where every single detail is just right, from the room amenities to the “just right” breakfast buffet.
The first day we visited the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), where the budget cuts really show, although it continues to be a reference in contemporary art.
For a couple of days at the end of July, we held a workshop in Kanteron Systems Headquarters, where most of the team came together to share, discuss, work, and have fun:
We had standup meetings, teamwork… all “Kanteron Style” 😉
We spent the last days of July, and most of August in Valencia (Spain). Here are some “public” highlights, besides many evenings at the swimming pool and beach (plus many more “private” ones, enjoying with the family and kids):
In July we had tapas at Central Bar, visited the Torres de Serranos, and went to Viva Tapas Bar with friends.
In August we celebrated our anniversary at Ma Khin Café (nice, but we ended up there because our first four choices were closed), took John, a friend, to Bodego de la Sarieta, had cava sangria at the Cafe Negrito, and visited the Saint Nicholas church.
On Tuesday August 9th, I was invited to talk about Personalised Medicine at Microsoft’s event “Empowering Health in a mobile first and cloud first world”, at Microsoft’s UK headquarters in Reading (UK).
There were very interesting sessions on Intelligent Cloud, Microsoft Research (with whom we are collaborating) work on radiology and genomics, Introduction to productivity in health, Revolutionising infection control, National Technology Officer’s Cloud Update, Transdermal Sensors in Paediatric Care, Introduction to personalised computing in health, Virtual care clinics in Sweden, Digital wellbeing, The venture programme for health, NHS…
On Saturday I went with my sister and brother-in-law on a day trip to my alma mater.
Although graduation ceremonies and hoards of tourists made it hard to move around and access temporarily closed buildings, it was a sunny day, and we enjoyed the walk, including a tour of Somerville and Magdalen Colleges, the Ashmolean Museum, a rehearsal for a concert at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, and the Bodleian Weston Library, where we saw the “Treasures: 24 pairs” exhibition and had a nice lunch.
Today we went with my sister and brother-in-law, who are visiting for a few days, to HyperJapan in London Olympia.
Silly and fun, full of cosplay and otakus. Kawaii!
^.^
