CAST meeting

The goal of my going to Hualien was to assist to the CAST annual meeting. This society commemorated 50 years this year. And then some think Taiwan is a third-world country!. The similar Spanish society, SEA, was founded about thirteen years ago and have their meeting every two years. Of course, they spend about a week on that and not just a weekend. I have only gone to one of the SEA meetings, but it was much more worth my time this one than that I went to almost two years ago. Maybe it is because there are proportionally more people doing things similar to mine here.

The meeting was in the Hualien university campus. The building where the talks took place had a fairly impressive look. It seemed rather a factory than a Gymnasium, as it was called.


The mini-conference agenda was ambitious: two one-hour invited talks, plus 26 10-minute talks with a minute for questions. Rather crazy. But, they managed to stick mostly to the schedule. My talk was the next to last of the first day. I don't know how I do it, but it seems as if it is always like that. It went well. I talked about a not-so-new thing, but it was my way of showing them my work. Specially, because another japanese and I were introduced as the new ALMA fellows.


I liked very much the two invited talks, clear, even didactic, and very well executed. A german lady talked about Astronomy teaching in Germany. It was very strange to hear talkig about the educational system of an european country beign so far from there.

It was interesting, in general. I could get to see what people I had seen in the ASIAA corridors did and I even asked some questions. What's wrong with me doctor, is it bad?