Day 2

I finally got my registration done. For some reason, my badge shows only my name, not my affiliation. It is kind of nice as for people who do not know me they would not be able to figure out where I came from.


(My badge; just my name there, nothing else.)

I spent most of the day chatting with people. Here is the interesting thing. The conference took place during the final week of SIGGRAPH review before the committee meeting, so we all know we are not supposed to talk about it. But without that, it is kind of hard for people to talk about something else, and eventually the conversations came (dangerously) close to SIGGRAPH.

To avoid this pitfall, I decided to spend some time sliding down the tubular chutes inside the TUM informatik building where the conference located.


(Entrance of TUM Informatik building)


(Chutes, birds eye view)


(Chutes, side view)


(Chutes, floor view)


I went to Voila Café for dinner. The lonely planet guide described the restaurant as having creative vegetarian dish, so I decided to give it a try. The décor is a definite local bar, and the menu is in German. Initially I thought I would have to scramble to find the “creative vegetarian dish” but I got very lucky; the menu has a designated section for “vegetarisch” and I simply pick the one containing the restaurant name. later on the waitress dropped by and asked me if I need a English menu, and I surprised her by telling her that I am ready to order.


(Menu)

The dish consisted of the usual materials: potato, broccoli, chili, cucumber, tomato, and eggplant, but it is superbly cooked. The potato is probably the best I have ever had for a long time; “juicy” is probably not the word that one would usually associate with potatoes, but that is exactly how the dish tasted like.


(Vegetarian dish)