So, there I was… in Las Vegas… at my room… looking out the window… what a view! I was staying on the 24th floor of the Monte Carlo Hotel & Resort (Or Resort & Casino, as preferred by the Hotel/Casino). The rooms were amazingly nice… the first thing I realized is that the Television was a totally pay-affair! You had some of the basic channels on for free… but they were very limited and boring… the hotel charged for most of the interesting and more engaging content. One thing to notice, was that the entire television program selection is completely centralized!

Picture this… the entire television system works on a menu-driven system similar to IVRS, except that instead of you making selections based on sounds, you also had the ability to SEE a menu! You just hit the remote buttons for the appropriate choice. You were also provided with a wireless keyboard which interfaced with the TV in order for the consumer to fill out the check-out form right from the room. When you select any program from the room, it is automatically added to your room bill… you don’t have to make a call, or anything!

Right… then after this, I met up with a couple of people who were also from India (we had been in touch for over 4-5 months via Yahoo messenger and email). We went to collect our registration kits from the registration desk, and also the final version of the schedule.

After this… I went back to the room… in search of an Internet connection. The hotel charged $11 a day for internet access… and that’s a bit too steep for me… so luckily there was a free wireless network that I could access. This network apparently was from outside the hotel… coming in through the window side…! So I still had my internet access! FOR FREE!!

The next day, was the first day of our Conference (International Conference on Wireless Networks – ICWN). The breakfast was at 7am upto 9am. I met a lot of people from various parts of the world, and it was an enlightening process! I found out various methods by which I could get my project funded… and how I should go about publicizing my work in order to get the necessary resources, etc.

After that, we had the Inauguration session, and some lectures by a lot of prominent people… it was an experience worth going for the conference alone!

After this, I went back to my room and started preparing for the presentation I had the next day.

The next day morning, I went up to the Conference Chair and asked him if I could present the paper as a Regular Research Paper (RRP) instead of a Regular Research Report (RRR). The main difference was the time for presentation and the presentation method. He said that he had heard from a few people that my paper was interesting and that they wanted to know more about it anyway, so it would be good if I could present it as a RRP! That was a confidence-boosting statement… why so? Because even before I had presented, just after speaking to some people about it, they were interested in finding out more about the paper!

So I went back upstairs and worked on my presentation all over again, modifying the slides and increasing the coverage of the presentation. Since my presentation was in the afternoon, I had plenty of time for doing this!

I then went to the conference room where the paper presentation was. My name was called out and I went to the dais and started the presentation. At the end of the presentation, I was queried by a gentleman from Panasonic, Germany and a few other people from prominent Companies. We had a long discussion at the end of the session as well.

After this, I was finally FREE!!! So I went out sight-seeing…! I went to the Bellagio, Caesar’s Palace, MGM Grand, Treasure Island, Wynn, Flamingo, and soooo many more hotels and casinos!

I watched the famous fountain show of the Bellagio, and the the wonderful show put up by the Treasure Island actors. It was getting rather late, so I went back to the hotel and had my dinner, before retiring for the night.

The next day again I woke up and attended a few sessions. After that I went around sight-seeing again, and returned back by the afternoon. One of the people who attended my session, a professor from University of Melbourne, Australia, treated me to an Indian lunch at a buffet nearby. It was a wonderful lunch, and we discussed our work over it.

After that, I had to chair a session. And there were some really interesting papers to listen to… and it was very intriguing. It gave me a few good ideas about what should be worked on and where to research in, if I want to change my topic of research.

I then went to the the Hotel’s tours Department and asked for a ticket for the next day’s Hoover Dam trip.

The next morning, I woke up and got ready. I had another session to chair. It was again interesting, as there was a similar concept being worked upon by Carnegie Mellon University as mine. The only difference between our projects was that they were working on Wireless LANs, which may seem a bit difficult, but I have a few ideas that they might implement in their project.

After this I took the Tour bus from the Hotel to the Tour Operator’s office. There I got onto another bus which had all the people from the various other Hotels around Las Vegas. We had one entertainer of a driver… I mean… right through the two hour travel, not one did anyone feel sleepy or bored! He was amazing.. carried on jokes and went around interactively with the bus members… all this while driving!

When we reached Hoover Dam, we saw some amazing sights. The entire dam seems awesome! And of course, the Government runs it as a tourist spot as well! Which explains the good maintenance (which would have been there even otherwise) and also the streamlined fashion in which the tour proceeds, inspite of there being hundreds of people present at any single point in time!

You can email me in case you want photos of the dam at tejaspadekar@gmail.com

We then returned back to the hotel and I went out shopping for the evening.

The next day, I took the flight back to Los Angeles. I traveled by Northwest Airlines. It’s a low-budget airline similar to Spice and Deccan Airlines in India. Of course the flight itself was only for an hour!

After reaching Los Angeles (LA), I went straight to Ashish’s room. There I found out that one of his roommate’s friends was gonna come and stay over, and since I had not planned on staying back in LA again, he had invited that guy over. So I would have to sleep on the couch. Well, in the end, when I visited Viral, he said that Nainesh had gone to his cousin’s place for a few days and that one bunk was empty, so I could stay over with him and Akshay. This was quite alright with me, and so I decided to stay over at their place. I went to Ashish’s room and picked up my luggage and shifted to Viral’s room.

Well… that’s the end of Episode 2. I will be back with the final episode in a few days.. so bear with me!