Nice dinner in Corfu'

Yesterday evening I finally gave my talk. As always, things went smoothly, and looking back to the worries I had of not having time to prepare it as well as I would have liked to, I cannot help smiling... The thing is, I am such a perfectionist that I make things very hard to myself, by setting the bar too high and then forcing myself to jump it anyhow. I usually manage to make myself happy in the end, but it always takes some effort...

I had a picture of myself taken while I was giving the talk, but I ran out of batteries for my camera and I cannot upload it now! Too bad... So here is instead the cover slide of my talk. Notice the rather lame style: I really had no time for frills this time...

After the evening session I joined Giorgio, Julien, Francesco and Donatella - four young colleagues from Padova - and we headed to the old town - a 10 minutes drive by taxi. There, we met Dario - the advisor of my Laurea thesis, our mega-boss in Padova -, his fiancée Irene and her friend Francesca, and with them we had a very nice drink on top of the Hotel Cavalieri (see very low-quality picture on left), which overlooks the sea and the city of Corfu. It was a very pleasant evening, with a cool wind blowing from the sea. We could see a thin slice of new moon playing games with Venus and a star I was quick to identify as Spica, alpha Virginis, when questioned (it may be tricky to identify a bright star if you see only that one and you do not know where north is, but I am darn good at that - and besides, bright Arcturus was evident above Spica).

We had dinner at a place called "da Anna" by Irene - I don't know the real name of the place, but being friends with the owner, as Irene is, makes it much easier to pick the best fresh fish. And indeed we did, and we had one very good seafood appetizer and two wonderfully fresh huge fishes, whose names I forgot but whose taste will remain a pleasant memory for the next few days. We also drank quite a bit of white wine, and by the time I went back to my hotel bungalow I was... Well, quite drunk.

By the way, on the right you can see the conference venue, the Corfù Holiday Palace, a nice place overlooking the Ionian sea.

This morning an alka-seltzer offered by Giovanni, my boss, who arrived late yesterday night, put my brain back in working order. Now I am in the conference room, feeling a bit guilty for operating my laptop while a brilliant speaker is teaching me about non-accelerator neutrino experiments. More on that later...