It's been an eventful January!
After following in Michaela's footsteps and passing my naturalization interview at the USCIS, I was surprised to be offered to participate in a naturalization ceremony the very same day in the afternoon. That the Portland office was trying to squeeze in as many ceremonies as possible before January 20th is of course pure speculation, but I was happy to jump at the opportunity!
While we did not celebrate with a coffee afterwards as we did in Michaela's case, we have started an exploration into the Portland café-scene: we are aspiring to check out a new café every (or most) weekends this year. We started with Keeper Coffee on SE 41st Ave and enjoyed a dark roast latte with fruity overtones as well as delightful coffee cake and a puff pastry cardamom bun. It was unseasonably sunny which rounded out a successful first outing.
The next Sunday we only briefly stopped at Ovation coffee on Mercantile Drive (Lake Oswego) on our way to the airport (Photonics West beckoned):
There, we were served - in a modern-industrial ambience - some very pleasant, spicy & smooth, Moroccan Latte's, as well as some unexpectedly (based on the presentation) amazing scones - not too sweet, very fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside.
And then it was off to Photonics West! As last year, Rob was kind enough to let me crash at his place, even though, at least for the first few days, he, Kristen, and Weston were off in Idaho enjoying some snow, so our catching up was limited to a nice Thai dinner on Wednesday evening while entertaining Weston with 'I spy with my little eye...'. This was my last year as conference chair for LAMOM and I was happy to hand off the baton to the next generation.
Photonics West was its usual self with ~20,000 participants and - at least the LASE part of the conference - has more or less recovered from the pandemic in terms of the number of talks (somewhere in the 700-800 range). Plenty of friends, acquaintances, speakers, and poster presenters to say hi and catch up with as well as to ogle the latest optics innovations the industry has to offer on the exhibition floor.
But just as notable was a real world application of optics (and AI) that has become ubiquitous on San Francisco's streets: robotaxis! Mostly Waymo's cars, but also some Zoox, were hard to miss given the sheer number of them on the streets.
Needless to say, I had to give it a try! On my last morning (Thursday) I called a Waymo at Rob's place to bring me to the Moscone center (about a half hour drive) and it was smooth as butter from the start of the call - the car arrived within 2-3 minutes or requesting it - to the drive, which admittedly took a few minutes to get used to not having a driver, to the drop off at the destination. It was a flawless experience - will happily do this again!
After settling back into Portland, Michaela and I wasted no time and explored the next Café on the following Sunday: Albina Press on N. Albina Ave. The Lattes were smooth, though not exceptional, the scones - particularly the apple-chai one - a bit stale and the artsy ambience a bit disconnected. Guess, not every Café can be a winner, even though we appreciated the pet friendly setup and the LGBTQ flag in the window.
Haven't decided, yet, which Café to explore next - stay tuned!
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