Today I submitted the survey for my Fulbright experience.

I met with my host at the institution and we had a good talk over perspectives on developing a long term collaboration. He just came back from SC and TACC trip last week and will go to Macau, Taiwan, and Hong Kong tomorrow. In the last 20 years, I have been transforming out of the high-performance computing fields while my friends in Portugal are transforming into a major player.

TACC has been very successful in the past few years. With the winning of the Frontera contract, it not only took away what NCSA had been hoping for, but also put PSC and SDSC in a very tricky place. TACC’s success should send alarm to stake-holders in HPC. At this transformative era, 1) someone’s gain is most likely built upon others’ lost. 2) HPC is transforming and traditional supercomputing is shifting to more agile modular applications of data-driven tasks. 3) TACC’s success is partially built on its army of solution support team.

I walked up the hill to CLIB in rain. It was 5:15 pm and the next bus should came in 20 minutes, if according to schedule. That’s a big if. The east gate of the campus is in the middle of two bus stops. I decided to walk up instead of down. There is a covered shelter on the downhill side but not the other side. I planed to wait a few minutes to see. There were already a big group of people in the shelter. On the other side of road, two women were standing in rain with umbrellas. With these many local people it implied that the bus was coming. I was counting on the two women to stop the bus so that I had tine to cross the road. A few more minutes later, it got darker and the rain got heavier. There was no sign of the bus. Then the two women came over. They must have abandoned their plan to ride the bus while it made the last several stops to turn back. Without them standing there waving the bus down, I had little chance to stop it from the other side. I had to either walk or standing in the pouring rain with no umbrella. I don’t bother doing that but it looks silly. I marched on.

I got to the CLIB a few minutes before the bus finally passed by. The gate was already locked. William forgot his swimming backpack. While he went back to fetch the bag, the bus came and left.

We got a Uber to get to Mario’s Pizzeria (it was misspelled as pizeria on a sign outside).

William ordered a bean dish with rice and I ordered a soup. Mario worried William did not get meat, so insisted I to get some. I reluctantly got a piece of fried pork stake. When my soup came, William leaned over and had a few spoons. Mario saw that and gave William another bowl of soup. We really appreciate the feeling of coming back to family.

Mario said Jose was very sick because of a flu. Their elder daughter had been helping him in the shop. We wish Jose will have a speedy recover.

We waited for Bus 24 at the station across the road, then moved to the next one to catch either 7, 43, 2, or 63. Unfortunately none came in 20 minutes. The bus schedule at night was almost guaranteed to not work. There is no point for William to go swimming at this point. We got on the first one came, which was Route 7.

Getting off the bus at the city center, we walked 10 minutes back to our apartment. William noticed the giant Christmas that occupied the fountain space. Some business already had Christmas lights on.

We took some pictures. We also saw they set up an outdoor ice rink. Will Braga drop below frozen temperature?

Rodrigo added William to the WhatsApp group for the SPEAK class. William browed past messages and sent some Thanksgiving GIFs.

I was finally able to sign up for the Saint Silvestre de Braga.