I picked up William from CLIB at 12:50 we rushed for the train at 2:05 pm.

Our train lost power momentarily after departing from Braga.

We got off the train at the Lisboa Oriente station. William took a picture of the Harry Potter Ford Angila. What a large city. Having been living in Braga for three month, we almost started feeling uneasy seeing so many cars and traffic.

We took a Uber to the Lisboa Marriott. The front desk couldn’t find our reservation. I called the Expedia and had it sorted out. It appears Lisboa’s IT system does not allow them to perform a search with a guest’s name when booked through a travel agency. It’s even more shocking to find that they do not have a working relationship with Expedia, which is a major traveling agency in the US.

The dinner was conveniently arranged in the Mediterranean Ballroom. William and I was assigned to Table No. 4. We sat with the Fulbright Commissioner and the head of the Public Relation at the US Embassy. Also at the table is a family of Fulbright alum of Portuguese students. They have a nice years old boy who is tall. I guess they made the arrangement so that two boys make chat, but it did not happen.

We were happy to meet some old and new friends.

Thanksgiving is a time to reflect. We read about Thanksgiving in books but the first time it came close to me was twenty-five years ago. I was picked, along another young engineer (who died a couple of years later of cancer), as the Chinese team leads on CRAY project at the National Meteorological Center. We worked closely with David (who later became my best friend forever) and another Australian engineer of Cray. It is the first ever of exportation of a Cray supercomputer to China. It was approved by the Senior Bush on the last day of his presidency, as he weighed between sensitivity of technology and humanitarian benefits. It’s a complicated project in terms of political, technical, and operational aspects. As Thanksgiving was coming, David rented a big bus and took the entire unit to a restaurant to celebrate. I didn’t go and I forgot why I didn’t go. It was the first ever Thanksgiving celebration for most of my co-workers, and people talked about it for a long time.

Two years later in a summer night in Beijing before I went to graduate school in the US. David, Cate, and I were chatting about the upcoming life in the US. David said to me, you would be the ambassador because many American will learn about China for the first time from you. In the next twenty years or so, I would strive to behave up to the bar as a good ambassador.

Time fast forwarding to two months ago at the US Embassy in Lisboa at the orientation for Fulbrighters, the US diplomats told us, you were the ambassadors. As a participant of the State Department program, we present US values to the people we interact in Portugal with a mission of building connections between the two countries.

The lab I am visiting at the University of Minho just received the first ever supercomputer of Portugal from the US. I am working with my colleagues in the lab and my collaborators at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), which is part of the UT, on a joint proposal for the UT Austin – Portugal program. Hopefully, we would be able to build a long-term partnership out of the Fulbright experience.

I appreciate the help I received from the host institute University of Moinho and the lab High Assurance Software Lab, as well as from many collaborators and students.

Over the course of 25 years, from one supercomputer Cray C92 at National Meteorological Center (NMC) in Beijing to another supercomputer Bob at Minho Advanced Computing Center (MACC) in Braga, life just made a full circle in front of my eyes at a Thanksgiving dinner.