Digital Signal Processing Seminar Series (DSPSS) 2008 in Ho Chi Minh city

	DSPSS08 was held at Ho Chi Minh university. It was twelve days of lecture and laboratory assignments for the students. Pretty intense for them. Luckily, the TAs only took segments of the seminar and had a lot of opportunity to tour Vietnam.
	A lecturer at Ho Chi Minh University of Technology came to pick me up from the airport. I got to my hotel late in the evening where I got to have two beds all to myself whereas the boys had to share (as usual :p).
	However, during one of the days, I saw a lizard crawl down the wall by the nightstand near the bed on the leftside. As a result, I logically decided that I was not going to sleep on the left bed anymore. Besides, the bed on the right was closer to the television where I spent sleepy evenings watching interesting television shows in vietnemese.
	Food was amazing. Every morning, the hotel had traditional Vietnemese Pho free of charge. For lunch, we usually ate with the students at local stalls with a bowl of noodles or a simple dish with rice. Most of the people on the trip got food poisoning one day or another (weak Americans ...) but overall the food was fantastic. For dinner, we were usually taken out by Professor Minh Do or a Vietnemese local. Dinner usually consisted of dining to your heart's content in a host of different environments. We dined by the beach, in well-known restaurants and in local stalls. I'll try to find some of the names of the well known places to put in here.
	The fruits in Vietnam are something to talk about. I tried so many fruits that I have never before encountered. Some of them have tastes which I simply can't describe. One particular fruit worth mentioning is the "manget". One day, Eric comes into the lab and says, "I tried these mangets that my roommate left me and they're amazing". We all look at him because obviously none of us have ever heard of a "manget" and usually people don't get so excited when they try a fruit. Turns out, the "manget" he was talking about is known as the "cay mang cut" in Vietnemese. We basically butured the name to be "manget" thereafter. Anyway, the ratio of ugliness to tastiness of this fruit is adoring. I unfortunately can't exactly describe the taste but if you are ever in Vietnam, I would strongly recommend hunting some of these down.
	In the mornings, we usually got up around 7AM to eat and get to class. I think the most worthwile thing to mention about getting to class was the street that we had to cross every morning. The traffic in Vietnam is a bit like schools of fish. The crosswalk doesn't really mean anything and basically you walk out and let the schools of fish swim by you. I tried to get a video of this but got scared and put my camera away as I was crossing the street. Probably, you can still get some idea though.
	TI donated about 30 TI-DSPs for UIUC to bring to Ho Chih Min University. Over the course of 3 days, we setup the new machines and came up with appropriate labs for the students. It had been a while since I took ECE320 at Illinois so there was quite a bit of refreshing for me to do! However, after about two days of wire stripping, soldering and debugging, the machines were ready to go.
	Hm, just to mention again, since our head TA Spencer got trapped in Thailand with a single-entry visa... Professor Jones, Eric and I found ourselves muddling through some unfamiliar code. Just like real ECE320, we got things done at the last minute. :p
	Class was really great. The students asked fantastic questions and helped each other once a lab was completed. In the end, they learned how to implement a FIR filter, an IIR filter and a simple BPSK transmitter. That's a lot for only 3 afternoons!!
	Since we were able to get the classwork prepared. We had time to go to a beach on an island and also visit the Mekong Delta. We had an excellent tourguide at the Mekong Delta where we were able to taste some excellent food and get a taste of the style of living in this swampy area.
	This is one of my favorite pictures from the beach. Professor Do and Professor Jones are picking out seashells to take home. I hope they don't get too mad at me for putting this on the web.
	I have a whole sequence of images for this but I'm just putting one here. This man on the beach really liked Spencer. Spencer didn't enjoy that too much but the rest of us did. Later, the man took a lot of pictures for us. I'm sure he did it for Spencer though.
	The next day, we headed out to the Mekong delta where we visited many islands. One of these islands are well known for it's coconuts. This family here is making coconut candy which Eric, Spencer, Nick, Ryan and I bought a lot of. It was impressive how the entire process took place in that tent run by the family. The coconuts are shelled, boiled, carmelized and wrapped all right here.
	This dude deserves mentioning. He's known as starting the coconut religion. He bought an island, built a playground on it which served as the temple and started the coconut religion. We visited this island where there were charming gardens and a playground tower. We also listened to a live traditional Vietnemese performance inside of a tree. I was pretty inspired by this island to buy my own and start my own religion ...
	I bought a lot of things on this portion of the delta trip including beeswax (which we watched a lady make) and snake wine (wine with a pickeled snake inside). We dined on the island where we tried more food, herbs and fruit which I can't describe. We took small boats through the delta and drank fresh coconut milk out of a coconut on the way back to the mainland.
	One thing to note about the delta area and Vietnam in general is that it is very much a developing country. This is a bridge that was being built as we crossed the delta. I've never seen such construction in the process of taking place and I took maybe twenty shots of this bridge in the process of being build. Makes you marvel at how this sort of construction goes on everyday. I'm sure that the next time I visit Vietnam, it will be a very different country.
	No portion of our trip was complete without a delicious meal. This particular meal featured a fish known as the "elephant ear" and is a specialty in this part of Vietnam. I really fell in love with the style of Vietnemese food. Lots of fish, different plants/herbs and fruit. Some of the cuisine is like Chinese food, but most of it has a very distinct twist.
	Back near the university, we ate delicious bowls of noodles with the local students. A very generous meal cost around 50,000 dong or approximately 3 dollars. A simpler meal cost around 32,000 dong.
	Professors gave lectures every morning. Check out the background sickle and star. The chalkboard fell a few times. The auditorium was nice and air conditioned though and there were breaks every two hours.
	By far, the best part of the trip were the people. I met many new Vietnemese friends and they treated us with incredible hospitality! I really hope that some of them will come to the U.S. so that we can repay the favor.
	They took us to district 1 where there are many more highrises. Unfortunately, there are also a lot more street peddlers. Everywhere around us, there were girls who were looking to sell flowers to the foreigners. Eventually, we gave in and Nick ended up with four flowers he didn't know what to do with. Luckily, there were four unsuspecting girls sitting in the park who Nick gave the flowers too. There's some pretty good video of this but maybe it deserves to be somewhere else.
	One of the last trips we took was to the electronic district where most of the cables we needed for the lab had been picked up. It was amazing all the things you could find there. If I had suitcase space, I would have picked up everything from imitation game consoles to imitation ipods and any electronic part you can imagine.
	I stopped at this booth for maybe ten minutes trying to decide whether or not to pick up one of the imitation game consoles and controls. The console was going for about $15 bucks and it came with controls that would have been really crazy to play with. In the end, I decided that it might be more trouble (and expensive) to get the adaptor necessary. Also, I didn't come with much luggage and probably wouldn't have had space. Seriously though, check out the games.
	The electronic district was a great last stop. Plenty of toys to play with there. If I were to go back, I'd plan out what I needed from there.
	I'd say that overall, DSPSS was a great success. The seminar in the end was well organized and quite intense for the 12 days that the students were there. There were many research presentations, mini-classes to give a taste of American education and most notably a laboratory setup for them to try our new ideas.
	Actually, at the end of the trip, I didn't bring back many souvenirs. I brought back snake wine and coconut candies from the delta. -And, I bought two motorcycle helmets to wear around the city when biking.