Participation in the 16th International Conference on Hydroinformatics in Zaragoza, Spain

From the 22 ^nd to the 26 ^th of June, I attended the 16 ^th International Conference on Hydroinformatics (HIC) which took place in Zaragoza, Spain. It was the first time for me to attend an international conference alone, so it was a somewhat exiting and anxious inducing experience at the same time.

There was a lot of troubles before I even arrived in Zaragoza (delayed Shinkansen before the flight for one) but all considered it went ok. The first thing I felt when arriving in Spain was the heat, it was over 40°C throughout the day. The sun also set around 9:30p.m. which felt very weird to me. The temperature didn’t get much better after the sun set as it still remained above 30°C.

I had some pretty nice food while in Spain such as Tapas and Paella. The non-local food there was also quite nice, especially some Romanian and Korean food that I had while walking around. However, I felt that I had more drinks than food due to the very hot and dry weather there. One of my favourites was the lemon beer, light and refreshing.

The conference was held in the Engineering faculty building of the University of Zaragoza, which was unfortunately somewhat of a distance away from the city centre. I really appreciated that they gave out a complementary goodie bag containing a fan, vacuum flask and transport card to get around the city.

I made some new friends on the first day of the conference during the ice-breaking gala. From then on, I stuck with them during and outside conference hours. I managed to attend some interesting sessions, and my own presentation went smoothly. I also managed to have some fruitful discussions with other researchers who are doing similar or related research.

Overall, I really enjoyed the culture and architecture of Spain and is very grateful for the opportunity to share my research on an international stage.

Written by

Ng Shu Kai