So in September I had my Roman Holiday. Brief photo essay follows.

Thanks to the jet-lag, for the first time, I saw the dawn in Rome:

I spent my few days (re)reading my Dylan Dog and Rat Man collections:

and playing my piano:

and generally messing up my room, that, having been cleaned daily for months without being used, had reached negative levels of entropy:

By the way, with a strange twists of events, I discovered that while I was busy converting the department to espresso, my parents had converted to American coffee (note on the left):

Roma! the perfect occasion to test my new camera (Sony A300). I found out that I need a larger macro lens:

and I need a longer zoom:

Then I headed to Nice, France for IROS. The conference was okay, with a good program, but the rooms were too small, especially for the bigger sessions.

During 5 days of conference, there’s plenty of time to go around the city. So I saw the sea,

I breathed the old-Europe air,

and visited the museums:

The most inspiring moment I had was in front of this citation of John Cage:

“the situation being desperate, everything is now possible” which will be added to my list of inspirational mantra.

And then, 26 hours of travel later, I was suddenly back in sunny California, wondering where my baggage was instead.