Goodbye twenties @ Vegas
Trieste
I was invited to give guest lectures at the Abdus Salam Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in 2008. Abdus Salam is the first Muslim and the first (and only) Pakistani Nobel Laureate. When the organizers found out that I’m a Pakistani, they took me on a tour of Abdus Salam’s old office. Below are some pictures:
(Abdus Salam’s Last Office at ICTP)
(Original Document in Swedish)
(Original Nobel Check)
I didn’t take a picture of the Nobel Prize/Medal because I was told that the one at ICTP is a replica and not the original. Spending time at Trieste, I could see why Abdus Salam would pick this location for the Theoretical Physics Center: the place reminded me of Murree and had a pleasant hilly resort kind of feel to it. The two tunnels below were on my walk between the hotel room and ICTP. I for some reason loved crossing these “two tunnels”:
(Two Tunnels, Trieste)
I sometime start my talks with random useless facts just to wake up the audience. For one of my talks the random fact I used was about me being a Pakistani and how Abdus Salam was not treated very well back home after winning the Nobel Prize. None the less they did dedicate some postal stamps in his memory later:
(Abdus Salam Slide)
It was one of those occasions when I felt proud of my association with Pakistan.
I just came back from Karlsruhe, Germany. Over there I was staying at the Hoepfner Burghof and the hotel (image above) left a decent enough impression that I will recommend it to others.
On the way back it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the name of the place (Akalla) where i lived in Sweden. That was just last winters and I lived there for three months! Lesson learned - I need to start maintaining a travel log.
