Summer 2013

by prashantmathur

Hi All,

Its been a while since I wrote any post. In this post I will share my summer so called adventures, my time at XRCE and my stay in Grenoble.

Xerox working place : Mamma Mia! The campus is situated in the midst of residential area. So quite, calm and peaceful. You can here the sound of the wind grazing the tree leaves. This is unlike any campuses in India where you can hear the noise from people blowing horn every second.

Xerox copyright Issues : I was quite apprehensive about the “research” done in Xerox, thought why would a company share their research with the world free of cost! Well, not I know its not the case. You have to file a patent before you start sharing anything to the outside world. I kind of have this knack of sharing everything that I do, so it was a little difficult to adjust to the new terms and conditions.

Things to do in Grenoble : Summer time you have the opportunity to go out for hiking, climbing (given that one is not afraid of heights). There are concerts every week in the big parks of Grenoble. Once a month the local municipality finds a reason to celebrate this or that with fireworks on a large scale. All the people in Grenoble gather in one place to watch it, its exciting!

French Food : Grenoble’s french cuisine is one thing that didn’t suit me. Well one could argue that its the best but I just didn’t like it. I checked quite a few restaurants here, some Indian restaurants too and  yes they serve quite close authentic Indian food. I regularly visited an Indian store here, which is open from 10AM to 12 midnight. I don’t find this in Trento 😦

Places I got to see : I traveled a lot during my stay here. First trip was a one day trip to beautiful Annecy with Xerox colleagues. We packed the bags, left early morning, biked around 40 kms in Anncey and returned back the same day. It was a tiring but an amazing experience.  Second trip was a “long weekend” trip to Paris. We were 3 guys, thankfully one of us knew french and it helped to quite an extent. This was the time when I was introduced to authentic delicious and expensive French food. I liked it!. Third trip was a short “official” trip to Sofia, Bulgaria for a conference. I got to see a little of Sofia thanks to a walking tour, a little of nightlife thanks to some colleagues. Last trip was a week long trip to Turkey, this trip was one of the best holidays of my life. Beach, *amazing food*, sun, friends and a Turkish wedding .. still these words are not enough in describing this vacation.

Work : Apart from having a time of my life I worked quite a lot. We ended up in filing two patents!! (can’t talk about this more than that : refer to Xerox Copyright Issues )

Thats about it!

Thanks for dropping by this post!

Prashant