SAE World Congress - Detroit and New York

On April 3rd I presented a technical paper at the SAE World Congress. The short story is that the research and the paper was prepared by another engineer, who forgot to apply for a visa to go the U.S. Since I was available at short notice and Australia and USA are old buddies (i.e. no visa required for my travel), they sent me instead.

For me, the conference was a good learning experience and also a chance to practice my presentation skills. The fact that somebody else paid for my dinner in the Coach Insignia restaurant on the top of the Renaissance Centre was just a little bonus. The RenCen is the tall silver building on the right of the picture. Also, it was a chance to have a look at Detroit, not that it is renowned as a top tourist destination. Along the river, it looked like any other major city - towering shiny high rises such as the GM Renaissance Centre, large hotels and conference centres, Starbucks, and so on. But as I walk away from the riverside district, it is not long before abandoned carparks and buildings fill the entire landscape. Some of the locals retain the hope that one day it will flourish again, but that will take a long time.

Detroit is well and truly a motor city. As in, you can't get around without a car since there is practically no public transport - I had to take cabs everyday. In Detroit I have seen cars of the worst condition, worse than the Trabants that I saw in Eastern Europe! Usually these are large, old cars with big V8s and mostly rust and almost no steel left in the body shell ...

After the conference I decided to drop by New York for some sightseeing and to visit my friend Anne, whom I met while working in Australia. I managed to see quite a few sights and walked around a lot of areas in Manhattan: Grand Central Station, Ground Zero, Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street, Rockafella Centre (Top of the Rock), Central Park, Times Square, see a musical on Broadway, and of course, Chinatown. It was certainly not possible to try to see all the interesting items in a few short days and hopefully I can go back there at a later date.

In some ways going to New York was a bit surreal - it felt like I was in a movie or in a TV show. Yellow taxis everywhere. Empire State Building. The subway. Trump Tower. All things that I have become familiar with through the media although I have not seen them in person. Times Square was quite amazing, it's brighter at night than day and there are all kinds of weird acts. We saw Spiderman trying to wind in the strands of his web, and listened to a rapper and his mates trying to sell me his CD. The view on the flight into LaGuardia airport was awesome - the plane basically flew over Manhattan and the rest of NY during sunset, did a U-turn, and flew over again before landing.

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