Hi friends
I was in
Basque Country in Spain.
At the
arrival gate in Bilbao airport, it was amusing that the taxi driver came straight
to myself without a moment of hesitation. I cannot remember how many times I
traveled to Bilbao, but it looks like more than enough visits.
I took my
Lumix with me but I simply had no time to take photos in the town whilst I was
there. 2 photos of my room. That is it. To be honest, I have never been to the
famous museum there. It is like visiting London without seeing Big Ben or Buckingham
Palace, isn’t it?
This time, I
went to the technological centre where geeks in white coats called metal
scientists are conducting some clever experiments for the future technologies.
According the local government, 2 in 100 people in Basque country are working
for the industry where such technologies are involved.
They are
absolutely fascinating. Myself being a metal forming technology geek, I
thoroughly enjoyed the visit. One of the young chap (comes with PhD, off
course) made me laugh when he was showing fabulous micro machining technology. “Many
many papers but no application” – yeah, I can well imagine that!
They spend
such long time to seek for the latest greatest technologies, but in the real
world, it is difficult to adopt such things into the normal production /
manufacturing process (mainly because of the size of investment and potential
returns in the realistic time frame), I would imagine more than 80% of their
study and research end up in the bin.
There are
millions of unseen research and experiments behind the technologies we use every
day. I am the resident of the practical world where we convert their studies
into the practice but only when we see the commercial gains in them. That is
why I sometimes envy the residents of the world where passion and creativity
overwhelm business cases…..
Well, ladies,
I think I should request HR to organise a career forum to catch those
intelligent young people. It is for the future development of the company, off
course.
….but I must
tell you that some of them are good looking Latin charmers. :-p
