First, at the beginning of our whirlwind trip, we were greeted at the Verona airport by a colleague, Paolo Rocca, from U of Trento in Trentino, Italy. He was kind enough to drive us from Verona to Madonna di Campiglio, about a 40-mile ride, and about 5,000 feet above sea level. The drive up the Alps was gasping with tiny villages of a few hundred people dotting the mountainous landscape. Moreover, we got to see the Dolomites Mountains which were beautiful.

The next day, I was blessed to give an inaugural lecture on quantum electromagnetics. There were 20 people on site, and perhaps another 50 online. After the lecture and lunch at the Cerana Hotel, we were driven for 5 hours by Nicola Anselmi to Florence, arriving at round 7 pm. We were pleased to be able to join the AdCom dinner at 8 pm and socialized with many colleagues from all over the world.

The next morning, I attended the AdCom meeting, and listened to many reports. Everyone was enthused and seemed to have much to say, more than their allotted times. I gave a short presentation about COPE. But the slides on IEEE Smart Village piqued the interest of incoming AP-S President, Stefano Maci.

I told him that we should push to grow wireless communications around the world, and this falls under the purview of IEEE AP-S, and the dream of Guglielmo Marconi. After all, Marconi was Italian, and our recent two AP-S presidents are Italians, Gianluca Lazzi and Stefano Maci. Our Society, among the IEEE Societies has the most expertise in this area.

After the Florence AdCom meeting, we took a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, from where we took a flight to Astana, Kazakhstan, very much to the north of Central Asia. It took about 7 to 8 hours to fly there--Central Asia is huge! At the Nazarbayev University (NU) of Kazakhstan, we met my former colleague, Ilesanmi Adesida from U of Illinois who is now a Provost at NU. We also met Chew Chin (my wife)'s brother Kai Hong PHUA who has volunteered to teach at NU from Singapore: he teaches public health/policy. We met with many professors from electrical engineering, as well as professors from physics and math. We had lunch and dinner with many deans from different schools of NU. (I was formerly a dean of engineering at the U of Hong Kong, and Adesida thought I had some experience to share with these deans.) NU is an interesting university where it has drawn talents from different parts of the world, because it has oil and mineral wealth.

Adesida took me on a tour of the School of Engineering where he had set up many equipment facilities in microelectronics and electromagnetics. (Adesida was formerly in the area of microelectronics at Illinois, and also a dean of engineering at Illinois.) They have a vector network analyzer. Here, I saw the power of knowledge sharing. Adesida, because of his background, knows what equipment to get and also how to set up a strong engineering school, especially in areas related to microelectronics.

In total, I gave three talks at NU: one in the PhD Forum, where I emphasized the importance of a PhD program in a comprehensive university. I also emphasized three important points for a research university?s PhD program: (1) Outside and international engagements; (2) To have postdocs to work with in addition to graduate students; (3) Ability to pick important problems to work on.

The second talk was like the IEEE AP-S Master's Class I gave at the AP-S 2021, Singapore entitled "Electromagnetics: from Classical to Quantum". The subject is low-level enough so that undergraduate students can understand.

The third talk I gave was on IEEE, and IEEE Chapter Activities, with the help of slides from Ajay Poddar and Anisha Apte. One way for knowledge to flow into Kazakhstan is via the IEEE Chapter network, which is almost like throwing a knowledge lifeline via IEEE Chapter formation. They have a local IEEE Chapter, but I was told that many students do not join because of the cost of membership (after all, this is a developing country with per capita income of about US$10K)). It is the richest of the central Asian countries because of oil and mineral wealth.

The Kazakhs, numbering about 20 million, are an interesting nomadic people. Nomads have lived in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, and all the way to China including Manchuria. They lived in Central Asia for a few millennia and they first domesticated horses around 3,500 BC. I read that the region was first dominated by Iranian/Persian culture, and later by Turkic culture. They speak a language related to the Ural/Altaic family, where object is placed after a verb like French. This language structure also prevails in North Asia, including Korean and Japanese. I could have mistaken these people as someone from Korea: Asian with a tinge of Caucasian look. They are beautiful people. In the history of sedentary people like China or Europe, they are noted for their penchant for raiding for resources. This is understandable given the wealth inequality in this part of the world and the ascetic life of nomadic people. Their cavalry skill is unmatched. In the West of Central Asia, they were related to the Turks and Cossacks, and in the East, they were related to the Mongols and Manchus. They worship God which is the blue eternal sky. I hope they can acquire a technology-based economy so that they can use God's most unusual gift: the brain, as a natural resource.

When we left Astana, Kazakhstan, we had to fly Turkish Airlines from Astana to Istanbul, then from Istanbul to London. On the flight from Istanbul to London, there were many people coughing in the airplane. That?s where we caught Covid. We had to wait over 2 hours to cross the security line in London. Security was beefed up in London Airport because of the Ukraine War. Since we missed our flight, we had to stay over one night in London Heathrow Airport.

We had Covid after returning. We self-isolated for two week, and are pretty much back to normal now.

Sincerely,
Weng Cho