crashing the international conference for robotics and automation in pasadena, california, where my brother's presenting a paper. truly a geek gathering, an environment totally alien to any of the other cities that i visited recently; but an environment that i miss and find myself very comfortable in :)

found that methods of enquiry (abstraction, theory-simulation-prototyping), problem-solving concepts (linerization and state transitions), are very similar regardless of engineering specialization. wonder how much of these modes of thinking are universal, and how much is merely anglo-saxon.