December

Dear Blog,

I have to apologize for this extreme delay, but this period is really cray. I barely have time to eat proper meals and sometimes the schedule is so strict that I have to skip them.
As usual, I will try to summarize the major events happened this month, hope this does not bother you!

Shehryar's PhD Defense

Our Senior PhD guy graduated! It was my first attendance to such an event and it was really intense. This guy is basically a genius and the lab (and myself personally) is going to miss him so much. His work on multi-modal state estimation in visually-degraded environments is amazing, he literally invented the thermal-inertial odometry. Such a great inspiration!
Here is a pic we took that glorious day (fleet of robots included for sure).

The Mihirs are gone

If so much joy happend at the graduation day, I also had to experience a moment of sadness when the two indian guys, who were in the lab for their master thesis, had to go back to their country. We had so much fun together and I already miss them a lot.

Here is some awsome shot of our last adventure on the hills of Reno. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbJnA47lApc

Jewish Christmas

Yes! This year, insted of celebrating a classic Christmas day, I was invited to my housemate mother's house and we had a wonderful Hanukkah! It is always nice to know and be enriched by different traditions and cultures.

Sugar Bowl

Oh I went to ski! A hole day, it was super fun. Fortunately one of my housemates works there and we got discount tickets. Otherwise we would have paid something around 150$ for a day lift (rent excluded!!), which is insane.
For my italian friends: if you think Cortina is expensive, you have no idea what you are talking about!