Wednesday: Getting to Know UNICAMP

Dra. Silvia needed her notebook charger back after work on Wednesday, so I have been unable to update this blog since then for lack of power to my laptop. So today I'll be posting multiple entries, as one aggregated post would be supremely long and tiresome both to read and to write.

Wednesday morning I had to wake up especially early because I was accompanying Dr. Sabbatini and Rodrigo to a seminar on the future of learning being held at UNICAMP, the main university of Campinas. Dr. Sabbatini was slated to be one of the speakers at this seminar, so we had to arrive early. The professor's house is about 3 blocks away from where I am staying, so he picked me up at 8 in the morning and we drove down to the university together.

Professor Sabbatini speaking at the seminar

The conference itself was particularly exciting. Professor Sabbatini's lecture was probably the most interesting of the three included in the seminar, but, seeing as everything was carried out in Portuguese, I had a difficult time following all of it. The highlight was "coffee break," a 15-minute intermission that turned out to be much more than just coffee. There was mini all kinds of foods, including pastries, sandwiches, and brownies.

After the seminar Dr. Sabbatini gave me a driving tour of UNICAMP's campus, which is very interestingly designed. It consists of multiple, essentially concentric rings that house the different departments of the university. In the middle is Ciclo Basico, where the introductory classes for freshmen and sophomores are housed. As you travel further out in the rings, the disciplines become more specialized. Professor Sabbatini said the university was so designed in order to minimize the walking time for students to get to the places they need to go. Quite interesting.

The campus, from above. Note the rings

UNICAMP's logo is actually a iconical representation of the campus

We then went to a very interesting place for lunch. The restaurant was filled with American-style memorabilia such as signs, movie posters, model trains running on tracks near the ceiling, and even a large collection of warner brothers and disney figurines. Apparently this restaurant was Dr. Sabbatini's favorite during his tenure at UNICAMP. Rodrigo and I ate feijoada, the national dish of Brazil. Apparently Wednesday is feijoada day all across Brazil, so you can eat feijoada pretty much anywhere on a Wednesday. The dish itself has an interesting history, as it originated from the food the slaves would make with the leftover scraps of pork that they were given.

Professor Sabbatini told us plenty of stories that day, including stories about some of the brilliant students he had come across in his time at UNICAMP. He started a division there of Bioinformatics, the discipline that telemedicine most readily falls under. In his words, he saw "all of the crazy people" that didn't quite fit into medicine or computing, but were rather interested in both, like himself. It turns out that Professor Sabbatini has two Ph.D's to go along with his MD, and is also very well studied in engineering. He's certainly one of the smartest people I've ever met, and yet he is very nice and loves cracking jokes. His favorite thing, I've come to realize, is telling stories, as it seems like he is always giving a brief history lesson when we have a convesation. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful, though I did go to the supermarket to recharge some of my dwindling supplies. Post about Thursday's events and observations coming soon.