COCOSDA 2005, BPPT Jakarta

Well ...

Last Tuesday 6th Dec 2005 I went to Jakarta for a conference on speech technology named COCOSDA 2005, the next conference will be held in Malaysia.

There were some interesting papers on speech technology including ASR, TTS, etc. There were 5 of us from ITB but none of us sent papers since we were invited to join not to participate by Dr. Arry Akhmad Arman ... Indonesian 1st Text-to-Speech expert.

I could get to know forreign researchers on speech technology from Japan, Thailand, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan; Discussed on their present achievement and cooperate in the future whenever possible. Actually speech technology isn't my speciality but getting know on it is also interesting ... perhaps someday we could build an intelligent partners ie. robots which could acquire our speech and conversate like any other human. It's still far beyond the sun, but well that's the dream of future and of course ... Japan would like to register as the first nation to develop such technology.

O right ... 4 females gave presentation from their papers; one from Taiwan, one from Indonesia but works in Japan, another 2 from Japan.

The speaker from Taiwan was somewhat attracted 3 of us (hehehehe .. boys will be boys :P), she's quite pretty and smart as well on her subject. Unfortunately, one of the board of executors critized her subject was out of topic ... I spent my time at the coffee break to talk to her regarding her topics. Again, one of the thing that barred me from talking to her was her English. I barely understood her speaking therefore I spoke "pardon me ... ?" several times, hahahahaha.

Also, I spent some of my time talking to a speaker from Japan who is an Indonesian; she works in ATR Japan and her name is Sakriani Sakti. The thing that surprised me was that she was my brother in law junior in ITB !! Good grief ... what a small world after all. From her talks and her speech I could reckognize she's a very smart and intelligent lady -I wonder why you are still single ... hmmm :D- well Mr Arry said that you would be giving a presentation in class next Thursday aren't you ? Good luck ... I'll see you there since I'm taking the same class :)

The conference lasted 2 days, so after the first day we stayed for a night at hotel Cipta KH Wahid Hasyim Jakarta. After some registrations, we finally got room 410 consisting 2 beds but we were 3 so brilliantly we concantenated 2 beds ... hehehehe. After few hours at hotel we decided to sight seeing at Plaza Senayan .. not far from BPPT. Dang ... Jakarta traffic jams really sucked, but fortunately using traffic jams to study maps is a good idea :), I drove the car while my partner navigated to Plaza Senayan. We got lost on the way there since we didn't know much on Jakarta but finally we could get to it somehow.

The day after was smooth, but we had to go back to Bandung in the evening ... so we apologized Mr Arry for a plan going back to Bandung right after an afternoon coffee break. And we kept our promise, right after taking coffee break we departed for Bandung, but we made a transit first to Plaza Indonesia because Eva had to pick up her bag from her sister who works in Jakarta. So again, we made a sight seeing in Plaza Senayan for several minutes then drove away to Bandung. It was raining in Jakarta PLUS the densed traffic jams.

Finally, we arrived in Bandung at about 2030. After taking my friends back to their residence I went home.

Farewell BPPT, COCOSDA 2005 and to other participants I couldn't get to know some of them. I hope to see you again ... as a specialist not participants anymore ;) and to Ms Lin, that Taiwan lady ... I hope to chat with you again someday :P