Frank Morgan

There seem to be no obstacles to progress in Thailand: everything is for sale. The streets of Bangkok are crowded with vendors of all kinds of food and clothing and services. If you need soap bubbles for your talk, you can find them at Toys R Us. If you need computer repair because you spilled soap bubbles on your new MacBook Air during your talk, there are even some ten authorized Apple repair shops, as in the famous Pantip Plaza, which also boasts three Apple sales shops. If you want to try durian ice cream despite the smell, it’s available at the nearest Metro station. If you want to visit some temples, you can hire a tuk-tuk for an hour for 30 Baht = $1, as long as you’re willing to visit a sponsoring tailor shop on the way.

The first three pictured former students treated me to dinner at In Love restaurant by the river.

Harit Rodpraser, Aom Kitichaiwat, Ta Banchuin, and Rungporn Roengpitya work at the Bank of Thailand. I found them through former student Chung Truong, pictured here at his penthouse room, who just showed up at my talk in Ho Chi Minh City.

Aom guided me to the Chula Mathematics Department. Ta was impressive in her master’s thesis defense  on “Finding a global factor in a country’s bond yield.”

So try to make it to the International Conference on Mathematics and Applications, ICMA-MU 2011, 17-19 December 2011 at the Twin Towers Hotel, Bangkok.