Blessed by the Potato

I know not many of you are checking the site at all anymore, and it has been far too long since I updated. I’ve been very busy of late, and been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block at work that seems to be tranferring to the website as well. Things have been crazy busy there: in addition to all the work for my crazy project, I’m also teaching a class this term (!) which is incredibly demanding. I’m responsible for everything, from planning the syllabus to creating the assignments, delivering the lectures to booking the rooms… and this is a brand-new course, too, so I don’t even have a textbook or anything to use as a guide. The damnedest thing about it is that my first class is today, and I still have no idea if I’m getting paid for this, or if I was suckered into volunteering. It’s a lot of work, so I really hope I’m getting paid, but on the other hand, my new contract prohibits me from moonlighting (on the gripping hand, volunteering would likely count as moonlighting too, if I really wanted to get out of it). I’m stuck, of course, because I want to teach: I think it’s a vital part of getting a PhD, and it’s a real shame sometimes that there aren’t more teaching opportunities around in this department (especially less demanding ones).

So, I’ve had two posts “half-written” (in actuality, it’s far fewer than half the words, but I’ve put some of my thoughts down in point-form so I don’t lose them) for over a week now, and I had hoped to get them up on the weekend. Since they’re not up I don’t want to make any more promises about when they will appear, but will try to return to a frequent updating schedule soon.

In other news, I made some very good-looking cinnamon rolls last week and remembered to take a picture of them, so hopefully I’ll get that off the camera soon and up on the recipes page.

Finally, curling season is upon us again, and I hope to get into at least two leagues this year. It’s a bit of a shame that UWO is taking out its curling ice: it’s putting a lot of pressure on the other clubs in London, and means that a lot of students who found it pricey last year won’t get to play at all, since it was actually really cheap ($75 at UWO last year for 1 game/week; London Curling Club is $170 base + ~$40/league night for students, $420+ for regular members). I’m planning on joining the London Curling Club, and hope to play at least twice a week. One thing I’m not really looking forward to is that they heavily segregate the men’s & women’s sections. There are only two mixed leagues, and I can’t make one of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I found I preferred playing in mixed leagues in the past: they tend to be a lot less competitive, and the presence of women helps keep the banter cleaner. Of course, this will be a proper curling club rather than a university one, so those probably don’t apply… Finally, I don’t know if I told the story of varcity curling here from last year. Basically, I was interested in trying out for the varcity curling league here at UWO last year. I checked the webpage, found the time & location for the information meeting, and went. It was on a Thursday night in the worst rain we’d had in years. I don’t know why I insisted on going, but I went. My shoes were soaked through before I even got to the bridge. At that point I just gave up and enjoyed being soaked right through. When I got to the room, there were 4 other prospective curlers waiting… and waiting. We waited, soaking wet, for about a half hour, and no one showed up. No one came with a message to say the coach was stuck in the rain, or that the team was full. After a half hour, we just started drifting away to go home. I could have emailed or called the coach after I got home, but I wasn’t too interested in working with someone who’d skip an important first meeting like that, and I was a little leery of the whole varcity idea anyway (I was hoping the information meeting would tell me something, such as how much of a time commitment it was). At the end, I was soaked right through my jacket, through my shirt, pants, and even underwear. I was wet. I couldn’t wear my shoes for 2 days.

So tonight was the information meeting for this year’s varcity curling team. I figured I was still somewhat interested and wanted more information, so I marked the day on my calendar. As was fated, it rained today, quite a bit at that. I decided I wasn’t going to be a sucker twice, so I drove up to campus to see if it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if it was the rain or what, but campus was absolutely packed (and this was at 7 pm), and there wasn’t a single parking space near where I was going — even the pay lots were full. There were, of course, spots in the more outlying lots, but most of those are not much closer than walking from my place, and I wasn’t about to do that again. I’m still thinking about emailing for details: being on a varcity team looks good for scholarship applications (I think), and while I have no idea what the commitment is like for the practice schedule, I know that there are only ~8 games in the competitive season, held over 2/3 weekends in January/February, that third weekend only taking place if we win — not too shabby at all in terms of demands on my time.

What a goddamned fucking mess these bills are from the Gran Melia are: do not stay there, especially if you need receipts to get reimbursed.

In addition to the general shittiness that we knew about when checking out (not honouring the quoted conference rate, charging for 3 people after 1 had checked out, weird, non-translatable spanish only), we’ve uncovered a new wrinkle: they charged us twice. Not double, not quite that bad. No, what they did is they charged our credit cards for $168 US before we even got there.

A week before we got there.

What $168 US is, we have no idea: the student rate on the room was $115, the supervisor rate was $150, and the hotel’s regular rates weren’t actually too far off from that, with rooms starting as low as $109 (which is why it was a double piss-off to not honour the conference rate: we got like 25% off at the other place, but this place the conference rate was quite close to their normal rates). So, what they did is they put in a credit for our accounts for $168 US (in Pesos, so we probably got screwed on the double exchange) as soon as we checked in, then racked up the charges on top of that. It means a few things that really screw with our heads: first, is that the grand total I signed off on was *not* the grand total charged to my credit card, since there was that extra at the beginning ($1,481.50 was the bill I approved at check-out, but I was actually charged $1,669.66). Next, the receipt is only for $1,481.50, so I have to somehow explain to the hospital’s accounting department that they need to look at the first line of a 3-page bill and see the credit there as something else they need to pay me. I have my credit card statement, and hope that will help me, but they’re notorious for not accepting statements on the same footing as receipts (especially when it’s dated a week before the conference you were ostensibly travelling to attend!).

It’s also strange that we had this charge since they never told us that there was an advance charge/deposit (and, in fact, had a seperate deposit charged upon check-in). It was also charged well before their published no-fee cancellation date, so it’s not like we were being locked in at that point.

Talking with others now that I’m back in Canada has added new dimensions to this affair as well: they knew very well that early check-outs from rooms with 3 people checked out, despite continuing the charges, since they got in a fight before they let them go. In order to prevent one person from a room fleeing and sticking the charge on the other person, or leaving without paying by claiming that someone else was still there when you were really the last to leave, they require you to present a check-out pass before the bellboys at the front door will let you off the property. If you’re just doing a partial check-out, and sticking the bill with someone else, they need to call that person and get their permission. I was out of touch, so they almost didn’t let my roommate catch his bus back to the airport… I’ve got to call shenanigans when they claim they don’t have a record of him checking out.

The bills of other students are even more pockmarked, where not only were the conference rates not honoured, but they changed every day they were there. Correcting entries (“traspaso cuentas”) were made on various days, adding hundreds of dollars to the bill, then taking almost all of it back off.

All of this is on top of the general non-communication from the hotel: no 1-800 number to call, getting put on hold when calling regular day-time long distance, not answering a single email of ours, and not telling us any of this billing stuff until we find, with a shock, that VISA wants the money from us. I can’t do much about it: arguing with them for 20 minutes in person didn’t do much, so calling them long-distance is probably just throwing good money after bad. Hopefully work will sort all this out and I won’t get stuck with it (my Accountant is better than my Spanish). In the meantime, I’ll just do my best to pan them here and on other travel review sites.

We didn’t get a chance to stay there since they were destroyed by the Hurricane, but the Marriott was much better about at least responding to emails and phone calls while we were setting up our booking in the first place (even if they, er… lied about their ability to open on time and host the conference at all).

I work with an Evil Genius, it’s clear now. Look at what they did to the desk of the girl who won the best speaker prize while we were away. Just marvel at it! I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time I was at work today, and it’s just going to be awesome to watch her take her revenge on these guys.

Note the attention to detail: they individually wrapped all the levers on the desk chair. The lightswitches were wrapped in such a way as to still be functional. The nozzle on the hand cream pump was very elegantly wrapped; the airconditioner and its cord were wrapped, as were the coat hangars. Everything inside the desk drawer (including the interior of the drawer) was wrapped. There’s even a circle you can see where an elastic band had been covered. What I love most is the Kleenex box on her shelf, with the newspaper coming out the top, it’s so artistic I well up a little just thinking about it.

I’m totally hiring these guys to wrap my Potatomas presents.

This prank also made me realize how very terrible my digital camera is. Even with a well-lit room and standing remarkably still, I got motion blur with most of the pictures I took.

I had over 50 messages in one email account, and 115 in another account that I pretty much only use for the BEMs discussion group. I thought that maybe some of the discussions at the meeting had spilled over into something that was intensely intellectually stimulating on the email list.

It was better: a massive flame war had broken out. It’s fantastically lame, all these scientists & tin-foil crazies sissy-slapping each other in public email, while others call for order, sometimes even in all-capitals. I haven’t finished plowing through it yet, but so far no one has made a Hitler simile; not even an oblique reference to communism, asbestos, or giant robots. It doesn’t appear as though usual usenet flame rules appear here; a carefully balanced system in which Godwin’s Law does not apply. It’s possible that this flame could burn for years, with new students joining the fray and taking up the moronic position of their thesis supervisors, continuing the fight for generations to come. I’m tempted to introduce new technology to the battle, such as the flame form or profanity, just to see how they react and handle it.

Checking out of the Gran Melia was hell: they charged us $65 US per night for the 3rd person in our room (after quoting $50/night for the conference rate). However, we only had the 3rd person and the cot for 5 of the 7 nights, but got charged for all 7. We tried to fight it, but they told us the charge was for the 3rd person, not the cot. I pulled out my receipt showing that I had checked in a day after the other two, so even if they had lost the records for the first person checking out a day early, at the very least that was proof there were only two people for the first day. They sat there and refused to take the charge off. Finally, my ride to the airport arrived and I had to give up and go. Hopefully work will cover it.

That pretty much sums up the hotel: the facilities were decent (except for the hot water capacity… there only seemed to be luke warm water in the afternoons, probably due to the sun beating on the pipes). The staff was reasonably friendly, but the prices were just insane for everything. They constantly screwed up reservations, bar bills, and changed quoted prices on the fly. We knew it was an expensive place heading out, and it turned out to be significantly more expensive than planned when leaving. I can’t recommend it as a vacation destination for anyone who hasn’t won the lottery. A few years ago, we stayed at a resort in Costa Verde, Cuba, and it was about half the price for a place that was almost as nice. The only thing Cancun had over Cuba was the option to go into town for shopping/bars/restaurants/clubs if you wanted (which we didn’t really), and I doubt that’s high on most people’s list of priorities when they look for a beach resort.

The flight back was pretty decent: we ended up coming back almost an hour early. I was the first one through customs, but then had to wait about 20 minutes for my bags to come up on the conveyor. I got bad directions from someone at Pearson for the Park ‘n Fly shuttle — they pointed at section “C” and said what I thought was “C”. After waiting almost half an hour for a bus that should have come every 10 minutes, I found out from someone else that the bus would be in “P” (they do rhyme). Once I got to P there was a bus waiting for me. While waiting though, the interterminal busses came by like crazy there: the terminal 1->3 bus came by so often that the next one would arrive and honk at the one that came before since it hadn’t had a chance to leave yet. You were never a moment without being able to see one of those. There was less than two minutes to wait for the 1->2 busses.

In the end, I was the only one who didn’t get sick and didn’t get a sunburn (fancy that!). After I wore a T-shirt into the pool on the second last day I was there, all the guys were wearing T-shirts into the pool.

After getting home I was telling all my stories to Wayfare — which mostly involve complaining, as you can imagine — who commented:

Wow, you’re not so much of a ‘my glass is half empty’ kind of guy so much as you are a ‘my glass is broken!’ kind of guy.

At dinner one night, a question was posed to me: if money was no object, where in the world would I go? I didn’t have an answer to that question at first. They goaded me: “Surely there must be somewhere you’d go, for historical reasons, or for the sights, or even the chocolate…” but no, I’m just that much of an agoraphobic that if money were no object, I could just pay to have people come to me :) Eventually, I changed the hypothetical a little: if money, agoraphobia, arachnapobia, ophidiphobic, etc. were all not an issue, I’d visit the rainforest and monkey around the trees with the primates, or go diving with the penguins off Antartica. I asked them where they’d go, and everyone at the table replied, in unison: Bora Bora. It was a little freaky, to tell the truth. Where would you all go?

Finally, it looks like Sword of the Stars is recruiting beta testers. I’m tempted to apply, but afraid it will destroy me ;)

After 3 days of begging, pleading, threatening with the hotel to let us use the wireless network since the free internet in our rooms was out, they finally realized that they might be responsible for a mass scientist internet addiction suicide pact if they didn’t open it up, so I’ve finally got some internet access. It’s only in the lecture rooms and the immediate area though, so I won’t be checking my email much. I’ll try to write a few in my room and cut/paste when I come down to the talks. Also, there’s a good chance my webserver will die towards the end of the week, and I won’t be able to get it back up until Monday morning, so be patient if the site disappears!

Notes on the trip:

Day 1:

That was the fastest I’ve ever been through security in Toronto. They had me take my laptop out of my bag as usual so the thieves could identify me, but then never even did a swipe test for explosives, let alone trying to get me to turn it on and all that jazz that eats up time. The guy in front of me had a huge camera case with like 24 different lenses, and the swipetest lady had to get them all, so after he packed up she just walked off on her break. I’m left standing there wondering if I can just pack up and go or if someone else is going to come test my laptop, and maybe look in my shoes and anus like they did in Washington, but they just waved me through.

I found Stephen King’s the Dark Tower part 3 in the airport book shop and bought it (my local Chapters only seems to stock 1, 2, 4 and 6, and I want to read them in order). I ended up starting into Sabriel (Garth Nix) on the plane instead (it looked easier to read in turbulence), and so far it’s been really engaging. I met my supervisor at a breakfast place in Pearson, which was good because part of my terror at having to take an international flight was doing it all on my own. It was good for him too because he hadn’t read the instructions on what to do once we got into Mexico, so I guided him through that part.

The plane ride wasn’t very good. We had about 3 hours of mild turbulence (on a 4 hour flight). Not so much that people were hitting the ceiling, but enough that I was really glad the people beside me slept the whole way and didn’t order any drinks. Oh yeah, and the seatbelt light was on the whole time. Most people ignored it though, including the family that had been split up in front and behind me. The mom and the ~1 year old screaming hellspawn were in front of me, and the dad and the jackrabbit ~4 year old were behind me. So for most of the ride this baby is just wailing its head off and this kid behind me is kicking the seat, and the two parents are stumbling back and forth trading off duties, while the airplane shakes and shudders…

It’s not a new idea, but there really should be a law against taking infants on planes (the kicking was less annoying than the screaming, and it only affected me, whereas nobody likes hearing a wailing baby on a plane, and they almost all wail). I know, I’m biased against air travel in the first place, but really, your infant who can’t speak and won’t remember any of what happens to it will not really get a whole lot out of your beach vacation – dump them at the grandparents, or a wet nurse or whatever it takes and go away yourselves if you must, but for the love of god don’t bring them on a plane unless you absolutely must (for instance, when emigrating one-way and only once). Remember, this is from a guy who generally likes kids (there was actually a cute moment where I crossed my eyes and the baby in front of me went all “blurgggle hehe!”): if you bring your baby on a plane and it cries for more than 90 continuous minutes, I will take it from you, and wring its little neck (if I’m feeling merciful; if not I’ll throw it out and leave you with the decision of whether or not to jump after it). That, or put them in a separate (mostly) sound proofed section. E.g.: move the galley section up a few rows from the very back, and then in the tail cone you can stick a dozen cheap seats for babies and their families. It’s also conveniently close to the washrooms!

Anyhow, we got to Mexico and there was a relatively long line at immigration. When we finally got up, they scanned our passports, stamped them, stamped the immigration forms we filled out on the plane, and sent us on our way without saying a single word to us.

Our flight number was up on a baggage carousel, so I sat at that for almost half an hour with no sign of our luggage. In the end, it turned out we had spent so long in the immigration queue that our bags had been taken off the carousel and put in the unclaimed luggage section. From there it was a smooth ride through customs, they just asked where we were coming from and sent us through with nothing to declare. It wasn’t quite that simple, actually: the Mexicans have a fairly elegant way of selecting people for random screens. You press a button below a traffic light: if the green light comes on, you walk out of the airport. If the red light comes on, you have to empty your bags. I don’t know if it actually makes it random in a fair way, or if it just provides that illusion to travelers while someone behind the scenes chooses the light based on the usual mix of racial profiling, behaviour, appearance, and a smidgen of good old fashioned randomness.

Checking into the Gran Melia wasn’t too bad, the guy who helped me was actually from Scarberia, though that didn’t leave much to talk about aside from “Hey, we’re both from Canada… ok, can I have my room?”

Unfortunately, once I got up here it was a different story: there is no internet access. The free in-room data ports are here, but they’re just not actually connected to anything (we have two dataports, so I theoretically didn’t even need to bring my networking stuff to get both of our computers working). There’s wireless access in the lobby (which does barely sneak up here with one bar of service), but it requires a login that runs at a steep $5 (US) for 15 minutes. That’s $20/hour, and likely over $200 for the week if I were to use the internet as I had planned when I got here (I was going to use Skype to call home, I had a bunch of emails I had put off writing, I was going to look up some papers by someone presenting here). I might break down and check my email in a few days for 15 minutes… but that’s really excessive pricing to begin with, let alone when there’s a big conference here (ok, a small conference; slightly larger than a large symposium). There are a lot of scientists who brought computers hoping to get some work done in the off hours (or even just email each other after the talks while the ideas are still fresh). At ISMRM when similar problems arose, they brought in a few email stations: just open-access computers for people to check their webmail at. A time limit kept them from being monopolized (and the hard stares of a hungry crowd behind the users), and they were completely free.

Anyhow, the room itself is pretty nice: marble in the bathroom, the beds look decent (though we had to order more pillows since they’re really flat; plus Mexico has a smaller double bed than we do). The décor is good (for a hotel), and we have our own private balcony to soak up the sun. There is air conditioning (but not in the girls’ room!), and it’s about adequate. It’s definitely cooler in here than out there, but it’s running on high and making a lot of noise just to keep up. I’d say it’s about 22 C now that the sun has gone down. Comfortable enough, but hardly cold (which the noise would make you think).

Day 2:

The A/C finally caught up overnight, and we woke up to a room at a lovely 19 C. The talks today weren’t very good: one of the biggest problems was that so many scientists seem to need to cue themselves off of their slides, and the room is set up with the screen and lecture in opposite corners, so you look at it from a pretty oblique angle from the podium. It also makes laser pointing difficult. Unfortunately, scientists seem to be not only completely ignorant of the basics of personal hygene, but also the concepts of how microphones work and contrast. We had a few people come up to the mic, test it, then turn around to read their slides and speak like that, and no one could hear them, so the poor hotel tech guy had to run up and physically place the microphone in front of their faces. Then one guy just didn’t take the hint and turned around a few more times, out of the way of the mic again. It wasn’t too bad though, since his talk was terrible (starting with the illustrious title of “the proper use of statistics on the field of bioelectromagnetics” – we thought it would be a basic tutorial on parametric and non-parametric stats, perhaps with some scathing examples of bad stats published in BEMs recently… instead it could have been summarized with one slide that said “Do good stats, it’s important.”). People also had terrible presentations prepared, with no concept of contrast for readability. One guy had an abstract background that basically looked like the sun in one corner with a deep blue background. So a whole quarter of the screen was white/yellow (with yellow streaks at that since it was kind of starbursty), and the text was… yellow. Another guy had a picture in the background of what looked like a lake on a cloudy day, so you have some very white sky for the whole top half, and some pale blue water (reflecting the clouds) on the bottom, with nearly invisible white text on top of it. You can tell he never even looked at it for a practice session, since he was trying to just read the screen word-for-word, and could barely make it out himself, after walking up to the screen (which also prompted the A/V guy to run up and move the mic for him).

I’m not looking forward to my talk tomorrow too much with this setup…

Anyhow, something else I forgot to mention is that the toilets here are pretty strange: the flusher is sort of spring loaded so there’s resistance when you move it, but you only have to move it a tiny bit for it to suddenly go bang and flush. It’s a little odd.

Day 3, morning:

My god, they *both* snore.

Day 3, later:

So last night I just couldn’t sleep: I had my talk and I was somewhat nervous about it, and both of my roommates were snoring. AL was snoring with a low, constant wheeze that was just a bit louder than the air conditioner and my earplugs could compensate for. I could have slept through it, however, since it was nice and regular… if not for the added harmonies of CC, who has a terrible, world-ending grunt/gasp snore that is very loud and very irregular. Sometimes, he would snore so loud he even woke himself up.

I decided I just couldn’t sleep through that (though if I managed to get asleep, I could probably stay asleep through the snoring), so I grabbed my book and read in the lobby until about 4 in the morning, when I was finally sleepy enough to give it another go. It still took a while after that, but I eventually got the hang of it and managed to sleep – almost slept right through breakfast, too.

The days here are *long*, starting at 7 am and going until almost 6 with the talks, with social events to follow. I was pretty nervous and sleepy for my talk, and now I have virtually no recollection of what I said. I know I left out some points I came up with the night before based on the talks of the first day (no true replication efforts in BEMs, etc.), but not what I actually said. The room was packed, right to standing room only. Ok, it wasn’t quite that bad, since people vastly prefer aisle seats, there were plenty of spare seats in the middle for the people who did end up standing. Nonetheless, it was a daunting sight. Everyone says I did okay though, and despite coming close my voice never actually cracked (but my pointing was uselessly shaky).

It’s over now, and I had a big plate of nachos and cucumbers for dinner (which go together surprisingly well).

After the social event, a few of us had another drink at the hotel bar and then decided to go for a night swim, but security kicked us out of the pool, so we went to the beach, where I lost my room key. Then another security team stormed the beach blowing whistles (it’s shark season, and the tide was going out with a fury), so we went back in. On the way back, we saw a roach that was almost 3” long – good times were had by all.

Back in the hotel I realized not only did I lose the room key, but I also lost the gift Alex had entrusted to me from the BEMs society for his sponsorship. I also found out that something in the water had eaten at or caused an allergic reaction with my feet and legs, because I was just covered in tiny little red bumps. Fortunately they don’t itch much.

But yuck!

Day 4:

It took a little bit to fall asleep last night with the two lumberjacks beside me, but I managed to get a decent sleep… by sleeping through the morning plenary and barely making it to the talks I did want to see (it still wasn’t a very good lay in, at least for me: I was still out the door by 10 am). The bumps on my feet have gotten bigger and started to itch; there’s one on my hand too. I’m suddenly afraid I didn’t pack enough Benedryl (I’m already down to 5, with 3 and a half days to go).

I haven’t complained much about the hotel, so I suppose it’s time to remedy that. There is no concept of hot water here, which I find odd given the fixtures all have two taps; must be imported from the States then. The showers, even with just the ostensibly hot tap on, are not even luke warm. The cold tap is only marginally colder. It’s made showering somewhat of a pain, especially since it’s so hot and sticky that I take two showers a day. Sooner or later I’m going to have to shave or they won’t let me on the plane, and that’s going to be a bitch with cold water.

Almost everyone who ate the beef last night got sick (except my supervisor, who we theorize might be sick on the inside, but too drunk or large to actually take notice). We all packed tiny travel bottles of hand sanitizer, but suddenly today everyone remembers to carry them around with them :)

The maid staff comes by 3 times a day, and it’s getting annoying. They move our stuff around, even if no one’s moved anything since the last maid moved stuff. They come in in the mornings and make our beds like you would expect a normal hotel to do, putting the icky top patterned sheet back on the bed, and the coloured pillows that you’re not actually supposed to sleep on. Then in the afternoon they stop by for just a few minutes to move our stuff and put out another room service menu. I think we have 6 in the room now; I’m surprised they don’t just wallpaper the room with them. Later in the evening they stop by again and take the icky top sheet off the beds, put away the covered pillows, and lay down a chocolate mint. It’s all very superfluous.

It’s an extremely expensive hotel for all of this, and they employ Dark Arts to conjure up the bill. Someone recommended that we check our detailed bill long before it came time to check out, so we had the front desk print us off a copy. They charge us $5 US per day for “bell boys” and $9 US per day for room service (they told us they would include gratuities, but yikes, I’m not that good a tipper!). The room rate is nowhere near either of the conference rates quoted (we’re getting hit for about $130 US/night, while student rooms should be $115 and supervisor rooms $150), and they’re charging us $65/night for the cot for our third person (despite promising to honour the quoted rates for our first hotel, which was $115 per night and $10 for a cot).

Everything else here is expensive, too. The food and drinks can be deceptively expensive, since they give us the drinks in tiny glasses or bottles. $2 for a coke is not unheard of at a bar or restaurant for us, but you usually get somewhere in the 350 mL neighbourhood of liquid – I think these are running at more like 100-150 mL (they’re less than half a can). Most ridiculous was my phone call to use my calling card: $61 US for less than 10 minutes to what should have been a toll-free number.

Most of the front desk and restaurant staff speak passable to decent English, so it’s been pretty good for us here. However, the maids and repair people don’t speak a word, so it’s very difficult to tell them what’s wrong with the air conditioner, or that there’s no need to barge in every 3 hours.

The conference hasn’t been a spectacular one. There were a fair number of no-shows, and many talks were sub-par. Also, the side discussions haven’t been as good as they were in Dublin or Washington – it seems when a talk that’s uninteresting comes up, rather than going outside for a coffee and discussion, most people are slinking away to their rooms or hitting the beach. I can’t really blame them, since I’ve just slinked up to my room to write on the computer.

It raises an interesting question about where we should site conferences, though. For an upcoming conference in a few years, it’s been decided that Canada will play host, so it’s essentially fallen to our lab (as Canadians) to try to decide on where exactly in Canada we should host it. Some people say our only real options are Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal, since it will be easier for people to get to a large city and there will be more things to do so they can turn it into a vacation. But most people don’t really even pretend that a conference is going to be a vacation, so that may just needlessly make things more expensive, and not really live up to people’s expectations of Canada (green spaces, nature, etc.). A good compromise has been London, where not only are we already located (which gives people the opportunity to tour our lab and see things first-hand rather than on powerpoint), but is also close enough to some open spaces and nice river walking trails that people can spend a little bit of time with nature. Plus, it’s close enough to Toronto that people can still easily go see a ball game or show or whatever, and large enough to have the hotel and meeting room capacity we need. Another suggestion was to really go all out and go to the Maritimes or northern Ontario. There are a number of resorts in those places that we could rent out, but it would probably end up being more expensive than London (unless we went in the off season). One further suggestion was to rent partial blocks of a number of nearby places (which might be cheaper than dominating a resort large enough for all of us) and then arranging for shuttle busses for everyone.

It’s a surprisingly interesting problem, with many factors being considered, right down to having to force people to take connecting flights (hardly anything flies direct to London or Ottawa, and busses would be necessary if we went for a nature retreat).