icbe 2007 conference blog - day 2

so i'm sitting here in san diego, ca, in the lobby of the coronado island marriott resort. a muzak version of bonnie tyler's "angel of the morning" plays over the speakers, accompanied by soothing bird-like nature sounds. directly outside the front doors, a small pond is home to at least 15 flamingos. fucking flamingos! i'm also skipping a talk because i need a break from science. anyway, here's what happened yesterday.

i awoke at like 6 am. still on east coast time, i thought we had slept through something. as we didn't, i went back to sleep til 7 or so and we got some breakfast. 3 kinds of cut-up melons and assorted fruits, and some croissants i guess.

then i went to some talks. i drank a lot of coffee. like a lot a lot. i feel like at least 50% of my time at this conference has been spent drinking and urinating liquids. anyway, lunch finally came at 1230 (remember, still on east coast time). every meal here (except breakfast) is a three-course meal that is served as such. we have been receiving an impressive array of salads and at each meal there is at least one item on my plate that i simply cannot identify. also, until lunch today there had been shiitake mushrooms in every meal.

also every meal is cream of butter cheese fondue with rich cream for dessert. the food is quite rich, an adjective i might also use to describe someone who would actually pay to stay here.

the science is interesting and it's a great conference talk-wise and attendance-wise. but the internet doesn't care about science so i'll leave it at that.

after lunch there was another session and i had to stand by my poster for a few hours and talk to people about stuff. then we heard a talk from j. craig venter. you know, the guy who sequenced the human genome.

afterwards we went to a bar which was a navy dive bar (think top gun) and soon left to get 6-packs at the liquor store [that smelled like pot] and drink them in our hotel room with a bunch of other kids. and that was that.

san diego is a fun place, dude.