Ok, first real day of the conference. I woke up at 7:30 am because I had hoped to get the poster laminated before the first lecture. But, when I got into town, the place didn't open till 9:00 am so I went back to the big opening plenary. The talk was (for me) actually quite interesting and relevant. At the end I asked a question (one of only two from the whole audience) and the speaker couldn't hear me so I was standing up trying to make myself understood in front of about 400 people or more including my honours and current Ph.D. supervisor who I saw not far away in the audience. But it turned out Ok, and I was happy that I had the guts to do that. The next lecture was more irrelevant so I went into town (again!) and got the poster laminated and it looked pretty spiffy.
The rest of the day I was rather bored and quite unpleasantly warm. I spent time in lectures, at the lab and at home. I read a fair chunk of Bolin's "the Search for Eve: Transsexual rites of passage" which is quite a perceptive book which is not unexpected considering the large amount of input which transsexuals had as oppose to simply being a collection of other studies. I may take it to some of the lectures tomorrow in case my boredom falls to life-threatening levels… *g*
The poster night for me at least was tonight, where a poster is a collection of what you're doing, why you're doing it and where you expect to go with your research in the future. Mine was about 9 A4 pages long and except for one other from our research group was the only one in it's particular area so there wasn't much else to keep me amused. I chatted with a few people and that was about it. there is another poster session tomorrow but I am not presenting anything thank heavens.
Ok, I am majorly zonked out, so I'm going to crawl the long distance (about 2 meters) to my bed and not wake up for days… ;)