The rest of the conference has been seriously good. It's really a very friendly crew, and even though there was more than 700 people, I felt like it was a good community by the end of the week. Last night we had an enormous dinner and dancing event, and that was heaps of fun. It made for a very late night, and we all had to be out of our dorm rooms early so there were a lot of tired and grumpy people at breakfast. I spent most of last night with the Aberdeen crew, there's so many of them that are doing good research in health psychology. It's not a place that has been on my radar, but now it certainly will be. They have an Australian research fellow as part of their team too.
For a formal event, we thought the food was quite amusing. It was buffet style, where you could choose from a selection of different coloured slop, and then you could choose rice, pasta, or potatos to go with it. They had a soft serve ice cream machine for dessert. The company, the wine and the dancing made up for it.
I'm in London now for my last night. I'm staying in a remarkably pleasant place for the price I paid, if I ignore the unhelpful, indifferent receptionist who is clearly bored out of his brain and is working as little as possible to prove it.
I'm totally drained from the conference and the people, and I'm a little bit sick of moving around so much, and tonight I really couldn't be bothered doing anything. I'm spent. I treated myself to a special dinner...Burger King take-away eaten in bed (and yeah, I've put on some weight while being away, I'm so going to start exercising again when I get home) while I watched tv ...and 2 pounds worth of wireless internet access. Wild night in. My room is up so many stories that the wireless signal in my room is too weak to connect, so I've settled in the lounge. Turns out there's a huge plasma tv here that has about 30 channels so that was a good find anyway. I had the place to myself (Friday night, everyone else is out doing something exciting in the city no doubt), until about 15 minutes ago when 2 older couples came down to play cards. They shared their wine with me so I was happy to share the space with them.
Although I'm a bit tired of moving around so much, I'm not that happy about leaving tomorrow. I'll be happy to be home once I'm home, but I'm a little bit sad that it's all over. I am quite motivated for work things though, especially after the conference and meeting so many interesting people and finding out about the great stuff that's going on over here.
I miss Leila! After spending so much time together it's a bit weird not having her around. So...we're meeting up again tomorrow before I go to the airport! She came to London to visit a friend and turns out she's not too far away. So that will be good!
An anecdote for my high school friends...my parents were flying out of Slovenia and guess who they saw in the que as they were boarding the place? Jill Kirk! She was on the same flight going home from Slovenia to London. Jill recognised mum straight away (she always was such a people person) and they had a bit of a chat. Pretty crazy huh?
Signing off...see you soon.
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