Just got back from a week in Hawaii at the conference. Presented a research poster on Wednesday as a part of a retirement ceremony for the pioneer of my field, and he even looked at my poster and told me I did a good job.
Also got an opportunity to talk to an early-30's scientist in my field who said he was looking for PhD. students in New Zealand~ Also attended the retirement party which was a chance to meet some scientists in a bit more of a social capacity. I generally tried to attend a lot of research talks related to my field and otherwise slack and go to the beach.
Climbed up Diamond Head, which was a lookout mountain back when the primary thing done in Oahu was military. It was nice but I am really out of shape! Went to the Pearl Harbor museum and took a tour, where I was impressed with the emphasis on how terrible war is rather than American propaganda. Thumbs up. Saturday we bussed to the north of Oahu where there are some more quiet beaches and took a bunch of pictures and ate at Obama's favorite shaved ice place. It's very beautiful! I'm just looking a little lobstery now.
Ate a lot of food that was paid for by the school.
Thai and seafood seems to be the big thing in Hawaii.
Also got to hang out with one of my awesome lab mates a lot. She's from South Korea, so we went out for some Korean food the last night I was there. Yum
. Bought some glorious abortion-loving Girl Scout cookies; the samoas and the savannah smiles. They don't have those flavors in Canada. ;_;
The plane trip home was interesting. It started super turbulent for about 45 minutes, I thought I was going to die but then because of the really fast tailwind we went like 1200 km/hr and got home more quickly. Got home early despite leaving 30 minutes late, which was cool.