The splendor of old town Montreal... Just returned last night sans luggage of course. Turns out Montreal is completely in French. Most everyone knew english, but everything intially began with a Bon Jour... Too many stories to tell. It was a fun trip. Mostly hung out with my lab members current and past and had a blast. My talk went well, and the session I assembled was quite a hit. Everyone in the field was excited to see it and thought the speakers in it did a great job. A reporter from an environmental magazine asked for my card, I laughed and told her I don't have a card!!! Guess I better get some eh? One of the speakers did not show up, still a mystery why not- just sent an email seeing what happened. All around a good conference though. I felt really good when I was sitting in a talk on Thursday and looked up to see my name in someone else's talk! The recent Trends in Ecology and Evolution article I wrote with a post doc in our lab was being cited and touted as one of the must reads. She after the talk told us that the article has become required reading in her class. It is nice to get an occasional ego boost like that. I will have to hold onto that inspiration once I dive into the fun of dissertation writing. I met with a well known professor about doing a post-doc in his lab. A good lunch, looks like a great lab with highly productive people that I could actually hang out with. Now all I need is a great idea to generate grant money (story of my graduate life....). It was also great to get to talk to former labmates about their post doc experiences. It is nice to have them as friends and as a source of knowledge and experience. It was also fun to have the newest grad student, Val, there. I got to know her much more and am more and more impressed with her (not that I wasn't already). It was nice also to be reminded of that first year student enthusiasm for meetings.
I got to see most of Montreal, all by foot. When you hang out with ecologists, even when you know the destination is 3 miles away- you walk it. Why spend the $2 each on the shared cab fare? We explored the several different sectors of town. St Catherine Street was like a movie, particularly at 3am. Picture a street with strip clubs abounding- then picture walking down that street when they were all closing. The only term I could think of is riff-raff. I kept thinking this is crazy! And then, Rachel would not like this at all. From steroid driven bouncers escorting their stripper girlfriends past goth dressed throngs of inebriated youth leaving a club to a group of black guys cheering on their friend as he openly made out with a white girl on the street as her friend was trying to stop her. The street got too intense so we turned off of it- but landed in china town where two men were trying to restrain a strung out Chinese woman who was flailing around and screaming. Then the cops came screeching down the street running up the curb, barricades were involved... it was quite entertaining. Enough for now, I just realized I really have not eaten anything for nearly 21 hours and I probably need something...