The conference is over! Four days of Cell Culture and …something else… goodness! “Scaling Up from Bench through Commercialization”, that was the other topic.
I don’t think I can honestly assess how many were interesting and how many weren’t, because with the time difference and having to get up early since session started at 8 there are a few I unintentionally slept through. Well, I did start listing cheeses as least twice. I missed Gouda. Yael, who was also at the conference, asked why cheeses, and the honest answer is because I can name more cheeses than grains, pork products, or presidents, so it lasts longer. One of the most interesting presentations was this afternoon, about another company’s problems with moving from little to big reactors. He had data saying it was one cause, but I think there was a major confounding factor, which I know about from my work. Either way, it could still help us with similar problems we have.
It was nice spending time in the South. People are just friendlier here. The guy on the phone at the Chinese place, the staff at the Chik-Fil-A who not only offered to “refresh our drinks” but bussed our trays (unfortunately in my shock I forgot to save the brownie I hadn’t eaten all of), the helpful hotel staff, the gentleman who opened the door to the conference center for me and then asked if I wanted a taxi ride to the airport later.
The conference center itself was huge, beautiful, and a remarkably inefficient use of space. It also had chairs that, if you sat down incorrectly, could give funny high-pitched squeaks or more frequently, lower, ruder noises that made it unclear for almost two days that it was actually the chairs.
The food we ate has been surprisingly international. The first night Yael and Kristi, a post doc I know from church, went to a tapas place (it was all right but I’m not a tapas person – I’ve never had small plates of phenomenal quantity and I usually end up hungry), then a Thai place with a larger group of people from work (very good but individual servings, not family style, forgot this was the South), then a fish place last night with an even larger group (pretty good but expensive and they did something wrong and brought my food out after everyone else’s, though I think they didn’t charge us for it after that), and tonight I got take-out from a Chinese place (very good! I got their house chicken entree and it had reputable cuts of chicken! But I also got soup and they didn’t give me a spoon…That was kind of awkward…).
Though breakfast hasn’t been too diverse. Starbucks every day. I did try to branch out yesterday, I looked up a local non-chain coffee shop on Google maps, but after not finding it (freaking Google maps) I went back to Starbucks. I am using Roche money to try new and exciting Starbucks drinks I’d never pay for myself. Well, I guess I’d buy a white mocha for myself again, since that was good, but yesterday I learned that the chocolate espresso truffle isn’t that great. Tomorrow I’m going to risk it all on a pumpkin spice latte, because that sounds horrible but apparently the other girls at church look forward to them all year. And maybe crumb cake, because it’s not like muffins have nutritional value so I’m just going to stop pretending and go for what I want.
I have discovered Modern Family online and will now use the rest of the “I can’t fall asleep because of the time change” time to watch the remaining three episodes available on Hulu.
