Kitchener-Waterloo, Victoria and back home... phew!
My crazy travel schedule continues (not surprisingly!)... and it's been a busy, draining, one!
On May 27 I flew to the Waterloo Regional Airport (okay it's technically now an International airport but it's the smallest airport I've yet visited, okay?), and got settled in residence at Wilfrid Laurier University. The first conference I attended was the Society of Digital Humanities conference (at Congress 2012) and since I was still getting over the cold that I had gotten from my trip to Vancouver previously, I was really glad that I wasn't presenting until the third day of the actual conference. The conference itself was pretty awesome. I had attended it before so it didn't surprise me much, but it was good! :) I spent time with lots of awesome folks and learned a bunch too! Food breaks were rather short given what building this conference was in (and it was crazy hot and humid too which wasn't hugely fun), but all in all it was a great conference! I rather enjoyed the social event (a BBQ) and seeing folks I hadn't seen for a while. My paper was poorly attended (at 9am on the third day) but it was well received with good questions.
The second conference began with the event that ended the first conference, a party with food and drink, video games, technology and a dance floor. I ended up going for a walk with Eric back to the Uptown loop after a while and we caught up with a few other UofA folks. (I did a lot of walking in Kitchener-Waterloo) This conference was the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) at Congress 2012. It was held in a completely different building (much nicer rooms!), and I got to see my supervisor (who now lives in Australia) when we presented our paper together (to a much larger audience also with good questions!). The poster session at CAIS was also much larger and well attended. I found it interesting how differently presentations tended to be structured given the two conferences were back to back. The social event at this conference was at Brick Brewery, but after we left we went for delicious Thai food so that was pretty awesome. Generally while there I mostly ate Chinese and bar food so this was a splendid change!
I also saw some friends while I was there: my best friend from high school came to visit and we went for Indian food so that was good! It had been two years and it was great to catch up! I also visited with some Kiwanis/CKI folks in the area (Jan is a GREAT cook!). On Sunday I had a lazy day but caught up on some Internet things and went for frozen yogurt at Menchies (yummy!) before catching my 7pm flight to Calgary and on to Victoria.
Getting into Campus far too late the night before, I got settled in the ring house residence (surprised that my favorite door to the wing I was staying in had become an emergency exit only since last year :( ), and got scant little sleep before DHSI began. This year I took a splendid course on GIS! My prof even rather liked the work that I did for the class so that was promising (it was shown off at show and tell on the last day). As for fun, I enjoyed the event at the University Club on Monday night, the transit of Venus (complete with telescopes and special glasses to really see that spec on the sun better!), a great gathering in a beautiful yard on Tuesday evening, delicious sushi and dessert at Sen Zushi on Wednesday, the Smuggler's Cove pub (courtesy of my winning the twitter contest!) on Thursday with library folks, and some touristy exploring of downtown including dinner at Red Fish Blue Fish on Friday evening. Both weeks, my chief entertainment other than twitter and the course/conferences was kickstarter, on which I've found some neat stuff. Saturday I headed home, which is where I am now!
Saturday night was good, though my flight home that afternoon was turbulent given the clouds and weather in Edmonton (and Victoria was FINALLY sunny :( ), Laury was kind enough to pick me up from the airport again and invited me to a friend's housewarming. We got to play some awesome board games (and some XBOX games too!), so that was pretty fun... and then there was the knowledge that my friends' groups intersect in interesting ways still and continually... :)
And so, today on such a glorious day I met up with JD to catch up, did some banking, some more Internet catch up, and plan to walk to a Kiwanis BBQ with some scouts hosting us. As for health, I don't feel horrible but I do feel like I did right after Vancouver: like I have the potential to get run down. So I think I need to do some more walking and eat healthy (seeing as it's hard to do that quite so well while travelling though Victoria wasn't bad and I certainly haven't been overeating as much as I have done in the past at various times), but I want to feel better about myself and get adequate exercise, sleep and nutrition... so I look forward to the walk tonight... hopefully it doesn't pour too badly! :)
On May 27 I flew to the Waterloo Regional Airport (okay it's technically now an International airport but it's the smallest airport I've yet visited, okay?), and got settled in residence at Wilfrid Laurier University. The first conference I attended was the Society of Digital Humanities conference (at Congress 2012) and since I was still getting over the cold that I had gotten from my trip to Vancouver previously, I was really glad that I wasn't presenting until the third day of the actual conference. The conference itself was pretty awesome. I had attended it before so it didn't surprise me much, but it was good! :) I spent time with lots of awesome folks and learned a bunch too! Food breaks were rather short given what building this conference was in (and it was crazy hot and humid too which wasn't hugely fun), but all in all it was a great conference! I rather enjoyed the social event (a BBQ) and seeing folks I hadn't seen for a while. My paper was poorly attended (at 9am on the third day) but it was well received with good questions.
The second conference began with the event that ended the first conference, a party with food and drink, video games, technology and a dance floor. I ended up going for a walk with Eric back to the Uptown loop after a while and we caught up with a few other UofA folks. (I did a lot of walking in Kitchener-Waterloo) This conference was the Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) at Congress 2012. It was held in a completely different building (much nicer rooms!), and I got to see my supervisor (who now lives in Australia) when we presented our paper together (to a much larger audience also with good questions!). The poster session at CAIS was also much larger and well attended. I found it interesting how differently presentations tended to be structured given the two conferences were back to back. The social event at this conference was at Brick Brewery, but after we left we went for delicious Thai food so that was pretty awesome. Generally while there I mostly ate Chinese and bar food so this was a splendid change!
I also saw some friends while I was there: my best friend from high school came to visit and we went for Indian food so that was good! It had been two years and it was great to catch up! I also visited with some Kiwanis/CKI folks in the area (Jan is a GREAT cook!). On Sunday I had a lazy day but caught up on some Internet things and went for frozen yogurt at Menchies (yummy!) before catching my 7pm flight to Calgary and on to Victoria.
Getting into Campus far too late the night before, I got settled in the ring house residence (surprised that my favorite door to the wing I was staying in had become an emergency exit only since last year :( ), and got scant little sleep before DHSI began. This year I took a splendid course on GIS! My prof even rather liked the work that I did for the class so that was promising (it was shown off at show and tell on the last day). As for fun, I enjoyed the event at the University Club on Monday night, the transit of Venus (complete with telescopes and special glasses to really see that spec on the sun better!), a great gathering in a beautiful yard on Tuesday evening, delicious sushi and dessert at Sen Zushi on Wednesday, the Smuggler's Cove pub (courtesy of my winning the twitter contest!) on Thursday with library folks, and some touristy exploring of downtown including dinner at Red Fish Blue Fish on Friday evening. Both weeks, my chief entertainment other than twitter and the course/conferences was kickstarter, on which I've found some neat stuff. Saturday I headed home, which is where I am now!
Saturday night was good, though my flight home that afternoon was turbulent given the clouds and weather in Edmonton (and Victoria was FINALLY sunny :( ), Laury was kind enough to pick me up from the airport again and invited me to a friend's housewarming. We got to play some awesome board games (and some XBOX games too!), so that was pretty fun... and then there was the knowledge that my friends' groups intersect in interesting ways still and continually... :)
And so, today on such a glorious day I met up with JD to catch up, did some banking, some more Internet catch up, and plan to walk to a Kiwanis BBQ with some scouts hosting us. As for health, I don't feel horrible but I do feel like I did right after Vancouver: like I have the potential to get run down. So I think I need to do some more walking and eat healthy (seeing as it's hard to do that quite so well while travelling though Victoria wasn't bad and I certainly haven't been overeating as much as I have done in the past at various times), but I want to feel better about myself and get adequate exercise, sleep and nutrition... so I look forward to the walk tonight... hopefully it doesn't pour too badly! :)