Apimondia 2023 opening ceremonies
Monday, September 4th, Santiago, Chile - having had terrible sleep or lack thereof on the overnight flight, after breakfast i slept till 11:30 or so. Then my friend Doug came over.
I had met Doug in Nigeria in 2012. Later we went to the beekeeping conference in Tanzania together in 2015 amd he's visited me several times in Australia. He's also here to attend the beekeeping conference and we're sharing a room, though he was already in country a few days at an airbnb.
He hadn't had breakfast so we went to a restaurant a few doors down from the hotel amd i just had a coffee while he had scrambled eggs.
Then it was 13:00 amd the conference opening ceremonies would begin at 16:00. I had wanted to do a city tour but now there wasn't time. My other thing i wanted to do was go to this preColombian museum but it was apparently closed on Mondays so we just walked around the area. The hotel seems to be in a modern central business district area. We found a nice park.
Presently it was 15:00 so i called up a ride on DiDi to take us to the conference center. Our driver didn't speak any English but seemed very friendly amd personable. Ride took maybe fifteen minutes amd cost 4,000 Chilean pesos ($4.70).
Registration consisted of having a QR code we'd been emailed scanned which apparently brought up all our registration information immediately, was handed our bags amd name tags. Had to surrender my driver's license to get the translation headphones.
Instant translation only available in English, Spanish amd Portuguese, sorry France. Bunch of speeches, some traditional dances.
Then we all retired to the expo room for free wine amd cheese. Doug got to talking to some people he knew amd through them we made another friend or two, that's how we do.
Wine glasses ran out just before i got to the front of that very long line. 😒 they still had wine just no glasses. Those of us still in line then scavenged abandoned empty wine glasses, scoured them clean with paper towels amd partook.
It finished around 19:00 amd I was surprised to find it still light outside, it'd've been dark by now in Colombia but, though they're on the same longitude Colombia is two hours earlier (this always ties my brain in knots but it means when the clock says 17:00 in Colombia it says 19:00 in chile but it's the same "real" time relative to the sun)
My phone was at 3% so i couldn't use didi amd Doug had no internet connection. We tried just going to the street to get a cab amd it seemed most of the participants were there trying to figure out how to get to their hotels. Cabs were trying to get customers but the one we talked to wanted 25,000, six times what it had cost us to get here.
So we went back into the convention hall where Doug could connect to the wifi to get an uber, amd there we found the Apimondia president Jeff Pettis doing the exact same thing.
Uber took us back to our hotel for 12,000. Cabbies are always complaining about rideshares but if they didn't always try to take advantage of us we wouldn't always go to rideshares for a fair rate.
I was looking forward to a hot shower after last hotel didn't have hot water amd so i felt very alarmed amd displeased when the shower never got more than slightly less than lukewarm. I was just going to grumble to myself but Doug exhorted me to call the front desk amd complain immediately amd so i actually did so. I cynically didn't expect it to accomplish anything but they sent a maintenance guy up who, i felt kind of with a bit of attitude demonstrated that the water was indeed hot. But it definitely hadn't been five minutes earlier so he must have fixed something before he came knocking. Either way, problem solved.
Tomorrow, it begins!
I had met Doug in Nigeria in 2012. Later we went to the beekeeping conference in Tanzania together in 2015 amd he's visited me several times in Australia. He's also here to attend the beekeeping conference and we're sharing a room, though he was already in country a few days at an airbnb.
He hadn't had breakfast so we went to a restaurant a few doors down from the hotel amd i just had a coffee while he had scrambled eggs.
Then it was 13:00 amd the conference opening ceremonies would begin at 16:00. I had wanted to do a city tour but now there wasn't time. My other thing i wanted to do was go to this preColombian museum but it was apparently closed on Mondays so we just walked around the area. The hotel seems to be in a modern central business district area. We found a nice park.
Presently it was 15:00 so i called up a ride on DiDi to take us to the conference center. Our driver didn't speak any English but seemed very friendly amd personable. Ride took maybe fifteen minutes amd cost 4,000 Chilean pesos ($4.70).
Registration consisted of having a QR code we'd been emailed scanned which apparently brought up all our registration information immediately, was handed our bags amd name tags. Had to surrender my driver's license to get the translation headphones.
Instant translation only available in English, Spanish amd Portuguese, sorry France. Bunch of speeches, some traditional dances.
Then we all retired to the expo room for free wine amd cheese. Doug got to talking to some people he knew amd through them we made another friend or two, that's how we do.
Wine glasses ran out just before i got to the front of that very long line. 😒 they still had wine just no glasses. Those of us still in line then scavenged abandoned empty wine glasses, scoured them clean with paper towels amd partook.
It finished around 19:00 amd I was surprised to find it still light outside, it'd've been dark by now in Colombia but, though they're on the same longitude Colombia is two hours earlier (this always ties my brain in knots but it means when the clock says 17:00 in Colombia it says 19:00 in chile but it's the same "real" time relative to the sun)
My phone was at 3% so i couldn't use didi amd Doug had no internet connection. We tried just going to the street to get a cab amd it seemed most of the participants were there trying to figure out how to get to their hotels. Cabs were trying to get customers but the one we talked to wanted 25,000, six times what it had cost us to get here.
So we went back into the convention hall where Doug could connect to the wifi to get an uber, amd there we found the Apimondia president Jeff Pettis doing the exact same thing.
Uber took us back to our hotel for 12,000. Cabbies are always complaining about rideshares but if they didn't always try to take advantage of us we wouldn't always go to rideshares for a fair rate.
I was looking forward to a hot shower after last hotel didn't have hot water amd so i felt very alarmed amd displeased when the shower never got more than slightly less than lukewarm. I was just going to grumble to myself but Doug exhorted me to call the front desk amd complain immediately amd so i actually did so. I cynically didn't expect it to accomplish anything but they sent a maintenance guy up who, i felt kind of with a bit of attitude demonstrated that the water was indeed hot. But it definitely hadn't been five minutes earlier so he must have fixed something before he came knocking. Either way, problem solved.
Tomorrow, it begins!