samedi, juillet 28, 2007
Coming home
Well, back to the rainy and cold "summer" in Paris, actually kind of nice after the heat wave of Vienna. Apart from the strong risk of melting away, Vienna was really great though. Especially once we moved into our lovely air-conditioned palace!
The conference was a wierd sort of coming home experience, since I hung out with a few people from Sydney Uni (mostly a bunch of Irish people who are now there, my old PhD supervisor and a few other academics, and a few young-uns who had only ever heard of me!), caught up on all the goss about the department, found out that life in the labs where I spent almost five years, not counting undergrad traipsing around the corridors looking for tute rooms and labs, is ticking along just fine without me. So it was a funny nostalgia spiced trip in a place I've never been before.
Anyway, enough of that, I'll put up some photos instead:
The purpose of the trip.
Some of the Australo-Irish gang I drank beer with, in the courtyard of the uni with all the posters in the background (mine is there somewhere!).
The plenery lectures were held in a church! Tell me, oh churchies among you, is this not slightly blasphemous? Certainly all the lecturers made jokes about having given plenty of lectures but never from a pulpit before! Gorgeous location, but unfortunately I think the acoustics in churches are designed to boom intimidatingly across the masses rather than to aid the explanation of metalloprotein active site mutations from someone whose first language is not english!
Come and listen to the Vienna symphony broadcast on a big screen under the stars, whilst behind youthere is a fantastic food and drink market where all the local restaurants sell their stuff. And in case the music gets boring, the backdrop is the gorgeous Vienna Cityhall. Magic.
Well, we forgot our cossies, but our feet at least had a swim in the Danube, although they were cut off in this self portrait auto-timer photo!
A section of the Danube lined with really lovely open air restaurants and bars. So nice!
The conference was a wierd sort of coming home experience, since I hung out with a few people from Sydney Uni (mostly a bunch of Irish people who are now there, my old PhD supervisor and a few other academics, and a few young-uns who had only ever heard of me!), caught up on all the goss about the department, found out that life in the labs where I spent almost five years, not counting undergrad traipsing around the corridors looking for tute rooms and labs, is ticking along just fine without me. So it was a funny nostalgia spiced trip in a place I've never been before.
Anyway, enough of that, I'll put up some photos instead:
The purpose of the trip.
Some of the Australo-Irish gang I drank beer with, in the courtyard of the uni with all the posters in the background (mine is there somewhere!).
The plenery lectures were held in a church! Tell me, oh churchies among you, is this not slightly blasphemous? Certainly all the lecturers made jokes about having given plenty of lectures but never from a pulpit before! Gorgeous location, but unfortunately I think the acoustics in churches are designed to boom intimidatingly across the masses rather than to aid the explanation of metalloprotein active site mutations from someone whose first language is not english!
Come and listen to the Vienna symphony broadcast on a big screen under the stars, whilst behind youthere is a fantastic food and drink market where all the local restaurants sell their stuff. And in case the music gets boring, the backdrop is the gorgeous Vienna Cityhall. Magic.
Well, we forgot our cossies, but our feet at least had a swim in the Danube, although they were cut off in this self portrait auto-timer photo!
A section of the Danube lined with really lovely open air restaurants and bars. So nice!
vendredi, juillet 20, 2007
Hot in the City
A small update from Vienna: 40 degrees every day, no air-conditioning in hotel (or anywhere else for that matter), a distinct and literal pain in the arse after spending many many hours glued to a wooden bench in the University of Vienna... am I having a bad week? No, actually, in spite of these hurdles (hard, wooden, bench shaped hurdles), I am having a great week here at ICBIC 13 (that's the 13th International Conference on Biological Inorganic Chemistry for those of you not in the know). I've met some really nice and interesting people, caught up with old friends from Sydney Uni, seen some really nice talks, had a bit of interest in my work, and the free beer has been plentiful! To add to the joy, tonight Alex is coming to spend the weekend AND we're going to an air-conditioned hotel!
