Last Day of the Conference

It's the last day of the conference and I have my presentation early in the morning. When I got to the conference, the place was dead. As you'd expect, people were tiring of listening to talks and seeing posters and slept in. Ok, I'll be honest, I expect that a lot of people were also taking advantage of the night life the night after the banquet last night.

Anyway, when I presented, it went fairly well. Enough people were there that I was able to have some good conversations about the work and I met people from 4 other groups that are doing similar work (with a different twist) and 2 of them I didn't know about before. So it was valuable making those contacts.

As the conference was winding down, I ran into Malin, who was also staying at my hostel. She was trying to collect people for going out in the evening. The plan wasn't very well setup because we were supposed to meet in front of the French Embassy but nobody knew the time. There were phone numbers and e-mail addresses floating around and I left to go back to my hostel to drop off my stuff, relax and get some food before people were to go out. The plan was that I'd get an e-mail with the time.

Well that never happened, so around 8, I figured that I'd go and wander around Taksim Square and as it turns out, I ran into a group of people by the consulate. Pure luck. There were five of us: Cat from Wales, Fredrick from Germany, Abdul from India and Pranam from Australia. We first hit up a restaurant because some people hadn't eaten. I ended up trying Aryan, which is a drink made of yogurt, water and salt. A lot of salt. It was interesting. I also tried their rice pudding, which had a fairly loose custard with a little bit of rice. It was pretty good. After that, we went to a bar for drinks, Hooka and chatting. After a while, we went down the Cadessi to the Gelata Tower because Cat had been there and knew there was a good bar. Instead of a bar, we found a gathering jugglers, slack liners and people just dancing and enjoying the night with many languages being spoken. It was fantastic to see. We had some tea in a cafe and relaxed for a little while.

After that, we made our way back up towards Taksim Square and found another bar, which was more lively. A lot of people were dancing in the street and two of the bars were duking it out over who could play the loudest. It was kind of hilarious. Eventually, people got tired and we said goodbye, but it was a fun evening getting to know some other folks and enjoying what the city had to offer.