Day 4

This was the day of my talk - the night before it, although I had gotten home late about 11pm, I managed to go over my slides before making myself go to sleep at 1am and then i kept waking up in the middle of hte night, because i was so worried i was going to oversleep. My talk was straight after lunch so lets just say i didn't eat much lunch either. It went ok, not the greatest but ok. People asked lots of questions and I think did ok answering them. But I wasn't expecting much anyway. The worst part was when in the middle of the whole thing i forgot the word 'space' so after I said 'key' I paused and my mind was frantically trying to think of the word 'space' but I couldn't remember it and everyone was just looking at me and omg, probably thinking what an idiot!! I could see at least one person smiling at me, probably thinking poor girl!!
Afterwards I was so relieved my mind was numb. It is funny how I never realize how nervous i am until afterwards when the pressure is off. We had the conference dinner that night and then I went out with a bunch of people from ETH and another German named Leif and a Polish studying in the Netherlands named... damn!! I knew I was going to forget at least one name. That is why I am making myself write them down. In case I forget.
And I ended up talking to him a lot of the night as well. He was an interesting guy with lots of interesting commentary about Poland. Here are some of the funny things I learnt from him:
- The president and the prime minister of Poland are twins. Really?!! and they are ultra-conservative.
- They were trying to make Jesus Christ the king of Poland. It didn't work out though. I think what with him missing from the coronation and all...
Really are these things true? can somone check for me??!!!

- omg he asked me what the top two largest countries in Europe were and I said Ukraine and he said that was the second and France was the first. HUH!! According to the following Ukraine is bigger than France!!

Day 3

I left London for Cambridge. I got here (Cambridge) after a lot of hassle - I was worried about my adapter problems and so once i got to king's cross i decided to try to buy another adapter before i get to cambridge because who know how many shops are open in a small town - seriously i was walking around kings cross with all my baggage and then i found out the train to Cambridge didn't leave from there on sundays and i had to go to another station and..
anyway I finally caught the train which takes about 50 minutes to get to Cambridge - once i got there i caught a bus to the city center and walked to the place i was staying at - it was one of the colleges called the Sidney Sussex. I dropped all my baggage in my room, exhaled a sigh of relief because i actually had gotten there! Then the next worry was what time the conference people were meeting to go punting. I wanted to meet some of the people since i didn't know anyone and I also wanted to try punting actually :-) and I thought afterwards I will walk around the city of Cambridge. Oh my how glorious Cambridge is. I will get to it, but I loved it so much. It is wonderful and beautiful and ....
anyway so I went to the office to see if the conference had left any info about the punting at the Cannes river. I got to the office and I saw a bunch of people standing in front of the office - I thought can it be? can i be that much on time? Most of the people were Europeans who did not look that geeky so I wasn't sure if i was in the correct place - but then i saw one or two geeky looking people and they were mostly men so I thought can it be? so I made myself go and introduce myself. Now that was kind of scary!!
anyway so it was them and i joined them and we left for the punting expedition. I ended up getting into a punt, punted by Stajano himself! :-P on my boat there was an Austrian Rene, a German Christoph and a Japanese of the unknown name who worked under Prof. Imai. Our group was a lot of fun - and we all took turns at the punting. It is actually pretty hard trying to maneuver the thing, make it go in a straight line while you still have some speed. After the punting, we all went to dinner and some drinks. I met another German guy Ulrich with his Brazilian girlfriend Luciana who was studying in Germany. She was in EE and the paper being presented was a joint paper. ooh how romantic!! :-) It reminds me of my two lovely papers with dazbend!! seriously how geeky do i have to be to find this SO romantic!
Actually getting into this topic, dazbend and I had two papers together the year we got married. We made sure we were joined for prosperity!!!