I recently attended the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases annual meeting, which was held in Lorne, a beach town a couple hours from Melbourne, located right on the Great Ocean Road. I had been through the area once before, when I was on vacation before I moved here, and I can't believe I waited so long to go back- it's so beautiful and relaxing. The conference started out on a positive note- my lab is on a tight budget so I booked myself into one of the cheaper hotel options rather than staying at the resort where the conference was held, but I got upgraded to an "executive apartment" that had a jacuzzi and a patio with a great view. Holla! The conference itself was really good- it's nice to feel like I'm actually part of a field (as opposed to grad school where I was more or less a lone wolf in terms of research area)- all of the Australian researchers who work on pneumococcal pneumonia know each other and seem friendly and welcoming rather than competitive. This meeting was more geared towards clinicians and did have some pretty interesting talks mixed in, like the history of infection control in China and that sort of thing. And everyone seems to be in love with worldmapper.com, which resizes countries according to statistics relating to a certain subject, like pneumonia deaths or prisoners (holy crap, the US has the highest percentage of population in prison).
I was the only one from my lab who attended, but there were several people from my institute there, so I always had someone to chat with on breaks or join for dinner, which was a relief. Overall, the science, the scenery, and the socializing were all great, so I hope to go back to ASID next year!
stay tuned for more posts...paintball, cooking, etc...
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