Hooray Oshawa!

Time: 5:09pm
Mood: grumpy.. I'm hungry!
Song of the moment: Stars - Ageless Beauty

So I was in Oshawa for 2 1/2 days @ a conference I had to go to. My source of researching funding requires me and all those who are funded to attend this annual conference just to give us an idea of what other research is going on in the field and how all these ideas come together, which I guess sums up ALL conferences out there. But really it was quite gruelling. I mean it was nice meeting others and learning about their research, but I couldn't really put my heart into it.

The place we stayed at was a university residence hall. It was brand new but it lacked one thing: no wireless internet! You could only gain internet access if you had a cable. I had brought a laptop with me so that I could work on my thesis (of course I didn't do much) and there was no where we could go to check our email.. so what did I do? I went to the bookstore and spent $5 on a internet cable and tada! Internet! I'm so glad I did that b/c there really wasn't anything to do in Oshawa. During the "free time" I chatted online with Jimmy and several other friends.. kept me sane! haha! Xiaonan and I managed to check out the big mall there.. nothing spectacular. I was really tempted to go home.

Every reserach group had to compete in a poster competition and each year our group never wins. We had gotten complaints in the past saying our posters were too wordy and there weren't enought pictures. This year we put more diagrams and pictures, but I still found it a bit wordy so I didn't think we had a chance on winning the first round of poster competition (there are 3 apparently!). So last night during dinner they announced 16 posters that would go on to the next round and to Xiaonan and I's surprise, they called us up! We won $50 gift certificates to Chapters! Hooray books! haha! Wow we were so surprised! But because we made it in the next round, we had to do an oral defense the next day. I'm so bad.. I convinced Xiaonan to do it! haha! Needless to say, we didn't make it past the second round but eh! We're totally happy we made it past the first (even our supervisor thought we wouldn't win! haha!). That was the only good thing that came out of that conference.. oh and of course the free booze they provided us for dinner! Woohoo! :D

Jimmy's playing hockey tonite *crosses fingers* I hope he scores :D Go baby! :D