I’m on a 5 hour flight across the diagonal of the USA, on the first part of my journey home. I love how flying home is shorter than flying away. The winds blow to carry me home. I left Gareth, the PhD student that works with me & who I went to the conference with back in San Diego. He’s off up the coast to Los Angeles today, before meeting me at JFK airport on Sunday. It’s a shame that my main science buddy Jo couldn’t come, but she’s very pregnant right now. While I’ve been away another medicine lecturer has given birth, 10 days early: congratulations Claire & family!
So I’m leaving the sun for colder, proper winter cities. I’m going to be reminded very soon that it really is January. Temperature & weather conditions in Swansea & New York are very similar at the moment.
So anyway, the conference was very useful for the two of us. The PhD student with an engineering background learnt a lot about joints, surgeons & scientists. I caught up with the latest info & developed a long list of ideas to convert into grant applications. And we presented a poster, so we contributed. For Swansea University & the School of Medicine it was hopefully the first of many associations with the sphere of joint disease & cartilage repair. As it were.
I get the weekend off now, so I plan to enjoy myself & relax a bit. I have plenty of fun things to do in Manhattan for the next couple of days. I haven’t managed to contact all the people that I wanted to see, but luckily I did get hold of a couple. The city that never sleeps. Swapping time zones should actually help me in that regard.
The Goldie Lookin’ Chain are playing on my iPod & reminding me of home. Kinda. Holy cow, I’ve got some Tom Jones on here somewhere. Damn, I’m really getting through some batteries on these long flights – laptop, PDA, iPod. I’m going to have to charge up in the airport just to find Molly’s address.
