24 December 2003 - 01:39

This is adapted from my journal, because I'm too lazy to write more material on the conference (which I've been relating to all of my family and friends, and am somewhat tired of talking about). So it's probably somewhat tedious.

Friday

Traveled all day. I got into Greensboro really late, but stayed up for a while longer talking to Kama (friend from New College, the only one of my roommates that I already knew) and Femme before dropping off.

Saturday

Femme and Kama both got up at some ridiculous hour to go to workshops. I managed to call "Have fun" as they were leaving, and then got in a couple more hours of snoozing, getting up at a reasonable 9:30. It was a morning of good discoveries. I got up and discovered a very comfortable bathtub and showerhead. I got clean, and then I wandered over to the phone/laptop area and was relieved to find that there is no charge for local calls. Then I wandered downstairs and was very pleased to find that the hotel has free breakfasts for guests. I'd been rather concerned about affording food all week, but as long as there are free breakfasts, I figured I'd be able to keep going, and supplement out of reasoned assessment instead of out of desperation. I ate a big bowl of fruit (honeydew, canteloupe, pineapple and red grapes), a bowl of cereal (raisin bran and whole milk), and two donuts (mmm, donuts). I returned to wash the donut off my hands and leave a message for Wheel.

Then, over to the convention center for the Kogia workshop!

The workshop was great. I listened to 16 presentations, and took notes on all of them. Only one was tremendously dull – it was 15 minutes of ugly slides of raw data with no analysis, graphs of numbers of stranded animals, one slide for state, by month. And the graphs weren't all the same scale, so like, whatever the tallest number was would be the tallest thing on the graph, so it was hard to compare. There were no composits or summaries or maps or anything, just endless bargraphs with no analysis. So that one sucked. The others were good through great, all with some amount of interest, but during this sweet presentation on the physiology of sound production, I got that 'BAM! this is something I'm really interested in' feeling.

So that was cool. I didn't know anyone at the workshop (I knew of plenty of them), but at least I was there and they'll've seen my face. I legitimately didn't have anything much to add about Kogia, but I know a whole lot more about the genus now.

There was a coffee break with a platter of fresh fruit, so that was lunch.

After I got out I wandered around for a while. The convention center was across a road and parkinglot from, and vaguely associated with, a large mall. I walked over there and was dazzled by big mall on a friday before Christmas extravagance.

I came home and Kama and Femme were there, and we talked and talked, and I got a phone message from Wheel and tried to call home, but no answer, so I left a message. And then a new roommate, Naeco, arrived. So I greeted her, and we all started talking more. And got online very briefly (Kama can AOL dial-up on her Compaq. We tried to get connection sharing working, but she couldn't access the connection settings for that account. You click on "Settings..." and nothing happens. Grrrr.)). Then we went to get dinner at burger king, and talked and talked and talked. More about gradschools and cetaceans in captivity and different facilities and people who are trainers and our experiences and lacks thereof.

Kama was finishing a final (had to be sent by Sunday at midnight; Insect/Plant Interactions), so eventually we left her and Naeco and Femme insisted I come to a bar with them. So we all took the van over to the Sheraton and hung out in the swank places. They had beers, I had nothing, and we talked about how cool GIS is and what our dream jobs would be and so on.

Finally they flashed the bar lights, and we called the van to take us back. Kama was still up working on her final. The bar was smokey, so we had to shower.

Sunday

The workshop on "Viewing Marine Mammals in the Wild" wasn't as cool as the Kogia workshop. We paid for it though, and so got two snacks (fruit and bread, then pretzels, popcorn, cookies and brownies) and a hardcopy book of the abstracts. It was mostly whale watching, and not quite as hard-sciency. There was at least one really disappointing presentation. During the lunch break or one of the coffee breaks I ran into Femme and Kama and Naeco in the lobby and we talked for a while. After presentations, there was about an hour of open discussion, and then we broke up into discussion groups. I went to the education one, along with a couple people I knew of. I sat quietly while people talked. I registered after the thing was over.

Next was the ice breaker, which was intense. There were many hundreds of us! In this corridor/meeting area upstairs, with hors d'oeuvres – cheeses and crackers and teeny quiche things and teeny quesadillas that were full of cilantro. There were so many of us that it was hard to move around. Kama immediately ran into someone she knew, so I split off on my own and started wandering by myself, searching for familiar faces. After a couple of circuits, I saw Gary back near the beginning, and he was talking to Gillian and Manateewhistle from Mote and someone else ...

So I walked over to them, and Gillian is a marvelous advisor, because as soon as she saw me she grinned and enthused, "Hello Julia! Say, have you met Dr. L? L, this is Julieclipse, she was one of my students." and I shake hands with L (who I've met once before, although she won't remember – the first day of captures 2002, the Nai'a and the boat she was on both returned to the dock at the same late hour, and we carried equipment in to the parkinglot at the same time). L has huge eyes and long brown hair. She gives me the reassuring 'A lot of brilliant students don't get into grad school right away, but keep trying' talk. Gillian goes to get some water, I split off and wander briefly again, but I gravitate back to a table where Gillian and Gary are talking to a guy who works with the marine mammal program at ONR.

I stand at the table with them (it's a tiny standing type table) and they're catching up on each other's lives and making a lot of friendly jokes and so on. I'm introduced. They talk ...

Then a man walks over and hugs Gillian affectionately. I glance down at his name tag and my eyes bug out – it's SK, this guy I've been considering contacting about grad school. He joins in the conversation and banter. He seems really nice, and has some obvious affection towards Gillian, which is of course major points in my book. Not long thereafter, ONRdude reminesces about his early conference experiences, and how hard it was to get up the nerve to talk to some senior researchers, and glancing over at them ... and how now sometimes he looks across the room and sees someone giving him That Look and it's weird/he feels old. I laugh a little more awkwardly than the adults.

When the group breaks up a bit and I wander back onto the floor ... I keep thinking I see people I know when I don't. There are so many people. (1350 people attended the conference, and a large percentage of them were at that event). I look for Dr. Starr, but eventually learn that he isn't here. I run briefly into Naeco and Femme, beers in hand, more than once. Everything is so loud. I passingly meet Femme's graduate advisor and one of Naeco's undergraduate professors.

I hang out with Gillian briefly more, and then Gillian heads off to bed and I keep wandering ... I run into Kama, who had been talking to Akaka (former student of Gillian's, now Dr. Akaka and a visiting professor at New College) and was now considering going to work on her final some more. I walk around looking for Dr. Starr and eventually see Gillian sitting on a couch talking to EM. Kama shows up then and she and I talk for a while, then Kama says goodnight to Gillian, and I listen to Gillian and EM talk for a while longer, and then Gillian actually leaves.

I hook back up with Femme and Naeco, and we talk to a pair of Italian students.

I finally get home, where Kama is working on her final, and I spent several hours making the most of Kama's cellphone's free weekend minutes. Mmm. Sometime after 1 am, Kama finally sends in her final and we all look over the talk schedule, and our final roommate Snowfall shows up (exhausted from driving in from Colorado). We catch a few hours sleep before getting up in time to catch the 09:00 plenary session ...

Monday

Monday's plenary session was really good. The 'welcome to our city, spend money here' thing was stupid (apparently Greensboro is known for its antiques stores, pottery, and a huge furniture store. We were all urged to buy furniture), but once it was marine mammal people, we were in good hands. The membership talk was hilarious. He gave stats on people from which states and countries made the most mistakes on their conference registration forms, mocking Texas (who was apparently the most mistakes of the last biennial, but dramatically improved) and Canada (this year's worst). He gave a great why-you-should-be-a-member spiel, which included "If you don't join the Society, we'll ... hunt you down and kill you.", before specializing into, if you're a cetacean researcher and you don't join, we'll send a pinniped researcher to live with you (*cumulative every year) ... if you're a pinniped researcher and don't join, killer whales will eat your entire study group ... these were complete with photos in the powerpoint presentation. It was swell. Then the actual presentations, a pair of them over a controversial issue, specifically, where did all the sea otters go? (did killer whales eat them because they don't have enough large whales to eat? or did they run out of food or something?).

I'd rushed so fast to arrive that I'd left my name tag in the room. You're supposed to wear it to all events so that they know you're entitled to attend, but I can't imagine that would be enforced at all. However, I knew it was crucial for networking (that is to say, when I am introduced to people, I want them to remember my name (and affiliation), and if it's in print in front of them, that will help tremendously). So during the half hour break between the end of the plenary session and the first block of talks, I take the van back to the hotel, run upstairs and get my name tag (and brush my hair). Amazingly, I make it back in good time.

Mmmm, acoustics. I stay for all of that session. I meet up with all of my roomies and we walk over to the mall for lunch. I get a sandwich from Subway (the vegetarian options are few and far between). The food court is crawling with marmam people.

I skip around during the second session, and then I go to all of Cognition. Mmmmm, cognition. I sit behind Gillian and next to Wendiops. Akaka is sitting next to Gillian. The talks are good. Akaka talks. Gillian talks. Someone Wendiops worked with talks. Gillian's talk is rather low energy (her words, but accurate), but very solid. Akaka's talk is extremely good (as I told her over lunch, she presents some ~ambiguous/frustrating data in a very clear and interesting way, which is hard to do). After the session, a small group of people gravitate towards Gillian to talk about her talk, and I stand there listening to them.

Then I meet up with my roomies. I'm thinking about leaving, but I stay with them instead, and we went to the student session (I'm close enough to one) and got pizza, and tried to stay awake through two talks. I went to the acoustic communication 'round table discussion group' with L and two other researchers. Naeco was in that group with me. We all went around the circle and introduced ourselves, and then people asked questions.

Somehow, it got on the topic such that Naeco asked, if a student couldn't get into grad school and work with dolphins, say, but had to settle for monkeys or something, would that hurt the student's chances of getting a job working with dolphins? And that guy ... said, woah, well, why does the student want to work with dolphins? And Naeco said, I think I could spend my whole life working, studying dolphins, and never get bored, always be learning interesting things. Guy said, you didn't answer my question though. What are your questions? What's your research interest? And Naeco said, Well, I just, I want to know what they're talking about. Guy said, but why dolphins? You want to look at communication in long-lived mammals in fission-fusion societies, or...? And both guys started bashing the species-specific, exclusively interested in dolphins thing. I felt bad for Naeco. It was some serious public humiliation – I felt really bad for Neaco, but didn't think I could intervene. She left the group shortly thereafter.

I stayed until the bitter end, although it was kinda dull/frustrating. After the group broke up I went and talked to a student who was studying signal processing in an engineering program. Then I caught up with my roommates. Naeco was really upset, and Femme was generally irritated. Kama and I tried in various ways to console both of them, especially Naeco. Femme wanted to go out, but we didn't, and Femme didn't want to go out alone and couldn't find anyone else to go with. We all slowly came back to the room, where I pulled Naeco aside and very seriously tried to talk to her about the weird-dolphin-lover thing, and how it can be hard to avoid seeming like one.

The whole room was up late talking dolphins.

Tuesday

Tired and overwhelmed. Very happy though. I waited until my noisy, noisy, noisy roommates had all left before I got up, so I was 15 minutes late to the plenary session. Gillian walked in just after I did and passed me, so I followed her and sat next to her and Gary, so it wasn't so bad being late.

After the plenary was posters. I wandered around, gathering poster print outs and looking at design.

Then was the acoustics session, which was intense. I planned to stay for the whole thing, so I sat third row in the middle, and in the middle of the row. Then someone sat down a couple seats away from me. Then he called Adam Pack over, and Adam Pack sat down next to me. And I sat next to Adam Pack the whole session. And Roger Payne (!) sat in front of us and to the right a bit, and after the first talk, Naeco and Kama showed up and sat rather in front of me.

Whit Au was chairing the session. The highlight of the session was two signature whistle talks – first Raccoon on signature whistles in Sarasota Bay, and then DR on the downsweep distress call. After her talk, DR sat next to Roger Payne. After the session I gravitated over to Akaka and Gillian, and talked to Akaka and EM for a while. Akaka asked Gillian and me to lunch (yes!). L asked us if we wanted to join them for lunch, but Akaka opted for a more intimate group, and we all walked over to the mall and went to Ruby Tuesday's, and sat in a corner and Gillian bought us lunch and we talked dolphins. And talked and talked and talked. It was the best.

We covered: Mirror self recognition ... graduate school experiences ... the MMRC staff and dolphins ... getting access to animals ... advice not to work with dolphins ...

And then we headed back, getting lost on the way (there was this very funny moment when we'd walked outside from Dillards, the store we'd come in through, and we walked over across the parkinglot to what looked like the side of the convention center ... and after a moment we realized that we had walked back into the mall.

In the lobby we ran into some people Gill and Akaka knew. I stood and listened to them and EM talk about jobs &nash; interviewing for academic teaching positions. It was all advice that I'd heard before, of course (there's only so much to say about these topics), but like Vruba's analysis of the appeal of Thomas Dolby's love songs ... it's the specific details that are interesting. And I think I absorbed good stuff from the specific details of KBB's job prospectives (engineering department in Pennsylvania and Biological Oceanography at University of Oregon), and also hearing about EM's experience (he sent in 94 applications, apparently, and did like, 7 interviews).

By then the second session was over and it was coffee break. Gillian went to get coffee. I went upstairs to look at more posters. I was looking at L and her student C's two poster when they both came over. L greeted me by name, and they said that they hadn't known the two posters would be next to each other, and they thought they should be in reverse order (as it was, they both used the same figure of Sarasota Bay signature whistles, and the two figures were right next to each other). So we switched them around.

Then I headed home. Very tired. Very full brain. And I showered and wrote.

I couldn't get ahold of Wheel, so I curled up in bed and slept for three hours or so. I heard a gaggle of roommates stop by at one point, but very briefly I think, maybe five minutes at most. Something about going to Chili's. I assume they were all off to the permitting in the wild discussion, which I probably should have gone to, but too late now. I didn't go to the general members meeting because Akaka said it would probably be boring.

Wednesday

I've started working on a shorthand scorecard for evaluating power point presentations.

2) A- L+ G* V+ C* S* T+

Today there were quite a few lousy ones.

Titles: judging by my roommates decision making process, clever but informative talk titles actually work ("Are you my mother?", "Baby come back" etc.). So do titles that are questions ("How much fission-fusion is there?").

I actually got enough sleep (8+ hours).

I finally ran into Nelly & Tom and made a dinner date with them.

Thursday

Kama was sick all day. I kinda slept in. Went to a bunch of great talks. I knew Gillian was leaving sometime on Thursday, so I approached her after the first session. She said she'd been looking for me, and gave me her ticket to the Friday night banquet (I hadn't been able to justify the expense) and invited me to lunch with EM and his partner, which was awesome.

Then we said goodbye, which was bittersweet. She wasn't leaving right away, but it's hard to find particular people in the throngs.

I attended more talks. I met Tom and Nelly for dinner, along with a former intern who I'd met very briefly.

Then, movie night! Four and a half hours of marine mammal scientists' home videos. My attention span wasn't quite that long, but I stayed for the whole thing nonetheless.

Friday

The afternoon was actually a little quiet. Gillian had left, nothing was happening at the convention center between the end of the talks and the banquet, everyone was kinda low energy.

I didn't bring fancy clothes for the banquet (I didn't realize I'd be going).

The banquet wasn't bad, although I think I would have been irate if I'd paid $60 for it (I didn't get a ticket because I knew Gillian wouldn't be there ... if I'd known she'd be at the conference still on Friday, I'd've gotten a ticket, and I think I would actually have had a much better time if she'd been there, though I didn't have a bad time.) We were about half an hour late getting there because Femme and especially Naeco spent so much time primping. All five of us went as a group. We didn't miss anything though, apparently, and a friend of Femme's had saved a table for us.

The food wasn't impressive for the price, but was very good. There was salad, a yellow ricey thing that tasted like lightly vinegary marinade, some other kind of saladish rice thing, vegetable sushi (Sheraton bastards too cheap to spring for sushi of the fresh raw seafood variety? Grrr.), dinner rolls, mashed potatos with blue cheese and nuts (the nuts were a bad idea there), some kind of fish (I actually had a little of that), two kinds of chicken, some other meat thing, and some sort of vegetarian pasta which was entirely gone by the time I got there.

Deserts were fresh fruit (mostly melons, a very few strawberries which were pale but sweet. They were too cheap to spring for berries. Lousy Sheraton), little cream cheesy filling and fruit tarts, carrot cake (mediocre), what was supposed to be creme brulee but wasn't (the top wasn't crunchy. Too cheap to spring for a blow torch? It was still pretty good custard), and a type of chocolate cake (excellent. If I hadn't had two plate fulls of dinner and bits of other dessert, I would have had a whole piece of this. Or two.).

So dinner started at 7:00, we arrived at 7:30, I ate a great deal. Adam Pack stopped by our table to talk to Kama, and Naeco boldly and briefly introduced herself. Slightly before nine, some ... appalacian ish? square dance ish? musicians (there was definitely a banjo) and associated dancers came up on the stage, all enjoyably talented. They did five songs or so, and then a band of the type that does large weddings showed up and people started pouring onto the dance floor. Hundreds of people dancing. Music of that wedding sort – I got to see them all do the YMCA. And the Electric Slide.

At one point, two Russian marine mammalogists took to the stage and sang three hauntingly beautiful Russian songs. That was really cool. The one woman had a marvelous voice, and the band did pretty well at back up (since they'd almost certainly never heard the songs before). I was very tired, so danced for a while, then rested. Somewhat later, all five of us ended up on the dance floor together, right in front of the stage. I tried hard to be social. I danced. I laughed at Naeco's taking goofy photos. I clapped at sweet dance moves. I made eye contact. Nonetheless, I felt relatively ignored. I don't know what I was doing wrong. The Italian boys showed up and danced near us.

Eventually Kama (still sick) left, and about 15 minutes later (around 12:15) they stopped the music and turned on the lights, although a crowd of hundreds was still out on the floor (and started booing).

Italian boys, Naeco and Femme cajoled me to come to the club with them (and a crowd of other marmam folks, including Adam), but I politely and insistently refused and headed back to the hotel, where I fell asleep immediately.

Saturday

Saturday morning, Kama and I woke up after Femme had already left (extremely early, to catch a plane). Naeco packed, and her friendly redneck uncle showed up to drive her and her stuff up to his house in the mountains in Virginia, and then down to Florida. Then Snowfall headed off on her drive to Colorado. Kama and I packed slowly, brought our stuff downstairs, ate a huge breakfast, checked out, and set off.

We listened to music and talked about cars. We missed a turnoff, as the roads into different parts of the airport (parking vs. terminals, for example) were poorly labeled. But we finally arrived, said goodbye, and I settled in at the airport, the airplane, the other airport, the other airplane ... where I read "The Glass Bead Game" and wrote various things and organized my harddrive and read Sky Magazine on the plane ... When I finally got in at almost 22:00, Wheel and Blazer were there to greet me, claim my bags, and hear about my trip.

And that's it. The epic journey (or parts of it).