This summer has been super busy, crazy and fun. I attended my last conference during grad school at the end of May. It was my second "international" trip, across the border in Ottawa, Canada. I don't know anybody else who has attended as many conferences as myself and none outside the States so that has definitely been a fun and unexpected perk of my studies. SPP6 stands for the 6th annual Conference for Surface Plasmon Photonics. We only went because it was so close. It's generally held in Europe which means there were a lot of European attendees. And a lot of engineers were there so it was mostly men too. My advisor was not happy with that. We're both slightly feminist :)
Anyway, Ottawa was a lot prettier and more fun than I expected. Here's the view from our hotel room:
Also from our hotel window. We never made it down to breakfast so Mark (the other group member who came) found this little scone shop and it was amazing!! We went there every day.
The second day of the conference didn't have any talks my advisor and I really wanted to go to so we went on a short walking tour of the city.
World War I and II Memorial (Parliament is in the back)
Parliament Buildings
Random spider statue in front of the art museum. I named it Shelob after the spider in Lord of the Rings :)
Across the street from the spider was this beautiful Catholic cathedral. It's actually called Notre Dame. The decor inside was absolutely ridiculous! As in, very ornate. There were hand-carved statues of all the prophets in little niches along the walls. Crazy! Not like the outside is plain either. The spires are silver for heaven's sake.
There's (apparently) one in every foreign city. We found Cooper St.!!!
View of the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill. Mid-week we went on a boat tour and the dock was just on the other side of the bridge.
Pictures from the boat tour. It got a little overcast so my pictures aren't that great.
Nerds.
Skyline and random fisherman on the dock.
This hotel was supposed to open in the Spring of 1912 but the owner was on his way back from Europe with all the furnishings and never made it. He was on the Titanic. I love weird histories like that!
Parliament from the back. You can't tell but that turret is really boldly painted.
Ottawa is very green. Even coming from SLC I was surprised.
Also pretty funny, the tour guide was really proud of these "falls" but my advisor had just attended a wedding in Niagara the week before this.
After the boat tour we had dinner here, in the Museum of Civilization.
We had a little time to kill between the tour and dinner so Mark, Jennifer and I went on a short walk. I took advantage of the opportunity to take a picture of "Hair Band." That's what I called the guy in back. Mark (front) was my accomplice :)
While we were on our walk it started pouring rain. We ran under a little overhang but got soaked anyway. And they wouldn't let us in the door we were right next to so we had to run all the way to the front. I didn't dry off completely until we got back to the hotel.
Our host for the evening was a native Algonquin man. He spoke impeccable English and French. Very impressive. And he's a great storyteller. Oh yeah, and the guy in front sitting at my table is George Schatz. He's kind of a big deal in the theoretical chemistry world. I can't tell you how many papers I've read with his name on them.
Mark at his poster. There was a poster session every night except for the night of the banquet dinner at the museum. Each session had competitions for best poster. I presented my poster the first night (which was great to get it over with so quickly) and I talked to people the entire time. The session was two hours long and I had people coming up and asking questions until the organizers finally told me to take my poster down. Jennifer and Mark had to wait for me so we could go to dinner. It was crazy. Awesome that so many people were interested in my research but exhausting. I even had people ask me later during the week if I won the poster award (it came with a $1000 cash prize) so I thought I actually had a chance. Sadly though, I didn't win. I think people just vote for members of their own research groups so it's more of an attendance game than a true competition.
The craziest thing that happened all week was something I've never experienced at a conference before. I was attending a talk by myself (well obviously there were other people in the audience but Mark and Jennifer weren't there) and during the Q&A period after the third presentation an older gentleman passed out! The session leader called on someone to ask their question and they said they needed help, the man next to them had just slumped in his chair. So then people start rushing to help and there's debate whether we should lay him on his side so he doesn't swallow his own vomit or lay him on his back. It was a little bit of an ordeal just to get him out of his chair and to the floor. Someone said "Call 911!" but the number isn't 911 in Canada and nobody's phone worked because we were all in a foreign country. It was a mess!! After about 10 minutes we were evacuated from the room while hotel staff took over. Ironic that the man passed out in a room full of "doctors" who ended up being pretty useless. I heard later that the man was OK. He fainted but it wasn't anything serious like a heart attack or something. Still, that was the weirdest, most unexpected occurrence!
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