conference mania!!

the reservation discussion will continue soon!! I am taking a bit of detour to talk about conferences. Well for the uninitiated, conferences are meetings/coglomeration where scientists working on a particular area present their latest work/ findings. I recently joined a research group to do my phd in fiber optics. My advisor also has some interest in quantum stuff so there was this quantum conference in my university and my advisor was to put up a poster. Its a sunday and asks me that he might be late and can i put the poster up on his behalf?? I am a new student willing to create an impression so i say why not?? I willingly reach there one hour early and put the poster up. That was the easy part but my advisor was 15 min late so i had to fend off advances of 3-4 big shots interested in that work that well i dont know jack about it. Then i ran off to find my advisor. lucikly he was coming in so that was that
A general comment about conferences in case you get to visit them!!. A conference audience is generally very focussed. So ou would find grey/white haired big shots+not so big shots. Then there would be young dynamic professors all too excited and well very forthcoming and nice to talk to. Then there would be graduate students. Well these are the best to talk to. They dont know jack, you dont know jack and thats a basis of a very interesting conversation.Once in while(if you are lucky) there are good looking females on the house!! that kinda spices up the show a bit. But they are not very inclined on the non science part of things especially during the conference. So the best way to strike a conversation would be to know the group she is working in or atleast a jack about her poster/ talk. In todays physicsy conference, I an engineer didnt know anything so was at a loss for words.A physicsy friend of mine got into a conversation with this girl and that was that for me!! Now i hate microprocessors more than i did in my undergrad and wish i knew what bell inequalities!!
Final concluding remarks about food. Well food is very essential commodity in any grad students life. Food in conferences is generally of the highest quality and in abundance!! there might be occasions where you get good quality wine. The idea i guess behind conferences is for the new age einstiens to unwind relax and talk science, something they cant do in their day to day laboratory based existence