Work Travel

Near the end of July, I attended and presented my work at conference in Atlanta. It was hosted at Marriot in downtown. It was super luxe. I don't think that I have ever stayed somewhere so nice. It was somewhat uncomfortable to me.

View of downtown Atlanta from my window.

I'll forebear from telling you all about the fascinating ideas and work that were shared, but I will tell you about my presentation experience. I presented on Tuesday. By mid-morning, I was already starting to get the gitters. So, I spent the lunch hour in my room practicing my presentation until I felt comfortable with it. Public speaking is so unnatural for me. So unnatural that my body starts to revolts. I realized that before I speak publicly, I get the twitches. My eyebrows started going up and down uncontrollably along with my ears. It took a good amount of control to keep my body from shaking as I stood and began my speech. It is a miracle to me though that everytime I speak after the first couple of sentences my body relaxes and I can settle into my speech. 

Wednesday morning, I left for the airport, even though the conference went on for 2 more days, so that I could see Joslyn run in her marathon. However, the following week, I start getting these e-mails from my adviser and my funding source congratulating me on winner the paper competition at the conference. I missed the award ceremony since I left early and had heard nothing about it.  So, I was skeptical. A couple days later, someone from contest contacts me and tells me that I won 1st place in the student paper competition! I was really so surprised. There were so many good presentations and I feel fortunate that the judges were inclined to like my presentation despite my twitches and gitters. 

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The first week of August, I spent in Cleveland at an electrochemistry workshop. I got to meet a lot of new people working in different industries. Probably the best that I got from the workshop was a better understanding of where people with different backgrounds are coming from.

I tried to get out and see as much of Cleveland as I could in the evening. The college campus that I stayed was stunning. It was such an interesting blend of historic and modern buildings. I loved the contrast.

This was the hotel that I stayed. It was renovated  from a 1910 mansion.

Right across the street from the hotel was a beautiful, botanical garden 

Modern & historic in one shot

One evening, I went downtown with some people from INL to check out the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame.

According to my high school friends, I looked exactly like this photo of John Lennon in high school

The King! Did you know that her served in the army?

Janis Joplin's car

I loved seeing all the handwritten lyrics. Here's Tom Petty's "Stop Dragging My Heart Around" Can you recognize some of the words?

ZZ Top's display was definitely the most eye-catching.

Michael Jackson's glove!

Right before the coolest display of the whole museum (Beatles/Rolling Stones), my camera died. Bummer.

Here are some photos that ripped from my INL buddies:

They had a wall of signatures of all Hall-of-Fame inductees. Eric Clapton was up there like 5 times with different groups because he is amazing.

Afterwards, we walked around downtown Cleveland. There were some cool building and interesting people