Business travel

One downside of moving down under is that it takes a 14 hour flight plus a 3 hour layover plus a long connecting flight to attend major conferences and events for work, either in Europe or North America. I just got back from such a trip, and I am tired.

What do you do with that 14 hour flight? Well, I know you're supposed to try to sleep, but when it leaves around 9am, you can use it instead to scroll through all the movies available and watch international flicks you wouldn't think of watching otherwise. And you can write the 2nd draft of the talk you are going to give at the conference. And you can revise that paper that you were supposed to revise last week. You can do all this and watch three movies and eat dinner and breakfast and get up to pee about 17 times. You can!

One of the movies I watched on the way out was "Still Alice," about a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease. I then spent the rest of the trip discovering that I must also have Alzheimer's disease. I have all sorts of symptoms.

(1) I couldn't find words I was looking for. Like "monotreme" to describe egg laying mammals. I just couldn't find it.

(2) After three days of talks at the conference, feeling pretty good about my ability to stay awake and alert so far, a colleague and I were asked in a Skype meeting with England how the conference was going, and what had people spoken about? I drew a complete blank. My colleague, however, began listing speakers and main themes. And I decided I have Alzheimer's disease.

(3) In the middle of another talk, this same colleague, sitting next to me, leaned over and showed me a research paper with a result that was similar to the topic of the talk.

"That looks like a really great result," I whispered. "Whose is it?"

"Uh, yours.... It's from a paper we wrote together."

Oh.

(4) I accidentally left my snugly fleece jacket in my checked luggage. Cold! And then I realized I had somehow neglected to pack the power supply cable for my laptop, after digging through my bag and being unable to find it. Luckily I dug again a few minutes later and found it actually was there, under the water bottle, but that doesn't convince me that I'm not losing my mind.

The highlight of the trip by far was the weekend in Washington DC.

It was actually significantly cheaper to fly from Providence to Washington DC over the weekend and take the train to Philly than to fly direct to Philly and stay in the more expensive hotel. So I spent the weekend visiting my brother, my brother's wife, and their sweet two-year-old.

And crazy of crazy,  the day before I arrived I got a message from said brother letting me know that their second child had been born early. So I also got to meet the newborn.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone. In the first, I didn't really want to be in the picture, but the 2-year-old wanted to see the screen while I took the shot. So it had to be a selfie.

And then he wanted to see Daddy on the screen. So I obliged by taking a fuzzy picture.

It was pouring rain when we went to visit mom and the new baby in the hospital. Fun times.

And here's the new guy.

Also with the other boys in his family.

I didn't take any pictures of my sister-in-law with the phone camera because she was either in the hospital, or sleeping when I was playing with the phone. Because dude, she had just been through childbirth. I did take pictures that included her as well, only I used their camera, not mine, so I have nothing to post here. Sorry.

Anyway, two weeks of work and one fun weekend. And lots and lots of time in airplanes and airports. It is good to be home. I hope I can sleep again sometime soon.