Kingston Trip: Part 1

Well, I'm back from Kingston. I'm not awake enough to do any actual work right now, so I thought I'd share my experiences from Kingston.

Wednesday

Xitao (my labmate) and I left Windsor right on time on Wednesday morning and had an uneventful train ride to Toronto. With only about an hour or so until our train from Toronto to Kingston left, we grabbed a quick bite at the Harvey's at Union Station, then went back to the gate to find a massively long line going into the gate, and it was still about 25 minutes before our until the train left. I do understand the amount of people, since the train eventually goes to Montreal, but this train had assigned seating. What's the use of waiting in line to get a good seat (if there even is such a thing on a train) if your seat is assigned anyway. But really, the ride to Kingston was uneventful as well. We got to the station right on time, hopped in a cab, and headed to our hotel.

I told our cab driver where we wanted to go, and he kept asking me which route I wanted to take. I said, "I'm not from here, so whichever is fastest", but he kept asking. Finally he managed to make a decision. So we set off for the hotel from the train station, only to find downtown in a bit of traffic chaos because of construction. Our cab driver was somehow unaware that multiple city blocks were closed to traffic (even local traffic). This did not make me feel good. But we got to the hotel and everything was fine. We checked in, got to our room (which was very nice), and after unwinding for about half an hour we decided to go get dinner. We considered the restaurant in the hotel, but decided that we would explore downtown Kingston a little and see what we could find. The only problem is that neither Xitao or I are capable of making a decision. We eventually settled on a restaurant that served Korean food and sushi and the like. We placed our orders and waited for our food....for a long time. It wouldn't have been a big deal, except I had made plans to grab a drink with Joe after dinner. Eventually our food came, and it was very good. Some of the most flavourful chicken I've ever had, served over a bed of rice and stir-fried veggies. Mmmm.

When we got back to our room it was about 7:30, so I gave Joe a call and we met down by the water (which was about a 1 minute walk from our hotel) and we grabbed a drink at the Kingston Brewing Co. which was right next door to our hotel. We caught up a bit, typical family stuff, and made plans to get everyone together for dinner the next night. I went back to my room and got a little work done before getting some much needed sleep.

Thursday

On Thursday Xitao and I were to meet with a couple of geotechnical people from Queen's who we collaborate with. We got up, figured out directions, and headed out. It was quite a productive meeting for something that had no preplanning. Actually, I've been in well planned meetings that were much less productive than this. We made some very good headway on integration of the work from our side and theirs, I got some excellent information and resources for my thesis work, and we were able to actually accomplish things. We also had some excellent Thai for lunch. The meeting ended in the mid to late afternoon and we went back to the hotel to get more work done. That night I met up with Joe, Dianne, and the kids and went for dinner at The Keg right near my hotel. Again, an excellent dinner. We went back to the hotel and Joe and the kids utilized the pool while I had access to it since we were moving to different accomodations the next day. We had a good night, then said our goodbyes since everyone had work/school in the morning, and I didn't figure I'd have more than a half a day or so to myself starting on Friday. And as it turned out, I had even less...