Kingston Trip: Part 2

Okay, so it's Friday morning. Check out isn't until noon and we don't have to be at the Conference Centre for our project management workshop until 1pm, so we both ended up sleeping until like 10am. Not something a grad student gets to do very often on a Friday, but I enjoyed it. We got our bags together, showered, and checked out. We then made the poor decision to walk to the conference centre from the hotel instead of taking a cab. It's not that it was a ridiculously long walk, I figured we'd be going for about 25 minutes or so. But we didn't think about the fact that it was already 20 degrees outside with a bright sun and we both had two pieces of luggage to carry. That, and it wasn't quite the straight line I thought it was to get there. It probably took us a bit over a half an hour. But we made it anyway. We got to the conference centre at about 12:30 or so, checked into our rooms, then grabbed some lunch provided by the course we were taking.

The course got started at about 2pm, and went until 9 that night, interspersed with some buffet style dinner that was better than most "sit-down" food you can get. It turned out the fantastic food would be a recurring theme. So, at about 9:30, group work started. We were randomly divided into groups and proceeded to analyze a case study about project management. An hour later we were finished, and were the first ones done. As we left the meeting room, we could see animated discussions and arguements going on in the other rooms. We had discussions, but basically agreed on everything afterward. So I grabbed my laptop and started to put together our group's presentation for the next morning with the help of a couple other group members. We got all our ideas down and into the presentation and I then took my laptop back to my room to practice and make it "look pretty". It was during this moment that I damn near had a heart attack. I was working on the presentation, when I heard a "pop" come from my laptop and it turned off. I started to freak out. It's almost 1am, I've got a presentation to give in less than 7 hours, and now if my computer is dead I have to redo it from scratch after finding some way of rebuilding it.

Luckily, I realized my comupter wasn't plugged in, so my battery had died. I plugged in my computer and was off to the races. I ended up going to bed at about 1:45 Saturday morning and got up at 6:30 that same moring to shower, do one last run-through, grab some breakfast, and be ready for 7:45 for our presentations. The presentation went really well, I even had a few compliments from other people (not in my group). All the presentations were really good. We then continued with project management lectures until lunch, and then after lunch. We broke at 5:30 for a one hour break, with cocktails scheduled for 6:30 and dinner for 7pm. It was "business attire", but I didn't feel like bringing my suit all the way to Kingston with me, so I got all fancied up with my shirt and tie and headed down to the room where cocktails were being served. Any establishment willing to give me free beer is good. Any establishment that sells Upper Canada Dark is good. This place did both, and so are amazing. I mingled some more, then sat down to dinner. The food was absolutely awesome. By far the best catered/banquet style meal I've ever had. There was this really cool two-coloured cheese and spinach soup, the two colours weren't mixed though, it looked like the yin-yang symbol without the dots. Then we had salad, and then some of the greatest chicken I've ever had...and I love chicken. It was a chicken leg topped with shaved ham and coated in this cream sauce that was soooooo good. The only thing that was out of place was the mushed beets that were served with it. Dessert was some of the richest cheesecake I've ever had. Then came the only real negative of the whole trip. And it wasn't so much a negative as it was a combination of circumstances. The nights activities were a guest speaker who works as a project manager. It was good to hear someone from the field who does the job on a day to day basis, but his talk was supposed to run from 8:30 - 9:30, and instead it ran to about 10pm. The information he gave was good (though a bit redundant at times), but starting at 2pm the previous day we had been working for about 25 of the last 32 hours, had just had a half hour of free cocktails, followed by a big meal (with endless wine supply). So it wasn't that the presentation wasn't good, we were all just exhausted. Needless to say I went straight to my room afterwards to get some much needed....hockey watching....then sleep.

The next day we had a bit more group work, again as smooth as could be, then finished at about 11:30. Our train didn't leave until 2pm so we had time to do yet more mingling over lunch. I met so many people over such a short time it was crazy. But it was good. Conference mingling is harder because most of the people are professors. Here it was all students so it was easy to just sit next to someone and strike up a conversation. Everyone was really friendly too.

After lunch we went to the train station by cab...and this guy might be the craziest cab driver I'd ever seen. He was weaving in and out of traffic and speeding, but we made it to the train station in record time :). We found out our train was running late and so would be about 45 mins late getting into Kingston and, subsequently, Toronto. But it was no big deal since we had a 3 hour wait in Toronto anyway. When we got to Toronto we went to BCE Place to the Richtree Market restaurant for dinner. This was such a cool concept, someone needs to open one of these in Windsor. Basically, when you walk in, they give you a debit card, and you walk around this market and get whatever you want for dinner. They had stations for sushi, fish, breads, pastas, steaks, stir frys, and a bunch of other stuff (including a bar). When you asked for food they just swiped your card and when you left you paid the balance off. I settled on some really good chicken alfredo with veggies after wandering around for 15 minutes considering my options. Most of the food was continuously being made, so you didn't have to wait long for your food and it was still fresh. Perfect for what was now a 2 hour layover in Toronto. We then went back to the train station and waited in another pointless line to get into a half empty train. It wasn't a total loss though, the woman behind us decided that we needed to know her life story even though we'd never met. Apparantly when someone asks me if they're in the right line, that's all they need to know about me to tell me their life story. Fortunately, she was going somewhere else and so didn't get on the same car as us. The rest of the trip was uneventful. We got in at about 11:15 or so into Windsor, cabbed it home, I crawled into bed, and was asleep about a minute later.

I'm almost caught up on my sleep, but the combination of a double overtime hockey game last night and some 8:30 proctoring this morning has caused me to be still a bit tired today. Ah well, as I kept saying to Xitao over the weekend, I'll have lots of time to sleep when I'm dead. :)