Anyway, the past few months have somehow gone past in a blur.. With the coral spawning mania over, there was the World Ocean Conference in Manado, followed by a period of depression... and then just last week, the Willi Hennig Conference which I'm supposed to be blogging about!
So although I was kinda made to attend this conference as a participant (first time attending a conference without having to prepare anything!), it was a pretty good experience I must say :) The even kicked off (for me) with a talk on Charles Darwin by Alfred Wallace by a historian, Dr John van Wyhe from Cambridge University. To think I was contemplating not attending the talk! Good thing I did in the end, 'cuz I really enjoyed the talk, and was even thinking about looking up Darwin's Beagle voyage books in the library! Never thought I'd actually enjoy such a nerdy talk ="=
The following few days of talks was really trying though.. So many trees.. Everyone was generating phylogenetic trees and presenting some funky analysis which I tried so hard to understand! (Danwei, this woulda been the perfect conference for you!!) Big words like synapomorphy, apomorphy etc that I'd seen before but can't remember what they meant, really threw me off balance.. I prolly understood < 5% of each talk :( Trying to be intelligent when you're not is tough! But I don't regret attending the talks, as I really wanna widen my horizon, and I think I did learn some stuff (albeit prolly not worth USD$150)! :p It was quite different from the other conferences I'd attended, as this conference was on a much smaller scale so it was a bit more engaging during the Q&A session, and there was no frantically running around between sessions!
One of my favourites about conferences is meeting people. Not just about seeing all the quirky characters of the scientists, like we had a Santa Claus, a Jesus Christ etc., but more so about being awed by the brilliance of these people. How I wish I could be just half as intelligent as any of them! Two of the people who left the deepest impression were "Jesus", the developer of TNT (better than PAUP!) and Dr John van Wyhe, the expert on Charles Darwin. It was really good meeting John, cuz I'd been really perturbed about religion/creationism & evolution for the longest time, and he did enlighten me somewhat. Although I still think I won't be able to accept believing in both at the same time, I can better understand why so many of my friends can. Thanks John! :) Hehe and now I think I have a mild crush on John, a HISTORIAN! ="= A true nerd indeed. How unthinkable!! :p Haha, think I'm just attracted to intelligent men :p :p Hehe so I shamelessly introduced myself, and even asked to have a picture taken with him!
