The stolen weekend.

Most of you have already patiently listened as I blabbed to you about my weekend, but for those of you who haven't yet (and those of you who are gluttons for punishment) here is a short summary.

I spent the weekend at the Australasian Shorebird Conference with all of the most important shorebird researchers in Australia and New Zealand (and a few from Asia). The point of going to the conference was to network within the bird community and to gain a broader understanding of the current shorebird research. The conference was run in the normal way of a scientific conference - a series of short (15 min) talks from various scientists with 5 min for questions in between.

Here are the key things that I learnt:

(1). It is really weird meeting people that you have referenced. A number of times I was quietly thinking to myself that a speakers name seemed familiar only to realise part-way through the talk that I had referenced them in my lit review - Finn (2006) suddenly stops being just an abstract idea in your head and suddenly turns into a real person standing in front of you.

(2). Bird people are all a little bit strange, but are quite nice despite this.

(3). People tend to focus in on one particular problem (eg shorebird conservation) and think that the entire population of the world should care about it as much as they do without taking into consideration the fact that it is not possible to care that much about everything that everyone thinks we should care about.

(4). I now know the Auslan signs for "bird", "chick", "migrate", "dog", and a few other things (we had interpreters at all the talks because one of the scientists is deaf). I really like the sign for "dog" - you slap your thigh twice as if you were calling your dog over to you.

(5). Honours supervisors can be useful. My supervisor was really great all weekend and made sure that I was introduced to all the right people and had an opportunity to network with them.

(6). Having to be at a conference 8:30-5:00 everyday of the weekend after a full week of being at uni (plus the conference dinner 6:00-10:00 on Sat) and then having to be at uni for the OH&S/first aid course 8:30-5:30 Monday and Tuesday can make you a little irritable on Wednesday.

(7). After seeing all the awesome photos of shorebirds I have found my inspiration to start painting again.

Anyway, that's it. See ya later.