I got back from Wagga Wagga on Friday. The 3 day conference was a blast!
We stayed at the Charles Sturt uni so I didn’t really get to see Wagga.
I was incredibly nervous before I had to do my presentation in front of
about 100 top ranking professors and officials. Luckily I was the third
candidate to give a presentation on the first day. Thanks to some
rehearsals I did with my supervisors it went pretty well. Still, I was
talking quite fast which led to a question on something I though I
explained quite clearly. But that was alright because that meant I
scored that one 😛 . The other question was more about the general
context of my research which wasn’t too hard to explain either. I
suppose that since the conference was really a physics one, no one could
really challenge me. Other talks were about superconductivity, carbon
nanotubes, thermoelectric/ magnetic materials and quantum computing.
Waaay above my intelligence ha ha. Nonetheless, after a while the talks
that were on the same subject, I could at least make some sense of.
Besides listening to presentations, the first night we had a conference
dinner and the second a trivia quiz. The trivia quiz night was crazy! By
then I had acquainted with the students there (just a handful), most who
just finished their honours. So we were at one table. Knowing that we
had no chance of winning we called ourselves the Naieve Stoodunts. In
the end though, surprisingly we came third last and not last! The trivia
questions were pretty general in categories like sports, geography,
politics and history. Three groups tried in first place which caused
some commotion but in the end all three would receive a plaque on the
winners cup. I bought some nice wine from the winery on the campus as we
left. Apparently if you want to learn to make wine, that’s the place to
go! Here are the photos of the uni at Wagga Wagga and the convention centre. The town/ railway in the photos is Wagga Wagga itself.

The following night (Saturday) I went to a cool pool party with my German housemate. It was good fun. I stayed until 2 am by which time I got bored / tired so I cycled back home.

I don’t have anything special planned in the next month or so except a gig in Sydney next week where I’ll go and see Iron Maiden live! That’s next Saturday. More on that later.