back from the hunter valley

I'm back from the SCANZ Crystal 25 Conference in the Hunter Valley. My first ever conference and I must say, it was fantastic. It could not have been in a nicer place. The scenery, the wine, the cheese, the food, everything was just great. Even though I was moved from staying at the conference venue to another site for accommodation, it was still pretty good. If CK and I ever decide to go away to the Hunter Valley, I would seriously consider staying at these places.

The conference itself was good. Great talks and not so great talks. No offence, but I have an issue with protein people being at a crystallography conference. It's just wrong! But some of the other talks are great. They tend to be involved with solid state chemistry, which is my field, or molecular frameworks. Other talks which was good were about some of the new facilities opening up here in Australia, such as the new OPAL reactor at ANSTO and the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne. And of course, the best talks were saved for last...Materials Science and Nanotechnology.

The social side of things were great...met a lot of new people, like MC, who is CL's new postdoc out at ANSTO. Nice guy. We were all fed well constantly and the dinners...really extravagant. I felt guilty throughout the whole conference. Here I am, just coming here to present a poster and listen to talks and some new research that's happening, and I'm being fed feasts after feasts. Of course, it was all sponsored by some very generous analytical companies. In the spirit of "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" I thought I'd mention one in particular...Panalytical. Why? Free periodic table mouse pad! You can tell I'm a geek, can't you?