Beautiful, like a truck

The conference is cool!

And so was the mountain! Ohh but I'll come back to that.

We've just finished the 2 morning sessions for Saturday. This evening we have some poster presentations, so that might be more interesting... I presume it's more question based, looking-over-people's-shoulders type communication.

My presentation on Wednesday went *really* well. I only had 20 mins including questions - I'm more used to 40-60 min presentations so it was quite a squash! But I had tons of sleep, and practiced quite a bit so it was very comfy. Normally, I'm preparing last minute and am really tired, so having to design the whole presentation before leaving Australia really helped!

OK... the mountatin. It was big... it was far... it was cold... it was wet. I can't even remember it's name, but we started walking just after 9, and finished after 4:30, with a bit of a break in between in a shelter to eat lunch. For my haggis friends, this made our "wee-walks" seem like childs play! It was pretty cold up there - I'm glad I had my super-touristy-looking-toasty-waterproof-gloves and my sam-could-be-a-construction-worker-extreme-wet-weather-yellow-goretex-jacket! The beanie thingy was pretty helpful too... but it's not cool enough to deserve a weird name.

While talking about clothes, I have a bone to pick with you Mr Marshman (Andy the shoe salesman!) . You never told me that my airwalks weren't good in the snow! Haha well at that time I never expected that I would be climbing the Polish Tatras either. I was skidding everywhere, which considering there is a sheer-ish drop just a few metres away is NOT a good thing. I took it slow and was the last down from the summit, but considering more than 1/2 didn't make the final climb I'm not bothered! Today my knees are *really* complaining, but it was still worth it. I'll have to go to my room later, grab my cable and CD and upload the "sam on the mountain" photos... you can all rate my jacket... Some days I kinda regret buying such a bright jacket... and some days I love it... I bet you're jelous that the voices talk to me :-)

I've met tons of kewl ppl! I've been making trips into Zakopane (the central shops and restaurant bit... it costs us $12AUD-ish for a taxi each way) with David, Pau, another spanish guy, and Thanasis from Greece... the night before last we went in, walked around and drank... We'd had tons of dinner and didn't want to eat, but spotted some really nice looking restaurants. Last night, after the mountain climb we were pretty hungry (and sick of ham-cheese-tomato-bread ham-cheese-tomato-bread ham-cheese-tomato-bread ham-cheese-tomato-bread which we get for brekky and dinner each night), so we went in again... got wet *again* after drying out from the climb, and ate some *really* nice flame grilled meat - a shishkebab, tenderloin, some mutton and a sausage. MMMMM real meat! The whole lot was 22zl plus a beer at 6zl and a all-you-can-eat salad for 7zl. Add it up and divide by 2.25 for $AUD and you'll see I ate tons for not much. Food here is pretty good and cheap!

Anyway, so that's the greek and the spaniards (sp?). The frenchies are pretty crazy! They'll be reading this later... but I think they'll agree with me! David (a french one) has tons of hair, and drinks vodka like it's water, and loves Estelle! Same with another french guy, they talk about estelle all the time (for the CS ppl... add a french accent to a C++ related-abbreviation and you might understand the object of their obsession)

There's also Dom(inique), who has as little hair as David has tons (well not quite), and is always the very crazy, laugh a minute, learn-english-on-the-spot guy. Pierre-Yves has like the MOST french name possible. He's really tall and kinda dangerous, especially when enthused after a few vodkas. Vincent was saying "no I can't drink, I'm presenting tomorrow" and then went on to start buying rounds of Zubrovka (Vodka flavoured with this grass that bison's eat)... he seems to love bad photos of himself??

Anyway... they're all crazy... and I think we've killed Thanasis (Actually Athanaseous!). He was pretty quiet last night, and was downing Vodkas with us... he's missing in action - haven't seen him all day!

So, we were talking about all kinds of expressions in Greek, French and English. Why do so many languages relate girls to animals?? The french equivalent of "Bitch" is much worse than the English one though, and you don't want to know about skirts near to certain shellfish... hrmm..

so, "Beautiful, like a truck" is a kewl saying. In french (after direct translation) it means "that guy is well dressed".... hrmm... see, told you they're crazy!

That's all for the moment... photos will appear soon!

Cya guys.

PS. Great to hear comments from some different people! Spread the word :-)

PPS. UPDATE... I went with Kostas (Actually Kostantinos!) and we banged on Thanasis's door... he looked really bad... and this was at 12:30 in the afternoon. We took lunch up to him and he didn't look that impressed... and we checked in on him at 3pm and at least he'd eaten, but is still pretty unsociable! It's 6:30 now and he's still in bed! We're going to try to get him up for the banquet at 7pm... should be fun! Kostas knows about sleep anyway, he's always the one piking because he's too tired! Probably means he's the most sensible... he laughs, maybe not (Kostas: "tonight, we'll see") haha. The plan is to eat tons at the banquet, then maybe go to a "discoteque" (sp?) It's strange that they still use that name! Ohh not as strange as the "nightclub", which ended up being a "Gentleman's Nightclub" ohh... not quite what we first thought.

Anyway someone else I have to tell you about is Pszemesz or something like that.... I can only sometimes say his name, and can never spell it! He's in the photos I just uploaded so you'll find out who he is soon! Polish names are scary!

Posted by Sam at September 28, 2002 06:46 PM