Impressions of Okinawa (6/30/04)

Between the food and weather, I think I’ve lost weight. The weather? A mix between a sauna and a hot tub. I thought for sure I’d be used to weather like this after living in Atlanta. Nope. The humidity in Okiwawa makes Atlanta seem like a desert. Everyone at the conference had horrible pit stains, wet backs and butts… I had sweat dripping down the backs of my legs fer crissakes!!! I thought I would have to burn a couple of the dresses I wore. :-{

My hotel was a Japanese equivalent to Motel 6 (ha ha). It actually wasn’t THAT bad, we got fresh slippers and a kimono on our beds every night. The only English TV channel was AFN (Armed Forces Network). Interesting. I watched part of Spiderman one night and I couldn’t get past the commercials. They were more like public service announcements. For example, how to use credit cards wisely; or it’s better to seek marriage counseling than to commit domestic violence; and the best – it’s illegal for a serviceperson to speak negatively about any of the country’s leaders, which would result in a court marshal and jail time. Hmmm.
My roommates at the conference were very cool. I now have two new friends, one at Cambridge and the other in France. Annelise, the Brit, was my favorite. We got along very well and hung out quite a bit.

As for the conference, it wasn’t all that well organized. My hotel was the closest to the conference center, but I was the last one picked up in the morning and the last one dropped off. I was at most 10 miles away, but it was a 30 min bus ride there and over an hour back to the hotel at night. They also only ran 3 buses in the morning from 7:30 to 8:00 then one bus every 3 hours… we were trapped. Most of the time when the bus reached OUR hotel, it was full. What the F---- is that all about? Usually we could bully our way on, but one day we couldn’t get on ANY bus that stopped so we had to take the public bus. The reason this all sucks so much is that we paid a hefty registration fee, which is suppose to cover transportation. Hence people’s hesitation to pay out of their pocket for an expensive cab. Several of us jumped on the public bus that day (which smelled like goat). First of all, it didn’t drop us off near the conference center. We had to walk 2+ miles from the bus stop. In addition, the damn bus cost MORE than if we had split a taxi!!!! Argh!

The other bit of poor planning came in the form of a deadly miscalculation of how much Westerners… or even just BIOLOGISTS love to eat and drink (beer and/or coffee). On the first day, sessions broke for mid-morning coffee, but there was no coffee. NO COFFEE!!!! Mayhem! Hordes of tired, irritable scientists with NO COFFEE during a coffee break. I’m utterly surprised that no blood was spilled. That was a quick lesson learned. The very next day there was ample coffee and snacks at both the morning and afternoon break. Salvation. The other miscalculation was in planning the two banquets. At each one, the food ran out within 10 – 15 minutes. Oh well, who needs food? The biological community could deal with that. But, when the BEER ran out!… those poor little Okinawanese looked like frightened goats facing the prospect of being torn to shreds by a Bengal tiger. On Thursday night after we drank the banquet dry, thousands of scientists invaded the city of Naha. Unfortunately the word had spread of only ONE bar. So, hundreds of people were heading for the same place. By the time my group made it to the little bar on Kokisai street, the conference goers had drunk the BAR dry. I’m not kidding. Several of us found a more obscure bar underneath the city. It was a tiny little dance club with strobe lights and funky music. We had a blast dancing the night away to Ludacris and Outkast sung in Japanese. :-D

Back to the conference though… other than the poor planning it was great. The talks were interesting. I was at the edge of my seat for a few. Geeky? Okay, but the science behind some of them (good or bad) was intriguing and I had tons of new ideas (and possible collaborations) spring forth. I made plenty of new contacts and have revived hope for my future. Now I need to push through the rest of grad school. I’m ready to be done and move on. I met several members of a lab in Australia… where the best potential for collaboration lies. However, I peaked the interest of parties in Hawaii, Oregon and California as well. I just hope their interest in me lasts over the next 2 years. I guess I should be working on my paper instead of writing this journal entry if THAT’S going to happen. :-}

Anyway… my talk was well received. I got great feedback and was excited because I was the only speaker (in the molecular realm) that actually presented DATA!! Everyone else just presented techniques that could be used to address questions relating to coral biology/ecology. I made sure to open my talk by stating just that…. That MY talk USED the techniques that everyone had been talking about and actually showed DATA from it. It made me feel pretty good.
I could go on, but I’ll leave it there for now. I’d probably bore you with the rest. ;-)

So for now… sayonara!
-Sara