San Diego

So, a while ago, in my new capacity as Press Officer for EMBL (the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, for anyone who didn't know), I went to the annual meeting/conference organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, better known as 'the people who publish the journal Science). As several people have asked about this trip - my first time outside Europe - but I never got round to writing a proper post, here is an account partly taken from an email I sent my parents & brother:

My first sight of another continent was the view of Hudson Bay from the plane - can't you almost convince yourself you can see polar bears down there? (or was that just a side-effect of 10hours on a plane combined with a lifelong passion for those creatures? Don't answer that...)

Once we had dropped off our bags and dirt (aka had a shower), my EMBL colleague Angela and I went hunting for a meal.. In the process, we found the official start of the historic part of town we were staying in, called the Gaslamp Quarter because all the street lamps used to be gas lamps and are supposedly still preserved (although now running on electricity).

 The strange thing is that actually this 'historic' quarter looks as if it could have been built last year (Ok, maybe 10 years ago)... it's all tall, modern buildings, with the occasional 'period' hotel thrown in for good measure (like the one we were staying at, which Angela described as "20th century American idea of Victorian" - I myself couldn't have put it better... the pièce de résistance was the box of tissues in the bathroom, which looked like marble, but was in fact plastic...)

On our first walk to the convention centre (or center as it is spelled there), a street sign had me baffled for a few seconds... it seems a pretty good example of the American penchant for strange abbreviations... (the first non-American commenter to guess what it means wins a prize!)

By the way, for the first 2 days I was walking around thinking "that rhythm is familiar" everytime I stopped to cross at traffic lights, until Angela pointed out they were modelled on birdsongs! Most of the ones we came across were cuckoos, but at intersections where you could cross in 2 directions (and where the light for each turned green at a different time), they had different songs for each direction (we think the other was a nightingale, but we're not sure)...

Another aspect of the trip for me was a kind of culture shock. First came the realization that the smallest coffee size at coffee shops seemed to always be called 'Tall', or 'large' or some other equivalent... On one of the evenings, for instance, we went out to supper with EMBL's Science & Society programme coordinator, who is Icelandic, and when the time came to choose desert, they rolled out a trolley to show us the different options. One was 2 profiteroles with chocolate sauce, and Angela and I decided they looked quite nice, and ordered one helping each - this is what each of us was brought! To give you an idea of scale, the spoon resting on the plate (which is what I was brought to eat it with) is a soup spoon! Welcome to America, I guess... ;)