On this trip would be two colleagues from the lab as well as my supervisor. The 7 hour drive was lots of fun. The professor is always full of stories and jokes. He keeps a pretty open mind about different kinds of music, from one of my colleague's strange mixture of Japanese Rock to my raw gangsta rap complete with racial slurs. One of the songs became something of a running gag as the Prof tried immitating the Jamaican-esque growling noise that came after the words, "Bumbaclot! Dance Right!!!"
The border guard was obvioulsy perplexed when he saw the four of us in the car. "A black man... 2 Russians... and a jew?" Sounds like the beginning to some uber racist joke.
Border guard: "Where you folks headin'?"
Driver: "We're going to bufallo... For a conference.."
Border guard: "What kind of conference?"
Driver: "It's the Northeastern Meeting for Yeast scientists."
Border guard: "...."
Professor: "A conference for biological science."
Border guard: "BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE??????"
His incredulous howl was a mixture of confusion and terror. But alas, he called over another guy in uniform, they looked over the passports and decided everything was in order.
The hotel was really nice and the Prof treated us all to a really nice supper. The next day was talks from 9am to 6pm. I nodded off for many of them, though they were for the most part pretty interesting. All the talks from me and the students from our lab went pretty well. One thing I did notice is where most people end the talk by thanking there supervisors, in our lab we thank, "Our professor." LIke he's more than just our supervisor. Anyway it sounded different. Less formal, more personal. Like when Samwise Gamgee says, "My old gaffer!" Regardless, we got props from the other scientists for our kick ass research! I'd say we even had some Biology groupies. One hot girl scientist said,"Hey Chris... Nice talk... Why don't you talk to me? IN BED!!!"
The last part probably didn't happen, but we were congratulated and met some interesting people at the Conference dinner. Among them were Dr. Bob, a rasta Biologist from Bufallo, and another guy from his lab, Sanjay. We went with them to watch the Doom movie, this being somewhat terrible and not worth watching. The movie can basically be summed up in four words, "24th chromosome... Ganglion... killer monsters..." In fact that was a line from the movie, basically explaining that people were turning into monsters because they were getting injected with a 24th chromosome. Ridiculous! Especially to biologists coming from a talk about genetics ands tuff.
Bufallo itself is a dead city, as I'm told most American cities are. Saturday night and Sunday morning the streets were barren as Angela Landsbury's womb. I must have counted 10 people walking the streets total. There were no billboards, no adds.. nothing... It was a ghost town. Anyway, on the way home we had what I like to call a CHAMPION breakfast, complete with pancakes, sausage, eggs etc...
Then the 7 hour ride back. We stopped at Fat Nancy's Tackle shop, just for a laugh. Fat Nancy happens to be a very large fish. And they sell al kinds of bait and odd t-shirts. Getting a little hungry I wandered to the back to see if they sold snacks. I found a fridge with a sign on it that said, "Nightcrawlers and Earthworms." Oh well, pancakes and such would have to hold me until my triumphant return to montreal.
Prof: "What's that you're eating Chris?"
Me: "Night..... Ummm... nothing..."
Then we stopped at the border. We all got alcohol. I picked up a bottle of Rum for my cousin Chad (I wonder if that was a good idea)
And we went on our merry way. YAY! It was a nice weekend.
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