Its been a pretty quiet start to June, after the hectic month that was May! Paul and I rounded off May with a trip down to Canberra to watch the Swans play (badly) the Western Bulldogs. It was a cold, almost winter day, and we were glad of our ski jackets and swans scarves to keep warm! It was quite different watching the game from row 3 rather than the top of the noble stand! The atmosphere was different from the SCG, partly due to the cold and the smaller capacity, and probably also because our team didn't win :-( I still enjoyed the game but would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if the Swans had a) played well and b) won! We dropped in on Nanna on the way home on Sunday just to say hello. I hadn't told her we would be in town so we surprised her! She was very happy to see her and it was lovely passing the time of day with her before we got back on the road again.

Once back in Sydney I had a couple of long days at work preparing for a 2 day conference on the Gold Coast. I had prepared my slides for my 15 min talk the week before, but I still had to work out how I was putting the talk together and what I was going to say. Knowing that the conference was going to be pretty full on I wanted to get it sorted before heading up there. The conference was a Jupiters Casino, but to be honest I saw very little of the hotel apart from the conference room! It was a packed couple of days, I was asked to be a student poster judge that took up any free time I might have had! I thought my talk went well and obviously others agreed as I ended up sharing the "best talk by a postdoc" award! Its nice to get some return for all the hard effort you put in!

Back at work after the long weekend now (which was blissfully free of commitments - Paul and I watched lots of sport, made nice dinners and headed down to the Darling Harbour Jazz festival and the maritime museum) and getting back into the (new) lab as well as modifying my conference talk into an in house 25 min seminar!