Well, today started in an interesting manner, as I was awoken by a knock on my door that made me literally jump out of my bed. Fortunately, I did not hit anything on my way to answering it (not sure how I managed to find my keys to unlock it either, but apparently I was startled into a sixth sense... I can't usually even find them when I have my contacts in, for that matter). There was a shape leaned over in a hunchback-like manner, mumbling to me in broken it-english. I had no idea what it said until later, but nodded, hoping it would leave me alone to find my eyeballs. And the figure scurried off after five seconds of this, and I was left to slow my heartbeat and splash water on my face to wake up (as it was already about 85degF at 7:30am, I was ready to go jump in the Trevi Fountain NOW PLEASE). When I woke up enough to reprocess what the guy said, it occurred to me that he was the dude on duty at the front desk. I asked yesterday if I could borrow an alarm clock since my phone doesn't know what time it is (Verizon apparently doesn't travel to Europe, only to NZ). Unfortunately, no, they said, but we can call you in the morning to wake you up (my room has a TV and phone line and sink, but no clock or toilet or shower). But apparently the phone line in my room is broken (as is the mini-fridge), so he had to come knock on my door to wake me up. Phew. That gave me a fright.
Beyond that, it was the second day of the conference. Audric and I listened to a bunch of interesting presentations, a bunch of boring-as presentations, and a bunch of poor PhD students you just have feel extreme pity for because you can tell they've never given a presentation before. Jon Nash gave a wonderful keynote lecture about the unpredictability of internal wave behavior in the presence of inhomogeneous topography, essentially telling me that my PhD is going to be ridiculous and I won't be able to draw any real conclusions given the data I have, and then failed to answer my question regarding wave packet identification by telling me that they were identified by changes in the vertical velocity (no duh, but that doesn't define packets, just IWs). On the bright side, this prompted Sonya Legg one of the three or so female senior researchers in the conference, to introduce herself to me. That was nice. And I had lunch with Lynn Gelhar again, along with a discussion of the pros and cons of presentations and posters. I think he was just trying to make me feel better.
The poster session went well enough, though unfortunately Rocky Geyer didn't show up, though I really wished he had (he was signed up for a poster... and I wanted to plant a seed in his brain that I would love to do a postdoc with him in three years or so at Woods Hole). Actually, of about thirty posters, only about ten of us showed up. And only about five of us actually were with our posters during the session time (which happened to correspond with coffee hour in the afternoon). I was hoping that Larry Armi would come over, but he just stopped by and moved on. Christine (a Stanford student who had also made her poster the wrong way) and I stole one of the Nortek dude's easel boards to put up our posters, and it was a madhouse trying to keep them up. Unfortunately, not very productive... the most productive comments/questions came from Audric, though I did get a chance to talk to several other SCAMP users and find that my swinging velocity isn't abnormal... it appeared off the coast of France, as well.
It turns out there are some people from NZ here, so I'm going to try to get a chance to meet them tomorrow. The scene in the keynote lectures is hilarious: in the first row near the door sit about seven old men with white hair and beards. They are rowdy and talk over each other, even during the lecture, and you'd think they were graduate students. But if you were to read their nametags, you would find yourself in the presence of many of the fathers of modern fluid mechanics and oceanography, from Scripps to MIT to Woods Hole to Oregon State to Cambridge to U. Western Australia. It's a ridiculous bunch, but knowing there are such great minds in the room simply enthralls me.
After sweating through the poster session (both literally and figuratively, as the posters were outside), there were more lectures (including Audric's) and I finally had a chance to sketch a little more. The cloister the conference is being held in (the Faculty of Engineering) is ridiculously gorgeous. I wish O'Brien were this nice!
Sangallo Cloister, Universita di Roma la Sapienza
But I guess that's what you get for being around since the 12th century.
At 7:30pm, Julia, Audric and I headed out to roam and have dinner in the Trastevere neighborhood, across the Tiber from where we're staying (and a bit). It's supposed to be the best place for nightlife, and if the packed cafes were any indication, they were right.
Via Della Scala, 8:45pm
We ended up finding the place we wanted to go for dinner was closed (not surprising, really, as this is the time of year when lots of restaurants have vacations). We ended up somewhere that ended up being pretty dang good, even without knowing anything about it and despite the high tourist population. So now commenceth food blog: we shared mozzarella di bufala with shaved black truffles:
and then for dinner, risotto with porcini, sausage and ricotta salata (yes! meat! though now my stomach isn't happy):
AND a bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo (nom nom), called "Ilius". Amazing.
And as we were walking back to the hotel (gotta love those nighttime city streets), there was a place selling ricotta granita. If you're familiar with granita, you will understand that is rather strange, as the creaminess isn't associated with granita much. It wasn't the best thing I've ever had, but hey, when in Rome, right?
What a day.
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