Okay So, the day/s running up to the tour were a little frenetic. First the glitch with the travel agents and airlines, then just trying to get some of the Division's assets unfrozen in time for them to give me a bit of cash to run amok through the US of A with, then attempting to get some shopping for snow-clothes done, wither live or via the almighty internet, then trying to nail down a few interviews for potential positions and suchlike while I did the planned 5 city tour. Needless to say, cities on the tour were planned for their ability to contain decent research units with whom I would like to carve out a career in the life sciences. That, and the holiday factor. Had I had a bit more time, and a lot more cash, the holiday factor would have included a Spring Break factor, and places like New York and Los Angeles would have been cut for places like Cancun and Fort Lauderdale. Nevertheless, interviews were set up and confirmed with the Scripps Institute in San Diego, a very larney, hoity-toity, top-of-the-line research spot in lovely summery SoCal; The Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, just outside DC; Georgetown University's Biochemistry Department in DC, and lastly, one of the units at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, affiliated to Yeshiva University in New York. The cash was unfrozen a mere two days before departure; issued in the form a fourteen-working-day-clearance having cheque from the University. They always do stupid shit like that - you tell them when you need to leave and get your travel funding by, and they always make sure it arrives late. Typical. The car was also booked in to have a new clutch put in the day before I was due to depart. The fact that the clutch had been needing replacement for a good few months now aside, the panicking mother factor came into play, deciding that the car was undoubtedly going to conk out and die on Hell's Highway, the N2 to/from the airport, while she and my sister were on the way back from dropping me off and they would meet with no end of certain doom thereafter. The bit about the certain doom is a given if your wheels give out on Hell's Highway. The fact of the matter is that the wheels were not about to give out, but hey, that's the panicking mother factor for you. Also, my sister can't drive for toffee, so if anyone is likely to blow out the tenuously-hanging-in-there clutch, it is her; perhaps my mom has a point in her panic. There was also the small matter of my research presentation, in the form of a scientific poster, which still needed a bit of fine tuning and then re-writing before getting printed and laminated and stuiff so it could actually get on the plane with me. The tricky bit there being that I am a complete procrastinator notwithstanding, I managed to get that done with 2 whole days to spare, a new record. The former record being 1 whole day to spare. This is the reason why I prefer oral presentations to posters. The idea of posters may sound a bit naff (I think it is, myself), but they do serve a purpose as being an easy way to get your research up and about and visible without necessarily needing you there to explain it to any hapless scientific colleague or arch-rival (ie anyone else in science at your conference) and people can peruse it at their leisure. PErsonally, I prefer the whole "our next speaker is" because then everyone who is anyone is actually kinda nailed to their chairs and is forced to listen to you and you don't have to loiter near your poster and hope they mosey past so you can snare them. Having said that, the easiest way to snare someone if you are obliged to do a poster and not a talk is to be friendly, witty and easy-going, and to have a colossal supply of Life-savers or Polos or BreathSavers or something sweet in your pocket to lure them in with. This actually tends to work with anything, by the way. Then there was the small matter of getting some forex, badgering the British Consulate in Pretoria to hurry up with my stuffing passport (got that with 2 days to spare), getting some more socks (mine are getting a little long in the tooth and my shoes tend to eat the heels out of 'em fairly frequently) and some bathroom stuff - shampoo, toothpaste etc etc - as well as presents for the guy who was putting me up in New York, collecting my shiny new credit card and also managing to snag an international driving licence (panicking mother factor part II: the return; she was convinced if we hired a car and actually, you know, drove in a foreign country, we would wrap ourselves around the nearest pole/tree/18-wheel truck or drive off a cliff or something. I just smiled and nodded and got the licence and told her to calm down. Went down like a lead balloon, that one) and then had to settle down to the task of deciding which of my thirty six thousand t-shirts was going on the trip, how many smart shirts to take (Panicking Mother III: The Revenge; "you need to make a good imnpression etc etc"), and getting it all stuffed into my luggage. Made off in the end with enough clothing to clothe the five thousand, with enough insurance (jeans, t-shirts, smart shirts, smart-casual shirts, sweaters, jackets, boardshorts, cargos) to cover any weather eventuality. All very through, and very heavy. Luckily the luggage had wheels on it. Surprisingly, made it to the airport with a good few hours to spare. Okay, need to actually do some work - tomorrow I will let you in on the bit where I managed to convince them not pull away from the airport and to please let me off the plane to go fetch the stuff I left in the duty-free shop... -d-