Well, Conference Day arrived, all bright’n’shiny, with no hint of the previous day’s ill weather, and, by proxy, no foot of fresh powdery snow, either. But still, this was it. The day I had been waiting for since I was green-lit to attend waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in January. The purpose for the 18 hour hell-flight. Sort of, at any rate, since I had been obliged to chuck in a little extra-mural travel as well – you know, see the sights – and of course see various people about schmoozing my way into their labs in a post-doctoral capacity. Nevertheless, Conference Day! Hallelujah! Glory be! Et cetera. Of course, SuperShuttle were only due back around 1pm; the mountain trip was going to happen at 2:30pm and it was but a very early 9:30am when I came to, blinking in the sunlight. Needless to say, there were a few hours to kill; quite possibly, however, not enough to get myself back to LoDo and back to the hotel – a real bummer since I had carefully plotted this the day before. But that’s what happens when you don’t give it 100% stick and don’t actually get stuck in properly. What I should have done was to call Supershuttle and see if they couldn’t come early – location meant any shuttle coming from town to the airport would have to pass me anyway. Didn’t occur to me, though – silly boy. So I did the next best thing, which was channel-surf a bit. All that was really showing on the 40-odd channels I could get was informercials, the Pope’s funeral, and the marriage of Charles and Camilla, to a good amount of rampant dismay from the British and Commonwealth citizens by and large; in particular, one Dale’s Mother, who had been muttering about it for some time. She gets a bee in her bonnet about things sometimes, you see, and these things blip up on the radar from time to time, usually fairly infrequently, but at length when they do, and this was one particular storm which I had weathered before leaving Cape Town, and thus was spared the week running up to said wedding when she may well have been in full force. I did get a dig in at her about it when she phoned, but spent more time moaning about my crap choice of lodgings, and trying to downplay that I was near a truck-stop frequented by Hellbillies, and that I was alongside a strip-joint which was quite possibly a brothel. Following that, I took good long hot bath. Yeah, I know guys are far more prone to showering, but I am more than happy to spend an hour immersed in warm water either reading a good book or latest FHM/Maxim/Men’s Health, or sleeping and coming to after 45 minutes with a sore neck. Following this routine bout of cleansing, I piled on shitloads of moisturizer – the dry air was playing hell with my sensitive skin; the 18 hours of horrific, no-off-switch-having A/C of the Airbus and subsequent completely air-conditioned environments of the preceding week had done precious little to help – and proceeded downstairs for breakfast. It was there that I came across the wonders of pre-packed Philadelphia cream cheese – something of a delicacy down here in .za; all imported for a the cost of an arm and a leg, and you guys just give the stuff away – and toasted bagels. So breakfast was good, especially the scrambled eggs and bacon and stuff as well, and I was, sated, able to wait out Supershuttle by doing a bit of internet shopping – well, internet browsing – for likely gift items for my family back home. The trip back to DIA was even more multicultural than the trip in the cab to WRAIR in DC. We had an Aussie – and I hardly even called him a sheepshagger, even though they all are down there – a girl from DC, a Mormon heading back to Utah and of course me, lost lonely little African boy, here to spread the word on how to save the world from malaria, to other people who were here to do the same thing. People who are non-scientists always think that that’s what we do at conferences – tell each other where we have been going wrong and sorting each other out, but it’s not true. It’s merely an incredibly expensive version of Show and Tell, with the “show” part being primarily intellectual property and statistical data and computer models as opposed to a pet hamster or a new pair of shoes or something similar. But you non-scientists can keep on believing that everyone attending any conference is holding the key to the secrets of the Universe if you really want to. Anyway, we all wowed each other with credentials of places we’d been to, and where we were headed to – Supershuttle of course traditionally taking people to the airport to catch a flight; my idea of Supershuttling back to the airport to catch another shuttle back out of the airport was met with much bemused consternation and general “Are you serious?” Of course, that was when I explained about the conference – that I was getting shuttled out to Keystone from DIA and the Mormon girl, a medical doctor in training heading home for Spring Break, realised that Keystone was a prestigious conference organization and that was how we got onto that eventually. Nevertheless, the 40 minute journey passed without any incident, and we were delivered to the various terminal entrances to get to our respective airlines – Delta, in my case, which is where the CME leaves from every hour or so. Got checked in there and was kinda left to my own devices for the next 40 minutes or so while we waited for everyone to arrive so we could go. I had my 2nd pack of M&Ms ready for lunch, since I had had a late breakfast and was not ready for anything substantially lunchy, and my camera and my poster and all my luggage and felt a bit of a nitwit watching everyone else rock up with only a small suitcase in tow, the conference itself running only till Tuesday. Yup, all this fiasco for a mere 3 and a half days. Seems like a waste, I know – welcome to science, people. Anyway, got pointed to my shuttle – there was another one leaving as well – and off we went. I was stuck with a very taciturn guy about my age, who didn’t say one word, another woman who slept the whole way there – she was going for the Worms conference, not the Protozoan one like me – and two other Dutch/German/Belgian/one of those countries academics, both now based at NYU, who gossiped and ranted and raved about everything the whole way there. Although I offered, nobody wanted any M&Ms; in fact, they looked at me like I’d crawled out from a piece of cheese and waved my cock at them until they realised I was in fact not taking the piss. They still declined, however – their loss, I say. By now, the bad weather was kinda coming in, and we got our first up-close glimpses of snow alongside the highway. I’ll admit at this point that my sole experience of snow has been the man-made kind at another ski place in South Africa – in fact, Tiffindell is the only ski place in Africa south of the Equator – and I had never before seen proper real snow which had actually fallen from the sky at all ever up close. New York and DC had both passed their snow days, although both were cold, and Denver itself had been decidedly unsnowy, and bloody-mindedly so. This was an exciting prospect – real snow; another foot of fresh virgin Colorado powder, Aspen-quality or Vail-quality no less, expected this evening and continuing on for the next couple of days. Although I couldn’t really line up or frame anything useful, I had my camera at the ready the whole time, and when the taciturn guy got off at the summit stage – a kind of general meeting point for all the shuttles before they head off to their various resorts – I did indeed go to town snapping snowy peaks. The summit stage, however, doesn’t give you a great vantage point for this sort of thing, but I got a couple of good ones, so that’s okay. A mere 10 minutes later, we were at Copper Mountain, home of the joint X5 (helminths – that’s worms for you non-scientists) and X6 (protozoa – single celled eukaryotes like Malaria, Leishmania etc; NOT bacteria because they are prokaryotes, as you know, and therefore have fundamentally different basic characteristics in terms of DNA complexity, ribosomal structure etc etc) symposia. Got checked into my room and off I went to get settled. The room was spacious – 2 double beds, private bathroom – on the 3rd floor of Mountain Plaza in the corner overlooking the main plaza and the American Eagle ski lift, site of my erstwhile non-co-ord skiing abilities. At the time of arrival, which was at the end of the ski season – the resort was due to close the following Sunday – they were well into the end-of-season events, and the one wrapping up today was a rock festival. As I was getting my shit unloaded, the band on-stage were 70s greats The Blue Oyster Cult, most well known for the track Don’t Fear The Reaper, which they were just starting as their encore. So I snapped a few shots out of the window of the band, and, more importantly, the guitarist during the solo. They sound really good live, it must be said. I had a room with a view, as the saying goes. In fact, one way or another, all the rooms seemed to have a spectacular view; the only difference being the way you were facing. Mine was directly onto the piste; the others behind would have been into the Breckinridge valley, which you could see from the front entrance to the building – all good, I reckon. Down below me there were ski shops, restaurants, bars, the Adventure Center and cool things like that; about 100 metres further away from that was a full gym with a heated lap pool and Jacuzzi. Most of the lodging buildings had either a Jacuzzi or a sauna – all very relaxing after a hard day’s skiing – and each bathroom was kitted out with infra-red lights to aid with quicker drying of your clothes. There were vending machines and places to do laundry and everything in the buildings as well, as well as ski lockers downstairs to keep your boots and board and everything on the ground floor so you don’t need to lug it up and down all day. Copper is an awesome place. It really does knock gigantic spots off Tiffindell, the local ski resort here in .za, in terms of locale, ski terrain, facilities and all-round fabulousness. The front desk is 24-hours and they are extremely efficient, the shops, ski-rental outlets, restaurants and pubs are all fun friendly places, the guys involved in assisting both on and off the slopes are very quick and knowledgeable and above all, the whole place just works really, really well. I would definitely recommend it. Absolutely top-notch all the way, in my opinion. Following the initial settling in, I went to go register for the conference. This involves getting checked in at the conference/meeting venue (fortunately, in a building just around the corner from my room – literally a 90 second walk), getting your name tag and passes for meals and special sessions, getting an official and up-to-date programme for everything, and most important, receiving your bag o’ swag – in most cases, a larney briefcase-type thing with the conference logo emblazoned on it, sponsored by someone who is trying to impress you, filled with a set of pens and pads and diaries and suchlike, also all sponsored by other people trying to impress you, and everything else – everything from vouchers for free coffee, keyrings, mouse pads, journal subscriptions, you name it – we all whore ourselves one way or another, I suppose, and believe me, the sciences, and medical science in particular, are no exception. We all moan about the big corporations ruining science and independent research, too, of course, but we will happily accept and endorse their merchandise, and their money is always welcome when times are tough. Times are always tough in the sciences, by the way, particularly at University level – this is one of those things – more so in the developing world. It’s a catch-22 of note for countries like ours – no money for research so the researchers go seeking opportunities abroad, so you spend more money to train more researchers who can’t find work, so they go away too etc. even when you get money, those who have left have tasted the high(er) life and are loathe to return to a place so backward by comparison. We’re in real trouble here in the 3rd World in this regard. Anyway, heading to the conference center at Copper, I ran into one of my colleagues, Brandon, who was in my department until recently and who is clearly also attending. He had arrived the day before, all on his lonesome, direct from .za via Atlanta (as opposed to my scenic approach over a week and via New York) and had, luckily for me, broken the ice with a lot of cool people, so I was readily accepted into a circle of his newly-made friends. This is good – I was on my lonesome in Tanzania, and struggled a bit to interact with the people from the conference staying in the same hotel as me. Those people I did hook up with at the conference were in other hotels scattered about town and so the social interactions were largely diminished outside “Conference hours,” largely because of the logistical nightmare of negotiating after-dark Arusha safely. In this case, safely means not getting hit by one of the myriad buses tearing up the wide dirt roads, no lights on the bus and no streetlights at all, and also not getting knifed for being a tourist and therefore wealthy, even when you are not. They don’t ask questions, you see. A word on the Keystone Conferences: they occur in ski resorts exclusively, during ski season exclusively. I was wondering if I should arrive a few days early to enjoy some snow and related activities when I was told to “do the maths” – according to Heinrich from my unit back here in .za, whom had been to several Keystone meetings while a post-doc at Yale Medical School, the skiing is all built-in and, to a point, expected. To whit, a typical Keystone conference day: 1. Breakfast 7am-8am 2. First morning session: 8am-9am 3. Coffee 9am-9:15am 4. Second morning session 9:15am-11am 5. Break 11am-4:30pm 6. Coffee 4:30pm-5pm 7. First evening session 5pm-7pm 8. Dinner 7pm-8pm 9. Second evening session/Social event 8pm-10pm 10. Repeat over 5 days. Note point 5 – the 5 hour break. Conveniently, the slopes are active from 9am-4pm, so that gives you ample time to get out and about, and in my case, horribly maimed, in the snow. And then 4:30-5pm coffee gives you ample time to brag to all and sundry about your fantastic, practically ESPN X-Games abilities, or in my case, walk about gingerly with a bruise the size of Texas on my backside, ruefully regretting my lack of co-ordination on the snowboard. So I hooked up with Brandon and was introduced to Paul, a PhD student from Imperial College, London and likewise Arsenal Football Club supporter, also sponsored by Keystone to attend like me; Nick, a PhD student from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with the most stunning blue eyes which you could lose yourself for weeks in, who was here to conduct a workshop on mRNA extraction, no less, very hoity-toity for someone so new in his field; big burly all-American Adam, a US Army captain/PhD and PI (Principal Investigator – kinda like a VP, in Yank-Speak) on two big projects at WRAIR – he even recognized me from the preceding week when I was at WRAIR, even though I wasn’t introduced to him – and several other people I got to know to a lesser degree over the next few days. Also there was Uschi from our unit – we don’t really get on; a long story for another time, but we were letting bygones be bygones in this case. Uschi and Brandon both work for Heinrich here in my unit at UCT. A bit of a motley bunch we were – an American, an Englishman, a Canuck, a Zimbabwean-via-South-Africa (me), an Austrian-via-South-Africa (Uschi) and a pure-bred .za boy (Brandon) – but a fairly good group of people nonetheless. Nick was technically there for the worms meeting, but since all the social items were joint worms-protozoa, he kinda loitered with us for coffee, meals and other times, and we agreed to not give him too much stick for being in the wrong research field. First item on the agenda was the official opening – these tend to be kinda sordid and back-slapping, a bit like the Oscars and Emmys, I suppose, where we all congratulate each other on having the foresight to attend such an important meeting on such important problems, and we all agree that we need to “move forward” – I really hate buzz-words – for the common good etc etc. It may all be true, but it is kinda cheesy, I reckon. All of those of us who were sponsored attendees were then introduced – we didn’t have to stand or anything, but we had our names and affiliations read out and they were broadcast all over the venue every time there was a break, along with the various sponsors and organizing agencies’ logos. Technically, I was not sponsored by Keystone; rather, I was there thanks to the ICTDR (International Center for Tropical Disease Research) Global Travel Awards programme, and Paul was traveling on the NIAID/Biodefence ticket. Of course, like the erstwhile Charlie who visited the Chocolate Factory in the novel, both of us were just glad to be there. Frankly, I couldn’t care less whom had actually paid the bill, although perhaps I should write a short note to them to thank them, and to suggest they chip in for Business Class travel, given my hell ride into New York. It’s all well and good to fly someone across nine timezones, but they can’t really function that well when they get there after 17 hours in a noisy cold tin can. Following the opening is the keynote speech. This is like the Nobel Peace Prize of the event – far too important to be lumped in with the other themed sessions, even though it usually belongs in one of them, and usually presented by the Man of the Hour, as chosen by the organizers. These days, the keynote address is considered all the more trendy and out-there if the presenter looks like he has been dragged through a bush backwards – old surf/rocker t-shirts, faded, well-worn in jeans, 3-day stubble, uncombed hair etc is good; 3-piece suit is bad. It’s almost like the researchers are trying to outdo one another in this regard. The idea is that the look is not so much retro as merely genuinely old. I’ll admit at this point to having somewhat of a love for the jeans/t-shirts stubble approach – that is one of the perks of the position as an academic scientist. You can pull it off quite easily being the head of a scientific research unit and looking like an aging hippie, with nobody batting an eyelid anymore. I wouldn’t try it if I were a Law professor, though, or a clinician, but a wet-bench scientist – no problem at all. Having said that, most of the attendees favoured a jeans approach, but we did sort-of dress it up a bit with smarter shirts to a point, and we looked a little less unkempt than our keynote speaker. Make no mistake, the guy doing the keynote is very highly regarded in the field at the mo, and rightly so – in fact, Paul is trying very hard to get in on some post-doc action up there with him next year. On the other hand, Adam did not like the keynote speaker – he had met him several times before, and had been dissed largely each time, the way he told it, and so thought it was a lot of hot air. We got to hear that at length over the next few days, usually accompanied by the word “dick,” every time the poor fellow made a comment or asked a question. He did ask a lot of questions, though, and of course nobody likes a clever dick. Following the opening there was a finger banquet supper thing, and pretty much everyone headed off to bed fairly early. Brandon, Paul and Uschi had all arrived the day before, and their body clocks were between six and nine hours off; Adam and I were still stuck on EST and so we were about two hours off. So it had all kinda come to a head – this was it; I had arrived at the place I was sent to and the last nine days, fun aside, were basically to be regarded as fluff by comparison. -d-