Home sweet home.

It is awefully good to be here after 24 hours of travelling. I am already resenting the cold weather and dark mornings although am finally enjoying a good cup of tea. Can't wait to see everyone. Go Riders!

Happy Birthday to Me!

It is my birthday, I am alone in the city of Lisbon, and so what did I decide to do? Buy myself a lobster of course. I don’t ever recall eating lobster in my life, so at the ripe age of 29 I figured it was about time I took the plunge. It was good. My favourite part was the arms (there were no claws on my lobster). I also had a small bottle of Portuguese ‘green wine’, so if there are obvious grammatical errors in this note, please dismiss them as a sign of half-drunkenness. Other than eating lobster, my birthday has been rather uneventful. I took the train from Lagos back to Lisbon and sat across the isle from the grumpiest old man with the worst hack (what is it with grumpy old Portuguese people?). He yelled at me (in Portuguese) for putting my feet on the seat in front of me. He was rather high tech though listening to his mp3 player and talking on his cell phone (really loud).

Last night I had an encounter with some other characters, these of English decent. A couple from Manchester were ‘picked up’ (literally) by my 3 day Lagos landlord. Instead of spending money on a wedding, they were travelling the world for as many months as they could. They, along with the Swiss guy, my landlord and his friend celebrated my birthday, a day early, and their ‘honeymoon’ last night. I was avoiding my ex-rasta flat mate as he had turned rather stalker-ish and was freaking me out.

Tomorrow, I plan on seeing a few more sites in Lisbon and doing some shopping. I have been inspired by European fashion and figure I owe myself another birthday treat. I’ll try not to swipe my credit card too much, but can’t really guarantee anything.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes on Facebook and emails … they definitely make spending it alone in a foreign country much more bearable! It’s been a good trip, but I can’t wait to get home (and see Morgan).

Several days worth of blogging due to lack of internet connection

Shopping in Lisbon
Never look at wallets for more than 5 minutes when being sold by a grumpy, old Portuguese lady on the street. You may have your hands slapped and may be yelled at in a language you do not understand. Very strange sales tactics indeed!

Small town Lisbon (2M)
While attending a Fado club we ran into our waiter from a fish restaurant we dined at the previous 2 nights. He joined us at our table and we found out that he was a retired ‘Fadisto’. After a couple performances by some other Fadistos, our waiter-friend did a 3 song set of Fado songs. He was very good! I really like Fado. If you are not familiar with it, imagine it as singers with operatic strength (but not the floweriness of opera) accompanied by a couple acoustic guitars.

Onto Lagos
On the train I was ‘invited’ to stay at an accommodation upstairs from a family in Lagos. I was a little suspicious of the guy marketing his ‘villa’ until I saw at the train station he had sent his wife and 2 kids to pick me up. Apparently he spends the day hanging out the bus station and riding the train to find travellers to fill his rooms in several different buildings around the city. Where I am staying is upstairs from his family. I am sharing a kitchen and bathroom with a rasta-French Canadian who is making my Lisbon experience interesting to say the least. He is pretty intense, so I was happy that my host picked up a Japanese and Swiss tourist to stay upstairs from us Sunday night. At one point the Swiss guy made the comment “how often do you see a guy from Quebec talking to a guy from Japan … in Spanish … in Portugal”. It was a pretty funny observation. On Sunday, my rasta-friend showed me around town. We went fishing by the port (you could see the fish in the water) then went to the beach and found some secret coves, caves and beaches. It was pretty amazing – Pictures to come! While exploring the town on bikes, I was amused to see the local’s reactions to my rasta friend biking around with his hands in the air singing lines of Bob Marley songs or whatever else is going through his head. He is some kind of a poet living off the $750 his brother gives him as a peace payment for not claiming his inheritance (or something to that effect).

Now it is time for work
Yesterday I typed up and revised a lab course outline and got a good start on a paper. Internet connections have been a problem, so I am happy to have now found a little café with free wireless. We’ll see if they kick me out before the batteries on the computer run out. Today it is raining. Actually, it is pouring … a good work day to say the least. Tomorrow it is back to Lisbon!

My mind is a ruminator

That is how someone from our group described how I think the other day. The more I think about it, the more I realize that is true (case in point?). I have never been the type that has all the answers at the tip of my tongue, but much prefer to regurgitate things in my mind.

Yesterday (Thursday) morning, I skipped the conference sessions and took a bit of a breather to see some of Lisbon. I wandered and saw some some pretty amazing parts of the city. I rode a tram that put me in mind of a roller coasters, had an amazing view of the city from a hidden rooftop cafe and saw a very majestic palace-type building. The conference schedule is pretty packed and the time away was much needed.

After an excellent session on abotic stress, I had a bit of an unexpected experience. I was invited to join a meeting of all the huge lentil people with the head of the Grain Legume Improvement Program (GLIP) who is one of the smartest (yet most down to earth) people I have ever encountered. It is incredible that someone could understand everything at such a level of detail. Anyways, there were talking about using one of the populations I am working on is the basis for all future lentil work (BAC library development, common mapping parent and tilling population parent for those who are interested in the details). The exhilarating of this was comparable to having an animal you own selected as a champion at the Royal Winter Fair! It sounds like it may not go through due to some sterility problems I have encountered, but it was fun to think that it may be a possibility.

One more day of conferencing then it is beach time. I am really looking forward to it!

Day 3 at the 6thEGLC

The conference has improved drastically, and I am very excited about legume genomics. My pink eye (I think I forgot to mention my ailment) is on the mend and I am becoming accustomed to the constant pain from the blisters covering my feet. Have you ever had a blister pop on the bottom of your foot while you are walking? It's pretty disgusting. I don't have very much exciting stuff to post about, that is unless you want to know about the ideas I have for my thesis project. I've met a few more interesting people at the conference, but this is by far the most unfriendly conference I have ever been to. Usually the students seek each other out and get to know each other, but other than bonding with my co-PhD student from my group (Lasantha rocks!), I have yet to talk to any students here. I was just able to phone my mom and leave a message at Morgan's which was nice. I like wine for lunch. Portugal is beautiful. The end (for now).

My first day in Portugal ...

was a little bit frustrating. After being completely ripped off by a cabbie driving us from the airport the night before, I managed to loose the posters I had been entrusted with. I found them after walking around Lisbon with a pack on my back and backpack on the front for an hour. I had hoped to dump my pack at a hotel where work-people were staying but missed them after getting lost. Out of frustration I decided to find the hotel where I was staying during the conference. After some drunk (did I mention it was 10am on Sunday?) boys told me I needed to ´return the favour´after asking them for directions, I managed to find the train station leading me to the town the hotel is in. Reached the town in good shape, but due to a combination of horrible instructions, poor road signage and lack of bilingualism outside of Lisbon and lack of taxis, I ended up wandering around town for an hour and a half with my pack on. The day improved drastically after I finally landed at ´Inatel´ (pronounced ´Inatelé´with large hand motions by an elderly Portuguese woman). Once I had settled in, I took the train back towards Lisbon to the town of Belém (pronounced Belé) where I had some world famous custard tarts. While sitting in the tart-restaurant by myself, I made 2 random friends. A chatty girl asked me if they could join since it was busy (lineup down the street) and they were in a hurry to see the town. While eating, I heard her life story (she was quite chatty) and we ran into some other ´plant people´. It was pretty funny, cuz they joined us and my chatty new friend told her life story to one of the people (LB from AAFC Saskatoon to anyone from the business who is reading this -- very funny to watch her reaction to my new friend). After tarts, my new friends and I checked out the art gallery and a local landmark the ´toure de Belém´. After parting with my new friends I went to the monastery in town (v. beautiful but didn´t spend too long there as their was some kind of boy-scout reunion mass going on) before heading back to ´Inatelé´. Close to the hotel, there was a marina with some really nice cafés and restaurants where I had a couple glasses of wine, supper and crepés for desert while watching the soccer game between Lisbon and Porto. I´ve looked into going to a game while I am here, but don´t think it is going to fit into my schedule. Too bad.

Some strange things I have witnessed while being here is young girls figure skating on roller skating, professional ´sand soccer´ and a ´beach tennis´club (on the beach). I am still figuring out how to use bedéts and am finding Portuguese time is pretty horrible (I waited for a cab for 30 minutes this morning before getting annoyed and just walking to the train station!).

I am now in the 2nd day of the conference. It is not as good as I expected, but am not sure if I am totally engaged as I would be if I hadn´t travelled 20 hours overnight to get here. There are more interesting talks scheduled for the next few days, so I expect thing to get better. Anyhoo, better go. So glad I found this ´free internet´ room at the conference -- otherwise I´d be paying a lot of €s just to post!

PS sorry for the grammer -- in a hurry!

8.5 hours to go ...

till i board a plane to Calgary. Then it's off to Frankfurt enroute to Lisbon Portugal! Next week I am attending the 6th European Conference on Grain Legumes. This is the biggest conference I have ever been involved with. It is really fun that I am actually starting to know a few people in the legume research community rather than just know of them on paper. It is funny to finally meet someone work you've read for several years and don't even know their gender.

After the conference, I am in Portugal for another week. I plan on heading to the southern coast, finding a room in a little beach town and having a 'writing retreat'. My thesis writing is really needing some attention and I've been too consumed with work and personal matters here at home to start, so I am going to use this opportunity to hopefully get caught up a bit. The idea of sitting at a little sea-side cafe with a laptop really appeals to me. Not only am I hoping to get caught up on my thesis writing, but a little blog writing as well. I'll keep you posted!

Voting in Saskatchewan

That was the new experience I had today. After much careful consideration, I selected a party I wanted to support. Half an hour before the polls closed, I rolled in to cast my ballot. Much to my surprise, not only was the party the candidate was representing listed by their name, but their career was listed below in brackets. This came as quite a surprise to me. As I suppressed giggles behind the cardboard voting box I read through the job titles. There was a teacher, a writer, a secretary at a medical office, a communications consultant and a 'retired locomotive engineer'. Yup, I almost changed my vote cuz I thought the latter was such a unique career. Well not really, but I did find it tempting in the funny, non-serious political part of my brain. I am really trying to remember what the career of Marijuana Party's candidate ... I am pretty sure it didn't say 'grower' or 'producer' or 'botanist'. That for sure would have made me laugh out loud.