Is neither too long nor too short. It went by in a flash really, those 3 weeks of workcation. The first 6 days were honestly more work than anything else. With the proposal writing… It was basically writing through the night or till the wee hours of the morning, then sleeping a bit, going to the conference… Rinse and repeat. We barely stepped out of the hotel room in San Diego really, because it was just writing and writing and writing. And dinner would be Uber eats… And the leftovers I would have for supper and throughout the night as I’m writing. It’s been too long since I did any sort of academic writing…
Typing on my new (ok, about a month old) iPad keyboard now… And I didn’t hear anything about a new one being announced yet so I guess I’m good. Probably next year says the rumor mills? By then I would have enjoyed this for a while. It is nice though, the key travel in this keyboard. But yeah no it IS heavy though! No matter what the weight still sucks. Especially if I also bring my work laptop back, as I did yesterday just in case… Also because I forgot that I did find an app alternative to mendeley… So I don’t actually need my work laptop to read journal papers. Oh wells. I don’t think I’ll touch my work laptop at all this weekend. But that’s alright… I took off on Monday, my birthday! Yay! Pack my table a bit, get some art going maybe? Oh yes, all my new neon watercolors have arrived. By last Sat in fact. Awesome. And my empty watercolor pans are supposed to be delivered today. I really can’t wait. Hope it’s sooner rather than later really… I want to make my Holbein pans and stuff and I’m so excited for that stuff to arrive.
I’m sort of used to the trackpad just existing on this keyboard now. Not like really use it *that* much… But I also learned some of the gestures and what not… But yeah overall… I guess I’ll indeed be going magic trackpad in the future… Heavy weight be damned lol.
Overall thoughts on the trip… Well… We more or less finished writing the proposal by the end of the San Diego trip… So we could mostly just have fun in Europe. 3 hours flight delay on the flight from LA to Paris though so that sucked. That flight by KLM sucked. It was so fucking hot and stuffy. The first flight from SG to San Francisco sucked too. I was freezing on the flight – it was sooooo bloody cold, and my jacket was too thin. And it was long… over 15 hours… My butt hurt from sitting down for so long, even though I made regular trips to the toilet to get some blood circulation going and all… But well, no matter what the flights were just a one day thing. It sucked in the moment but you just grind your teeth and bear with it for a few hours and it’s a done deal. The flight back from AMS was a lot shorter than – well about 12 hours… And it wasn’t overly cold or hot. Ok a little on the warm side, and I was sitting next to a fairly large guy…. But it was ok overall. I was starving at one point and they took forever to start serving snacks, but overall it was quite ok. My knees did feel like they swelled up a lot though… Again from the inactivity I guess… And carrying my luggages from Paris to Brussels and then Amsterdam… Yeah my knee did give way once when carrying my luggage down from the train. It’s not even that heavy, my stuff this time. 34kg in two check in luggages. And then a probably 10 ish kg bagpack. That’s way lesser than what I had when I came back from Japan. But I’m also older, heavier, and less fit so… Yeah.
I definitely spent way too much on this trip. Ahhh which reminds me I need to sort out all the $$$ claiming for all the work expenses. Mostly the conference registration fee and hotels. And also some food, transport, and the poster printing. Yeah. Food in Europe was good, mostly. But expensive. And also a lot. I mean, when you’re greedy and order a started and a main and a beer… Yeah that’s a lot of food… And I bought back lots of chocolates and cheese… And of course a bunch of art supplies too. Haven’t actually dug into those art supplies yet… Yeah. That’s what I gotta do this weekend.. Maybe I’ll read two papers and then do some art or something…
Speaking of which, I slept till 11:30am this morning lol! It’s a Friday and I decided to work from home… I woke up during the night at like 4ish, took really long to get back to sleep, woke up at 7am… And then the next time I knew it, it was 11:30am! I was NOT intending to wake up so late for sure. But the trip has been really exhausting and even though it’s a whole week since I’m back, there’s probably still some jet lag and what not… Also. Fever. Not sure why but I got a fever on Sunday evening. Took some panadol and it went down the next morning. Monday was back to work day and I felt alright. But on Tuesday evening I was feverish again… Slight fever both times. And that slight fever lasted till Wednesday morning… But I had stuff to finish up at work so I went to work anyway… Felt a bit tired and a little off in the morning but not that much… And I was feeling quite ok in the afternoon, but still felt a bit feverish. Yesterday (Thurs) I felt ok. Until when I woke up at like 3 or 4am during the night and I felt feverish, but temp was just 36.5 ish and normal for me so… Yeah. Not sure what’s happening. Dengue? I did get pangs of pain in my knee on Sunday. But that could be just my knees being bad from the trip/flight. And my knees hurt quite a bit too, like aches and stuff. Then on Wednesday my right wrist/forearm hurt so much, I took out my tape to tape it up. But again, that could just be from carrying all that stuff on the trip. Just a delayed reaction… No headaches or anything else so… I’m just putting it down to being tired from the trip and that’s why I stayed home today…
Pelikan hub tmr! I’m looking forward to it lots! Yeah our hub master swapped the date to tmr to get a cheaper venue. Saturday works for me too so that’s great. Just read the email from Olivia (our hub master) earlier and that got me so excited. Looking forward to it! Alright. I guess that’s all for now. We might be hearing back from the editors tmr morning and I hope it’s good news… :X After all, coming back from the trip I’ve been working yet on more figure edits, but for the patent filing this time. I really want this to be over asap so that we can move on and do other stuff. More stuff. Yeah… And I want a break… I want to sleep… I want to just slack at home for a week…
I want to play with all my art supplies basically…