Today was our first real day in Philadelphia and unforunately the first day of the conference. Thankfully, Terry wasn't feeling up to attending the conference, which was great, because I was in way too much of a lethargic mood for doing so. Now before you start thinking 'tsk tsk tsk ... they should do work stuff on a work holiday', you should know that there wasn't anything relevant to our work at the conference that day, so bludging wasn't really such a naughty thing to do. Anyway, I digress. We headed off to the historical part of Phili which pretty much encompasses the entirity of Phili's tourist circuit. Philadelphia is actually a fairly signifcant city in the US, because this is where the constitution was formulated by Thomas Jefferson and his friends and was also where ... read more

Finally arrived in Philadelphia after a grueling 26 hours of traveling. The plane trip was really horrible. I first flew for 3.5h to New zealand first, stopped there for 2 hours, then 12 hours to LA, stopped there for 2 hours, then flew to philadelphia for 5 hours, then had to sit in the airport and wait 2 hours for terry's (my colleague who is attending the conference in Phili with me) flight to come in (he caught a different flight between LA and Phili). On the positive, I managed to score 4 very good plane food meals, including a chicken schnitzel, lasagne, and this really nice noodle chicken salad. I also watched about 5 movies, though I couldnt see half of them because the big idiot in front of me had a big head that ... read more