Off to conference . . .

Tomorrow is the Johnson Matthey student conference, held in Loughborough. For those who don't know Loughborough, it's fairly close to Cambridge . . . yes, that's about it. Whilst we'd rather go to conferences in Hawaii or other exotic places, I'm sure it will be a great conference, with plenty to learn and lots to see. The idea is to bring together all the JM-sponsored students and see what else is going on in PhD studentships around the country, and to network and make connections with not only your peers, but also industrial contacts.

Since I'm a first year, I shall be presenting a poster there and that's it. I shall also be trying to avoid heckling or asking awkward questions to Oxford PhD students, as we don't want gang warfare on our hands. We even have an ex-Oxford'er on our side now for insider info. Maybe it all just stems down to individual jealousy as I was turned down from Oxford as a bright-eyed 17 year old all those years ago! Although as it turns out, Sheffield was a wonderful choice for an undergrad in Chemical Engineering. I made many good friends, met some brilliant academics and learnt an awful lot which I am subsequently doing my best to forget.

I suppose the next thing to think about is the hotel arrangements. Is it still au-fait to steal the hotel shampoo / shower gel? Having said that I'm feeling princely at the moment as I'm rocking the Radox shower gel - it was on BOGOF in Sainsbury's not too long ago so I stocked up to nuclear-war proportions. If the zombie apocalypse does come, and the zombies are afraid of jojoba oil shower cream (whatever jojoba oil is) then I am laughing. I'm also well stocked-up on Sainsbury's Basics Chocolate Digestive Biscuits, which for 38p (I think!) a pack are the world's greatest foodstock. My teeth might not live until the end of the apocalypse though.

Well anyway I shall spend the rest of my day decoding the new CFD code and writing a user guide for it. It might come in useful someday for someone else, but for now writing a user guide is more for clarifying everything to myself. Implementing two phase flow is going to be "a bitch", if you excuse my French.

Signing off from a somewhat cloudy Cambridge,

Dave