Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Gawd help us


I am going to a conference in Old Slaving Port Town tomorrow. Oh, joy. Two days of the smell of overhead projector fans and oh-so-stackable conference chairs covered in a colour the Pantone swatch for which reads Conference Chair Blue and a fabric which does a good impression of actual cloth from ten paces but once you sit upon it is revealed to be composed of thousands of minute blue kitchen scourers knitted together.

Two days of constant slight boredom and slight fatigue and the sense that one ought to be Getting Something Out of This which makes everyone more snippy in the Q&A sessions than they would be if they hadn't packed their rolling suitcase with a view to being updated on the state of the art in the discipline and instead ... it's the same as last year.

A night in a student room with a Conference Chair Blue bedspread and an itty bitty soap like a tallowate mosaic tile on the gritty white grouting of the hospitality towel allowance.

Instant coffee in the breaks and, all the heavens have mercy, the biscuits, the thought of which everyone is secretly invoking to get them through the next godforsaken minutes of whatever this session's theme is while your ass is slowly sanded by the minute demon kitchen scourers. Is the speaker done yet? Check watch under cover of useless handout ...

Oh, how I hate conferences. Pray for me.

6 comments:

Scrivener said...

I will hold you in the light.

Xtin said...

Thank you. Not the fluorescent strip, if you wouldn't mind.

Tom Bozzo said...

Pantone Conference Chair Blue: brilliant.

I think the organizers of the postal economics conference may have the idea -- stiff conference fee, but open bar in the evening.

Xtin said...

Open bar? Open bar? Open bar?

What exotic wonders must exist in your world, traveller from another planet.

Tom Bozzo said...

Well, the conference fee was such that you'd expect it to include spa and/or rehab services on top of the open bar...

Heidi the Hick said...

Wow, sounds like most of high school for me, only with different furniture.

And less soap.

No towels.

No cookies either.

guuuuhhhhhh I'd say have fun but it would sound so insincere.