Blooming in Bloomington

A bunch of us from Purdue went down to Indiana University in Bloomington last week for a conference on Mathematical modeling. It started at midday on Sunday with a workshop for grad students and early career faculty. That was about frisbee golf and was OK. As you can see, we are all really so enthusiastic!

The conference was really good with some paper presentations, but lots of discussion groups or workshops. The schedule was good too with lots of breaks. There was also lots of food with breakfast and lunch every day, snacks in the afternoon and for the poster presentations on Monday and Tuesday there was beer, wine and snacks. Way to make posters interesting! Then there were the dinners. Sunday and Tuesday were just small (with beer and wine of course!) but Monday was a huge BBQ with a live band. One of the conference organisers was the lead singer and the head organiser decided he would play the harmonica and his didgeridoo. He was pretty good! Of course there was lots of beer and wine again.

Tuesday night we were allowed into the puzzle collection. That was quite fun. We all got at least one puzzle out.

After that we went to a Tibetan restaurant which at the time it was opened was only the second Tibetan restaurant in the US. The food was OK but as I don't like spicey food, I went for the dumplings!

One strange thing was this fan. That is a puzzle.

Another puzzle was during Wednesday night's big sit down dinner. Work out what is in this glass! It is a very strange serving suggestion and you definitely can't drink it, you need a spoon.

It was all fun. I really enjoyed it. It was hard work and I had to think a lot, but I met some new people to keep in touch with in the future including a few Aussies. It has left me very tired though.