Leisurely Morning

I'm having a delightfully relaxing morning- there's birds chirping, a blue sky and a nice breeze.  There was no established plan for this morning so I stunned the Taiwanese people to silence when I walked into the convenience store by myself, order a medium coffee, 1 sugar, no extra milk (even though all you can get here are lattes anyway) asked how much and said thank you.  Taiwanese people are easily impressed.  But I have only found one other white person at this conference- all the other invited speakers from America are originally from here or the mainland.  I was walking past an improv group on my way to the physics building when Penny ran up with the rice roll, as per request of the professor because it's his favorite.  It had peppers, onions, a peanut-ty sweet sauce and maybe some ginger inside.  When he saw me later, he went on a passionate rant about how this was the height of Taiwanese breakfast food and this is what he missed most when he went to graduate school in the US.  However, "people these days", especially those in business, think breakfast sandwiches are the new trendy thing which makes rice rolls harder to find.  So convenance and the allure of the Western world probably contributes to the whole hamburger trend.
Oh, and Penny thinks the random pods of artsy students might be participating in a high school winter session camp.  Although it contextualizes their antics, it doesn't make the random shenanigans any less entertaining!

I speak after lunch but after working on this presentation off and on for a month I can give the whole thing without even looking at my slides so I'm ready and raring to go! Especially considering Lei Bao didn't even remember what he promised to talk about and the professor from CCU has talked about TEAL a lot but never formally, so he's struggling.  I'm currently in his office, visiting with Puppy as the professor hunts down Lei Bao, but trying not to get too friendly to avoid being covered in dog hair.

Yup, so that's the latest with me.  I'll try not to look blissfully snug in my pre-presentation preparedness.  Tonight's the formal conference dinner (not ball-gown-formal, if you are my grandma and reading this worried about my wardrobe), where less than a quarter of participants scored invites.  They have everyone squeezing in the guest hotel for the meal, which looks like it might be snuggly!

Later!