I have been in the UK for the last few days, and that’s the main reason why my blog has not been updated. After spending three days in London, I am in Glasgow now for attending the ICC. International Communication Conference. Or at least that’s what was planned before.
The days in London were not the best. Aside from the annoying Jet Lag, I had made an awful mistake and had booked a silly hostel which was nothing like a nice place you could take a shower and have a good night sleep. I got a much nicer place in Glasgow, but not sleeping for three nights had had its effect on my hormones.
y presentation was scheduled for the second day of the conference. At the end of the first day, my professor invited me to dinner and unfortunately I dumped too much in my stomach, I guess. When I came back to my room, and after I watched the end of the movie I had been watching the night before (The Sentinel), I started practicing for my talk. I am not typically anxious before any presentation, either in Persian or in English, but this time I really needed to do it over and over. I even recorded my voice and listened to it and changed a few things in the slides. It was 12pm when I went to bed at the end. It was my first proper sleep in five days. At that time I was thinking that my presentation will happily happen the day after, at 11am.
I woke up with a knock on the door. Looking at my wrist watch I realized that it was 1pm. The reception lady was at the door (this Travelodge does not have an internal phone system). Without even knowing where my hotel was, my professor had managed to find my number and had called me to make sure I was alright. Well, I would have felt much happier if I had had a stroke the night before. He had given the talk, the very exact reason why he had paid for my travel.
I spent today listening to a few talks, in an attempt to feel a bit better. He had not found any interesting paper in the program, so he had decided to stay in his room for the day. Tomorrow is the last day of the conference. I guess that’s when I meet him and will have to start looking for a new job.
I do know how to code in MATLAB and I can deal with optimization problems. I am not bad in math and my wife loves me. I will not reject any job offer, which does not include sleeping in a crappy place.
This is my talk as I recorded it the night before. It is very long and has very bad quality. It would make me feel very good if I know you listened to it. At least, that would mean that I did not waste those hours practicing it.
p.s. I talked to him later. He seems to not want to fire me. I am not sure I would be so nice to a student of mine who had been so lousy.
