toronto, ontario, canada
life update
Hello to everyone! I just returned from a conference in beautiful Toronto Canada! I was so impressed with the city: flowers everywhere, clean, and very modern. I thoroughly enjoyed walking the streets and seeing the sights (which I had plenty of time to do since my flight was delayed for an extra night).
Even the hotel I stayed at had a wonderful garden and beehives:
I was also impressed to see that the city had people vacuuming the sidewalks.
Yes, you heard that right, vacuuming the sidewalks; but not the way you think. I tried to catch this on camera while taking my Lyft from the airport, but I didn't get a good shot:
So, I did some internet searching and found out that a lot of Canadians hate these street sweepers because they make a lot of noise very early and very late during the day. Here's one of the nicer videos showing how these work:
As soon as I saw one of these machines, I had the most sudden and visceral flashbacks to my childhood that I can remember. Does this thing remind you of something familiar?
I can't believe I consumed such media as a child. It might even be worse to still remember it at my age 🙃
the conference
I attended TERMIS-AM. That stands for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, American chapter. This may be the first time in history that a link to their website and a video of the Teletubbies have appeared on the same page. I'm proud to be the person who made that happen.
People at the conference share about their research, both previous and ongoing. Since some of the research hasn't been published yet, photography is strictly forbidden and it's a professional courtesy to avoid publicizing what people are currently working on.
However, I can share that I listened to some very inspiring talks from some of the heroes of my field. If you're interested in learning more about others who do work similar to mine (but they do it much better than I do 😅), do a Google search for the names listed at the following links:
- https://am2022.termis.org/plenary-speakers/
- https://am2022.termis.org/fireside-chat/
- https://am2022.termis.org/wfirm-young-investigator-awards/
on the way home, a very canadian experience
As I mentioned before, my flight back to Minnesota was delayed by a day. I was one of the lucky ones: my European friends were trapped in Toronto for several extra days and my US friends had multiple layovers they didn't originally plan for.
While waiting in the customs line to leave Canada, there were lots of Americans trying to get back to the States. I think there was one flight in particular that had a close connection that most people were going to miss.
In light of all the closures and the rush, the Canadian citizens in line all joined together to allow all the Americans to the front of the line. Many of them simply said, "Sorry about our airlines." All of us uncivilized Americans were shocked that any individual would go out of their way to make our lives easier, let alone an entire group of random strangers.
All in all, I loved Canada and would visit again in a heartbeat.
Even so, I don't think I'll ever have poutine again.
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