Melbourne III

Some more highlights (more general, less scientific):

-Seeing old friends who have been overseas for 3, 5 sometimes even 7 or 8 years. It is kinda scary how easy it is to lose touch with people for half a decade or more when living on the bottom of the world.

-The quality of the science presented. The vast majority of talks were well thought out, and presented significant, interesting research results. My only complaint was that with so much good science, there were a lot of simultaneous sessions for talks I really wanted to go to.

-Dragging a bunch of lily-white geologists out to Footscray for real Ethiopian food. It is interesting how the whole corporate hospitality industry brags about how many dollars it brings into the city, and then does everything possible to make sure that all of those dollars are spent on it. So it’s fun to actually pry people away from their grip on city centre and actually go to establishments owned and operated by humans.

-Lab visitors. People on their way to or from the conference have been floating into lab with interesting samples, methodologies, or ideas. Also, some of the geochemical community’s analytical hot shots- people who generally aren’t let out of their own labs for substantial periods of time, have been wandering through, and it is great to learn from the masters, and trade ideas, protocols, and general lab talk.

Anyway, that’s about it for Goldschmidt thoughts. Hopefully I’ll have some nitty-gritty analytical posts ready sometime next week, but for now, good night all.