The AFCG Annual Meeting was held in Perth and I had the opportunity to attend it. The organizers and the UWA vice-chancellor arranged for some funds for my conference fees and allocated an oral presentation as a new investigator. That’s a new title for me, ever!

The conference was quite a cosy affair with about less than 100 people per day. This allowed for better interaction with the delegates and soon familiar faces abound. I met a few people, randomly. The chap from tasmania, sydney, saudi, china women from sydney, adelaide vet person, TICHR folks and another RA from down the hall which I never spoke to until this meeting.

The invited speakers were quite good with highlights being Fionna Wood, David Price and many other local superstars of flow cytometry. I never realised the uses of flow in the clinical setting and this opened another job “window”. I also got more info about the use of flow in third world countries which is spearheaded by Cytometry for Life. I think it might be the first community action which will use my direct skills in science if I were given an opportunity to help out.

My presentation went pretty okay. I think I was under time and failed to slow down and let my words sink into the audience. Unfortunately I failed to win the speaker prize which is again, disappointing… for those who liked my presentation and expressed their interests to me personally. Thanks for the support!

The conference dinner was really nice and it was held at the Maritime museum. I finally got to go into the building which i’ve always regarded as the tsetse fly building. The museum is quite small and most of the exhibits were of recent things, unlike the ship museum in stockholm. That is quite a site.

I guess it was quite a good conference and one of the few which I throughly enjoyed.