After lunch, I took the conference bag - all 2.5kg of them - back to my hotel room, FaceTime Anita and the boys before heading back out. Destination, Central London.
From Canary Wharf, I took the Jubilee Line - in Zone 2 - straight to Bond Street, changed to Central Line to Queensway and had lunch at one of the kebab house there. Just like the good old student days. There, I heard in the background a lady talking to her children in Malay. Sure enough, you would more than likely bump into Malaysians around here, being one of the hub for Halal food. I chatted with the husband later on, and they had been here for almost 2 weeks and would be flying home tomorrow evening. A nice school holiday treat foe their children I must say.
After lunch, I went to Whiteley's, where my favourite cinema from the student time stood. It has since changed company but it was still going strong. After lingering around for a while, I doubled back to Central Lie alighting at Oxford Circus, where I really started my journey. It was a nice sunny day and without the breeze, it was warm enough that I had to lose my jacket.
I had to make a confession here, amongst the first shop I walked into was the Apple Store, located at Regent Street. We were talking about a proper shop here, not the pretenders like Machine back home. I'll blog about that later maybe.
I walked further down towards Covent Garden where I got most of the shopping done for the stuffs to take back home. mainly shirts and bits for the boys. I stopped over at the Haagen Dasz for coffee, where during my student days, I went usually on the final night before returning to school with my friends, to more or less drawn our sorrow. None of us were really looking forward to return to our boarding house especially after a couple of weeks away, having a great time in London.
That was actually the first half of what I did, I after that, I returned to Marble Arch to further remember my student days, as well as dinner at Edgwere Road.
Friday, April 20, 2012 at 12:15AM 
Final Thoughts
Coming to the end of the Conference, I thought that I would be in a better position to give an overall impression o the past four days, in terms of the conference was concerned. The single word review would have been - "efficient". First of all, let me be clear here, I would not be discussing the educational value of what I learned here in this entry. That would be boring.
First of all, the talks were cut into 25 minutes chunks in a symposium format around a single topic. The whole symposium was 90 minutes max, with the speakers taking questions at the end. There were up to eight session running concurrently, so one can pick their topic of interest and turn up at the assigned hall. The 25 minutes really kept my focus - that was how long my concentration level was. I dis not have time to fall asleep. Everything just snapped past really fast.
The venue was huge, but well signed and very well staffed. All the staffs there wore bright uniforms for easy identification and they always knew the answer of what we wanted to know. There were plenty of then around as well to direct the delegates. The signs started from where we alight the train to come to the venue, not just at the venue.
Since the pace of the meeting was fast, there were no such thing as long introduction of the speakers. It helped when they were world-renowned. Tree was no ceremonial speech prior, even during the opening ceremony. The opening was essentially a welcoming speech by the Congress President. It was done in 15 minutes. At the end, there were no such things as gifts or survenir. Quick in, quick out. All was done. In Malaysia, we had to welcome the VIPs, corsages included of course. Then give them a huge take-aways to thank them for turning up, as if they contributes to science! A waste of time.
Next, there was plenty of space! There were cafe everywhere, so getting yourself filled up, was never an issue. There was free, superfast internet for anyone with a device as well as free terminal available for everyone else. This time around, following the FDA cutback on gifts from the Pharma company, none of the Pharma booth were giving away freebies. There were free coffees though, served by proper barristas.
Unfortunately, for such a modern place the AV system at the venue was actually rather backwards. Slides were blurry, and sometimes, the speakers were having issues getting the right slides or advancing them. one of the speakers actually brought his own Mac, and it took about 5 minutes of fiddling before he could start his lecture. The system only work well if the slides were pre-loaded. Some of the rooms were too small for concurrent sessions. The organisers prepared an overflow area for live cast of the talk, but there were often lag and interference. They could have definitely done better here. Find a big enough venue for the concurrent sessions for a start.
Lunch was a typical western affair, sandwiches, crisps and yoghurt. You just bring your lunch pack into the lecture rooms for the lynch debate, so all the time, there were hardly a break in terms of educational program. There was a common prayer room, but no place for wudhu'.
All in all, we still have much to catch up in terms of optimising a packed program such as this. We can definitely do it as we had venues and equipment. The problem usually lies in underestimating the task of organising such event. We must do without the pomp and the habit of long unnecessary speech by the obligatory VIPs, as well as having a budget just for their survenirs, let alone giving them away.