Conference and Birthday in San Francisco

Despite not being interested in bacteria at all (and the fact that I am leaving the lab), Mike relented and let me go to the American Society for Microbiology in San Francisco this year.  It is a huge conference (~15,000 people) but super organized - they even had an access card and an app to schedule all the talks, rate the sessions, log poster visits etc. Unlike most conferences, I actually wanted to go to more than 90% of the talks. I presented a poster too, but that was pretty uneventful.

Dan came with me too, which was awesome, especially because we got to celebrate my birthday there.  When he wasn't working at their SF office and I wasn't conferencing we got to do some fun stuff  around town and ate like PIGS.  See for yourself:

Friday 15th: 

Arrived in SFO. Tried the BART - which looks suspiciously similar to the MRT.  In fact, Singapore itself looks suspiciously similar to San Francisco, although, of course the former is much nicer ;).  Got some stellar Indian butter chicken, garlic naan, and mattar paneer. 

Saturday 16th:  

Met up with Vivek and Katie and their 9 mo old daughter, Malaika for some savory pies.  Then we took a wine and cheese-tasting tour in 3 vineyards in Sonoma County.  The guide told us that the rows of grape vines were very specifically arranged by computer software to get equivalent sunlight.  Then a GPS-enabled robot would go through and automatically stake the soil in the appropriate places.  Apparently each acre of land here goes for ~$400,000!  

At the Cline Winery

At the Viansa Winery

I didn't know this, but the golden gate bridge is apparently not owned by the city - 20% is owned by USBank and the other 80% is owned by the people who actually put it up.  The rust color of the bridge was specifically picked out to match the hills behind it, but a team of people have to go out every single day to patch up the paint. 

Sunday 17th: 

Dan found himself some Blue Bottle coffee - which he claims is excellent. Very smooth, not bitter... Tasted like coffee to me.

Later we checked out the Italian village for dinner and got some excellent Italian gnocchi and seafood ravioli.  For dessert we wandered over to the Ghiradelli square for some ice cream and free chocolate squares.  We tried browsing some art galleries, but the sales ladies kept thinking we were actually going to buy the $9,900 painting of a flower.  

Monday 18th:

OMG, I had a crepe to die for (literally): blueberries, strawberries and bananas plus nutella, brown sugar sauce, ice cream AND whipped cream.  All that stuff goes right through you, so we followed it up with some pretty authentic Japanese sushi and squid!

We also went to a bar that really tested the meaning of exclusive.  The door was unmarked (you had to ring a bell), a waitress would ask you for a password (which we didn't know), and if you didn't know it, you couldn't eat at the restaurant but were taken to the back room (entry only by pulling out a specific book, which would make the bookshelf swing inwards).  The room was dark (no windows, no lights except little candles) and the drinks were very specialized (nothing as mundane as a cosmo or an irish cream!) and took several minutes to make.  Nevertheless, the place was crawling with yuppies like us. Cool experience!

Dan in front of the unmarked, speakeasy door. 

Tuesday 19th: 

Browsed a very cool bookstore that had tons of books in lots of little nooks.  This was the last day of the conference.

The capitol building and some weird inflatable flower. 

Wednesday 20th:
My birthday. We rented a car and took it out to Muir woods.  Really tall redwood trees grow there, wider than your armspan in diameter.

Dan made me a brownie fudge cake when we got back to Rochester