Day One: Conference

Day One: Conference 9am - 6:15pm

I arrived at the Auditorium where the Opening Ceremony and keynote speeches were held before 8am. Once there, I was on my feet throughout. Running up and down the auditorium, seeing to keynoters' needs, making sure keynote presentations would run without any glitches, saying Hi to people, ... I was just busy, busy, BUSY!!!

The conference opened proper at 9am with the opening ceremony speeches, followed by two keynote speeches (lunch in between) and two blocks of concurrent paper sessions. I was most enthralled by the keynote speeches, one on high stakes testing by Prof David B and the second on math teaching by Prof Deborah B. Both Profs are heavyweight in the education arena or as my good friend says, they are the superstars of education! :)

I finally managed to rest my legs during the paper sessions (from 3 - 6pm). However, I wasn't idle. I was working on my PhD presentation in the "cave" (my office) as I had yet to finalise my implications and conclusion. By 5:45pm, I was off again with a colleague to pick up two keynoters from the campus hotel accommodation for a dinner organised for keynoters and invited panelists at 6:30pm. My job (looking after the keynoters and invited panelists) ended at 7pm when they boarded the coach and set off for the restaurant.

I could finally go home for a rest but only a short one as I still had to look through the slides for both my presentations tomorrow. Hmm, maybe I should have withdrawn one... but I was too stubborn and proud to withdraw any of my papers. :P