Chi-Town

Here's to my boss for sponsoring a pretty sweet trip to Chicago two weekends ago.  Grad school is really pretty sweet.  Most of the time we're living off of Ramen noodles, but every once and a while we get to take all-expenses-paid trips to random locations in order to give 20-minute powerpoint presentations.  And if the location happens to be a 3 hr road trip away, it's all the easier to convince people to let you go.

And of course, it just so happens that some of my bestest friends also work in chemical engineering and also like going to extremely fortuitous professional meetings.

AIChE Spring meeting 2011 + Josh + awesome friends = Amazing

To start the festivities, we all went out dancing at Sound Bar, which is a little bit crazier than the clubs in Champaign, as you can imagine.  I didn't know what to expect, but it was pretty cool.  Mainly because of the company.

I'll admit I like getting my dance on too, though.

We stayed out until 5AM, just enough time to squeeze in a shower and a restroom break.  Turns out that the hostel where we were staying didn't have any running water in the morning.  Construction evidently.  So that means no sinks, no toilets, and no showers.  How do you survive in a hostel without running water?  How do you let people reserve places at your hostel without mentioning that the water won't be there when you arrive?  Oh well.  I'll bet Panera across the street had a bunch more interesting visitors than usual that particular morning.  Most of our entourage, though, were too beat to be doing much of anything, much less showering.

So then we went to the conference hotel, which was the Hyatt.  Most expensive hotel I've stayed at probably ever in the States.  We basically spent most of our time outside of the conference eating.  That was definitely the highlight of the trip.  In all we visited Joy Yee Noodles (Chinese, with the best Bubble Tea's in Chicago), Sansoogabsan (awesome Korean BBQ), _________ (insert incredible South Indian food place here), and Red Apple (Polish buffet).  It was intense.  I've never had such a concentrated culinary adventure before.  I think the coworkers were happy.

I know I was.  I found a great shirt for the conference, and it was on sale.  I had great food.  And my gf came along too.  Can't ask for anything better.

Red Apple seemed to be the favorite overall.  I've never seen Matthew eat so much, but he destroyed all of us.  I think this is his third plate...and it came after two dessert plates.

Time to hit the gym.  Thank you taxpayers:)