It Has Been a While

Since the pandemic, I have only been to a handful of conferences and meetings face-to-face. The rest had been virtual. I have been doing at least a couple of talks a month. And this marked the first talk I had done in front of an audience. I had almost forgotten how it felt.

The talk I did last weekend was at Grand Hyatt Hotel, and the venue had a novel idea of how the hall was set up. They had refurnished aircraft seats for everybody in the room, and registrations felt like checking in into a flight. 

The organiser had definitely splashed out on this one. The AV system was state of the art. We had speakers calling in from London and Kuching, interacting with a presenter in the room. All done seamlessly.

My talk was pretty simple, just a colleague and me talking through the topic. My part was right at the end of the schedule, standing between the delegates and their dinner. 

And the dinner was unique as well. The hall was transformed into an aircraft cabin, with images of the destinations - in this case, Tokyo and New York projected in high definition around the room. Quite a scene. I just wished that the food was just as good.

I stayed back until almost 8 pm, just before the desserts. It had been a long day, with a full clinic before I headed home for change before driving to KLCC to park. I was knackered by the time I settled back home that evening.