PALA conferences are awesomely cool (not temperature-wise, unfortunately), as the big names at PALA are actually also some of the easiest to talk to because they seem to transform every bit of casual conversation into something of a joke - mind that these are quite serious people though, they're the big names for a reason of course.
There's a lot that can be said about conferences and most of it is probably not that interesting to you anyway, so I suppose I'll skip that. After all, I could go into the physics of changing sessions, but as that's pretty much a get-up-and-move affair, it'd be quite superfluous and thus I suppose would be me flouting one of the Gricean maxims (as it is, despite me not being a Linguist/Stylistician, I know the basics).
There seem to be some misconceptions about conferences - or, in any case, my parents do not completely understand them - my Dad seems to go for the purely academic, with him asking whether I'd be graded on my paper - thankfully, no, I will not, because conferences are not that type of academic activity. My Mum, on the other hand, sometimes seems to think it's all about the social side, that it's something of a holiday, which is not true either.
Of course, the social side is important. This is how you meet new people and forge deals, right?
That's where the social events come in. See, I just don't have the guts to just go up and talk to people I don't actually know. Heck, as we're dealing with academics here, there must be a significant portion that's the same sort of shy as I am.
So, for our sort of people, they invented social events. Like conference dinners that have dances at the end (the one thing I'm not actually too shy for - I love dancing).
By that way, I must also mention something of a PALA tradition when it comes to dinners - we didn't get to experience it in Malta last year, but apparently sketches and singing and all sorts of bits of entertainment are normal to PALAns*. And it's quite something to see the big names act all silly. It's also quite something to see professors/lecturers from past studies (or, just, any professor/lecturer) on a dance floor.
So, social events - good things.
But, PALAns, beware. I'm making a confession here, in the sense that I'll tell you now that I'm actually trying to write a novel. I haven't gotten very far yet - about half way through the third chapter, but they're long chapters, I'm at about 10,000 words now. And, considering the adage that I should write what [I] know, it's shaping up to be something like a campus novel, but, being a fantasy and Egyptian mythology fan, elements from that too. So if you've done/are doing something memorable, I may actually include you. Without any identifying features, of course, because I don't want to be sued for slander/libel (not that I'd write about bad stuff, of course, but still). But I'm an ambitious person (sometimes), so I'd like to make it properly multimodal (Polymodal was also coined in a plenary - that would be a fair description of what I'm aiming at). With lots and lots of stylistic and rhetorical elements. And PALAns would then have something of an advantage there, in that they'd then be able to ask me directly why I wrote this up in an awesome alliteration, or why I wrote that in a first person-perspective with second person-pronouns.
A bit quid pro quo.
So, tomorrow is the wine tasting, for which we'll have to get up at 8. It's now 3am, so I suppose I should show mercy to Kristy and stop typing.
Let us therefore end on the following words;
PALA and PALAns, I love your conferences. University of Heidelberg, Professor Busse, conference helpers - I loved this conference.
And whatever we do, whether we're going wine tasting tomorrow or not, we'll see each other in Maribor next year.
And thanks for all the fish.
*The floor is now open for a discussion on whether PALA-normal overlaps in anyway with real-life-normal.
*The floor is now open for a discussion on whether PALA-normal overlaps in anyway with real-life-normal.
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