Indian Food & Skegness Weekend

I'm back and finally caught up a bit on sleep after my very busy weekend!

Before we get to the weekend lets finish off last week. On Wednesday I made my famous pork chops and coke recipe for everyone, but I also added some tricoloured peppers for those weird people in my group who don't consider ketchup a veggie. It turned out great (as usual) and everyone was shocked that I had cooked with coke and ketchup and that it actually tasted good! After that meal was such a success one of my friends decided that on Thursday they would make us some Indian food. She has made Indian food for us once before and knew that some of us have a very low tolerance for spice, so she's good at making it not too spicy. So she ended up making us daal palak (which is a spinach and lentils dish) and aloo bengan (a potatoes and aubergine/egg plant dish) and another friend made some rice. The first thing I tried was the aloo bengan which was awesome! It had a bit of spice but nothing I couldn't handle, especially since the potatoes helped mellow it out. Then I tried some of the daal palak ... now that was great, don't get me wrong ... but the spice just kicked my butt! She wasn't sure the amount of spice to add for the quantity she was making and thought she was making it mild but it turned out to be just the normal Indian spiciness (which is way too spicy for me). But I managed to eat it all (with help from a tone of the rice) and as I was eating it I slowly (very slowly) started to get us to the spice. My plan is going to be to try and build up my tolerance to these spicy foods so that one day we can go to an Indian restaurant and I’ll be able to order anything I want off the menu with out having to worry about it being spicy or not :-P

That's enough talk about food, now I’m sure some/most of you want to hear about the AOP Student Eye Opener Conference in Skegness this weekend.

I woke up and packed all my stuff at 5am on the Saturday morning. It turned out to be a real challenge packing everything since the only bag I have is my backpack or a big suitcase...so I of course tried to squeeze everything into the back pack. It turned out to be a real squeeze but I managed to fit all the necessities in the back pack. Afterwards I went and waited for the bus at about 6:40 (which is what the confirmation e-mail had told us to do). We all hung out and the bus pulled up at 7, and the 22 of us all got on to the nice big coach bus. It was nice and roomy and most of us even managed to have two seats to ourselves. We ended up leaving Aston at about 7:30, because we had been waiting for someone to show up, but they never did. But so we were on the road and I found it kind of strange because the whole bus ride it seemed just like I was going on a school trip or something in Canada on a grey hound.

The highways and the scenery and everything was very much just like I was back in Canada, the only difference was that we were on the wrong side of the road and that there were way more round a-bouts (but that was ok, since each place there was a round a-bout we would have normally had a stop light in Canada, so this way we still were moving, and so there were much fewer stops). The weirdest thing was I kept seeing road signs that looked like inukshuk (it turns out they just mean that the motorway regulations regulations are in effect ... I don't really know what that means).

I also noticed that when we were on the main motorways they even had the rest stops with the gas stations, a Costa coffee shop and a fast food restaurant (but instead of McDonalds it was mainly Burger King). During our journey to the East coast, we ended up stopping once for about half an hour at a rest stop. It was actually kind of neat because as we sat there an older yellow double decker bus pulled up and a bunch of students filled out. At first it looked like it was a sports team, but we quickly realized that it was it was just the first two out the door that were dressed in a uniform, the rest were in various other costumes. We later found out that the bus of University students was heading all the way up to Newcastle for a big Halloween party. In the long run we ultimately got to the Butlins in Skegness around 11:30 (about 4hours, even though our expected time of arrival was suppose to be around 10) and so we all filled out and found our way to the AOP conference check in area. It became quickly apparent that Skegness is very much a summer/cottage community since aside from Fantasy Island with the roller coaster there was a bunch of trailer parks, Butlins and one small downtown street which all made up the town. Butlins was just on the outskirts of the town and after stepping out of the coach we discovered that Butlins is very much a family/kids resort. There were kids running around all over the place, and there were tones of kids’ rides, games and activities. But we were there to have a good time, and there was no turning back now. After we all checked in we went to our rooms, which had three people to a room and the rooms had one bathroom and two bedrooms, one bedroom with two single beds and the other had a queen bed. Seeing as there were only three guys from Aston we were basically given a room to ourselves. After everyone threw there stuff down the next thing was there was a scavenger hunt thing, which all the other schools had started to do around 10, and was due to be finished at 12, but we just tried answering all the clues without going to any of the places. We thought that we had done really well and were very clever, but later found out that we were completely wrong with all our answers. Afterwards we went to lunch from 12-1. It was a big cafeteria style lunch set up and I ended up getting fish and chips, along with some lasagne and peas. Both looked and smelled good but turned out to be fairly bland. Afterwards we all went to the conference. There were a bunch of talks from various people basically informing us about various places that we as optometrists could work (independent practice, hospital, multiples and domiciliary).

We then had a coffee break and got to talk to the wide range of vendors that were there (such as people from Ciba vision, Vision Express, British Contact Lens Association, British Association of Behavioural Optometrist, Optometry Giving Sight, Keeler, a practice management software company, etc). Then it was time for a somewhat boring presentation about CV (resume) writing and interview skills that was given by two guys from a recruitment agency. There wasn't really anything interesting that they said and it was kind of poorly delivered but I had my coffee so it made it tolerable.

As soon as it was over there was another coffee and networking time, and then the last presentation of the day. The last presentation was given by a guy named Brian Tompkins and it was about contact lenses and why optometrists in the UK should dispense contact lenses more to their patients. His presentation was very entertaining, although it seemed a bit scattered at times, but all in all it was very well done. All the talks and everything ended up going later than expected so instead of having about an hour break we all went outside and watched a Fireworks display that was going on. It was neat walking to the display since we passed all the kids and their parents in the resort who were all dressed up in their Halloween costumes, so that was neat to see. I also was talking to some British optometry students and found out that apparently Halloween isn't nearly as big in the UK as it is at home, which was disappointing to hear. But then the fireworks went off so that cheered me right back up.

After the fireworks we had about an hour break before the eyeball/drinks reception, so all the females quickly tried to get ready while I just walked around for a bit and went through all of the papers that I had been given so far at the conference. A few minutes before we were suppose to be at the reception I just through on my orange dress shirt (got to stay in the Halloween spirit) tie and dress pants. I also had purchased some nice cheap new dress shoes that I got to wear too. The reception was suppose to be very formal with a jacket and such, and it turned out that basically all of the guys had jackets and were wearing white shirts, well except for me since I didn't bring my jacket with me to the UK, but I didn't mind too much since it definitely meant I got to stand out of the crowd a bit better. After the reception it was around 8pm and when we all filled over to the restaurant for dinner.

It was a fancy restaurant and the dinner was pretty good. I had a fancy soup, followed by chicken and mashed potatoes, and then for desert there was a chocolate mousse cake which was pretty good. The only thing is I wish I had of ordered the vegetarian dish as it was a fancy risotto that looked pretty good. It’s kind of weird over here actually the number of people who are vegetarian, because at the dinner I would say almost half of the meals served were vegetarian. After dinner most of us were planning to head off to a club that they have at the resort for adults, but on the way we found out that it was closed for a few weeks, so we all went to a sports bar that they had there which had a DJ and then just hung out and danced the rest of the night. It was probably around 2 or 2:30 that the group I was hanging around with decided to head back and on the way back to our rooms we decided to go check out the beach, since this was the first time that we had a chance to check it out. It turned out that apparently there is a gate to get to the beach, which was locked. We tried looking through the fence but it was so dark that we couldn't really see anything.

We then ended up taking a walk back to the rooms and it was about 3am by the time I got to sleep, since my one roommate and I got watching the end of some weird Chinese movie on TV (I think we mainly watched it since we have been so TV deprived since starting school).

The next morning I woke up bright and early and at 9am I went and had breakfast in the same cafeteria place that we had lunch the day before. It turned out that the breakfast was actually pretty decent. I had some back bacon (which was heavenly), some eggs and then some of these deep fried looking pieces of toast. Since it was so good I then went back and got some seconds but this time I also got some sausages (the first one was good, but I don't think the second one was cooked very well). I also managed to down about 3 cups of coffee, which had been some of the best coffee I’ve had since being over here, and the strange part is it came out of a machine! It was then shortly after 10 by the time I had finished all my breakfast so it was time to head over to the conference. The real crappy thing was that it had been raining so hard and the wind was blowing like 25-30k that by the time we all had walked the 30 second walk back to the conference we just were soaking wet. But they loaded us up with some more coffee and we heard another talk about the pre-registration period that we have to do after our third year. The talk was interesting and very informative, but applied more to second years that currently have to apply for their pre-reg positions. After the talk there were some prize draws for like door prizes (basically Nintendo DSs, Nintendo Wiis, Keeler refraction kits, and volt lenses). Surprisingly only one person from Aston won a Volk lens, meanwhile most of the other prises went to people from Glasgow or Cardiff, so we're all wondering if it was maybe fixed a bit.

That ended the conference but we still had about 5 hours to kill so they gave us all some free passes to a bunch of the events at the resort. The first thing we did was go down to the beach! The rain had stopped, yet it was still really windy but we figured that we had to go check it out since we came all that way to see the coast. It was kind of neat to see the sand and water again, as it reminded me a bit of some of the beaches back home. One neat thing they had was out in the middle of the water was where they had a big wind mill farm, which I thought was a great idea, since this way no one lives right next to them, so less people complaining about the noise, etc.

After spending about 15 minutes on the beach we headed back to the main part of the resort and all went and watched a movie. We ended up seeing Up (but not in 3D). It was the only decent looking movie that they had playing, and apparently it has just recently come out in the UK. It was an okay movie, but just sort of what I had expected. After the movie we walked around a bit, grabbed a snack and then tried to find something else to do, but most things were full, but so we ended up going bowling and managed to squeeze a few frames in before it was time to go.

We packed up everything and left Skegness around 5:15 and got back to Birmingham around 8:30 (since we didn't make any stops, and the bus driver found a slightly quicker way back). All in all it was a very long tiring weekend, but I’m happy I went as I did learn a bit of new information about the state of optometry in the UK, and it turned out that most of what I learned was through the networking I did with the vendors, and other optometry students. All in all I'll probably go again next year, provided it's somewhere different next year (and rumour has it they might be looking at Nottingham or somewhere more central for next year).

So that was my weekend (and week) last week ;-)

- word/phrase of the week:  When a British person says "half eight" it means "eight thirty" or "half past eight" ... not four which is what i keep thinking when people say it  :-P