Northern Ireland Conference 2008
On January 28th, 2008, the members of the Spectroscopy lab on the 6th floor of Chemistry (except for Raul and Emma who would join us later) left the lab to the mercy of the builders and left for the lush pastures of Northern Ireland. County Antrim, and a couple of delightful cottages just a few minutes walk from the Giant's Causeway, was our destination.
Despite popular belief (due to envious and not so fortunate contempories), our goal was not to explore the delights that Ireland had to offer us, but to get some serious work done. The conference was conducted in a responsible manner with all members speaking on their current research, Alison's introduction to new advances in linear dichroism and a rundown of the achievements made by the lab in the past year, and organisation of the new lab space and responsibilities, including equipment guardian.
Of course, one can't be a hop, step and a jump from an UNESCO world heritage site and not visit, so we made an afternoon's outing of it and found the time to visit the Bushmill's Distillery, the oldest licensed distillery in the world, on our return journey to the airport.