The promised NOLA post
Nov. 5th, 2006 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesWhen we last left our heroine, it was Tuesday, and she was making a list of Stuff To Get Done...
On Tuesday night I picked up my newly printed business cards, and went up to TJ Maxx in Brighton and bought some clean socks and a small rolling suitcase. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided I didn't want to put my good clothes and my shampoo in a duffel bag together and subject the whole works to the tender mercies of the TSA. So I bought a proper suitcase (with somewhat unfortunate pink accents; more on that in a bit) and brought it home and packed it, and slapped some VERY temporary content up on coffeeweasels.com (since I had put the URL on my business cards and I didn't want there to be absolutely nothing there).
On Wednesday morning, I headed off for the airport. I intended to be there early enough to get through security and do something about breakfast afterward, which is what ended up happening. The TSA agent in charge of the metal detector told me I looked nervous. I hadn't been until he said that, what with the article I had read about TSA agents starting with behavioral profiling. Mostly I was annoyed at the fact that I'd had to take my blazer off and my bra wasn't behaving itself.
I was hoping that the Great Airport Terminal Reshuffle had done something more convenient with the AirTran terminal, but it hadn't. At least I'd left myself enough time to go on an Expedition to the food court from the AirTran terminal. Anyway, I did find it, and equipped myself with coffee and danish, and hung around some, and got on the plane at about the right time. The flight to Atlanta was about as uneventful as possible. Don't ask me why, but I was rather amused at the fact that the native soil around Atlanta is pretty much neon orange.
I had a three-hour layover in Atlanta, during which time I had a pretty good sandwich (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prunesnprismswas right, Atlanta does pretty well by airport food), finished most of the book I had started reading in Boston, and got thoroughly sick of the recorded intercom announcements.
The flight to New Orleans was also uneventful. When we were on final approach, I looked out the window and said "Whoa! Water!" Apparently it was Lake Pontchartrain, and I was looking at the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. I really wouldn't have wanted to be in charge of building it. Due to having to wait for my suitcase, I missed a shuttle to the downtown hotels. I also discovered that the transfer tags AirTran puts on luggage are almost the same pink as the accents on my suitcase, so looking on the conveyor for pink on a black suitcase wasn't helping me all that much. I had to wait about an hour for the next shuttle, and it was something like a half-hour trip on the shuttle to get to the conference hotel. By the time I got there, things had closed down for the day, so I went and found the La Quinta I was staying in, and checked in.
I'm not entirely sure the La Quinta wasn't entirely rebuilt recently. It was way too nice to be a $79-a-night hotel, but that's what I paid for it. After I dropped my suitcase off, I went off to find something dinnerlike. What I found was a mini-mart/souvenir shop/package store, which seem to be all over the place. You can't get anything really useful, but I did find snack food and liquid, so that worked.
On Thursday morning, I got up assuming that the conference was going to start at 7:30. The La Quinta had a continental breakfast that had scrambled eggs and waffles and all that jazz, so I had some yogurt and eggs and went off up the street to the Sheraton, and registered at the conference, and had coffee. That was one of my brighter ideas; the ATA conference's idea of breakfast is pastries and coffee and fruit, but they had better coffee than the La Quinta. At breakfast I met a translator of Indonesian from Yale, and a translator of Spanish from Houston.
Unfortunately, the conference was set up for breakfast from 7:30 - 8:30, and then there was pretty much dead time until 1:45. There were board meetings and orientation for first-time attendees, but no panels until 1:45. (Bless the people who put a Wendy's on the corner across from the Sheraton...) I wandered through the exhibitors' room, and stuck my head in at the Kent State booth and got invited to the Kent State lunch on Friday, and went to a couple of panels when they finally got started.
The second panel ended at 5:00, and I went to the networking session at 5:30. That mostly consists of people congregating by area of specialization in the exhibitors' room, in and around a buffet of finger food and a couple of cash bars. (In short, it's a zoo.) I did exchange cards with some people, though, so it wasn't a total waste of time. It was also interesting that people will talk to me now, even though I have no freelance experience. When I was a student, nobody was interested.
After the networking session, I was hungry, and my feet were killing me since I had been wearing heels all day. I happened to run into one of my Kent State professors in the lobby, and the person she was with had recommended the Palace Cafe, so I took myself over there for dinner. It was pretty busy, because there were three conferences (including the ATA) in the Sheraton, and at least one in the Marriott down the block. Anyway, dinner and wine were had and I went back to my room and fell over.
On Friday, the panels started at 10:15, and I went to four of them over the course of the day. I got lost three times trying to find the restaurant on Bourbon Street where the Kent State lunch was, but I did eventually find it, and scared a couple of my ex-professors talking about what Harvard puts people through for promotions, and had a good lunch, and generally enjoyed myself.
I didn't really want to do much of anything between the end of the last panel at 5:00 and the book splash at 7:00, so I went for a short walk and got dinner from Wendy's and went back to my room and did mostly nothing for the rest of the evening. I probably should have stayed around and met people and all that jazz, but I was running out of steam anyway.
I knew I was leaving the conference at noon, so I checked out of the La Quinta and brought my suitcase to the Sheraton. I ended up having breakfast with my advisor from Kent State, who's less intimidating now that I've graduated. I left my suitcase at the Kent State booth so I didn't have to haul it up and down the escalators all morning, and went to a couple of panels (three, actually, but I walked out of one). I retrieved my suitcase after the last panel, got on the shuttle to the airport, and actually got to see some scenery this time since it wasn't dark this time.
The New Orleans airport is somewhat smaller than the Providence airport, and is in the running for a prize for uncomfortable chairs. Fortunately I wasn't there for that long. The flight between there and Atlanta was only an hour.
In Atlanta I forgot that the time had changed by an hour, and was settling in for a three-hour wait. It turned out to be two hours, and was made somewhat less boring by a sudden gate change after I'd been sitting there for about an hour. I trundled off to the other gate and settled in, and suddenly they started making boarding announcements. I had been thinking about dinner, but never mind.
I got on the plane and discovered somebody else in my seat. Apparently a family had gotten split up, and asked me if I would swap seats with one of their sons. I said I would, but my new seat was right over the wing, so I got a marvelous view of an engine and not much else. We taxied out to the runway and sat there for half an hour, and then the pilot came on and said there was a problem with one of his indicator lights, so we went back to the gate and a mechanic came and rebooted the plane (they think there had been a power spike and the computer hadn't liked it), and took off an hour late.
We made up half an hour on the trip, which landed us in Boston at 9:15ish. In Atlanta I had remembered that my keys were in my suitcase, so I was hoping that my suitcase had kept up with the gate (and plane) change in Atlanta, or I was going to have (a) cold feet because I was wearing Tevas, and (b) noplace to sleep because I couldn't get into my apartment. Suitcase and keys showed up just fine, but it took them until 9:45, so it took me until about 11:00 to get home from the airport.
The panels I went to:
Thursday:
Linguistic Interference Between English and French
Medical Interpreter Services from A to Z: Learning Experiences from a Children's Hospital Medical Center
Friday:
When A Child Is Dying: The Unique Role of the Medical Interpreter
An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth 10 Pounds of Cure: Mitigating Technological Risks
Why Can't I Interpret? I'm Bilingual! Supplementing Interpreter Staff by Assessing and Training Bilingual Employees
The Cons of Not Being a Pro: Translators and the Fear of Being a Professional
Saturday:
Enhancing MS Word Processing Efficiency Via Macros (this is the one I walked out of; it wasn't even close to interesting)
Translation Summit Panel: Internships for Beginning Translators
Clinical Insight in Mental Health Interpreting
NOLA in general is a very odd city. I stayed in the downtown business district, and mixed in with the huge, modern, gleaming conference hotels, on every corner there was a teeny little hole-in-the-wall mini-mart/liquor store/souvenir shop. Every second bulding had at least one window covered with plywood, and the building right across the street from the Sheraton had all its windows gone and its fire escape looked like somebody had tried to tie a knot in it.
What I saw of Bourbon Street in the daytime was a place I wouldn't have wanted to go alone at night, even if I hadn't been warned not to.
I think part of the problem is that there aren't enough people in New Orleans any more. Granted, I wasn't in any of the residential sections of it, but we drove past some of them on the way to the airport, and they mostly felt dead even though they didn't look it. I wonder what it feels like in some of the less tourist-centric places. Like New York, I think I should have somebody who knows the city (and preferably knew it pre-Katrina) show it to me.
The news in NOLA calls Katrina "the storm". I wonder if they don't use the name bacause they don't need to, or because they don't want to.
On Tuesday night I picked up my newly printed business cards, and went up to TJ Maxx in Brighton and bought some clean socks and a small rolling suitcase. Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided I didn't want to put my good clothes and my shampoo in a duffel bag together and subject the whole works to the tender mercies of the TSA. So I bought a proper suitcase (with somewhat unfortunate pink accents; more on that in a bit) and brought it home and packed it, and slapped some VERY temporary content up on coffeeweasels.com (since I had put the URL on my business cards and I didn't want there to be absolutely nothing there).
On Wednesday morning, I headed off for the airport. I intended to be there early enough to get through security and do something about breakfast afterward, which is what ended up happening. The TSA agent in charge of the metal detector told me I looked nervous. I hadn't been until he said that, what with the article I had read about TSA agents starting with behavioral profiling. Mostly I was annoyed at the fact that I'd had to take my blazer off and my bra wasn't behaving itself.
I was hoping that the Great Airport Terminal Reshuffle had done something more convenient with the AirTran terminal, but it hadn't. At least I'd left myself enough time to go on an Expedition to the food court from the AirTran terminal. Anyway, I did find it, and equipped myself with coffee and danish, and hung around some, and got on the plane at about the right time. The flight to Atlanta was about as uneventful as possible. Don't ask me why, but I was rather amused at the fact that the native soil around Atlanta is pretty much neon orange.
I had a three-hour layover in Atlanta, during which time I had a pretty good sandwich (
prunesnprismswas right, Atlanta does pretty well by airport food), finished most of the book I had started reading in Boston, and got thoroughly sick of the recorded intercom announcements. The flight to New Orleans was also uneventful. When we were on final approach, I looked out the window and said "Whoa! Water!" Apparently it was Lake Pontchartrain, and I was looking at the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. I really wouldn't have wanted to be in charge of building it. Due to having to wait for my suitcase, I missed a shuttle to the downtown hotels. I also discovered that the transfer tags AirTran puts on luggage are almost the same pink as the accents on my suitcase, so looking on the conveyor for pink on a black suitcase wasn't helping me all that much. I had to wait about an hour for the next shuttle, and it was something like a half-hour trip on the shuttle to get to the conference hotel. By the time I got there, things had closed down for the day, so I went and found the La Quinta I was staying in, and checked in.
I'm not entirely sure the La Quinta wasn't entirely rebuilt recently. It was way too nice to be a $79-a-night hotel, but that's what I paid for it. After I dropped my suitcase off, I went off to find something dinnerlike. What I found was a mini-mart/souvenir shop/package store, which seem to be all over the place. You can't get anything really useful, but I did find snack food and liquid, so that worked.
On Thursday morning, I got up assuming that the conference was going to start at 7:30. The La Quinta had a continental breakfast that had scrambled eggs and waffles and all that jazz, so I had some yogurt and eggs and went off up the street to the Sheraton, and registered at the conference, and had coffee. That was one of my brighter ideas; the ATA conference's idea of breakfast is pastries and coffee and fruit, but they had better coffee than the La Quinta. At breakfast I met a translator of Indonesian from Yale, and a translator of Spanish from Houston.
Unfortunately, the conference was set up for breakfast from 7:30 - 8:30, and then there was pretty much dead time until 1:45. There were board meetings and orientation for first-time attendees, but no panels until 1:45. (Bless the people who put a Wendy's on the corner across from the Sheraton...) I wandered through the exhibitors' room, and stuck my head in at the Kent State booth and got invited to the Kent State lunch on Friday, and went to a couple of panels when they finally got started.
The second panel ended at 5:00, and I went to the networking session at 5:30. That mostly consists of people congregating by area of specialization in the exhibitors' room, in and around a buffet of finger food and a couple of cash bars. (In short, it's a zoo.) I did exchange cards with some people, though, so it wasn't a total waste of time. It was also interesting that people will talk to me now, even though I have no freelance experience. When I was a student, nobody was interested.
After the networking session, I was hungry, and my feet were killing me since I had been wearing heels all day. I happened to run into one of my Kent State professors in the lobby, and the person she was with had recommended the Palace Cafe, so I took myself over there for dinner. It was pretty busy, because there were three conferences (including the ATA) in the Sheraton, and at least one in the Marriott down the block. Anyway, dinner and wine were had and I went back to my room and fell over.
On Friday, the panels started at 10:15, and I went to four of them over the course of the day. I got lost three times trying to find the restaurant on Bourbon Street where the Kent State lunch was, but I did eventually find it, and scared a couple of my ex-professors talking about what Harvard puts people through for promotions, and had a good lunch, and generally enjoyed myself.
I didn't really want to do much of anything between the end of the last panel at 5:00 and the book splash at 7:00, so I went for a short walk and got dinner from Wendy's and went back to my room and did mostly nothing for the rest of the evening. I probably should have stayed around and met people and all that jazz, but I was running out of steam anyway.
I knew I was leaving the conference at noon, so I checked out of the La Quinta and brought my suitcase to the Sheraton. I ended up having breakfast with my advisor from Kent State, who's less intimidating now that I've graduated. I left my suitcase at the Kent State booth so I didn't have to haul it up and down the escalators all morning, and went to a couple of panels (three, actually, but I walked out of one). I retrieved my suitcase after the last panel, got on the shuttle to the airport, and actually got to see some scenery this time since it wasn't dark this time.
The New Orleans airport is somewhat smaller than the Providence airport, and is in the running for a prize for uncomfortable chairs. Fortunately I wasn't there for that long. The flight between there and Atlanta was only an hour.
In Atlanta I forgot that the time had changed by an hour, and was settling in for a three-hour wait. It turned out to be two hours, and was made somewhat less boring by a sudden gate change after I'd been sitting there for about an hour. I trundled off to the other gate and settled in, and suddenly they started making boarding announcements. I had been thinking about dinner, but never mind.
I got on the plane and discovered somebody else in my seat. Apparently a family had gotten split up, and asked me if I would swap seats with one of their sons. I said I would, but my new seat was right over the wing, so I got a marvelous view of an engine and not much else. We taxied out to the runway and sat there for half an hour, and then the pilot came on and said there was a problem with one of his indicator lights, so we went back to the gate and a mechanic came and rebooted the plane (they think there had been a power spike and the computer hadn't liked it), and took off an hour late.
We made up half an hour on the trip, which landed us in Boston at 9:15ish. In Atlanta I had remembered that my keys were in my suitcase, so I was hoping that my suitcase had kept up with the gate (and plane) change in Atlanta, or I was going to have (a) cold feet because I was wearing Tevas, and (b) noplace to sleep because I couldn't get into my apartment. Suitcase and keys showed up just fine, but it took them until 9:45, so it took me until about 11:00 to get home from the airport.
The panels I went to:
Thursday:
Linguistic Interference Between English and French
Medical Interpreter Services from A to Z: Learning Experiences from a Children's Hospital Medical Center
Friday:
When A Child Is Dying: The Unique Role of the Medical Interpreter
An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth 10 Pounds of Cure: Mitigating Technological Risks
Why Can't I Interpret? I'm Bilingual! Supplementing Interpreter Staff by Assessing and Training Bilingual Employees
The Cons of Not Being a Pro: Translators and the Fear of Being a Professional
Saturday:
Enhancing MS Word Processing Efficiency Via Macros (this is the one I walked out of; it wasn't even close to interesting)
Translation Summit Panel: Internships for Beginning Translators
Clinical Insight in Mental Health Interpreting
NOLA in general is a very odd city. I stayed in the downtown business district, and mixed in with the huge, modern, gleaming conference hotels, on every corner there was a teeny little hole-in-the-wall mini-mart/liquor store/souvenir shop. Every second bulding had at least one window covered with plywood, and the building right across the street from the Sheraton had all its windows gone and its fire escape looked like somebody had tried to tie a knot in it.
What I saw of Bourbon Street in the daytime was a place I wouldn't have wanted to go alone at night, even if I hadn't been warned not to.
I think part of the problem is that there aren't enough people in New Orleans any more. Granted, I wasn't in any of the residential sections of it, but we drove past some of them on the way to the airport, and they mostly felt dead even though they didn't look it. I wonder what it feels like in some of the less tourist-centric places. Like New York, I think I should have somebody who knows the city (and preferably knew it pre-Katrina) show it to me.
The news in NOLA calls Katrina "the storm". I wonder if they don't use the name bacause they don't need to, or because they don't want to.
