At the International Neuromodulation Society conference in Seoul

10.42. Arrived in South Korea yesterday and bussed in to Seoul. They have pine trees here! I guess Russia is just around the corner. Temperature's perfect but the sky's cloudy. Went for a walk around downtown Seoul last night. Lots of neon. Big streets and buildings but not crazy big like Singapore, tho maybe closer to the city centre. I'm a sucker for huge modern buildings.

I'm here to present a poster and give a talk about the iPlant project at the 9th world conference of the International Neuromodulation Society. They're footing the bill. Truth be told I'm not sure what I'm doing here.

16:57. Woke up early and spent the day roaming around north-western Seoul. Still not huge or very rich, just very big and active, lots of cars, lots of people. Took forever to find the conference centre. Spent half an hour hiking up a hill at one point and was greeted by a dead end and a very helpful man who spoke no english. Didn't have a proper map and Google maps sucks here (probably wants korean characters, luckily the trains write and speak english). Got to see a lot though, and take pictures. People differences include sleeping (sitting up) on the train, and quite a few wearing face masks. My hotel (Imperial Palace Hotel) is great, with one caveat: they charge for internet. No internet at the conference centre (Grand Hilton Hotel) either. Sucks. Should paradoxically leave more time for me to blog and make videos though.

I've gone through my talk a few times and will try to record it tonight. Poster presentation and talk tomorrow. Poster needs to be up at 7 and the trip to the conference centre takes 1.5 hrs. Uff. Main concern is I need to not get stage-fright, there will be enough confusion re this project without me adding to it. Seriously, they've squeezed me in between 'Motor Cortex Stimulation for Central Pain and Peripheral Neuropathic Pain' and 'Long term Follow-up in Vagal Nerve Stimulation for Drug-Resistant Epileptic Patients' and put an MD next to my name. Should be interesting.

Have a good day.