March 31st
Final presentation. This is it. To make it worse, I had to wait at the reception early Monday to call someone who knows me to escort me into the building. Yeah the security at reception know who I am, they see me every morning when I greet them. But rules are rules!
Anyway, I found out that Bill Buxton, the big man, the famed HCI researcher was visiting, prior to his trip to CHI 2008 to accept his lifetime achievement award. And lo and behold, he was there in the room as I presented my talk.
it went pretty well I must say and Bill was interested. Interested enough to share many insightful comments along the way during the presentation. it was supposed to be 50 mins but it became a 1.5 hour affair. But people genuinely appeared interested and engaged. I had a brief chat with Bill at the end and it felt great.
After that, it was a quick pack-up and go. I went back to my empty room, grabbed my suitcase and waited for the cab to take me to the train station. I was leaving Cambridge, after 90 days, I was leaving. For now at least, this would be last time I depart from this station famed for its very very long platform and board the train to London to not return the weekend as I have done for so many times.
I felt quite sad. I have already begun to miss the people that I have interacted with for the past 3 months. This departure felt like the end of a very important chapter. Something significant has just passed. As the train fled away from Cambridge, I was suddenly overcome and tears ran down my cheeks. As I cried, I grabbed my luggage and hugged it, rocking it gently with the roll of the carriage.
Luckily it was a pretty empty carriage and I was quite sure nobody noticed. In hindsight, the tears were a release of a very mixed bag of emotions. I was crying out of sadness, out of the tiredness that have infested every single muscle fibre of my body. The adrenaline that had kept me awake, apparently chirpy, and bouyant has run dried. There is nothing that can hold the dam back now.
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