New Orelans Day 2: Woah what the fuck

Oh shit my vision has gone like a badly tuned TV I’m so hammered. It’s taken like 10 minutes to even get to this wordpress admin page. ohhh.

New Orleans pulls off the trick of being like every other tourist hell-hole in the Universe .. but manages to stay classy, somehow. I love the fact we can watch stuff like “Treme” and peer behind the curtain of the “real New Orleans”.

Wow this blog post is effortful, I can barely type the keys.

So what did I do today. Well I managed to sleep in until 8am with the aid of my melatonin. I spent an hour or so checking my talk, got a coffee, registered for the confernce and then sped off to the “Bywater” by way of a taxon to meet up with Jasprit’s friend Rebecca from New Orleans.

I have to admit to feeling somewhat out of sorts – a little jet-lagged and anxious about giving my presentation later in the afternoon. Rebecca took me to Elizabeth’s – a very cool joint with a flying pig on the ign. We had praline bacon to start off with. Wait, can I say this blog post is fucking hard work, none of the letter are coming out right – something to do with the several Hurricanes I have drunk tonight. Anyway the praline bacon was amazing – you take bacon and add butter and sugar and pralines to it. It must be the only way of improving bacon.

We both had “shrimps’ n grits” for our main course.. Wow this was pretty amazing – I love grits anyway and these were cooked in some kind of pork stock .The shrimps were OK. But the combination of jetlag and nerves were stopping me fully enjoying the experience.

A pudding of “Ooey Gooey” cake was pretty much as described. I joked to our waitress that I would go home and “get diabetes” but she didn’t think that was much of an idea. Wow there are some fucking big asses in New Orleans. Yikes.

Back to the conference centre. My talk was after Mark’s and it went pretty OK although my subject was not my favourite. ASM is a serious conference, there are 12000 delegates and it was standing room only during my talk. The whole session was pretty good though, I think

After the workshop we followed @madthemikebiol to a cafe where we feasted on various New Orleans classic dishes including oysters (bit of a worry, given the missisippi being the last place for the whole of the US to take a shit – and the entirely fucked-up Gulf), “blackened” alligator – actually very nice, like a kind of fishy-flavored (US spellin) chicken, covered in a very spicy Cajun rub, and fried crawfish tails. The basic rule in New Orleans is to deep-fry everything, and if you have the time to coat it in butter and sugar so much the better.

After that we went to a jazz club – “Maison Bourbon” on the ever-insane Bourbon St where I am staying. Despite the “one drink per person per table” and “no taping” rules it was pretty good value, band leader Jamil producing a succession of crowd-pleasing jazz/blues numbers. I was tapping my foot like a mo’fucker. “Yeah you right”. A whole family of Japanese tourists – replete with Mardi Gras beads were similarily getting into it.

The Rotary club are also in town – there is a competition between the ASM and these guys as to who is least exciting. I spoke to some young Rotarians – they call themselves “Rotawrags” or something. It’s not clear what it’s all about really.

OK I go now, I’m about to pass out. “Hurricanes” – they mainly rum yes?

PS. I just puked up. Yuck.