In the morning, the wisdom of drinking tequila and Coke became apparent. Specifically — when one is drinking tequila and Coke, its very very easy to switch to straight Coke without any pressure to drink more.

No hangover.

Which is a GOOD thing when you’re sitting in the second row during the conference kickoff presentation. There was loud music, there were bright lights and there was applause. The process repeated itself noisily a number of times. Unspecified others might have been suffering.

No hangover is also a GOOD thing when you’re there for work. It was a great day of exciting presentations, really whetting my appetite for the next day. It’d have been a shame to miss any of it. Like unspecified others might have.

In the evening, we strolled along the boardwalk, looking for a restaurant right up along the beach. We walked for ages. It was amazingly busy on the boardwalk — there was a HUGE open air barbecue going on which I would have loved to try — but the lineup was huge. But man, was it impressive, two big drum barbecues covered with meat — and enough people milling about to make me think it’d be pretty tasty. Ended up going to a Turkish restaurant, sitting and people watching for the course of our meal.

(PS: Tripe soup isn’t as interesting as it sounds.)