Conference in Pittsburgh - Day 4 (26th November 2013)

Today is the last day of the conference and since there was no talks in the morning that interested me, I decided to take a walk down Strip Avenue. When I woke up at 5am in the morning, I realised that it had started snowing again and by the time I left the hotel at 8am, the snow was getting slightly heavier. Donning my cardigan, scarf, gloves and summer jacket, I headed out of the hotel and walked towards the nearby cross-roads. There, I spotted a beautiful scenery of a walkway surrounded by bald trees and snow-covered grass. It was rather surreal as it was my first time experiencing snowfall and I was really happy and excited like a little kid during christmas day. I walked about, snapping tons of photographs and eventually made my way across the cityblocks to Strip Avenue. Strip Avenue is a really long stretch of road and I passed by quite a few government buildings before spotting a beautiful scene of snow-capped pine trees in the background of the adjacent street. I immediately went over to the adjacent street and saw that there was train tracks running alongside those trees. After exploring a bit, I headed up a slope and got myself right beside the train tracks, with a huge and "never-ending" freight train passing by. It seemed like eternity as huge containers passed by me, one after another, for about 10 minutes, pulled by a single train engine. After the train was gone, I immediately started snapping more photographs, greatly amazed at the beautiful works of God's hand. It was amazing to be at such a scene that I had previously only seen in photographs. A giant field covered in snow, with train tracks right beside me, and a towering slope filled with snow-capped pine trees nearby!

After much gushing and photo-taking, I headed towards the nearby building and headed back down to Strip Avenue where I saw a shop selling all sorts of chocolates. I immediately went about buying some hand-made truffles and chocolate balls for my girlfriend and had wanted to buy more, if not for my limited budget. The chocolates weren't cheap but definitely looked yummy. After that little side-track, I headed over to a brunch diner that I had intended to visit. Pamela's P&G Diner was a laid back american diner that served brunch daily. The food was unpretentious and good, and the servings were huge. I ordered a large breakfast of grilled ham, scrambled eggs, two huge pancakes, a mug of hot chocolate and an additional serving of corned beef potato hash. It was really really good and I was filled to the brim! I took my time to finish breakfast since I had some time to spare before attending the afternoon conference talks. After the really huge breakfast, I headed to a donut shop behind the diner and decided to buy one of their speciality donuts, Maple Bacon Donut. This little donut store, "peace, love and little donuts", had a hippie feel to it and it sold many different interesting flavours that one never ever finds in Singapore!

After that little donut topup, I started to walk towards Allegheny River since it flowed besides the convention hall too. There was a Three Rivers Heritage Trail System of jogging tracks that plied this river but due to the weather, the track was closed indefinitely. However, it was possible to walk along the carpark beside it and so I walked towards the conference hall with a beautiful view of the river and had strong cold wind and snow flakes to accompany me. By the time I reached the conference hall, it was lunch time. I met up with two of my research mates and decided to accompany them for lunch.

We headed to the nearby August Henry's Restaurant where they had full meals but I only had a small cup of Chili since I was really full and it wasn't polite not to order anything there. After lunch, we all headed back to the conference hall where we attended a series of talks, two which were presented by fellow researchers from NTU. Once the entire segment of talks were over, I collected my poster and some of us headed back to our hotels to rest.

I was tasked with finding a restaurant for a celebratory dinner since it was the end of the conference and everyone else was heading back home on the following morning. Easy Street Restaurant was the restaurant of choice and after resting in my hotel for about an hour, it was time to head over. It had stopped snowing by then and the snow fall was actually turning into a light drizzle. I headed over in the hotel shuttle and waited for the rest to arrive. Dinner was rather interesting, despite occasional discussion about work (which was really unappreciated by me). Unfortunately, the restaurant was closing early due to the inclement weather and we did not stay for too long. After dinner, everyone headed back to their hotels since they all had early flights to catch. I also went back since the rain was getting heavier and that prohibited me from exploring the surrounding area.