Aloha Novotel Melbourne South Wharf Room 1218 Dr Gary Lum, AM
Posted on by Gary

Meeting in Melbourne

Meeting in Melbourne

This week I spent a few days attending a meeting in Melbourne.

Melbourne CBD

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It’s been a busy and fulfilling week. Senate estimates on Wednesday meant a 6.30 am to 11 pm day, although because of a car park problem at Parliament House I didn’t get home until after midnight. I still got to work on Thursday morning at 6.30 am but I didn’t get my walk in. I slept in to 5 am.

On Thursday evening I flew to Melbourne for the annual scientific meeting of the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia known as Pathology Update #pathupdate

I was speaking at a session on Friday morning so I flew down on the Thursday evening. I stayed at the Novotel Melbourne South Wharf. The hotel is located in the Melbourne Convention Centre precinct.

 

I arrived at the hotel in time for dinner, albeit a late dinner for me. I normally eat around 6 pm as part of my Senior Australian curmudgeon training. I felt all sophisticated and bourgeois eating at 9 pm.

Pathology Update is a fun meeting. I really enjoy the plenary sessions which take a broad look at pathology and medicine. These sessions are multidisciplinary and are designed to be thought provoking.

One of my favourite plenary sessions this year was on writing scientific papers and reviewing manuscripts for journals. I have nearly 50 papers in my CV and I regularly review manuscripts for journals. I’m also on the editorial board of a journal.

It’s amazing the amount of academic fraud that is going on at the moment. It seems the vast majority of work published is of questionable value given the flourishing pay-to-publish models of many journals. Many of these journals have grandiose sounding names, but when you read the fine print, it’s obvious that almost any rubbish will be accepted and when you read the papers in those journals you can verify the crap factor. I’ve read so many articles over the last five or so years that have just been rubbish. Not only is the English poor with spelling mistakes and poor grammar, the claims are clearly fraudulent. It’s a pretty good sign that if reading an article makes you want to take a red pen out to correct the spelling and grammar, there’s no real peer review.

Pathology advances are occurring so quickly it’s difficult to keep up. Multiomics is the buzzword at the moment. For me, the conjunction of genomics and proteomics is very real. The way I practice medicine is headed to more super computer analysis and big numbers rather than physically looking at organisms.

Personalising medicine is the future. Tailoring diagnostics and treatments to a patient’s needs. Knowing someone’s microbiome may become as important as knowing a person’s genome.

What have I watched this week?

I’ve only been home two nights this week and I ended up doing work those nights.

Star Trek: Discovery (Spoiler warning)

The Sound of Thunder

This week’s episode is all about the first officer of the Discovery, viz., Saru the only Kelpian in Star Fleet, and his new found confidence. It’s pretty cool to get some more character development of Saru and learn more about the Kelpians. That said, I am fond of the mirror universe kelpians and the thought of eating them and their delicate threat ganglia. I like to think what the threat ganglia might taste like along with some live gagh.

What have I listened to this week?

Podcasts

Nothing has stood out as worth writing about. In fact, I deleted some shows because the show notes didn’t tantalise me and I figured it would be a waste of my time to listen to them.

Radio

While driving from work to home though I have been listening to ABC News Radio. It’s on the FM band in Canberra. When the Australian Parliament is sitting, whether it be the Senate (upper house) or the House of Representatives (lower house), News Radio will broadcast various sessions, usually live. I enjoy listening to bills and amendments to bills being debated. I usually miss question time from the lower house unless it’s a recorded session.

What have I eaten and photographed this week?

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one image and scroll through the rest of them.

  • The Owl Statue Sunday morning
  • The Owl Statue Sunday morning
  • Margaret Timpson Park
  • Benjamin Way
  • Melbourne CBD
  • Great Southern Pinnacle Rib Eye medium rare with bordelaise sauce and hot chips. Meat Market South Wharf.
  • Great Southern Pinnacle Rib Eye medium rare with bordelaise sauce and hot chips. Meat Market South Wharf.
  • Great Southern Pinnacle Rib Eye medium rare with bordelaise sauce and hot chips. Meat Market South Wharf.
  • Mango and vanilla NEW YORK CHEESECAKE, hibiscus syrup
  • Melbourne CBD
  • Friday breakfast. Bacon and eggs with stuff at the Novotel Melbourne South Wharf.
  • Lamb rack with crispy quinoa served with a fennel and mandarin salad.. Novotel Melbourne South Wharf.
  • Warm breakfast muffin. Queensland nuts and white chocolate.
  • Urban Bean Espresso Bar
  • Chicken schnitzel and chips with peppercorn sauce
  • Vegetable laksa at Asian Noodle House, Woden
  • Entrée Asian Noodle House Woden
  • Almond croissant with custard
  • Vegemite and Coon cheese roll for lunch
  • Abandoned shopping trolleys at the Sentinel
  • The Owl Statue Wednesday morning
  • Me at Belconnen Police Station
  • Sous vide steak and rice with hot 🌶🌶🌶 chillies, lime, and avocado. Steak 60 minutes 55 °C and rice boiled then fried. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #rice
  • Sous vide steak and rice with hot 🌶🌶🌶 chillies, lime, and avocado. Steak 60 minutes 55 °C and rice boiled then fried. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #rice
  • Coon cheese and Vegemite roll. It needed raw red onion.
  • The Owl Statue Tuesday morning
  • Toasted cheese roll and a pot of tea
  • Toasted cheese roll and coffee
  • Baked salmon with Udon noodles and spicy chilli limey curry coconut cream 🌶🌶🌶 Salmon 8 minutes 250 °C and Udon noodles boiled for 8 minutes before stir frying. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #salmon #udon
  • Baked salmon with Udon noodles and spicy chilli limey curry coconut cream 🌶🌶🌶 Salmon 8 minutes 250 °C and Udon noodles boiled for 8 minutes before stir frying. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #salmon #udon
  • Shopping trolley down in the Woden Wind Tunnel
  • Shopping trolley down in the Woden Wind Tunnel
  • The Owl Statue Monday morning
  • Leftover sous vide steak with Udon noodles and spicy chilli curry coconut cream. Steak 1 hour 55 °C and Udon noodles boiled for 8 minutes before stir frying. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #udon
  • Leftover sous vide steak with Udon noodles and spicy chilli curry coconut cream. Steak 1 hour 55 °C and Udon noodles boiled for 8 minutes before stir frying. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #udon
  • Tasmanian Heritage Blue cheese and triple brie, crispy oven-baked KFC skin, dried figs and dates.
  • The bus line
  • Abandoned shopping trolley on Benjamin Way
  • Abandoned shopping trolley on Benjamin Way
  • The Owl Statue Sunday morning
  • The Owl Statue Sunday morning
  • The Owl Statue Sunday morning
  • Aloha Novotel Melbourne South Wharf Room 1218
  • Melbourne CBD
  • After presentations on mould disease I have been craving this butter fried sourdough bread with sous vide scotch fillet steak, Tasmanian Heritage blue cheese, and garlic aioli. Leftover steak seared in a hot pan. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #bluecheese #mould
  • After presentations on mould disease I have been craving this butter fried sourdough bread with sous vide scotch fillet steak, Tasmanian Heritage blue cheese, and garlic aioli. Leftover steak seared in a hot pan. #yummylummy #foodphotography #foldio #hypop #sousvide #steak #bluecheese #mould

Yummy Lummy this week

Great Southern Pinnacle Rib Eye medium rare with bordelaise sauce and hot chips. Meat Market South Wharf. Bone dissected from fillet muscle and deckle or rib cap meat.

I didn’t do much cooking this week so I wrote a restaurant review of a place I ate at on Friday night, viz., Meat Market Melbourne South Wharf.

I ended up eating a very nice steak. If you don’t subscribe to Yummy Lummy, I’d love it if you read the review, ‘liked’ it, and if you feel inclined, please subscribe to my food blog.

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Final thoughts

  • Do you like attending conferences?
  • Do you like speaking at conferences?
  • When you travel for a meeting, do you like eating out?

10 Replies to “Meeting in Melbourne”

  1. Butter fried sour dough bread – YUM. I love the look of the vegetarian laksa too Gary. I have just spent three days in Melbourne with a friend; nice trip and had a fabulous lunch at the Italian restaurant at the Crown Casino – great food. And I wanted to tell you I saw the owl statue for the first time last week – looks good.

    1. Ah, the Belco Owl, one of my favourite things about Canberra.
      I really liked the vegetable laksa. I’m grateful it had only a few pieces of tofu.

  2. A busy week for you Gaz. Out and about, and sounded like a good time 😃 Not sure if conferences are my thing. But I’ve been to a few and yeah, definitely ate out during meal times 😃 Didn’t know there were academic papers published with grammatical and spelling errors, and might not be believable. How they can get that far 😯

    1. Thanks, Mabel. The problem is there are journals out there with all the reviewers on the payroll. You submit an article with the fee and the reviewers just accept the paper. It’s hard to know sometimes if the paper has even been read.
      My written English isn’t the best, but if I can pick spelling and grammatical errors, it has to be a crap paper from a rubbish journal. People publish this way to get their position in the literature so it can be cited by like-minded fraudulently minded people.

    2. I guess if the work is not up to scratch of fraudulent, it’s worse than grammatical and spelling errors. It almost sounds too easy to publish something in academia these days.

    5. The other down side is that gullible people read the work as if it’s the truth and then go down rabbit holes of poor treatment.

  3. I’d have a colossal tummy ache after eating that late!
    Red pens in papers that should make our future…scary!
    It was brought to my attention with mum, thatvif we could map her properly, she might have lived longer. Another benefit. Getting her gene testing done made me feel tons less stressed for my own future.

    1. Thanks, Kris. The future is going to be amazing when it comes to personalised pathology and personalised medicine. It was good to get home last night and have tea at 6 pm.

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