Last week , I was in Incheon, South Korea to present my research paper "Oktoechos Classification in Liturgical Music Using SBU-LSTM/GRU" at INTERSPEECH 2022- which is the Comic Con for nerds crazy about speech and language processing. Yes, I am a nerd.

Apart from having to prepare myself to talk about my paper to nerds with careers spanning from 10 to 40 years, there was the added weight of having to travel all alone to a foreign country for the first time.

And guess what? Your girl nailed it!

Well, I wasn't exactly winning in my life from Day 1.

I reached Incheon in the morning and waited for two other folks from a reputed Indian university, to go to our hotel. Little did I know that our cute trip to the place was going to take 3 hours of taking multiple metro trains, carrying heavy suitcases packed with clothes I didn't even need. By the time I reached my room- I was exhausted, overwhelmed and bawling my eyes out.

Then I had to gather myself to go out AGAIN to get an RT-PCR test. In case we get tested positive, as per their rules, we should stay in quarantine for a week.

DAY 2 was all about liberation.

So on the second day, I woke up to a negative PCR test, which was a huge relief. I didn't spend all my salary to come to South Korea, to stay in a hotel room for a week. But unfortunately, the student from the reputed-Indian-university-pair, was tested positive. But this may have been a blessing in disguise for me- I feel guilty about revealing this in a shady corner of the Internet.

The thing is, I can be very indecisive at crucial moments- especially when I have people around me. Despite the insane amounts of respect I have for myself, I almost always agree to what others want, especially if they are not my best friends with whom I can boss around (sorry guys!).

So here I was, sitting on the toilet, with a bidet flushing water up my butt-hole, contemplating about staying-in for the rest of the day- for you uncool non-nerds out there, not much happens on the first day of the conference. Anyway, my parents weren't really happy with my decision. They obviously wanted their couch-potato of a daughter, to explore South Korea, even if it meant going alone. I may or may not have thrown a tantrum over a WhatsApp call, when they suggested that not going out might be a bad idea.

But surprisingly, or not surprisingly (because I am full of surprises, that it is not a surprise anymore), something switched in my brain, and I just decided to go out. Thankfully, the previous day's experience of taking multiple metro trains had equipped me for this impromptu decision.

And let me tell you guys something! I felt so liberated and refreshed, by doing the simple act of taking a train, all alone, in South Korea- and it's the best thing that has ever happened to me.

That night, after visiting the conference venue to get my tote bag and goodies, I went out at night to a nice restaurant and had chicken and beer.

DAY 3 AND IMPOSTER SYNDROME

The second day of a conference is when things get real. I was certainly expecting to feel like an imposter, but it still hit me like a brick. A place filled with geniuses who are talking science as if it's some foreign language is clearly not the right environment for an anxious person like me. I was constantly taking down notes and trying to be invisible as much as possible.

For context, my presentation was supposed to happen the next day, and it was supposed to be a poster presentation. Only way cooler nerds would get an oral presentation. Duh! So I decided to check out the poster presentations for the day, to get inspired. And clearly, it was anxiety-inducing, that I decided to rush to my hotel room and start preparing for my presentation. And ended up sleeping heavily.

That's it for today. I am exhausted.

Second part coming soon.

PS: I once heard in a fun course on MATLAB provided by Coursera that NERD= Naturally Endowed for Research and Development. Thought you guys would appreciate the humor. K Bye.