how is it that the first weekend of the congress seems to go on forever, and all of a sudden it’s the last day. happens every year; you’d think i’d be used to it after all these years. i spent the early part of the morning catching up on some notes, chatted with a few people, and headed into the MLAS SC II – my first meeting as secretary. barbara was an excellent chair – as i knew she would be! – and got us through a very full agenda on time. i dashed across the street to meet ingrid for lunch (as a past president, she now actually has time for lunch), spent a few minutes out in the sunshine, then met up with janice to pass some time before the closing session.
the closing was full of fun things to celebrate: ingrid was awarded an honorary fellowship in ifla; victoria was introduced as a newly-elected member of the governing board; wroc?aw, poland was announced as the host city for the 2017 congress and the very entertaining mayor bid us a warm welcome; the co-hosts of next year’s congress in columbus encouraged us to discover OH – IO!; and our new ifla president donna scheeder gave an excellent inaugural address (which jane somehow convinced me to record on her phone – really hard on the arms!). we also bid adieu to jennefer nicholson, ifla secretary general (and another former MLAS member); this was her final conference as SG, as she will retire next spring.
met up with my ala mates keith and michael, and taxied down to the the port where they’d had a tip on a good seafood restaurant. in amongst all the towering container ships and cranes was a low-level building with blue awnings: panama jack’s. we sat at the bar for a couple of beers (jack black) while we waited for george, another ala colleague and the one who had suggested this restaurant. the meal was phenomenal! we started with abalone (a first for me), which we went over and selected from the tank ourselves. it was grilled up and quite exquisite. next were the oysters – just a hit of lemon, heavenly. then we shared two massive seafood platters: scallops, langoustines, lobster, mussels, kingklip, and on and on, all right fresh out of the ocean. a great evening of food and friends, and a fitting wind-up of the congress week.