Flight Cancelled
Okay, so I recently attended a conference, which was a fantastic experience (my first conference)! Despite the heat and everything, I had a great time and learned a lot about the state of the field. For example, I was surprised to learn that a significant chunk of the research focus and anticipated future directions was around foundation models. Like, for example, GPTs and Stable Diffusion and etc etc etc...
But! On the last day I was supposed to get a plane home at 9pm ish. The flight was delayed by an hour, no big deal. Then it was delayed by two hours. Uh, hopefully my hotel will still be able to let me in if I arrive late... Then three hours. Then four hours. In the end the plane was expected to depart at like 2am, which we were told at 11pm. At 11:30pm, we were told "sorry, it's been cancelled".
So, this has never happened to me before. Somehow, I was not exactly phased, maybe because the university had an emergency number to call. I called that number and they basically used the airline's website to get me a new plane home the next day. But for the hotel, I had to sort that myself.
* Hotel Okay I didn't *have to sort the hotel myself, but the person on the phone said my options are: 1) Sleep on the floor in the airport, 2) Go to a hotel 65km away! My supervisor said I have to follow their instructions. But like...
Instead I walked across the street and got a decent hotel for a decent price. Hopefully I can claim it back I guess. But probably not because I didn't want the 65km away hotel I guess.
** Rescheduled flight
Next day for my intended flight .... Yeah, that was cancelled too. Currently I'm between everything having the time of my life. All day yesterday I was trying to arrange transport with the uni. In the end they can hardly help me and I am paying out of pocket to get home. Shall we hope today's flight is going to actually fly?