When I woke up this morning, a light
rainfall was making Kaunas city wet. Kaunas, the second largest city in
Lithuania, is final destination of our 14 day long PhD trip. Stunned by the
beauty of Estonian and Latvian cities that we had visited before this city, I
was wondering, is Kaunas equally beautiful?!
Today a lot of things were to be repeated. Sami
would not forget to say “Ekaraj, my best friend; my food is your food” as he
has been doing it from last few days. Nirmal, Kashif and Jue would keep reminding
(a friendly tease!) me from time to time about availability of free wi-fi that
I could use to use facebook. And, almost all of people (may be Remko and Jos
will not?) would keep on repeating “no-no-no-no-no” for exactly five times
whenever they have to say one single no. I wonder who started this at first?! But the program of the day will be different
as we are no more visiting universities and research centres like what we were
doing from starting day of the trip, but attending a conference Foodbalt-2012.
Our bus driver Mr. Koit a smiling and
outspoken guy with pleasant accent in English, was leaving today. On the way,
he gave each of us a key-cord and also joined us in till the breakfast. Maurice
also gifted him with some money that he collected among all of us.
We finished our breakfast at around 8:45 in
the canteen of conference venue. Laura, Jorien and me passed the underground
tunnel that links building where conference was organized to the next building
where posters were to show. Then we came to know that our turn is only tomorrow.
We should sometimes look at the program schedule a bit more carefully!! We finally
stored the posters in a locker and Laura kept the key. Hope she will manage not
to lose them till tomorrow!
Conference
started exactly at 9:00 with an opening speech from rectorate representative.
He also introduced history of FoodBalt conferences. The session was jointly chaired
by Thierry Talaou and Rimantas Venskutonis.
There were two plenary lectures; one by Remko
and another by Eugene Jansen. Remko highlighted on current and future food and
fuel issues and sustainability. He also highlighted on how sustainability in
food sector be improved with examples of corn milling, separation of wheat
gluten and starch, meat analogues etc.
Eugene Jansen presented on monitoring of
nutritional components and anti-oxidant status in human serum.
After first coffee break, the session “antioxidants
and other bioactives” started at 11:45. The presentations were about
antioxidant properties, anti-microbial properties, bioactive properties,
phenolic compounds, antioxidant activity etc present in various plant materials
and possibility of their exploitation. Six young scientists presented their
work in this session. I felt the area of the work was a bit far from what we
are doing in our group.
We had a nice time during the lunch break.
Jimmy was trying hard to convince all of us that “your worst enemy is the one
who is the most closest to you”. There was a rumor in air that Pascalla, after
eating the delicious Latvian lunch, was so overpowered that she banged herself
at least two times against a glass wall.
We visited the poster session, where enthusiastic
young scientists were showing their work.
I found the afternoon session a bit more
interesting. The afternoon session was about food technology and processing,
the quality of food products. Six enthusiastic young scientists presented their
work at this session. The presentations were about unit operations like carrot
juice freezing, potato blanching, lactose crystallization, fat crystallization
etc. with which our group is more familiar.
Most
fun part of the day was evening dinner that the conference organizers had
organized. Food was delicious but even more delicious was musical program. A
group of musicians played music in a perfect pleasant rhythm and harmony out of
wooden log, some metal rings and few other things that really looked
pre-historic. Later, people cannot stop themselves and almost all were dancing
in narrow space between chairs and table at which food was kept. Later on few audiences
replaced the musicians. Sami, Laura, Jua and Jos were trying their best to be
as good as the original musicians.
It was already dark when I came back to the
hostel after visiting a river cross with Pascalle, Nicolas, Marta, Jue, Sami
and Jaquelline. Today Nirmal and Kashif forget to remind me about availability
of free wi-fi. Today was indeed different!!.
Ekaraj Paudel
17th May 2012
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