In September I attended the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation – Asia Pacific chapter meeting in Sri Lanka and presented on acoustic monitoring using open-source hardware. I met quite a few new people that I have wanted to get in touch with before, like Eben Goodall that works on acoustics in birds. I also made some new connections and saw quite a few interesting talks on elevation studies as well as co-occurrence networks. There were also quite a few people there that I haven’t seen in a while and it was nice to catch up and see where they are with their research. One of the evenings there was a tribute night to Anslem de Silva who have contributed greatly to herpetology in Sri Lanka, he used to be a magician and even showed us some magic tricks. It was a nice meeting and it was good to see such strong attendance from Sri Lanka and India, especially by young students. I also went to the business meeting (a good idea if you want to ensure you know what’s going on with a society you are a member of) and amongst other things witnessed the new Asia-Pacific board get elected in.
I somehow managed to also purchase and wear a saree for the first time for the opening ceremony as the Sri Lankan president (who is also the Environmental minister) came to give an opening speech and to plant a tree.
