While I was in Hangzhou, a friend mentioned he was going to some white hat conference on the 14th and asked if I wanted to come along. I figured it was free anyway, so I just tagged along. With my friend's help, I successfully got an invitation.

Since the conference was held at the Sheraton Hangzhou Xixi, we decided to book a room there the night before to rest and also experience an upscale hotel while we were at it.

The day before the conference, we checked in, and the room even had a bathtub!

Had a great soak that night! Soaked for two and a half hours and could barely stand up afterwards.

That said, the hotel had plenty of things to complain about. For example, doing laundry actually costs money?! Don't they have public washing machines? Atour is better in this regard. Then when calling the front desk, there's actually an AI layer in between — you tell the AI what you need, and the AI relays it to the front desk. I just don't understand, why not connect directly to the front desk? Also, for food delivery, any meal orders aren't allowed to be delivered to your room! Again, not as good as Atour or Hanting — at least their robots can deliver anything.

On the day of the conference, we went to check in around 1 PM, and after registration we could enter the venue. Before going in though, there were lots of booths outside where you could get small gifts by following their official accounts or sharing posts. My friend and I grabbed a whole bag of stuff — we came to collect freebies!

Then we went inside and found seats.

There was even something about crayfish?

Anyway, I listened the whole afternoon, even though I didn't really understand much. But I was still pretty happy — broadening my horizons is always a good thing.

As for why I'm only writing about the 14th on the 17th — it's because I didn't get back from Hangzhou until the 16th, and I wasn't in the mood to write a blog while in Hangzhou.