Palm Trees and Contact Lenses

Vistakon is one of the major players in the contact lens market. They make anything that has the word "Acuvue" in front of it. In an effort to increase their reputation and get new ODs to recommend Acuvue lenses, they invite 3rd and 4th year optometry students to an all expenses paid trip to Jacksonville, Florida, for training and education of fit

ting contact lenses. They pay for the flight, hotel and all the food while you are there.

So, I took them up on their offer, and on October 3 & 4 I headed down. It was a neat experience. We had some good lecturers, one in particular who was a business consultant. He goes to offices all over the country and specializes in ways that an office can do better by how they treat people, the psychology of customer service. It was a fun lecture.

While there, Vistakon gave us each $40 to eat at Outback Steakhouse! Yum. I never thought that 6 people could spend $240 on food at a restaurant, but we managed it. It was a good trip, but I was glad to be back in Memphis with Belinda when it was over.

Here are a few pictures of palm trees (I've never seen sooo many before; they aren't that exciting, but I kept taking pictures of them), and my friends from SCO.

This is Ben, Seth and Rickson. Not sure why they are making funny faces.

There were about 20 students from my class on the trip. Pretty much all of us ended up on the same flight.