The Opening Ceremonies
Jun 29, 2009 04:48 AM Filed in: Chemistry
The opening ceremonies of the 59th meeting of Nobel laureates and young researchers, the 19th forum dedicated to chemistry (yes, that is the full and complete title of the meeting I am at), took place today, but lets go to the beginning.
I woke up today and jumped in the shower, which, by-the-way, gets just warm enough so that you think its a good idea to get in the stream of water... but then you end up shivering and cold. This, as it turns out, isn’t completely bad, since it seems to be so incredibly hot and humid here, and there are no air conditioners in sight. Anyways, breakfast was an interesting ordeal. They are providing it here at the hotel, and it is a wide assortment of meats, cheeses, breads, fruits and juices - not quite the sort of thing I’m used to, but good nonetheless.
Registration for the meeting was pretty quick since I was there early enough to get a good place in line. I got my badge, paperwork, a list of the abstracts and CVs for ALL participants (its a fairly large book). I was instructed to walk around back where we would be receiving a gift, which turns out to be a book of all of the Nobel laureates, for all of time (well, I haven’t actually looked at it as it is incased in shrink wrap, but this is my guess based upon the shear size and weight... in fact its gonna cost about €50 to ship back to the U.S.). I also received, get this, a free cell phone to use during the meeting. This is new to me, and it seems a little weird that they are just handing us cell phones to use for a week (although we can only text message, surf the web, and use the GPS). Hey, I’ll take it... free international text messages!
For the remainder of my time (before the opening ceremony) I walked around the island portion of Lindau and took some nice photos. This is actually quite an amazing little town. The streets are all narrow and paved entirely with cobblestone and the harbor is quite something to see. Also, the island is quite small, a good 15 minutes walk for the entire circumference.
...but now to the opening ceremonies. There was a strict bag restriction and heavy security by at least two separate agencies (although I couldn’t tell you who they were), because there were several important dignitaries there, including: Annette Shavan, the German Federal Minister of Education; Kapil Sibel, the Indian Minster of Human Resource Development; and Jose Manuel Borroso, President of the European Union.
An impressive turnout.
To finish off the night, the U.S. delegates hosted a dinner for select other nations. I had dinner with a couple of gentlemen from Malaysia and a woman from Romania. I’d say that keeps life interesting.
I woke up today and jumped in the shower, which, by-the-way, gets just warm enough so that you think its a good idea to get in the stream of water... but then you end up shivering and cold. This, as it turns out, isn’t completely bad, since it seems to be so incredibly hot and humid here, and there are no air conditioners in sight. Anyways, breakfast was an interesting ordeal. They are providing it here at the hotel, and it is a wide assortment of meats, cheeses, breads, fruits and juices - not quite the sort of thing I’m used to, but good nonetheless.
Registration for the meeting was pretty quick since I was there early enough to get a good place in line. I got my badge, paperwork, a list of the abstracts and CVs for ALL participants (its a fairly large book). I was instructed to walk around back where we would be receiving a gift, which turns out to be a book of all of the Nobel laureates, for all of time (well, I haven’t actually looked at it as it is incased in shrink wrap, but this is my guess based upon the shear size and weight... in fact its gonna cost about €50 to ship back to the U.S.). I also received, get this, a free cell phone to use during the meeting. This is new to me, and it seems a little weird that they are just handing us cell phones to use for a week (although we can only text message, surf the web, and use the GPS). Hey, I’ll take it... free international text messages!
For the remainder of my time (before the opening ceremony) I walked around the island portion of Lindau and took some nice photos. This is actually quite an amazing little town. The streets are all narrow and paved entirely with cobblestone and the harbor is quite something to see. Also, the island is quite small, a good 15 minutes walk for the entire circumference.
...but now to the opening ceremonies. There was a strict bag restriction and heavy security by at least two separate agencies (although I couldn’t tell you who they were), because there were several important dignitaries there, including: Annette Shavan, the German Federal Minister of Education; Kapil Sibel, the Indian Minster of Human Resource Development; and Jose Manuel Borroso, President of the European Union.
An impressive turnout.
To finish off the night, the U.S. delegates hosted a dinner for select other nations. I had dinner with a couple of gentlemen from Malaysia and a woman from Romania. I’d say that keeps life interesting.