I met Dr. Grip!

No kidding! I really did. Well, his name isn't actually Dr. Grip, though he did invent those amazingly popular pens. He was at the welcome reception for a conference my advisor organized tonight, so I got to meet him. I understand that he is a bit different from the others (in that he has a sense of humor, and wears a leather jacket rather than a suit). I didn't know until afterwards that he invented Dr. Grip pens, and then suddenly the fact that he studies ergonomics made so much more sense. I think I'm going to have to go buy one of those pens now. :-D Although I understand that he is not so rich as one might think. Tomoko tells me that he invested his money in other research or ventures that didn't do quite as well as the Dr. Grip pens.

I also met my advisor's boss, whom I take to be an important person. He's 65, but looks wayy, wayy younger than that. I thought he was not much older than my advisor. The striking event of the evening was that he knocked a glass over onto the floor, spilling red wine everywhere. Immediately, 3 neighboring women rushed to the scene, picking up broken glass and wiping up wine with tissues. And...he just stepped back and observed. Amazing. Didn't lift a finger. Didn't even hear him apologize! One of those cultural things...If Larry Summers (while still president of Harvard) dropped a drink, would 3 female grad students/professors/what have you academics scramble over themselves to clean up after him? It was kind of painful to watch. Hmm, maybe Larry Summers is a bad comparison. If the department chair of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard dropped a drink... Argh.