Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Harvard apparatus

i saw this machine in the lab and found it very funny. those pursuing a phd/having one will understand what i found so funny about it. does this machine really infuse and/or withdraw a phd? and in this case a harvard phd? tim is one of those "unlucky" ones who performs his phd work at harvard, yet will get the actual doctorate from the much less "prestigious" utrecht university in the netherlands.... (thats where i got mine too, haha).
anyways. unlike me, tim is a genius, as he won a price for his work. his work was selected, as well as 15 others, from a pool of some 300 harvard scientists. the price; 1000 dollars. not directly for him, but to spend on /towards the costs of a scientific conference (so that includes the travel/accomodation/conference fee, etc etc). on top of that, we had the honor this evening to dine with the scientific research committee, and other important harvard-people (i guess there were 100 or so). it was extremely fancy, and the entire affair probably costed more than a yearly postdoc salary.... which i somehow found extremely sad (as a postdoc salary is very meager (and does not include retirement savings. not even if you are american, i found out recently); but to spend it to feed some grey men from the scientific research committee and some "chosen" scientists at some fancy location it is quite a lot...!)
but well... for me the evening ended delightfully, as i joked to one of the ladies from the organization that i just saw a lady walking away with one of the bouquets from the dinnertable, and her reply was; please, take one too! otherwise they go to waste! and so we now have a beautiful new vase at home, with probably at least 50 dollars worth of very nicely smelling assorted flowers..... :D

7 comments:

Manon said...

Tim, congrats on the award! Cat, congrats on the centerpiece

Manon said...

Oh it didn't take my tag at the end... again, without the < and > then: lol

biebkriebels said...

What a great story, Tim congratulations with the price! Well sometimes money is round, I shouldn't bother but enjoy. Funny you were allowed to take the bouquets.

Tim said...

you should have posted a pic of the flowers, they smelled nice

Nellies said...

What a great story, especially about the center piece, can you please post a picture of that? :-).
Of course congrats to Tim for winning a price for his work!
And don't think too much about how much all this must have cost (I agree, it is sad that they do spend a great amount of money on this, but don't pay their people properly....) At least you got to experience this, not many people get to go to such an event :-)

CaT said...

yes, we did enjoy the free food and wines...!! :D
i was too busy trying to bake bread last night, but tonight i hope to take pics of the centerpiece.... :D

Kay said...

Sounds like you're enjoying your bread-making, too.

Congrats to Tim! "Perks" like that are nice as long as you don't reflect on what else the money could be doing. Enjoy the flowers.