Marcelle's Blog: More business and pleasure, this time in Monaco

From the meeting in Paris (see previous post), I flew on to Monaco for the next week-long meeting. Actually, it was supposed to be a multi-purpose week: attend the International Symposium on Isotopes in Hydrology, Marine Ecosystems and Climate Change Studies; but also meet and discuss with my colleagues in Monaco. You see, my IAEA division is actually split into two: the Terrestrial environment labs in Seibersdorf, Austria (where I work) and the Marine environment labs in Monaco. Being relatively new staff, I was supposed to go there to get to know my coworkers, the projects they are working on, discuss ways to better harmonize our efforts. Or that was the plan, anyways. However, the earthquake, tsunami and resulting situation at Fukushima has taken over some of our worktime, and made everything complicated. So my time with my coworkers was extremely limited. I spent most of the week attending the symposium.

OK, enough about work. What about the fun stuff?
First of all, I was supposed to go to the opera in Monaco with a coworker. However, he was called to Vienna (Fukushima work!) and wouldn't be able to attend. So he gave his ticket to another symposium attendee and introduced us. Kathy is also Canadian, a nice person and also a bit a fish out of water at this symposium (just like me) so we hit it off. At the first evening mixer, we also randomly met a Czech lady working in Germany (Dana) and South African scientist (Jacques). This made up my "core group" for the week. So between lectures and posters, at lunchtime and in the evening, we mostly hung out together. I still did the work thing, and mingled and answered questions. Lots of questions. You see, we all had name badges. The attendees' were blue and those of IAEA staff were red. But since I was often one of very few (or the only) IAEA staff there, people kept coming over and asking about stuff. Which is fine, I like to talk about what I know. In between all that, and due to walking from the symposium location to my hotel, I got in a bit of sight-seeing.

The symposium was held at the Oceanographic Museum, which was convenient. Some of the topics at the symposium went above my head (as in, even some of the units were new to me). During those presentations, I'd sometimes slip out and go down one floor to the aquarium to look at fishies for a while.

On Tuesday evening was the symposium's "cocktail party". It was the strangest cocktail party I've ever been to, as it didn't actually inlcude cocktails (it had a cash bar instead, with Monaco-appropriate price$). All the finger foods were served within the first 45 minutes, so too bad for you if you were late, which we were. We did get a bit of food, but nowhere enough to compensate for the entrance cost of this silly event. Needless to say we blew that popsicle stand fairly early, and went to a wine bar instead.

On the Thursday afternoon, the schedule had a bunch of discussion groups, to which I could bring nothing interesting. So my new friends and I played hookie, and took the coast bus to Nice. (I figure I'd worked many extra hours in Paris and some also in Monaco in the evenings, so I deserved a half-day off. OK with you? Good.)We went up the rock for the view, walked around the flower market and had a nice lunch. Jacques' food was quite rude and insisted on staring at him. :-)