More farewell parties

March. New post-docs are surely about to arrive, but at least one, Youhei, is going back to Japan. A funny guy that arrived here a month ahead of me. We had a farewall dinner for him last Thursday. At Shao Shao Ke, a northern Chinese food restaurant in Taipei, also remembered by lots of graffiti on the walls and ceiling.


The food is very good. The typical dessert, made from deep fried cheese ans sugar, is excellent; but it has to be ordered in advance.

A night of eating and drinking.

Adding numbers

Another one far from home. It is not the first time, so no problem. I managed to get together a small group of people and went to have dinner, delicious, in a japanese restaurant. The truth is that I was very pleasantly surprised, with a small gift

and the usual required procedure


Today, a song of congratulation via Skype. Very nice.

Encore

I had another celebration today. This time it was a Year's End lunch. That is the good thing of somehow belonging to two institutions. This time it was the NTNU Department of Earth Sciences' lunch. Quieter in a way than the one last Saturday —there was no KTV—, but with a similar structure. This time, I really stuffed myself. It was a less fancy restaurant than the one in the hotel where we were on Saturday, but the food tasted better and was much more generous. Too much, probably. They (my supervisor) bought some bottles of chilean and australian wine and, as you can imagine, we finished each one of them.

There was another lottery too. I was told that it is a chinese tradition of this time of the year. This time I got a 2GB USB stick. It looks like I am collecting them.

The most interesting part for me was the completely taiwanese environment: the typical chinese round tables, food and more food, happy conversation —I even spoke some French with some guy—, jokes, smiles, and many very curious toasts, face to tace, more elaborated than I imagined.

I almost fell asleep in the car on the way back, feeling warm and with a full stomach. But life is hard and I have six students that are supposed to come to my office between today and tomorrow to review the poster they should be presenting in next week's conference. So, no rest for the wicked. Most of them are late and with problems. As someone said (free translation) you can almost chew the tragedy.