Today I craunched the marmoset.

I had toast for breakfast which is always a good start to the day. Also I ate with one C. J. Liu, who works at Brookhaven National Labs on lignin degrading enzymes and also pectin acetyltransferase enzymes. He is from Shanghai, and speaking to him reminded me very much of Iron and Silk. He is the least stuffy professor I have spoken to yet. He told me how in Tokyo, everything is so vertically oriented that even the bathtubs are longer than they are wide, so you sit more upright in them.

The first speaker of the day was Margaret (Margie) Gruber from Canada. She was very proud of how cold Canada is, which made me think of Robertson Davies and the diaries of Samuel Marchbanks (who is always fighting with his furnace and regretting the climate). She was an amazingly bad speaker: coughing into the microphone, unable to manage the clicker and insisting that the A/V guy must advance the slides for her, turning her head away from the microphone to look at the slides so she sounded just like Lina Lamont. Also she had been almost obnoxious on the previous day, questioning people’s statements that Miscanthus was an acceptable energy crop for Canada – because there’s cold and then there’s Cold. And her evidence was that she had seen Miscanthus in Canada and it was not impressive.

Then Maureen McCann spoke, and I liked her talk very much. She is a clear thinker and a clear speaker and I hope to interact with her more. (I think that everyone who knows her and Nick Carpita likes them very much.) She is at a newly established center proposing to transform biomass into fuel via direct catalytic conversion, similarly to how the petrochemical industry makes many interesting materials from a few starting molecules by choosing the appropriate metal/synthetic catalyst.

At the coffee break I saw Ken Reardon, who was trying to work out a tricky travel arrangement. The conference proceedings are over on Wednesday night, and most of us don’t leave until Thursday night. So he wants to spend Wednesday night and Thursday day in Sao Paolo, sight-seeing. This is very difficult for the travel agent to understand. He invited me to come along, and I said I would consider it. During the next set of talks I realized that instead I could go see the sugar cane plantations, as had been promised when the conference was first advertised but later disappeared (because there are too many of us.)

And so at the next break I talked to people and found that the hotel offers an “eco-tourism” trip in a South American-style jeep, which visits waterfalls and souvenir shops and the sugarcane fields. I will sign up for it tomorrow – it sounds like a very relaxing way to experience this area.

At lunch I had rice and beans! Wonderful! And a new steamed vegetable, and lots of fruit. I like the food at this hotel. Also, all or most of it is from the nearby farms, and the irrigation is from the natural mineral water of the area, with no agro-toxins (says the hotel brochure). The water is really tasty. Lots of mineral flavor. A professor from Santiago ate with me, and he was a very awkward man. He sat at dinner the night before as well, and was responsible for making the conversation focused on earthquakes. I remembered how it happened because he tried to do it at lunch also: Chile has few energy resources, and some people are proposing nuclear, but Chile has earthquakes, so that won’t do. Luckily at that point in the conversation Ken had joined us, so he suggested even further alternatives for energy, like tidal fluctuations.

The talks the rest of the day were not as interesting, but I did ask two excellent questions. The first one I asked got me a thumbs-up from Nick Carpita, so I think I righteously craunched the marmoset. There are not many graduate students here, and the ones that are here do not seem to attend the afternoon sessions so much. I think people generally have less interest in attending talks that are not directly related to their area of research. They do not have the same great interdisciplinary attitude…

I realized that I had submitted my abstract twice, because when I tried to resubmit the website was being recalcitrant, so I tried making an entire new submission. Well, both abstracts were accepted, and since I put them in different subject areas, they are both printed in the conference program, and I got two certificates of participation. So that’s the second way I craunched the marmoset. And I realized that the electricity here is the same as the US, so I can recharge all my devices! The computer was almost out of power at the moment I made the realization.

There was a small poster session this evening as well, so I thought I might as well hang out by the poster and see what people say. Ken came and examined it – it is very nice that he is being so interested in the project. At different breaks he keeps interrogating me about it and trying to understand it. (He told me this morning that in Pat’s different grant proposals she is not always very clear about the end goals of the project, so he appreciates that I am having to figure that part out myself.) Also I talked with some Brazilian students. The ones that talk to me are very friendly and full of smiles, and happy to be doing biofuels research. The conference is starting to feel like a self-affirmation session. I don’t mind!

Tonight there is the Brazilian barbeque, out by the pool. It is starting soon I think. I don’t plan to stay long – I want to read more of Grapes of Wrath and lie in the comfy bed – but we shall see!