Saturday, March 15, 2003

In Which Our Heroine Is a Horrible Hostess
Administrative stuff first: the archives now work. Really click on a link and find out. I didn't post on the site while I was in China. If you want to read about that time, check out yahoogroups.com/goannego. If you're looking for cotimundi, and I'm always amazed how many people are, they're in the last week of January, 2002.
Anyway. Bad hostessing. So poor Elenarda, having arrived and begun to combat jet lag last night, was today dispatched down to the center of town, and just really dropped there. Because I was already booked to spend the day at a seminar on Trade Secrets. From nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, lunch included. So after a quick pointing to the T stations, here is the school, here is the State House, here is the T station, I left her to it. It doesn't seem to have gone too badly. She had other friends coming in for the weekend, and the first one was arriving on the 11:30 train. Between meeting her, and getting her to the hotel, spots of lunch and things, time seems to have passed quickly. She was fine.
Time was probably passing more quickly for her than for me. The thing about seminars is that you get some good speakers, and you get some bad speakers. The first thing that I noticed was that apparently to be a prominent trade secret attorney, if you are male, you have to be a) not very tall (as in, short), b) have a beard, and c) be relatively bald. It seems to be the case that the more prominent you are, the more profound your combover. I have to say, the panel of men sitting waiting to speak all came from the same cloth. But they knew what they were doing. Trade Secrets, trade secrets, trade secrets. I suppose I should comment that the woman who opened the panel was also very good, but was not short, did not have a beard, and did not seem to be going bald.
And then I noticed that my friend Ralph was there. Even better luck! Not that Ralph and I would be chatting during the presentations, but it did add a fun element to it to be sitting there with him.
The thing is, the papers preapred with the presentations were very comprehensive, and now I have to read them! My internship is having me make a presenation to it's sales force about confidentiality agreements, non disclosure agreements, etc, so this is right up that alley. I feel that I got a very practical grounding for preparing for making this presenation.
The one bad bit of news was talking to a partner from a big firm in town. He described the current market as a "nuclear winter." I don't think this is a positive sign looking to the immediate future of the market.
Oh, so tired. These last couple of postings have barely been coherent. I'm sorry, but I'm a bit wiped out of late. I shall try to do better. Or, as Ethan says, "there is no try, there is only do."
Love,
Anne

No comments: