I would not have held it to be possible, but indeed, nothing is beyond the staff of our institute: today's evening of toe-curling entertainment was even worse than last one...
The gaggle of Danish have arrived yesterday and today was the first day of the workshop. We had some fine talks during the day, and for dinner a so-called "welcome party" was planned. Due to Anke's
successful hosting of the party for the distinguished guest, she is now the host-of-choice and was asked a week ago if she would be host again. She even said yes (she needs the material for this blog!) Her co-host for tonight was graduate student Hao -- who was apparently volunteered rather than asked.
Our new secretary (the one that did the somewhat inappropriate belly dance last time) was in charge of organizing the whole event. She got a little carried away perhaps. Here's what she sent Anke and Hao last night:
"
This is final the program list for the reception. There are introductions about every performance.And in addition, I wrote something about the open part and end part. You could use your own words to say it. Just a tip for you. So, enjoy yourselves at the party."
Attached to the message was a complete write up of what she thought we should say, starting with "
Good evening, distinguished guests, faculty and students, welcome to our reception banquet. It’s a great privilege for me/us to be the host of our performance tonight. "
This kind of took the fun out of the whole thing for Anke. No, I guess that is putting it too mildly. It really pissed me off! For Hao, the situation was much worse. The lovely secretary had told him to organize a game, and when the idea he had did not work out so well, she refused to let him drop it. In the end, we convinced him to screw her and drop it anyway. Still he was so stressed out that he ran off while walking over to the hotel with Frans, to make sure he was not late (nobody had even arrived at the venue). After the first introduction, when Anke went to talk to him, he immediately said "Did I say something wrong???" Poor guy!!!
According to Frans, the whole evening was somewhat hard to take because of all the pressure being put on the hosts and performers. Add to that the fact that the same secretary did her scarcely dressed belly dance plus this time also sang a song while wearing inappropriate dress. And finally, consider that all Danish visitors are male, plus very polite, so they did not know what to do. (I should add that most of the entertainment was not indecent -- just somewhat boring perhaps.)
Frans managed to add comic relief towards the end of the evening, when he gave a pop-quiz based on his
driver's license exam. It was a great success, but according to Frans this was due more to the fact that everyone needed to get rid of the tension, than to the humor content of the presentation. I guess that says a lot...
Anyways, now that I have been able to vent; here are some photos from tonight. Sorry, no photos of the scantily dressed secretary -- we're too decent for that...
Uncomfortable looking Danes:
Fortunately, the Danes are good people. We managed to get over the trauma together with a bit of karaoke. Here's the most distinguished Dane, rocking out to "Girls just want to have fun" with Frans and fellow postdoc Elad.
Unfortunately, it is almost always the case that the surroundings and presentation of the food are more memorable than the taste of the food, and this was also true here.
In the afternoon, we visited the class room where famous Chinese writer Lu Xun apparently studied. It is quite clear why Frans is not a famous writer...
Apart from eating cow tongue, fancy dishes and seeing class rooms, we also had a brief workshop in Tohoku University, where Anke gave a talk. It appeared that nobody was interested however.
Uncomfortable looking Danes:
Fortunately, the Danes are good people. We managed to get over the trauma together with a bit of karaoke. Here's the most distinguished Dane, rocking out to "Girls just want to have fun" with Frans and fellow postdoc Elad.
Woman playing string instrument accompanied by traditional orchestra.
Fellow postdoc being put into shower cabin with tied-up Chinese lady while wearing a Chinese kimono (all part of a normal postdoc day!) -- after a few moments they came out, and the Chinese lady was still tied up, but somehow had the Chinese kimono on underneath the ropes. It's magic!!!
This one was not there last time. Who knew you could get people to pay to come see hand-shadows-in-the-shape-of-faces.
Distinguished Anke in a distinguished imperial seat.
On then on to the distinguished foodz: A distinguished flower salad, good for the health of the distinguished gentlemen, as well as advantageous for the beauty of the distinguished ladies.
I still haven't gotten used to this pea gel thingie. They do have a very distinct flavor.
Then probably a distinguished highlight: deer tendons.
Chicken soup.
And finally dessert. Based on your choice your fortune will be predicted by the distinguished fuyar.
It turns out that Anke will have many babies.
Our associate director Amy always does a great job ordering the foodz at our institute's get-togethers!
We had an awesome lunch with really delicious food.
Afterwards, Amy was really unhappy though --- apparently when we go out with Andy (the boss and Turing-Award-winner himself) in Beijing we get some sort of special VIP treatment, and Amy was very unhappy with the fact that this did not happen here. She even had to make an effort to get a waiter's attention apparently.
