Heist of the 17th ETH Conference on Combustion Generated Nanoparticles

My lakeside leisure plans have been completely rained out by the decently intense rain, but that doesn’t keep a good dog down and I’m determined to take full advantage of Zurich.  Not that it’s sometimes nice to vegetate on the couch watching MTV’s Ke$ha – My Crazy Beautiful Life for hours with Swiss German subtitles while eating leftover pasta for hours…okay, maybe I did that last night ‘caus jetlag part 2 hit me, but when the sun is up it’s adventure time.

Around 0730 I was up and decided to indulge myself in my favorite semi-indoor international pastime: Public Transportation Commandeering.  What’s that?  It’s the act of sneakily lurking off and on public transportation while evading those sworn to uphold the law and catch said wayfaring pirates.  Zurich has to be the apex spot for this and I’m pretty sure that if Public Transportation Commandeering were an Olympic sport I’d represent the USA and win Gold.  The only person even remotely capable of beating me would probably be Quinn, but he would have to cheat and use Floo Powder to get to the destination faster.  Trains, subways, busses, trams, boats, and ever-elusive Polybahns crisscross this city like a labyrinth more effectively than any city I’ve ever encountered.  What’s a Polybahn? Think of it like an adult Knott’s Berry Farm Huff & Puff ride that floats up steep hills tightly ensconced by ancient homes and used when any other mode of transportation would be impossible to implement without disturbing everything.  Thus far I’ve easily racked up +300 CHF worth of gettin’ around.

Now for the real point of this post, I guess it’s worth mentioning that I’m writing this blog in Hall Eo 7 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich while listening to Mr. S Kureti lecture about the Effect of Physical-Chemical Soot Properties on the Kinetics of Catalytic Soot Oxidation.  If you don’t believe me, go look him up.  He professes at the University of Freiberg, Germany.  But really the fact that I’m listening to this lecture isn’t the interesting part because I have only the slightest clue as to what the fvck this guy is explaining.  It’s all interesting!  Including the part about how I got here.

The University of Zurich was on my list of things to explore so I apparated over there via PTC to discover that the 17^th ETH Conference on Combustion Generate Nanoparticles is taking place starting today and lasting for 3 days.  Now, this is a pretty lofty engineering based conference that by the looks of the champagne glasses full of orange juice being served to the guests by sexy little butler-ettes probably costs a heavy penny to attend.

Professorial gentlemen old and wizened enough to have that funny looking bald patch on the back of their head, seemingly created by bobby-pinning a yarmulke to their head for so long that it eventually tore out all the hair in that exact plot of scalp, are milling about conversing over tri-fold poster boards filled with interesting technical digests.  This opportunity just looks too cool to miss.

So I muttered, “Dude, I’m so glad I shaved this morning,” fixed my collar, cinched up my Saber backpack, removed the headphones from my ears, flummoxed my hair to somewhat resemble the rest of the attendees and walked in.  The conference promoter stopped me at the main door and asked for my ID badge, but honestly the key to any city is a great smile and a mild lack of morals.  I kept walking, tucked my shoulder, patted the inside of my breast pocket like the badge was simply hidden under my coat and voilà!

That sounds pretty cocky, but I was lucky enough to have various decent conversations with gentleman at booths about the wind turbines business…since that’s the only thing I know that is vaguely applicable with this crowd.  Unluckily, any tech these folks are using is way to expensive to ever be remotely viable to the wind industry.

Alright, I gotta blast.  Going to go listen to some brilliant people and force myself to get smarter.

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Main building of the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETH)

2013

06/25

CATEGORY

Zürich

TAGS

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
University of Zurich

Write comment