This week there’s a huge conference on petroleum technology
in Houston. I’m not attending, and I don’t want to. First, Houston is not my
favorite place to go. Second, the conference is too crowded (more than 50.000),
too much business and politics, and too little science.
I have, however, been to this conference once, some 10 years
ago. I was invited to give a presentation on some research we had done.
There was a somewhat complicating issue, because I brought
older boy with me on the trip to the US. Back then, he was a little boy, only 8
years old. He was going to visit a friend who lived in Colorado at that time (the
father of his friend was a professor on sabbatical).
Older boy looked forward to visit Denver (where we lived for
a while when I was a student).
But first we had to go to Houston.
Houston is a big city with high crime rates (in some areas).
It’s not a place where you want your kid to get lost. Also, he didn’t speak
English. In case he got lost, he wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone.
This was a challenge when I was giving my talk at the
conference.
After some negotiations with the conference management, I
got a special permission to bring the boy with me to the technical-session’s
area. He was not allowed to visit the exhibition
halls, where lots of heavy-duty offshore equipment was shown.
I went to the speaker’s preparation room, to upload my
presentation and check that it was OK. I put the kid on a chair next to me,
with some candy and a Mountain Dew, to keep him quiet.
Then we went to the auditorium where my session took place.
When it was my turn to speak, I put the kid in a seat in the first row, right
in front of the podium. I gave him his Gameboy (a Nintendo device), and told
him to turn off the sound.
I gave my talk, presenting the mathematical model and application
examples. All the time, I kept an eye on the kid from the podium, while he was
sitting still playing a Pokemon game.
After my talk, we went straight to the George Bush airport
to get on the plane to Denver. Then we went up to the Rockies to enjoy some
slushy May skiing in Arapahoe Basin.
(For some reason, I've never used my camera when visiting Houston. I took the picture above by the I-70, west of Denver, where the highway starts climbing up the Rocky Mountain Foothills)
