Talk of the Nation

A few weeks ago, it was recommended by Whitecastle that the research assistants (RAs from now on; my fingers have better things to do) attend a talk he's giving today. And because we are not entirely stupid, we picked up the hint and went to his talk today. Although our trek there proved that we're also not entirely smart.

For starters, Young Bo' walked into not one but two doors. One of which was not even glass. Then there was finding the place. Our hospital is made up of many campuses and buildings, some connected, some not, and employs tens of thousands of people, yet somehow we figured that knowing the conference room was on "L1" was good enough and tried to make our way. It went mostly well and after some direction seeking, we finally found an elevator that looked like it was going to lead us to L1. That was when Aussie, who is not an RA, but an impressive and nice guy in our division, grew a little weary of our ignorance and decided to leave us. One second we were all talking and waiting for the elevator and the next second, he had disappeared through the door that led to the stairs. Without saying a word to any of us. After a minute of hesitation and "what just happened? where did he go?" "should we or shouldn't we?," the four of us charged down the stairs after him. After opening a few shady doors in dark stairwells, we finally made it to the room. Only to find that Aussie was nowhere to be found. He walked into the talk much later than we did. We have no idea what happened to him in those nine minutes of time...

But we had bigger things to ponder over. Like finding ourselves in a room with lots of stern Asian men in dark suits. Men who were very trigger happy with their digital cameras but looked very humorless otherwise. We thought we were out of place last time when everyone else was in scrubs and lab coats, but the suits thing was definitely weirder. Apparently, Whitecastle's talk on his study specific to the American healthcare system coincided with a visit from some important Chinese cardiologists. Judging by the number of pictures they took during the talk, either they are going to completely plagiarize the presentation, or Whitecastle is going to be very big in China.