The last few days before a conference pass in a near-nightmarish blur. Schedules turn erratic. The department store people look at you strangely as you desperately wipe out the instant noodles counter. Your disappearance from the canteen is now taken for granted! Also, since they habitually read your mind, your instruments stop working, your gels look like abstract art, your cells decide to go on mass self-destruction, the computer crashes…

But since hope is never lost, you march to the printers, holding up your precious USB stick like a banner ahead of you, and watch your work roll out into life, while wiping an exhausted tear.

So, I trudge down the darkening path to my home, impossibly happy with the world, I have just converted euros to mint-fresh US dollars and the feeling that I am actually visiting America has just sunk in! I need shades – I make a mental note – because I need to click typical Golden Gate self-portraits, I need a leather jacket, and hey, I need a cowboy hat, right? But this euphoria is short-lived. I open the door to my flat and a hurricane-hit sight welcomes me, dirty dishes from prehistoric times, wet laundry not yet hung up to dry, feet sinking in a few inches of dust, and a totally alien smell hanging about in the room, that is not (you get into the scientific process of elimination) a hundred percent TEMED, seventy percent ethanol, or five percent acetic acid…it is called trash, but let us not talk about it.

But you are preparing to be a scientist in the end, and never giving up has become a part of your system. The right attitude, teamed with a rational mind – and a few hours later you close your suitcase shut. It is at this time you come upon one final problem to solve: how to carry the poster when the large and cumbersome holder has no handle? Trivial problem, eh? Of course, you can simply carry it in your arms as your precious [and rather too tall and thin for one] baby. But running across the airport, lugging your suitcase, hugging your poster holder that is sliding off your perspiring hands, and perpetually bumping against your legs, threatening to trip you over…the problem does not really seem trivial anymore.

It was late in the night when I decided to improvise a handle for my poster holder. And that is when (honestly, it IS a useful tip) old conference name tags (I mean, the strings associated) came in handy. I took two of my previous conference identity tags, ripped out the strings that once let me wear the tags around my neck, and set to work. A few knots (that would put a sailor to shame) later, my poster holder could be carried at ease! I looked proudly at my accomplishment, also faintly aware that this might be a bit of a show-off at the airport, as the abbreviated names all-too-familiar in academia stared back at me. But then, who doesn’t like a bit (just a bit) of show?!

As I drift off to a happy sleep, my mind wanders, could this be a valid research topic – maybe for a PhD, or, probably, a post-doc – “Exploring the multi-faceted roles of the strings associated with conference name tags”.

Well, maybe, who knows?

--Madhura De