The boss’s new gadgets

At work it feels a bit like the three of us “interns” are considered to be the company’s latest investment. We are the gadgets that the boss likes to show off with. But I’m not the one complaining, being one of the exotic Swedes I got to shake hands with a Noble price winner!

Dr. Shirakawa won the Noble price in chemistry in year 2000 for his discovery and development of conducting polymers. Last week he was visiting the company for a demonstration of their solar cells. He had been involved in developing one part of it. We were asked to join, and the explanation I was given was that he wanted to see us (or maybe, just maybe, it was the way I interpreted it). When the demonstration was finished we were presented as “our new interns from Sweden, who really wanted to meet you”. We bowed and said our [Hadjememachtee] (a polite way of saying hello) and then photos were taken and hands shaken and I was smiling big times. It was fun. He looked like such a sweet old man and he said it was an honour to meet us. Not too bad, ehh?

We’ve also had lunch with the boss himself, who is the holder of the Guinness world record of number of patents, and the chairman of the board. Nice, but formal occasions.

But there are also downsides of being the ones that everyone has to see. Once a month they have an in house conference and on the last occasion we were asked, 5 min prior, to stand in front of everybody in the conference room and present ourselves. Inside was all employees including all the members of the board, all in all between 600 and 700 people! I was so nervous I thought I was going to faint and I couldn’t hold the microphone fixed in front of me because my hands were shaking too much. But luckily it was a quick presentation. The backwash of the hole thing was that lunch was straight afterwards and I can assure you that it’s completely impossible to eat with chopsticks when your hands are still shaking from the adrenalin chock.

This week they had us listening to a lecture about electron spin resonance for 3.5 hours – all in Japanese! I couldn’t see the importance of that one. And just a 10 min break, without any fika (Swedish cake and coffee brake)! Well ok, I learnt one thing. With this analysis method they have concluded that as the price of tea (of course green) and instant coffee increase, the amount of free radicals decrease, thus expensive tea is more healthy than cheap. Very valuable knowledge.

I’ve finally uploaded some photos. As soon as I have some new photos I will upload them, so you just have to check out the photoalbum once in a while if you don’t want to miss out.