A Pub Quiz: This time last week I attended the
(rather excellent) inaugural SludgeTech event in Guildford, UK. 90 people
attended the evening dinner and Nick Mills, the man from Thames Water for whom
the event was his brainchild, decided to hold a pub quiz between courses. It
was filled with impossible, quirky, non-sludge related questions such as ‘How
did the Star Wars character R2D2 get his name?’. Nick somewhat foolishly asked
me to provide the answers at the end of the evening and thus I found myself
arbitrating between competing tables. In the end I adopted a healthy level of
disdain for the whole scoring mechanism and awarded points randomly and
generously to anyone who took my fancy. At one stage we had to get a real-life
Professor onto the stage to outline the answer to a complex math problem. It
was organized chaos, designed I suspect deliberately to confuse the large
number of overseas guests. A pub quiz is a quintessentially English past-time.
Golden Coffee Pots: The week before I was in the
Middle East. One of my meetings was with the CEO of the Sharjah Water
Authority, Dr Alleem. He is a passionate enthusiast for sustainability and new
technology and we quickly found common ground. At the end of the meeting there
was a photo-shoot where I shook hands with Dr Alleem and was presented with a
superb golden coffee pot. It was explained that this was symbolic and the
coffee pot wasn’t mine to take away. However when I got to my taxi it was then
given to me a second time by one of the junior members of the Sharjah team.
Unsure quite what to do (or how I was going to get it through customs) I took
it with thanks. It now sits proudly on my office desk at home. Below is a
newspaper article that was published over the weekend. Dr Alleem is the man on
the right. Look carefully and you can see the coffee-pot on the table in front
of us. Unfortunately I can’t read Arabic. I am sincerely hoping it doesn’t say
‘Do you know this man? He has stolen our golden coffee pot’.
Alternative to Gambling: Think of Las Vegas and you
probably think of gambling…but perhaps not for much longer. On July 23rd
the Governor of the State of Nevada is visiting London to announce the creation
of a new Centre of Excellence for Water. It is a collaboration between the
state government, the Las Vegas Water Authority and the Desert Research
Institute. They are coming to the UK to form alliances with like-minded
institutions and technology companies. The ultimate goal of the CoE is that Las
Vegas will be known for its water hub as much as it is for gambling. Isle is
helping co-ordinate the London event so if you want to come along then let me
know. I promise there will be no quizzes or coffee pots. There might be a hoe
down though.
By
the way, the answer is Reel 2 Dialogue 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment