Party in the Swiss ambassador's residence

When I took this photo, the ambassador asked me if I was doing some form of industrial espionage to steal business from Swiss chocolate manufacturers. I said no.

Last Tuesday I had to go to Tokyo, to the home of the Swiss ambassador to Japan, for a research meeting. Actually they wanted my professor to come, but he is travelling abroad somewhere so he e-mailed them and said that I would go instead. He did cc me on that e-mail, but actually being asked might have been nice too...

Very tiny but very good beef.

The meeting was to start at 9:15 on Tuesday morning, so I would have to leave Sapporo on Monday night to be there in time. Monday was however a Holiday here in Japan (the "Sea day") and I had other plans (a wedding). In the end, I got up at 4:30 am and took the first flight out of Sapporo to Tokyo, which meant I arrived at the ambassador's residence slightly before 10. By then, the presentation that my professor thought was most important was just about finishing (it ended slightly before the scheduled time), so I missed 97% of that.

The desserts were covered in gold. I guess Switzerland just has too much gold and stuff.

There were three more presentations after that, and then a panel discussion. There were two very good presentations that I enjoyed, and there was also some very nice food.

I did however get a very bad cold on Monday evening, so flying back and forth to Tokyo was not great. The super hot summer of Tokyo was not that nice either, but my ears going weird from the flying had me most distracted. Last year I got "sudden deafness" and lost the hearing on one ear. Though most of the hearing came back three weeks later, I would very much prefer not to experience that again (and some hearing never came back). At that time my ear felt weird but did not hurt. After flying, it felt quite similar... I figured it was just the combination of a cold and flying, but it still made me uneasy, haha. I kept checking "do I still hear low frequencies OK?" with ear phones in the plane etc., many times. I am getting paranoid about my ears acting weird. Especially since the chances of not becoming permanently deaf from sudden deafness decrease quickly with time from onset to when you start treatment. If I get that crap again, I want to find out quickly :-)