No travel this week, which was a pleasant change. But a wonderful evening event on Monday at the Frick Mansion in Alpine NJ participating in a fund raising event for the local Alpine school and getting to meet many of the residents of this intriguing, tiny, exceptionally wealthy town. We made a number of good new contacts that hopefully will become friends to LDEO in the future.
We entertained Kyoshi Suyehiro on Wednesday, who stopped by for a few hours on his way from the IODP jackup rig off New Jersey (that is drilling the hole that Greg Mountain has been trying to get drilled for a century or two) to his IODP-MI Office in DC where he is now President. IODP Management International will be moving to the campus of Tokyo University around the end of the year, so Kyoshi will not have to commute Trans Pacific quite so frequently. We talked with him about a wide range of issues regarding the future of ocean drilling but central to all our conversations were the issues surrounding the renewal of the program in 2013. The large international INVEST meeting (to be held in Bremen this September) will play a critical role - it will be there that the science plan is developed, and also importantly where the program structure is discussed and recommendations made about whether the existing exclusively proposal-driven structure is the right one for the future.
ExCom consumed the morning today followed by another of the Research Life Panel series which again was well attended and very useful. But the day will not end well - it is sad comment upon the state of my life that the only time that can be freed up in my schedule so I can be abused by my dentist is the time I should be spending drinking beer at
TGIF!!
Have a great weekend,
- Mike