A candle and a laptop

South Korea

Here I am, comfortable installed in a simpatico French café at the Incheon airport, listening to smooth and charming Brazilian music… seated in a leather sofa walled with large cushions.
This is the end of the almost two weeks of a business trip to Asia. A great trip with a lot of great experiences and many contrasts.

A trip with minimal sleep trying to do the present work (related to the meetings) during the day and the distant work (related to the office) at night.

A trip where I played opposite roles, the student in India and the teacher in Korea. Interesting, one would logically expect the contrary (teaching in a less developed country and learning in the most developed one). Circumstances made the difference: a statistical course given by an International Research Institute in India while in Korea was teaching and organizing a few lectures at a first international course provided by the National Research and Development to a range of young scientists from Southeast Asia.

As a student I felt quite comfortable as I had lot to learn. I was amongst the senior students but I felt in tune with the group and we had a great time, both in classes and outside the classes. The experience as a teacher was a new experience to me, amongst so many experienced scientists and feeling somehow closer to the age group of the students… Not even the white hairs I am starting to have helped that much… Being the only women in most of the formal dinners and meetings did not help either. As my boss got sick at the last minute I had to replace him unexpectedly and felt a bit lost. However, the experienced colleagues (a few I knew from before) with a lot more experience, filled the few gaps and gave me a lot of support. I feel much more confident now and happy that I did my job with success. It was not so difficult after all!

Actually, one of the difficult parts was to remember the names for each face. The Korean names are unfamiliar to me and many share similar first or last names. I exchanged business cards with more than two dozens scientists and only know exactly who is who is in not more than half of them. A shame!… It did not help that most of them had similar business cards as they worked in the same institute, what made it even more difficult to associate the cards with the faces. Only two of them had a picture (which is a great idea!) At some point I started to make little notes in the cards related to the place we met or the issues discussed. At the end, I could not find the card of the one of the scientists that was extremely friendly and helpful and had taken us for dinner and lunch almost every single day. I browsed through all the cards I had and did not know who they were and found the courage to politely ask him which one was his card. Luckily, it was not any of them (so I was sort of excused for this gag…) and he gave us his card.   

It is the second time I come to Korea and still the same impression as the first time. So civilized, so clean, so tidy. People are very well educated and seem to have a high standard of living. Beautiful new cars everywhere, processes highly computerized and digitalized. A few difficulties thought, English is barely spoken and with an accent difficult to understand. Most names of places, roads and products are written in Korean… This can create a few misunderstandings: ending up in the parking floor of the department store instead of clothes department; having a camera battery taken to be charged when asking to buy a similar battery; unable to get hot water to add to the strong tea. Washing hands in a restaurant toilet with gargle liquid instead of liquid soap.   
Having the internet and the windows menus in Korean, it is very difficult to find the right menus and understand any error messages.

However, this time I had the opportunity to notice that the Korean society is extremely stratified, remains of Confucianism, that still influences a lot the Asian society, especially Korea. Everyone has his place in society and it is difficult to change. Students stay in the dormitories, teachers in hotels. Students eat in the cafeteria, teachers in restaurants. The coffee breaks had a minimum duration, 5-10 minutes and not really done for networking. There were few opportunities to interact with students, something we are used to do (and an important part of training network for future collaboration) in the International institutes as well as in African countries.

In contrast, I noticed that people can interact quite freely during the famous karaoke sessions, abundant in town. Here people can sing and dance, regardless of social positions. It was nice to be able to be (a small!) part of it.

Food was another challenge: many small dishes made a huge meal. In average we had at least 30 different dishes per meal we were invited for, and when we thought it was finished, here comes the main dish, rice! A wide range of delicious flavors (but a few not so good) from a special very soft octopus that leaves in the mud, to jelly fish, row fish, sea weed, snails and poisonous fish (where the poisonous bits were remove). I was afraid when I was offered a sort of meat and was told it was ‘dok’. I though it was dog, but after some questioning I understood that it was in fact duck (very nice by the way)! I learned then that there are special and very few places where dog is served. It is very expensive and served as delicacy but also for medical purposes, as it helps the healing of people after surgical operations. Seating on the floor on a few traditional restaurants was also a bit of a challenge, as after some time the legs become num and it is difficult to find a comfortable position…

From the technical side, I was very impressed with the modern and beautiful genebank they have. The extremely neat rooms and work; the amount and quality of specialized people and work; the degree of organization (everyone and everything in his place); and the available modern techniques put into use, like the automatic robot system to place boxes of seeds in and out of the long term storage (a -18oC cold room). 

India

This was also the second time I went to India, although I had never been in Hyderabad. I was pleasantly surprised with the airport. It is a brand new and modern airport, a vivid contrast with my memories from the airport in Mumbai (an ugly, old, messy and dirty building)! The city is very developed with many modern buildings, but still retains the image we often see in movies: wide roads full of all sorts of cars and motorcycles driving almost touching each others on a messy multicolored wave. Particularly impressive (and scary too!) are the fragile two or three wheels motorcycles driving in fast zigzags, carrying families of 3, 4, 5 or even more… After a few hours downtown, one easily realizes what noise pollution feels like…
And after being downtown, we enjoyed and appreciated even more the isolation, beauty and peacefulness of the ICRISAT campus we were staying (modern and comfortable facilities surrounded by kilometers of green grass and neat cereals and legume fields with a few peaceful lakes in between; not forgetting the castle and chapels too; all of this within an unbelievable area of about 1400 ha!).

From the technical side, impressive to see the amazing expansion of the molecular biology facilities and related services they have. The great amount and detailed work they have also done on diversity studies of their germplasm collections that truly enrich their potential usefulness for many users. 

Other highlights were:

- The nice food provided by the cafeteria, with a range of delicious Indian spices and rotis.

- The friendly people in campus that made us feel at home.

- The great welcome party in the middle of a storm that even included some dancing.

- The shopping trip on the last day with a diverse group looking for quite different sorts of items; some very brief sightseeing in between to have a feeling of the old monuments in town. The challenge to stop and shop for each one, trying to keep the time and not to loose anyone… A few arguments in between but everybody managed to buy something nice in the end… The nicely organized picnic box we had during the shopping trip (avoiding eating out to keep everybody safe, just in case).

It was the rainy season, the famous monsoons that were in fact a bit late. We had rain almost every day, although the weather was warm so it made easy to dry wet clothes or shoes. We were cough by the rain a few times, despite the innumerous umbrellas that were provided in the various buildings of the campus. The rain and the Muslim fasting season gave us some stress on the way back to the airport. The taxi driver came late as the time coincided with breaking the fast at the end of the day. It was also raining quite heavily and the road to the airport is quite new and still under construction in a few parts. So new that the taxi drivers do not know yet where to exit or turn; so new that it is in the middle of nowhere; there are no houses or people along the road, something very rare in a country so populated as India. I am curious to see it in a few years time…