An old German guy ...

An old German guy took me by surprise when I stopped in front of his poster (not that I was at all interested, but I had to stop every now and then to fake some curiosity) and engaged himself in a thorough explanation. I could only ask him some general questions on the PDEs he solves and on the stiffness of his source terms, questions he kindly addressed, excitedly, but he kept on insisting on the importance of something mysterious hidden under the acronym ITB, and on some neoclassical solution he had found but was unstable due to the violation of some "elms", whatever that means. He was glad to announce that he was soon to test his theoretical results in a large facility called JET, and I told him, sounding foolish to my own ears, that that was a good thing. Not really knowing how to put an end to his lengthy explanations I wished him good luck, to which he replied he was going to need it. We both laughed a little laugh.

This poster business has a tendency to lead to uneasy situations indeed. Irrespective of the meeting there's always this inevitable poster nobody cares about. And you fear the recurrent pitiful scene about to unfold, with the author standing beside, in vigil, eager to be approached by the eventual passer-by but shy enough to dare start a conversation (not the case of the old German chap). And you get by the poster - there is nothing better to do anyway - and you feel the uneasiness of its author behind you, but you are hopeless too to relieve his distress - simply throw a few glances, look at this or that figure, pretend to read some bit of text. And then you leave the scene a little ashamed and keep walking towards the new poster to meet the gaze of another eventual loner patrolling a four-square-meter floor, babysitting his wordy creature on display. And all this is done at a painful slow pace, in extremely slow motion, the watching, the walking, the exchanging of little smiles in courtesy, the silent reproach on your shoulder.