Jeanne

It is time for post two! Since a lot of you complained, this time its a new post not a new blog. :p
Since, I am again going to write about a person, I thought keep a few things from last time. So, its just the name, even though I know her full name. :)
This post is about my current PI/ boss, Jeanne. She is the sweetest person I have seen in last 5-6 months in Worcester and since I wanted to write about some person, I thought why not her. She is 5' 2", old and so all grey hair, doesn't seem intimidating, but definitely is authoritative. She is a very famous scientist in her field of work and so always has a lot of work. Loves talking! her usual attire is black jeans, cotton shirt, a sweater or a jacket over it and a nice scarf around her neck. She almost always has different specs everyday. Must be easily above 55 but is extremely active, running from one room to another all through the day. Funniest thing about her is that she sort of squeaks when she laughs. A lot of people mock her by trying to imitate that laugh, but its pretty difficult to reproduce that sound. She has short grey hair and often likes to flick locks of her hair that are on her forehead. . To give you a rough idea, I think she looks like a very old Uma Thurman. A lot older than the one in the photo. The reason why I think she is really sweet is because of two events. Well, two significant ones.

First, on the first day that I went to the lab, they had a lab meet. According to the tradition of their lab, they usually have lab meets over lunch. It seems they started this because, as I said before, she loves to talk and so even though the meeting is supposed to be for 3 hrs, if goes for about 3 hrs. But I usually don't like to do that, one because food is a big distraction when you are trying to think and second (the more important one) is that I have a slice of cheese pizza everyday. :) So, basically I was the only one without lunch. Everyone came in, settled in their places and started to have their food. Jeanne was the last one to come in. She had a box of meatball pasta in her hands. She walked up to me and said, "Umm...would you like to have half of it? I don't think I can finish it." Unfortunately, even though I was hungry, I had to say no because it had a big 'meatball' label on it. :p But just she saying that was very nice.

Second was a funny event. To give you a background, in USA, from at least what I have seen, no one drinks water. Its either coke or beer. So, I guess most of the water fountains don't get a lot of drinkers. There is one such deserted water fountain between the lab I am working in and Jeanne's office. On my second day in the lab, I went out for some water.  Just as I was about to finish drinking, she walked past me. She walked a few paces, stopped turned back and asked me, "Hmm..How does the water taste?". I was a little shocked at the question, who won't be? All I could manage to say was that it tasted 'normal'. Then she said, " I haven't seen anyone drinking water from this fountain for quite some time. Its good? Ok. Let me try it". She went to the fountain and drank 2 sips of water from it. After which she just stood for 2 sec and  it looked as if she was trying to analyze the taste of it. Then she looked at me with smile and said, "Hmmm..it is nice. Normal.", laughed in her peculiar way and walked to her office.
There a lot of other smaller experiences, nice and funny, that have happened after those first two day and by the end of the each day for the past two week, I am just in awe of her simplicity.