Talking Makeup with Benazir Bhutto
It all started yesterday when I found out that my academic hero, my sensei, Peter Singer, is in town this weekend for a conference. I made up my mind that I'm going to meet him. I found out where the conference is, called his hotel, and left a message for him. This morning I called him and managed to catch up just as he was leaving for breakfast; he told me to call the press office for the conference to set something up. Of course I couldn't get through to the press office. No one was there.So I gave up for a bit, went and got my hair cut, and then tried again. No answer. As I was eating lunch I thought, 'I should just go down to the Ritz-Carlton. I'm sure I could find the press office there and set something up'. When I got there, though, I somehow ended up getting a press pass and coming back in the evening to go to the opening gala. I walked in and saw a few of my co-workers from both International and Arabic, so I chatted with them and ended up sitting with a few of the producers from Arabic and a co-worker who is in Scheduling. Although there were several speakers at the opening event, including Karen Hughes and Syed Hamid Albar, the Malaysian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the best one by far was Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr al-Thani, the Qatari First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He spoke very eloquently about Hamas and misconceptions of Arab governments.
Afterwards I wandered outside and saw someone very familiar standing with a delegation from Jordan. I realized it was a guy I met in Damascus last year, so I went to say hello. He's a senior researcher in the Jordanian government, definitely a good person to know, but also a nice, really smart guy. It was good to see him because I had lost his contact information. The world of people who study Arabic is pretty small; my friend was right when she said I would run into him again someday.
After the opening event, my co-worker and I went to the dinner and networked a bit. We met Benazir Bhutto after the dinner and were quite excited about meeting her. We introduced ourselves and said that we're from Al Jazeera International and she remarked that our channel was making quite a showing at the event. Then she talked to us about her makeup. She was excited that Al Jazeera's makeup artist did her makeup when she went in for an interview earlier today; it meant that she didn't have to do her own makeup for the evening! I hadn't quite expected the former Prime Minister of Pakistan to say something like that.
I did end up getting closer to setting up that meeting with Dr. Singer. I finally tracked down the press guy, he took my number and I took his, and I'm going to get a meeting. All this at my first day at the conference! I'm going back tomorrow for more. Maybe I'll get to talk jewelry with Karen Hughes.
posted by Travel Chick @ 10:36 PM
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