The recent conference on ethology was an eye-opener in many ways. First of all, it made me aware of the world that lies outside of IISc which is not necessarily great. Moreover, most of them are antagonistic to you, for whatever reasons. That's immaterial though. The more important realization was the extent to which we lack in ethology as a science. There is no solid fraternity. The lackadaisical attitude is so rampant, it bleeds my heart.

And then, the way people present their data. One refuses to believe the apathy people have towards presentation skills. One has to see it to believe it, the kind of non-show people put up there. Goddammit, science means objectivity, not blandness. The observations and results of your experiments and the interpretations from those have to be derived and judged objectively, but the way we present the data before the audience should be little theatrical, little dramatic to make it more spicy!