Other Duties as Assigned AFine Specimen Stuart Ruff, CGMP Senior Meetings Planner, International Trademark Association

At a former job in the Washington, D.C., area, I was a deputy project direc- tor for a firm that handled logistics for the U.S. State Department and the National Institutes of Health. In April 2009, I was doingmyfirst conference ever in India, at the Oberoi Grand, Kolkata. It was very stressful, and the night before opening day I went out to dinner with a group of scientists and reluctantly had a hot tea. The tea wasn’t that hot, and I remem- ber thinking to myself, “Don’t be that American guy. I’m sure it’s fine, don’t be paranoid.” The next day, sure enough, I was violently ill. I’d

never been that sick before inmylife, and here we are trying to open this conference. What I forgot to mention was, the conference was on enteric diseases,

and specifically covered diarrheal-diseases research. I was extremely, extremely ill—physically in and out of the restroom, and very pale. When the doctors and scientists that were there

found out that I was ill with an apparent enteric prob- lem, they were very excited. I think they actually thought that I was a better meeting planner for having the thoughtfulness of being sick for them. They even askedmefor a sample, to study at their laboratory. They were very serious. Thatwas a bit above themeeting planner call of

duty. Iwas just kind ofmortified by thewhole thing. And, no, I did not provide themwith a sample. —As told to

Hunter R. Slaton

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pcma convene October 2010

www.pcma.org

ILLUSTRATION BY PHIL DISLEY