It's hard to say. You can't really judge a person in just a few weeks' time. Anyway, my position is like what you were in your chi??e lab a year ago. Nobody knows and cares what you are doing. I think he just speaks out of his mind when he's seeing someone he knows quite well. Which is after he knows you enough, he starts cracking jokes... etc. For me I dun think he's doing that to me rite now, cos I always showed him the serious look when I see him, so he had to do the same to me. And I'm trying hard to maintain this distance. Actually, both ways have the pros and cons, maybe one day I'll just crack some jokes to him and things get better. In order to keep the people' name anonymous, I suggest using the *nickname* or short form, it's easy to get sued if you do not do that. As you know, he's now going the bioinfo field, or getting interested, so he get student doing bioinfo project, like *lion king*, dun have to know who is *lion king*, just for example. So he went for confs on this topic. What he meant was he see lots of opportunities in this area. Mr BLOG