An Interesting and Bizarre Coversation

I just had an interesting conversation (well, conversation is not really the word for it, it was more like a monologue) in the hostel kitchen with a guy from New Zealand who designed solar race cars.  He started with the materials and designs of solar race cars, complete with diagrams and equations that he furiously scribbled as he was talking, and he interspersed that with talk of recumbent bicycle design, US interventionism internationally, corruption in the Philippines, the fabrication techniques of all the devices and things in the hostel kitchen, the difficulty of finding flat spaces in New Zealand, the specific problems with military bidding protocols, how Texas Instruments poisoned their workers, different grades of military aircraft and the folly behind each, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.  He talked a mile a minute in this fashion that was densely packed with concepts, backed up with furious scribblings, and almost devoid of social cues. It was really interesting to listen to this person who had a communication style that was pretty different from the usual.

And now I'm off to explore Canberra.