I am awkward.

I finally met Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Director General of TERI, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, today. It was super awkward:

I was meeting Dr. Leena Srivastava (executive director of TERI, second only to Pachauri, and PiA's contact with TERI) when Pachauri walked by and Leena said, "Have you met Dr. Pachauri? Introduce yourself. Go! Now!!" so I left her "cabin" (as they call glass offices) and awkwardly ran up to him to say hello. Super awkward. I was like "um Dr. Leena told me I should introduce myself before you get away, sorry if you're busy and I'm disturbing you." Because it was clear that I had run up to him and I felt I needed to explain myself. I of course should have said that I wanted to introduce myself, not that Dr. Leena wanted me to introduce myself, but it all happened so fast and I was flustered.

...I am the most awkward person on the planet.

In other news, the Prime Minister of Sweden visited TERI today (see this article about his visit). This meant that the Delhi Police was securing the building with a walk-through metal detector that no one actually pays attention to, a woman who giggles when her handheld metal detector makes a noise over my bra's underwire, and a man with a big gun and camouflage vest. Also, lunch was delayed by half an hour. Unclear to me why lunch was delayed. But everyone was pretty hungry.