Compulsive Shopping!

SiWe are in April 2023. My wife went on vacation with my children, and I'm alone at home... free from my tormentors, I organize a party with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll... but since this is not the blog of a normal forty-year-old, my days are summed up in exhausting quiz sessions and readings in preparation for my specialist examination in Ayurvedic medicine. I'm tired and a bit depressed because, in the midst of Stockholm syndrome, I miss my captors. Around 4 in the morning, I find myself goofing off on the internet again, and Sem is still there!!! Anesthetized by sleep and hours of Ayurvedic nephrology, I write an email to the seller...

"Good morning, I notice that Sem has not been sold yet! I propose to free up the space that the machine occupies in your warehouse for a symbolic amount!"

I better go to sleep! A few hours later, the response arrives punctually! Thanks to Google Translator, the German in the email makes sense: 'Dear Dr. Gab, if you're truly interested, come visit us in Niederdorf, and we'll work out an agreement!' At that point, the first question that comes to my mind is “Where the hell is Niederdorf?!” and without thinking too much, my response is “OK! See you tomorrow around 10:00.” I would later discover that Niederdorf is about three hours away from my home...

The next day at 10 o'clock, I find myself in the nerd's wonderland! It's a small scientific equipment refurbishing company. Think of any instrument, any instrument at all, and they have it in various models! Waiting for me is Dr. F.B.: a character who worked in research until he realized that what he believed to be innovations to improve therapy precision were actually being used by Big Pharma to prove that it's the patients' fault if the medicines don't work. Disgusted, F. leaves his golden position and joins Boson... a startup that recovers obsolete scientific instruments and, after cleaning, decontaminating, refurbishing, and adding a bow, sells them to less affluent countries than us privileged Swiss folks. After all, it's known that the trash can of the rich is often the treasure of the poor. And that's how, in no particular order, you find a mass spectrometer, two or three laminar flow hoods, a gas chromatography system with an obscene number of stacked detectors, a charming collection of turbomolecular pumps, a couple of argon lasers including the power supply, a monstrous amount of laboratory glassware, and the list could go on and on...

We immediately understand each other through that feeling that unites super-nerds and passes through an Italo-Swiss-German English. He takes me to see Sem. Next to Sem, there's a helicopter turbine, of course, also for sale... T

The instrument is aesthetically in good condition... there are very limited traces of rust. It stands there like a dormant giant still under vacuum! The electrical diagrams are there. A piece of paper recounts the last shutdown of the machine in 2005 and its transport to Switzerland from Germany, all under the watchful eye of a Jeol engineer who asked the modest sum of almost 10,000 euros...

"How much do you want to pay? Give me an honest proposal!”

I think about it... as a negotiator, I suck!!! I decide to play the honesty card...

“Considering that it needs to be transported and that the instrument is not complete, 1,000 euros already seem too much to me.”

F. thinks about it...

“Let's say 1,700, including transport...”
“Let's say that's twice as much as I would like to spend... let's say then that we throw in a nice freebie... like, I don't know... do you happen to have an evaporator for sample preparation?”
“... you know I sell those for 1,500 euros?”
“Maybe yes... but you know better than me that electron microscopes in biology are no longer used by anyone! And those who use them are loaded with money and certainly won't come and buy a 1,000 euro carbon sputter!!! Come on, I'll free up a tremendous amount of space for you!!! You should be the one paying me!!!”

We both hesitate, and for diametrically opposed reasons, F. thinks I'm offering too little and I think he's asking for too much. But when two great spirits meet, incredible events (or incredibly stupid ones) happen!