A Good Sign

Saw this in the Physics Department at National Central University in Jung-Li, Taiwan. A very right-thinking place indeed, to have the detail of a nice kettle on the door of the little kitchen down the hall. I went there (on Wednesday 4th January, during my Walkabout) to give a lecture ("Non-critical Strings and Matrix Models") with more background material on the matters in the seminar I presented a week and a half before in Taipei (the one before I dashed for the bus to Tainan...). It was at the invitation of Chiang-Mei Chen. There I also met Otto Kong Cho-Wing. They are both high energy physicists (Chiang-Mei is in General Relativty, while Otto Kong is a particle phenomenologist), and I enjoyed my short visit. (Relativists among you will know the name Nester. Well, the man himself, James Nester, is also part of the department there, although he was away at the time I visited.) Chiang-Mei and Otto Kong were excellent hosts, and particularly gracious (and visibly happy to relocate) when, after we sat down to lunch (and saw the menu) at a Western-style restaurant they clearly thought I would prefer, I quietly suggested that I had been looking forward to trying (hint! hint!) the Chinese-style one that they had briefly mentioned earlier. We left and went to the otherone, telling me that they preferred the Chinese-style one too. It was probably rude for me to have said anything, I know, but everyone got a much better meal out of it. -cvj