So on Friday afternoon during the rain, and after dashing home from work to do a hurried packing of a bag, I made a dash for the airport. It was quite a nerve-wracking trip because the rain meant that two of the three freeways I needed to use were not moving very well (in fact, the middle one was almost stationary for a while), and after losing a lot of time there, calling my airline and finding out that the flight was of course going to leave bang on time, I got to the check-in desk (after sitting on a frustratingly slow bus from the parking lot that dutifully stopped at six other terminals before mine) with -1 minutes to go before the flight was officially closed. There were no other flights out that day, and so it would have been a disaster to miss the flight. As it was, some combination of (1) my asking on the phone that a note be put in the record of my flight that I was on my way, and (2) the presence of two other (unapologetically late) annoying Europeans besides me holding up the line, I got onto the ten hour flight to London.
So after a quick stop in London to say hello to my sister, have a look at Bromptons, Routemaster buses, etc.....here I am in Dublin, Ireland....one of the main places where you can get the best pints of Guinness on the planet. I'm using the wireless access provided by the head offices of one of Ireland's main funding agencies, which gives you a clue as to the cover reason for my being here..... I'm part of a panel reviewing the grants for funding. We sit in a room with a long table over two days and deliberate solemnly over proposals from a huge range of physics areas. We all wrote reviews of selected proposals earlier in the year, and now we get to read each other's reviews, argue a bit over the physics and other relevant details, and come up with our recommendations. It's actually a lot of fun, since I just love reading about physics from all sorts of areas, whether related to my own area, or not. Both experts in the particular fields and non-experts get to make intelligent comments (there's lots of give and take) on all proposals, and so one gets to learn a lot about what's going on in the big wide world of physics, while making a valuable contribution to the scientific community as a whole. It's just another of those things that we do as part of our job as academics plugged into an international community (and on which we report to you from time to time). The other perks? Well....... later tonight, I'm going to sit down with a pint of Guinness, properly poured (i.e., slowly), for a change, with a perfect creamy head and full body. Oh yes..... It makes the jet-lag I'll have at both ends of the trip (I have to jump back on a plane pretty soon for a ten hour trip back in order to get back to my classes, etc), the missing of the Oscars, all worth it. -cvj
