It’s been so long.

What can I say? What can I write? How do I start?

After taking almost 2 weeks off work—my first real vacation since I was a child—I’ve been trying to get back into the groove again. It’s actually quite difficult.

Mathematical research tends to proceed in cycles of highs and lows. After a while, you start to recognize the onset of another ‘low’. And you stop fighting it.

Here is an excerpt from Women in mathematics by Claudia Henrion:

I’ll be taking a page from Claudia’s book (heh) and over the course of this oncoming ‘low’, I’ll be getting back in contact with old collaborators and contacting some potentially new ones. I’ve been in negotiations with a colleague on how we want to arrange some publications, and so I’ll also be putting aside the current work so I can begin to write and arrange the forthcoming articles.

I also have some potentially fantastic plans for revamping the teaching at Oxford (circa 1096), which arose from my experiences with the students this year.

All very random work thoughts, though.

Have you noticed that I’ve slowly permeated my blog with more and more work-related posts over the course of the past year?

It’s not that I don’t have personal thoughts to share. It’s just that it’s been getting harder and harder for me to arrange them in any coherent form.

I do miss those days when I was a teenager, and when my little personal anecdotes and streams of angst-ridden whinging would naturally pass from my brain to the keyboard.

Is there a reason why it’s gotten so hard to share?

Tomorrow, we’re all heading to Cambridge for the biennial Woolly Owl talk.

What is the Woolly Owl? Here is the official description:

I’m treating tomorrow’s talk with a sort of mild annoyance and neglect. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. In fact, I just managed to finish the slides for the talk, now 16 minutes before midnight the day before. Won’t have time for a run-through, though I’ve done various versions of the talk over the last year. It should be fine.

Nice thing is that I have probably the best slot for the day, being first up. Usually, being first to present at a several-day-long conference is bad, as people tend to arrive late (or not at all). On the other hand, being first for a day-long thing is as good as it gets. People are focused, fresh, and alert.

You can take a look at the talk here. Or you can just drool at the most impressive page, where I’m supposed to explain how our ship-wave theory can be extended to more complicated hull geometries.

Oh, and on the last page, I included this little gem.

That was actually a conversation between me and the boss. Pearls of wisdom indeed. Brilliant as he is, he’s not the best when it comes to practical advice or vague questions like, “How do you feel about our progress?” or “If maths was a flavour of ice cream, what flavour would it be?”

It’ll be an interesting day. Cambridge was one of the schools I’d turned down, so I’m anxious to see how things could have turned out differently had I taken the blue pill instead of the red.

Edit: We lost the owl. Oh well. It was totally rigged, anyways. Personally, I thought the Oxons had more impressive talks, while the Cantabs had more consistently good talks — it was close. Plus, I bet the judges didn’t want to hand the owl over to us for the forth consecutive win.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.

I looked down at his work and pointed at a symbol.

“That’s ‘y-nought’ isn’t it?”

“It’s not,” he said.

“Did you just say ‘not’ or nought?” I asked.

“Huh?”

I frowned and tried again. “I mean, did you say ‘not’ or…” I pursed my lips, tightened by jaw, and affected a British accent, “…nought*?”.

Everybody burst out laughing.

Hmmm. The pitfalls of a Midwestern-Canadian accent where “not”, “naught”, and “nought” sound exactly the same…

* Click the British and American flags to hear the different pronunciations. I thought I did rather well!

Sometimes I feel sad.

I feel sad because I have so much to share, but no one to share it with.

Would you like to be that person? I swear, it’s not about maths.

Okay, not all of it.

Anyways, I’m teaching a class tomorrow and one more on Thursday. That’ll be the last batch for this school year. Then I’m giving a talk at Cambridge on Tuesday (”You’re walking into the belly of the beast,” says my boss). Whatever, I’ve met the Cantabs. They’re all pushovers. Mostly.

Then again, I never did meet the guy in the wheelchair.

I’m just tired, I guess. I don’t know why I feel so stressed-out all the time. It’s not like I’m writing exams or anything. All this is voluntary.

So I guess the real question is, why am I volunteering?

I had a dream yesterday. Which is a bit of a strange thing.

I know that almost all human beings dream, (whether they remember it or not), but I stopped remembering mine a long, long time ago. And so when I say that “I don’t dream”, I mean that I wake up in the mornings not knowing one way or another.

At least with respect to my conscious, I don’t dream.

And so in the last three years (including today), I’ve woken up remembering my dream on six different occasions (twice a year). Four of those times have been work-related (so I dream about math — who doesn’t?), once last year I had a dream about losing my teeth (which I had once when I was a child), and…yesterday…?

Yesterday, I had a dream about a girl (No one in particular — just a nameless pretty blonde). That’s right, fellas. A good ol’ fashion dream about women.

Wooo hoo! Go me! High fives all around.

I’ll tell you something though: Thank God.

Thank God, because I swear, if this one turned out to be about maths, I’m pretty sure I’d have picked up the phone and called for immediate psychiatric assistance.

Dear Doctor: I’m a twenty-something guy. Aren’t I supposed to be dreaming about fast cars and easy women like, all the time. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me?

Okay. Six more months till’ the next one. Can’t wait.