I came home yesterday.

At this point, there’s a lot of random, not-so-urgent things I have to take care of before leaving semi-permanently for England next month.

1. Pictures, Letters, Friends Shit:
First and foremost, I know a handful of you still haven’t gotten anything from my Kenya trip. No letter, no postcard, nada. Zip. Zilch. This includes at least three blog owners. I know, okay? In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been all over the place lately, and you’re first on my to-do list. So calm the fuck down. I’ll send you an e-mail when it goes out via snail mail.

2. Blog Shit:
I realized as of late that my monitor calibration may have been off for the last year or so — which means my blog colours/contrast/brightness may have been out of whacked all this time. So do me a favour. Does the site seem overly-contrast to you? In particular, do my pictures seem underexposed or too contrasty? On this monitor, my face on the right looks all mangled up. E-mail me, okay?

Oh, and I have to fix little things. Re-doing my archival system (things are getting a bit long), and uh…comments. Yeah, you heard me. I’d like to enable comments. It’s not that easy, actually, since I have to redo some of the CSS and design, but yeah. Comments. In a month. I hope. But you know how I am with promises. I recall making the same promise a year ago.

3. Work Shit:

I still haven’t recounted my day at Oxford. In any case, I’m still stacked with work. Need to write up a journal article soon, need to look into potential projects for my Ph.D., need to study this and that. You know, the usual. No rest for the wicked.

4. Packing and Preparation Shit:

I need to deal with the residential situation, credit cards, bank accounts, electronics, student Visas, an endless array of details. Oh, and I need clothes. My wonderful array of bright and bold t-shirts are wearing thin.

Oh, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Best book ever. Read it. Now.

*yawn*

4 AM here. Flying back now.

See you back in Canada. Fuck I’m tired of airline food.

Tomorrow, I’m spending a day at Oxford University.

Sorting things out, discussing future topics with my soon-to-be supervisor, watching the annual cricket match between the Applied Math and the Computer Science departments.

No joke.

So before I sign off for the night, I have to figure out:

1. How to get to Oxford,
2. How I’ll find the math department,
3. Review things I’d like to discuss, and
4. Find out how cricket is played.

“If they ask you to play,” advised my (former) supervisor, “just swing”.

I’m actually pretty nervous about this first meeting. Suffice it to say, I’ll be meeting with one of the superstars of Applied Math (not only in Britain, but all over the world), and I think the potential to make a real dick of myself is pretty substantial.

But it’s not only my performance which is being put to the test. What if we don’t get along? The relationship between doctoral student and supervisor pretty much dictates not only whether you’re going to be graduating with a Ph.D., but also whether you’re going to be successful 10 years down the line.

There are horror stories abound of students not getting along with their supervisors (for whatever reason) and essentially obliterating their careers then and there.

So yeah, I’m pretty worked up.

Oh, and yeah, I know about the whole wet situation up there.

Honestly, I’m more worried about making a fool of myself than I am about drowning.

hugh grant

Do you think there really are people who can say, ‘Hi, babe. My name’s Charles. This is your lucky night’?

A mutual friend sent me this list of pickup lines along with the suggestion to use it on any “smokin’ hot girl” I might stumble upon.

Take for example, this particularly nasty one: “Your skin is so smooth, its definitely differentiable everywhere.

Or perhaps even more horrendous: “From combinatorics, it’s not N choose R, it’s I choose U, now let’s combine.”

Had enough? How about one more for our friends in Algebra: “You know group theory, right? Let’s add you to me and me to you and see if we’re closed under the ‘operation’.”

This does however bring back a particular exchange from the brilliant film of the 90s starring Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Charles: Though, let’s say, for the sake of argument, one did take a fancy to someone at a wedding. Do you think there really are people who can say, ‘Hi, babe. My name’s Charles. This is your lucky night’?

Matthew: Well, if there are, they’re not English.

Charles: Quite.

And so while I can’t possibly imagine that there are people who are able to use one of these lines with great (or even mediocre) success, if there are, they’re not in Math.

Every morning, a cleaning lady comes into my room, makes the bed, replaces the towels, empties the trash bin, and cleans up the room.

I can’t decide whether I like the convenience or hate the intrusion.

In any case, it’s become less of a convenience lately, as I’ve been trying and clean up before leaving in the morning — so as not to embarrass myself.