The interview is tomorrow and surprisingly, I’m a little nervous.

Strange. It’s been a good long time since I’ve felt nervous about anything. It’s a good feeling.

I’m not worried, though.

Once, someone reviewed my teaching as, “He’s a performer”. He was right. When I give a talk or teach a class, I like to connect with the audience; I like to talk loudly and crack jokes; I like to smile and wink at people sitting in front. It may not be terribly dignified, but I’m still young — why not substitute exuberance and passion for dignity and restraint?

The talk will go well. And so will the performance. I’m confident with the material, and I’m sure I can go toe-to-toe with the interviewers.

These are just butterflies of anticipation, I suppose.

The biggest question on my mind is: What colour should my tie be?

1. The unnatural nature of asymptotics

This article came out a while ago, but I just never had the time to mention it. It’s the first expository article I’ve written on my own research, and I was fairly happy with the way it turned out. iSquared magazine, by the way, is a very professionally run popular maths magazine coming out of the University of Nottingham.

You can get a taste for the magazine by reading my article here.

2. The Sixth IMACS International Conference (Georgia, USA)

I’ve been invited to give a talk at this conference March 23-26. What’s in Georgia, anyways? Not much, apparently.

I’ll be presenting some of my work on stern waves, which I talked about here.

Anyways, it should be fun. A lot of big names in the field are supposed to be there. And they’re paying for my stay at the uber-fancy hotel. Dare I hope for an open bar at the conference banquet?

I debated going to spend a day or two at some friends in the US, but decided against it. I’m already stacked enough for work, so I guess this one will be a straight-forward in-and-out. that said, anybody want to come and bunk with me?

3. British Applied Maths Colloquium 2009 (Nottingham, UK)

I’m giving another talk at the BAMC from April 4-9. It’s sort of the standard thing for applied mathematicians to go to in the UK, but the talks also have a ridiculously cap of 15 minutes(!)

I’m still wondering what in the world I can say in 15 minutes. After all, everybody knows I usually dick around for the first 8 minutes, anyways.

4. Waves 2009 (Pau, France)

Not much to say, here.

I went to the Waves 2007 conference in Reading, UK before I started at Oxford. In fact, I wrote about it here. The Waves conferences tend to be more on the theoretical side (and consequently attracting a more European-flavoured crowd), so I decided this would be a good place to upload my work on gravity-capillary flows — which, at least for the moment, hasn’t been applied to any particular physical systems.

Just submitted the proposal early February, so I we’ll see if it’s accepted. The conference takes place June 15-19.

5. SIAM Oxford Poster

My poster took first prize at the SIAM Student Chapter Conference in Oxford a few weeks ago.

Fairly happy with how it turned out. The whole thing took me about a week’s worth of nights to design.

6. Jowett Senior Scholarships

I have an interview for the Jowett Scholarships this coming Thursday, so I’m spending some time preparing for that. Winner gets a tidy sum of cash, plus free food for a year. Dear lord, is there anything I won’t do for free food?

For the interview, they’ve asked me to prepare a 15 minute talk on my research to be presented to, get this: (1) a professor of computer science, (2) a professor of legal philosophy, and (3) a professor of Sanskrit.

Can you believe that? Man o’ man, what a challenge; it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “So the other day, a mathematician was giving a talk to a computer scientist, a legal philosopher and a historian…”

7. Transfer of Status

Oxford doctoral students are supposed to write a report on their current progress a year into the program.

This one just takes time.

8. Teaching

I’m teaching two forth year classes this term.

They depress me.

9. After the perfect non-date

After the perfect non-date, nothing of significance happened in my non-professional life.

“So, you’re going to let me take you out again, right? On a real date this time.”

“I can’t,” she said, getting all fidgetey and looking away.

“Why not?”

“I’ve got baggage.”

“Don’t we all.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Ah.”

And that was it. As abruptly as it began, that’s how the non-date ended. And if all you cared was the ending, then there it is. There’s no punchline, here. No trickery involved. The curtain has fallen. The fat lady has sung. Exeunt omnes.

But for those who care about more than just the ending — well, I’m going to go back and tell you how it all started. After all, it’s never about the answer, is it? It’s about the journey.

“Another riveting day at the office?”

Those were my first words to the temporary receptionist — you know, the person who comes in out of nowhere to work for a week or whatever, while the usual employee is off sick or honeymooning.

Let me describe her. She had (1) Long — longer than shoulder-length — auburn hair that seemed to always be perfectly arranged in wavy tresses, and (2) Big blueish eyes that seemed to change colours depending on the lighting, and that projected a constant air of curiosity tinged with bemused delight. That’s all you need to know.

At that moment, however, those big blue eyes were rolling in a great circle, as she replied to my question with the obvious reply.

“This is a really important building,” I explain, sweeping my hands grandiosely around the room and sniffing proudly. “Lots of mathematicians to protect. Some of the greatest minds in the world, here.”

“Oh, I know“, she said, “I’ve been grilling everybody that comes through the gate. ‘Whatdaya want?’ I say, ‘What’s your business, here?’“

“Really? I’m impressed. Show me. What’s your snarl like?”

She showed me.

“Not bad”.

The next day, I asked her out to lunch. “I’ll come down here at noon and we’ll have lunch somewhere. Alright?”

And so later, as promised, I came down to reception. She wasn’t there.

“Where were you?” I asked, several hours later.

“Where was I? Where were you? I waited. And then I’m like, ‘Nah. He’s not coming’.”

“I came,” I say exasperatedly, “Like, five, no, ten minutes late. Barely!“

“I’m sorry, but I really had to go.”

I stare her down for a good few seconds, shaking my head disapprovingly. “Monday, then. Monday. Noon. No excuses.”

“I can do that.”

And so I stalk towards the door. “I did come down —,” I mutter.

“—late,” she calls after me.

“I did come down —,” I mutter again.

“—late,” she calls again.

People walking past look between the two of us, wondering what in the world we’re talking about. I decide against giving one last retort, and with one final theatrical sigh, I exit the building.

This morning, it snowed in Oxford for the first time this winter. Even for a Canadian, for whom snow is a concept about as foreign as rain is to the British, you tend to notice the electricity in the air after the first snowfall, partly because the first snowfall is likely the only snowfall; partly because everybody here — man, woman, child, grownup — acts like this form of crystallized precipitation is the greatest thing since sliced bread; and partly because Oxford looks beautiful with a dusting of snow.

As I entered the building that morning, I stopped by the receptionist.

“So noon, right?” I say to her, “We’re having lunch.”

“Sure,” she says casually.

I turn, and look at her seriously for a second. “You mean — you’re actually going to be here when I come down, right?”

Without missing a beat she fires back, “You mean — you’re actually going to be on time, right?”

I give her look of surrender, then turn and start walking back up the stairs. “Well played, madame,” I mutter.

Even from behind me, I can hear the snickering.

There’s this feeling that I rarely get anymore: It’s the feeling of genuinely wanting to know something — anything — about someone else. See, most of the time, we ask people a question like, “So where are you from?” or “So what do you do?”, but we couldn’t care less about the answer. It’s worse than small talk. It’s polite apathy.

But on those rare occasions, you meet someone whom you truly want to know about. Suddenly, every aspect of their life is a source of discussion. So slowly, as we walked side-by-side towards my college dining hall, we covered the various topics.

As we entered into the garden quad, we were presented with a truly magical scene; the stuff of movies. In our scene however, light snow peppered the trees around the garden, and kids (“damn undergraduates”, I muttered) were off to the side, building snowmen and having snowball (Remember: Balliol is one of the few Oxford colleges that allows that sort of chicanerie on the grass). The juxtaposition of the young and the old, and the serenity of it all was fascinating.

We climbed the steps towards the dining hall, and I gave the door a shove. It was locked. “Fifteen minutes ’till hall opens. Want to take another walk around the quad?”.

And so we did. As we walked, we talked more about families and parental pressure. We talked about how my parents wanted both my sister and I to go into medicine. We talked about traveling. We talked about the weather. We talked about everything and anything.

And then we had lunch. We walked back to the department afterwards. A bit late. “Just tell them you were with me on official math business”, I said.

“Is that what you call it?”, she asked.

“Whatever. I’ll come down sometime before you leave.”

You all know how it ends.

This was her last day temping for Oxford. In chagrin, she told me she was sorry for not letting me know the whole story beforehand. I, in turn, told her I was glad she hadn’t. There was no dramatic standoff. Just a simple handshake, and a bemused good-bye on both our parts.

Tuesday morning, she was gone.

Life, it seems, is not so easily divided into happy endings and sad endings.

But ultimately, what matters most is what we take with us. And for me, it was a chance to be proven wrong.

It seems that the older I get, the more disconnected I feel with people — and perhaps more worrisome, with women. There is no shortage of attractive women in this world; no shortage of women who can smile and laugh at a joke; no shortage of women with whom one can carry on an intelligent conversation or share a physical relationship with. There are hundreds. Thousands. I see attractive women with beautiful faces and yes, smokin’ bodies, everywhere I look.

But whenever I meet one of these women, it’s like my brain goes into auto-pilot. Boredom takes over. I joke, they laugh. I ask them where they’re from. How they’re doing. And when they ask me about my life, I list out the details — as if reading bullet points off my curriculum vitae. Mathematician. Canadian. Oui madame, je peux parler francais. Photographer. The list goes on. And then I’ll do the whole charmy, flirty thing (I do it very well, apparently), and that’ll be that.

But it’s all a performance. Maybe that’s why I consider social events to be awfully tiresome; the effort of performing for people I don’t really care about is exhausting.

And then, well — you meet a girl. And she shows that that there is still hope for making a connection in this world. And for that — despite the near certainty that we’ll never meet again — I’m forever grateful.