I just got back from a one-week trip to the UK for a work trip. This is the shortest trip I’ve done overseas. Usually, I like to go for two weeks, just to make the adjustment to the timezone worth it. But, as I’ve got too many things to do back home, I kept this one short. In the end, I think it will be fine. While I had a struggle at times staying awake, I made it through.
The purpose of the trip was to attend and present at a workshop on accelerated molecular dynamics and long time scale simulations. That was the subject of my postdoc at Los Alamos. The idea was to bring together many of the people involved in this research and give the ideas greater exposure in the UK. Most of the talks were very interesting. There were a lot of neat new ideas presented. It was hosted at Loughborough University, in north/central England. They have a wonderful campus, one of the largest, in terms of land, in the UK.
Our host took us to a traditional British pub which served traditional British food. I stayed away from the “typical” fare (black pudding, for example) and got Steak and Guinness pie, which was very good, with no vegetables and extra mashed potatoes.
After Loughborough, I headed to London to spend a day with a collaborator at Imperial College. When I arrived, he and his students took me to a Lebanese place which was quite good. We had a number of starters, all vegetarian, and then gorged on lamb and chicken for the main course. It was very well prepared and tasted great. We spent the next day talking about various projects of common interest. In the evening, my host took me to his place for a BBQ, which he lugged all the way from America after his sabbatical at Los Alamos.
Overall, the trip, while fast, was good. A lot of time spent traveling. I flew in via Atlanta and Amsterdam to Birmingham, as that is only about 30-40 miles from Loughborough. Then I took the train to London. The flight over was a bit obnoxious as they didn’t have the personal TV for each seat. I don’t even remember what we watched. I did a lot of reading of papers and stuff. I took three books and didn’t crack a one. I guess I was too tired to read for enjoyment.
On the way back, I did have one of those fancy personal TVs with my seat. That was cool. I watched an episode of House, which is always entertaining. I saw the first episode of Heroes and was pleasantly surprised at how well I liked it. I also saw Casino Royal (I’m a bit confused by the ending, but will wait to comment on that until I watch it again with Lisa, since we have it at home waiting from NetFlix) and Hollywoodland, which I vaguely remember hearing about but didn’t know anything about. That was good. It has Ben Afleck, who I could give or take, but Adrian Brody was also in it and he seems like a good actor. It is one of those morally ambiguous tales. I highly recommend it.
Also with the TV was an onboard trivia game that you can play against other passengers, which was cool. I won one of the maybe 5 rounds I played. But, there was one question that annoyed me: categorized as “Science and Technology” they asked: what sign would someone born on October 2 be? What does this have to do with “Science and Technology”? It would be fine as “General Knowledge”, but it just does not belong in the “S&T” category. There is no science nor technology in astrology.