Loose ends: May

I'm a stickler for chronological order, so even though I did many interesting things in June, and July (even this afternoon) has already been interesting, I need to mention a few things from May first.

I went to a discussion group about the role our faith has played in our scientific work. It links a bit with my previous post: I think education is undervalued in the circles in which I move, and I think there's a moral call to contribute in what way I can. One difficulty is that careers move rather slowly compared with the rush of news about the state of the world, so it feels like I'm not doing much at the moment! Fortunately I've always been reasonably patient.

I went to the JFI grad student seminar day, where about-to and just-graduated PhD students talked about their research. It was very interesting to hear what's going on in the department, and the standard of talk was pretty high. There were four prizes awarded: I agreed with the recipients though not exactly the order.

I went with Peter and Allison to see a baseball game at Wrigley Field. Peter is a Mets fan, and I decided that being a Red Sox fan and hence an anti-Yankees fan, I could very happily cheer for the Mets. The game was Noah Syndergaard's major league debut, but unfortunately, it didn't go so well for him. The Cubs looked like the better team all game, and a poor 6th inning ended it for the Mets.

I went to JEFFERSON PARK to catch up with Godine, who was on his way to his brother's graduation. It was good to chat about life back at MIT, as well as my new endeavours here.

I joined NaYoung and others for International House's Festival of Nations. I enjoyed food from around the world and various cultural performances, especially dance. My favourite was a group performing southern Indian dance - unfortunately I can't now remember the name of either the group or the style of dance. Let me assure you that it was exceptionally energetic and they looked very happy while performing it.

I had some time on a Saturday morning, so I wandered through WEST RIDGE and LINCOLN SQUARE. Pretty quiet neighbourhoods. I was happy to see a little free library on one corner: I was almost tempted to pick up a book.

I went to a party hosted by Giorgio and Bill. We were meant to have fun glow-in-the-dark activities outdoors in the twilight, but 20 mm of rain caused us to set that plan aside. Instead we played indoor games: mostly a very complicated (and fun!) version of Mafia.

Coming up next: much travel!