London Day 3

IMG_0136, originally uploaded by eesley.

Yesterday I met up with Erin, a friend from a few years back when we were both instructors in Duke's TiP program. We went to Shakespeare's Globe to see a play and then walked around London.

We went to Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey as well as Trafalger Square before grabbing some dinner in Chinatown.

Today I'm preparing for my talk in Paris and then taking the train there this evening, arriving late at night when my friend Sylvain will meet me at the station.

King's College (photo)

IMG_0114, originally uploaded by eesley.

My friend Sung Joo and I left Cambridge (the old one) this morning and took the train to London. After dropping off my stuff at the hotel, we had lunch and headed for the British Museum. There was an enormous amount of pollen falling from the trees and between that at the pollution my eyes were burning. One we got there though, the museum itself was very nice.

After grabbing a quick bite for dinner, we headed to Her Majesty's Theatre to see if we could get tickets for The Phantom of the Opera. We did manage to get two seats and the show was great.

Cambridge, UK

 


I arrived in London on Weds. and met up with a couple of friends there then took the train to Cambridge in the afternoon. I gave my presentation at the conference today which went fine I think. I didn't practice so I rambled a little, but it was ok.

Yesterday, after a full day of conference presentations on Open Innovation, we had a glass of champagne and dinner at St. Catherine's college (one of the many colleges in the University of Cambridge system here). Then Ethan, Sung Joo and I went out in search of thai food and wandered around the city. Eventually we gave up on the thai restaurant and found our way to the Eagle Pub which was where Watson and Crick had a pint after discovering DNA. We didn't make any discoveries but it didn't stop us from having a pint there too.

This afternoon we went "punting on the Cam" which means going for a little boat ride along the Cam river. It was very nice and beautiful weather. Tomorrow Sung Joo and I will go to London together and visit the British museum.

Other side of the pond

This post will be short since I haven't slept in over 24 hours and the keyboard is all British, but I've landed, had a quick breakfast near the British Library (where there was a line to get in at 9:20am), and found my way to Lourdes Sosa's office at the London Business School.

So far I'm puzzled by the toilet paper which comes out 1 sheet at a time (WTF?!) and my HSBC global ATM card which doesn't want to work at the airport, meanwhile the American Bank ATM card, of all things, worked just fine. Oh yeah, i think I spent half the morning getting through the immigration line which was massive and waiting for my bags which came to the wrong Baggage Reclaim (I guess re-claim makes sense) carosel (probably due to the hours spent in the immigration line).

Off via train to Cambridge this afternoon.

Update

Blogging has been slow as I've been keeping busy. Here's a quick update.

The dissertation is making progress, I've been TA'ing an undergrad class on entrepreneurship, still working part-time with Flagship looking and (and passing on) medical device opportunities. I've also started this consulting firm for life sciences, http://www.lobby-10.com. It's been fun.

I think that's about it. I'm headed to Cambridge, UK and Paris next week for about 10 days (vacation and to give a couple of talks on my research). Then down to UNC to present a paper June 3-7th. Also, probably headed to South Africa to give a presentation at a conference this summer (July 27-31st). Then to Anaheim, CA Aug. 8-13th for a conference and up to the Bay area Aug. 13-19th.

Once (2006)

Once (2006)

I saw this movie on Friday evening after Yoojin cooked a nice dinner. I highly recommend it. It reminded me of nights back in high school when Chris Madine, Buddy, or Rick Hanf would play guitar at Angel Emerick's or some sketchy campsite we had picked out that weekend.

At Duke also I had friends who were more musical and would play guitar from time to time such as Connor Briggs (now Connor Desai and check out her album on iTunes!) or Dan Purdom.

At MIT, things have changed and between the workload and hanging out with economists, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs, those more musical nights of listening to CDs or live music are fewer and farther between. This movie was great to watch with the music reminding me of Ida, Nick Drake, Smog, or Devendra Barnhart.