Lincoln's tear in Spacetime

Another blog, another day - but now things are different! I can see you are all on the edge of your seats to hear about what's changed in my life, so I'll present it in convenient bullet point form, so you don't have to pay attention for too long in this busy age of quick information:
- I have returned from Oxford, and am now back at home.
- I've visited Lincoln for the first time.
- I have tidied my desk area, so it feels very snug and comfortable (I was going to do a photo tour of my room, but my sister's stolen my camera for the day).
- My hair is slightly longer.

I think that's about it. Well, not really -- in this ever changing maelstrom of flux and change that we call our lives, we rarely realise the true extent of the change that is always happening around us. We limit our perceptions to a tiny angle of a tiny proportion of the whole vast universe, and somehow manage to convince ourselves that what we see is reality.

Today, I shall blog about the Oxbridge conference I went to Friday. I'd volunteered for it at the beginning of the term, in response to increasingly desperate emails from the university's admin department, and then completely forgot that I had until the beginning of 8th week. Hastily rearranging my plans so that my Dad could pick me up on the Thursday evening, everything turned out alright in the end. My Dad arrived an hour early, and sat in my room watching me pack with a smug look on his face.

I got the train from Peterborough to Lincoln in the morning, arriving there at 9. I had written down the mobile of the woman from Oxford who had contacted me, in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, when I tried to text her to say I was on my way, I found out that I had written it down one number short, leaving without any means of contact of anyone who was actually there.

I was prepared, however! I had printed off a map, which helpfully labelled where both the train station and the conference centre was. Guesstimating the distance with my fingers, and thinking that it would be a quick 5 minute stroll, I set off merrily.

10 minutes later, I stopped to get my bearings, checked on the map, and discovered I was not even a third of the way there. I hoped that, for some bizarre reason, the map makers had made different parts of their map to different scales, and in fact the rest of the way would only take 5 minutes.

After another 10 minutes, realising with a small sense of triumph that I had reached the halfway point, I took off my jacket, tightened my backpack, and set off with grim resolve. Half an hour after leaving the station, I arrived at two huge gas storage tanks, with a charming little conference centre/school hidden underneath.

I went in, had a cup of tea, talked to fellow undergraduates who had volunteered to encourage the Bright Young Minds of Tomorrow to apply to Oxbridge. I was down to give several talks, mostly on "Being a Student at Oxford and Cambridge", with a few other undergraduates. We went in having no idea what to talk about, but went with the Q&A style of talk, which went very well.

I was also giving a talk on "Doing Maths and Philosophy at Oxford" -- by myself. Fortunately, only three students and a teacher turned up. After talking briefly about the course and such things, I started teaching them some analysis and algebra, so they could get a flavour of the type of the maths they'd be doing. I got quite caught up, and was extremely disappointed when I was time for lunch.

Another uneventful train journey back, and then home. I'm sure Lincoln is a lovely place, but I will forever associate it with that never ending road. Bloody physics.