Feeling at home & the first day of the IOP

29/03 - I feel I have missed an essential element out of the last few entries. This is to point out just how glad I am to be back in London, actually living in my house rather than just visiting. The best thing about last night was that I knew I wouldn't have to get up early and dash off to the airport. After Kelly left this morning I spent some time making some shelves for our room, washing a load of clothes, doing some washing up and generally doing house stuff, which I really enjoyed, it made the place feel a little more like home.

I left the house at 11 and made it to UCL with plenty of time left for registration for the IOP meeting, which is ostensibly my reason for being here. I saw a few people I wanted to talk to, more who I knew and loads who I recognised. I ended up mostly chatting to Rich over the sandwiches (blue cheese and apple, crayfish, chorizo, and other surprisingly tasty options). The first session today is the STFC town meeting, which is mainly some folk from the research council outlining and defending their funding choices for the next year. In summary: there's not much money and everyone's unhappy about it.

Well, the rest of the day continued in much the same manner. There were many talks, some more interesting than others, and at 6 we had a drinks reception with some awesome canapés, and a large selection of real ales for us. Kelly joined us for a while, we had some slightly awkward chats with some physicists, and then left to go and meet Simon and Clare in the Norfolk Arms, a pub near King's Cross which does pretty good Spanish food. Simon told us stories about his recent trip to New Orleans (he got back yesterday), especially focussing on the food - deep-fried oyster po-boy sandwich anyone? The meal was really good, but a couple of things went wrong - firstly our desserts took nearly 40 minutes to arrive, as the waiter had clearly just forgotten all about them and made some rubbish excuse. When I ordered my second glass of wine, they brought me a large glass when I had specified small - this wouldn't have really mattered, but the difference was at least a couple of quid and I was already quite full enough of booze. For the above reasons we ignored their 12.5% service charge and left about £4 instead (I am never any good at this, saying no when the tip is already on the bill, but to be honest the service was pretty crap).