On a different plane

Somehow jet-lag has turned to insomnia, something I usually reserve for periods of intense work when my mind won't stop turning over ideas. I'm not quite in that frenzy right now as I'm spending most of my time preparing talks.

Yesterday I gave an hour and a half formal seminar in the KITPC which was extremely enjoyable. I count it as a success when I have questions up until the end and several people coming to chat afterwards. As usual it's also brought up a couple of points I'd not considered which is always good!

Today I have to give another talk, though it's going to be more informal, on the blackboard, and I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going to be saying. Friday is another seminar and then I'll be giving at least two more next week. At some point I also have to have meetings with various researchers here in the department where we'll actually discuss some physics!

My mind is however rather fuzzy at the moment as I've managed to fall asleep at 6am and get up at 9am for the last few days. This, sadly is not me celebrating being back in Beijing, but simply an inability to get to sleep. Between bouts of putting all my effort into drifting off, I started reading the Language Instinct by Steven Pinker last night, an author who continues to completely change my world view on all things linguistic and neurosciency. Packed full of amazing anecdotes, if I weren't too tired I would be regailing people with them now.

Anyway, this post is a bit of an after lunch interlude as I simply can't focus on anything much right now.

Here's hoping for more than three hours sleep tonight!