very, very brief trip to the UK this week

To serve as external examiner on an excellent Ph.D. thesis that will be a sheer pleasure to discuss. Total time in the UK will be something like 52 hours.

Nice bonus: routed through Istanbul, with a significant layover on one leg. Few things are better than arriving in Istanbul in the early morning on a red-eye flight, then going quickly through their fairly humane passport check and heading down to the water for a relaxing ferry ride and some hot tea. I also sometimes buy the simit (those pretzel-looking rings) and toss pieces from the boat to the seagulls, who are amazingly skillful in catching the pieces in mid-flight.