Lost amongst the familiar

Just a brief post before I toddle off to another day of fun and hijinks at the Victorian Algebra Conference at UWA. (Yes, the organisers grasp of geography is a little thin. And no, we don't go round talking about *tries to think of a victorian era algebraist* ...Gauss?)

Last night I eneed up being the lone sandgroper amongst a bunch of easterners and so became the native guide. I showed such a poor knowledge of Nedlands pubs and the basic layout of UWA (I got us lost on the way from Broadway to the maths department!) they decided I must only be pretending to be from UWA :) It is not wise to get between mathematitians and their beer. Today I've been given the task of taking this Iranian woman out to lunch, presumably because I'm the only female UWA attendee who's free :)

The blog is supposed to be meme free, but the "quote some shakespeare" one gives me a chance to do one of my little rants. The first line of "Twelfth night" is the oft-quoted "If music be the food of love play on". The second line is "so that in surfeit of it the appetite may sicken and so die". And the guy saying it (Duke Orsino) does fall out of love with the women he's sick of being in love with, and gets together with someone else (his manservant Bob...I mean Viola :) ). Thus proving that it is better to make up your own pithy sayings than to quote the classics out of context.

Oh, and becuase it's so darn heavy I haven't been taking "JS and Mr N" to uni to read, so won't finish it for a bit. So far it's interesting but a little heavy going since I don't like Mr Norrel and (not to spoil the plot) he's one of the main characters so hard to avoid :)