Notes from Cambridge

Well, 3 months in Cambridge now and I thought I'll put down my likes and dislikes:

Like:
Cycling into office. Makes me feel good that I'm keeping fit. It's a good 15 mins cycle and much of it is off-road through parks, by river etc. so it's very scenic and relaxing.

Dislike
Cycling into office when it rains. This is a real struggle... I wear my raincoat and rain trousers which is of course a fashion disaster but the splatter of rain on my face does horrible things to my makeup. I now know why cambridge academics have no fashion sense and why there are so few women. And don't even get me started on the type of footwear for cycling. Am I doomed never to wear my heels again? One colleague suggested that I change when I get in. Not a problem unless you consider that I have to walk past reception and offices to get to the restroom to change. Not ideal.

Like:
The space and time to do anything I want. Ah, sabbatical and research leave... so much freedom to do blue sky thinking and blue sky research. I've meet with computer scientists, engineers, etc. trying to develop ways to capture data for better service systems and measurements. Lovely.

Dislike:
The space and time to do anything I want. Makes me massively restless. There was one afternoon I spent just playing online games and levelling up my defender on MMORPG. Felt really guilty after that although I shouldn't coz I have no deadlines, no set times etc. I really need to pick up more stuff to do. Have too much capacity. I've already committed to teaching at Mannheim, Valencia and for BAE Systems and STILL I have capacity. I can't believe how sloooowwww Cambridge is. I reckon that the fastest people (in terms of working) would be the computer scientists (geeks like me), second would be the engineers and last would be management folks. I think maybe I should just go out into town and do an anthropological study to collect data just for the heck of it. Would give me something to do and data to analyse.

Like:
Being around smart people. Good to have people that challenge me. They can think of angles, use better words, helps me learn a lot.

Dislike:
Being around idiots. Yes, unfortunately idiots are equally distributed geographically across universities and Cambridge has its fair share.

Like:
Being treated as an expert in my field. Yup, it's nice to be appreciated to be the top in my field. Jonathan from RR said last week to Paul (BAE) that he seems to have corralled all the top people in service to cambridge. that was nice.

Dislike:
Not really belonging anywhere. Not in exeter, not in cambridge, this transient lack of identity is getting to me.