Ben & Lucy’s
Friday, March 15: A drop of rain in the morning and cloudy all day
Caricature of Prof. James Flynn, University of Otago, Dunedin
Was up fairly early and had the rest of my crumpets with vegemite for breakfast. Ben & Lucy were still getting up when I left for Flynn’s office. I had judged the distance and time pretty closely and only had to enquire at the Psychology Department where his building was and was there on the way to finding his office when I bumped into him.
He had forgotten his wallet at a petrol station and left me in his office while he retrieved it. A few piles of paper on the floor suggested he was doing his tax return and in the meantime I checked that my equipment was working and ready to go.
He was back in a jiffy and I gave him a rundown of how the interview would go before we started. He is very much the gentleman and not nearly as strident as I heard him on Steve Mirsky’s Science Talk. Anyway, we got through my questions (and a few more than I had written down) and I managed to turn the interview into a closing statement, take a couple of pictures of him and of his pictures on the wall and was off to the next event, my lecture at Zoology. Found a banana at a dairy on the way for $1.
Shinichi was a young postdoc (much younger than I had imagined) and we went down to Hamish’s office and had a chat before beginning. Then to the seminar room, which quickly filled. One slide was unusable but could be reconstructed; then Hamish introduced me and away I went for 45 minutes. The thinking experiment worked yet again, and the audience was quite responsive to the humour. A couple of questions & that was that.
The Irish and the Scottish, University of Otago, Dunedin
Hamish took me out to lunch (chicken something or other at a place opposite the institute – quite hot, but thoroughly enjoyable – with a flat white to revive me). Went back to Ben & Lucy’s & dumped my pack, then went back to the Centre for Irish & Scottish Studies to photograph the sign (card playing up again) and then to explore town a bit more. Found a supermarket for muffins, another banana for this evening, and beer, and returned home to schedule the blogs up to April 5.
Ben & Lucy had arrived home and I asked them about staying an extra two nights (they were no longer bookable via airbnb), as Jenny Rock from Science Communication was interested in scheduling a lecture from me for the Monday morning. This will work, so I plan to spend some time on the peninsula tomorrow.
Then it was off to Skeptics in the Pub. Sat around for a bit compiling brackets from March 11, then Katie arrived & introduced me to the people at the next table (Josh & Sequoia) who donated their leftovers to me (Nepali restaurant “Kathmandu” with more like Indian cuisine) – chicken with capsicum, rice, some veggie burgers and nan. Then a rearrangement of tables and the talk got as far as the creationists before we had to regroup. About a dozen people in all.
Was caught out on kiwi speciation in the Q&A. Actually, I don’t see how kiwi species could sustainable interbreed and still be regarded as separate species. Will have to look this up. Perhaps just some confusion on behalf of my audience.
Had been invited to a beer by Sequoia and had another one in the discussion. Presented Katie with her BBC homeopathy DVD and after a short wait around returned home.
