Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Meeting Day


Today is the first day of the meeting on refractive error at which I am presenting a paper. At eight is a meeting of all the presenters. I will probably be at the meeting all day.

Yesterday’s meeting was long but better than I expected. I am starting to get a better feel for the international development community. I am not sure that is a good thing. On the one hand, I need to know the lay of the land; on the other, part of what I bring to development is my perspective. I do not want to lose the outsider view. I guess that it is inevitable, but I would like to delay it as much as possible.

I was lucky in London, much as I had been for my visit last year; the weather was perfect, a beautiful early spring day. I had an eight hour layover. As I said earlier after I dealt with customs, money exchange, and ‘left luggage’ I headed into London on the ‘tube.’ Heathrow is the western end of the Piccadilly Line. It’s about a 40 minute ride into London center.

I needed to walk, explore, and move my legs after the cramped flight from Newark. It couldn’t have been a better day to tramp around London. The Eye was crowded, the embankment jammed; everyone was taking advantage of the weather. The Tubes were under construction; the circle line was completely closed, I wanted to see an interesting neighborhood. I decided to abandon the trip to the Tower Bridge and head to Notting Hill.

I liked the look of the neighborhood from the movie – that romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts. The neighborhood was pretty much as expected, but time was running out, on to High Street. I was not sure what to expect, I had heard of the name but didn’t associate it with anything, even after seeing it I’m not sure what of make of it. I enjoyed walking the neighborhood, but I can’t say anything about it.

Writing does not seem to be clicking today, maybe it would be more productive to edit the photographs and get a posting out.

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