Lots of travelling lately. Just returned from a short trip to BeNeLux (here's a link for the non-Europeans) for a scientific conference, but am already on a week-long US domestic trip. I've been really lucky with my travel lately though (knock on wood). Without the usual mishaps (weather delays, mechanical problems, missing luggage, et cetera), travel is not tiring at all! I'm also very fortunate to be almost immune to jet lag. I don't know anyone who suffers less from it than I do. Summer time also makes it easier to travel light, and avoiding checking in any luggage.
For my trip to BeNeLux, I flew to Heathrow and then took the Eurostar fast train plus local train. Just had one day back home after a couple of days in upstate New York. The upper midwestener next to me on the plane thought I was from Buffalo. I swear I'm not trying to fool people, pulling some catch-me-if-you-can stunt! I'm always quite surprised and amused when people think I'm from any anglo-saxon country. Planes were pretty much packed and when we went shopping, the mall parking lot was 99% full. I heard the number of US domestic flights have been reduced by 20%, but still. Are we really in the worst economic slump in the US since the Great Depression? I'm getting mixed signals. Maybe people still go to the mall, but shop less?
I have a bunch of notes (harder to find public WiFi in Europe, so I wrote notes off-line several times) I'll clean up and post over the next week or so. At least that's the plan. I don't want to blab too much about me, I'm just not that interesting. Instead I'll try to write things up I figured out along the way that might be simultaneously somewhat useful to others and are not easily googleable.
