Well, that was a fun evening. As Kevin reports in comments on his post, the Consul-General has a very nice house near the Presidio just a few doors down from Diane Feinstein’s place. It was quite a small gathering, and it wasn’t full of venture capitalists as I had feared, so I actually got to talk to the Vice Chancellor a bit. I was delighted to hear that my former colleagues in the Department of Oceanography now have proper research vessels and can swan off the to Seychelles to do their research rather than have to bob around on small boats on Southampton Water like we did in my day. There are also some interesting new developments going on. All I’m saying for now is that one of the things that the VC mentioned perked my interest and the first thing I did on getting home was to email Cory.

Oh yes, and it turned out that the Consul-General is a Welsh rugby fan and as soon as I get back to the UK I am getting a copy of this.