It has been a busy week, the undergraduates are back, semester has started, and all 3 of the academic bloggers in the Department got to dress like penguins (see piccy of Jim to the left). The occasion for the dressing-like-a-penguin was the Institute of Physics (IoP)’s annual awards bash. Jim won the Kelvin medal this year. This is an IoP award for outreach. Incidentally, the medal Jim is wearing in the photo is his OBE not the Kelvin medal.

So Jim went to collect a medal, Paul went as an IoP regional group chair and I went as the Department had a table. It was rather fun, at least it was once I managed to work out the bow tie of my hired dinner jacket worked. The dinner was held at the very fancy Landmark hotel in a posh part of London. This is not the sort of hotel I usually visit, University regs say I should stay in up to 3 star hotels, this is a 5 star one. It is £300 plus a night and for that you don’t even get free wifi or breakfast! Shocking.

I enjoyed the dinner, it was good to see people, some of whom I know like Jim, being recognised for their teaching, research and outreach. There was a an ex-student of the Department there, and it was great to see her again and see how she is doing. It is always good to catch up with graduates and hear about what they are getting up to.

The after dinner speaker was our boss the universities minister David Willetts. His speech was very well delivered, and nice and short. He of course told us how lucky we were to have our fine government, but it was interesting to hear him.

The dinner was on Thursday, on Friday it was back to teaching. saying hello to my new level-1 tutorial group, and chatting with the returning 2nd and 3rd year students at a little reception the Department held. This was quite a long week but I can hardly complain about tired, the earliest I got up was 5:45 and that was on Saturday to watch the rugby. It was worth it, we won and now Wales are in the semifinal of the rugby world cup. The last time this happened, our undergraduates weren’t even born.