Sabbatical

So here it is, the (apparently) long-awaited second post to our blog. I am happy to report that I am well settled in Manchester, England. I am even more happy to report that Talinn is scheduled to arrive here on Sunday morning---at the somewhat un-Godly hour of 7:20 am. Since we will have been apart for 18+ days (but who's counting?) at that point we will be very happy to see each other. Or I expect she would be if she were not so sleep-deprived.

Anyway, enough of future prospects. What, I hear you ask of the past two weeks? In fact, I have been spending my time getting settled here. I am now officially a member of Staff at the University of Manchester. I have an appointment here as a Visiting Researcher from July 1-November 1. This is the first leg of my "sabbatical", a concept I will now explain. Those of you who already know all about that can skip the next paragraph.

Sabbatical, in principle modeled after the biblical concept of Sabbath, is a year off that you get after you have worked for a University/Church/Employer for six years. Oops, in Ohio, that's seven years. Obviously they did not read Genesis very carefully. At least that part. But lest you think I have already slipped into the mind-set of what we in Australia call the "whinging Poms" I have to say that I feel very lucky/blessed/happy to have this benefit of my employment. Seriously. In what other line of work these days to you get essentially full job security plus a scheduled year off every eighth year of work? Pretty jolly good stuff I would say. Now presumably because the legislature in Ohio did not think that the idea of giving someone a year off sounded very good they call it "Faculty Fellowship Leave". I had to write a proposal explaining what I would to enhance my career, make the world a better place, etc. in Academic Year 2008-9. Pretty much I told them that I would be pushing back the frontiers of Theoretical Nuclear Physics in various locations around the globe. Because pretty much that's what I'm going to try and do. We have adopted this globe-trotting lifestyle because (a) Talinn is very excited about getting a whole bunch more stamps in her passport and (b) OU will only pay 2/3 of my salary during the next year. Fortunately I have friends in places like Manchester with whom I can write proposals to fund visits like this. So I am singing for my proverbial supper by working on a research project with my friend and colleague Dr Judith McGovern here in Manchester.

Therefore one does not really "rest" on a contemporary academic sabbatical. Except in the sense that "a change is as good as a rest". And it is definitely a lot less stressful to not have to juggle so many responsibilities at work (teaching, committees, research, etc.). But clearly I am planning to---and want to---get a fair bit of research done this year. We also have a fair bit of gallivanting planned---as you can see from the itinerary Talinn posted. And it would be nice to come back with the batteries recharged. Figuring out how to balance all these (worthy) sabbatical activities will, I think, be one of the challenges of the next year. Albeit a nice challenge to have.

But so far it is going pretty well. Until now my life here has been rather boring. I get up, eat breakfast, catch the bus (which arrives pretty much outside the door roughly every 10 mins.), go to work, push back those frontiers, come home, eat dinner, watch some TV, maybe do a bit more frontier pushing, and go to bed. I am thinking of going out to a concert, e.g. this one and/or a movie, since I really have not done much so far except work, and get the apartment set up.

The apartment, or flat as I am learning to call it, is very nice. It is in a place called Didsbury, which is a suburb about 25 mins. bus ride from downtown Manchester. More on the whole English-place-names thing later. The flat is one of eight in a converted Victorian house. Which apparently was owned by an Argentinian linen merchant! Thanks to the wonders of Google Earth you can see it, at least from above, if you type "Manchester, Lancashire, M20 6DG, UK" and look for the place at the corner of Wilsmlow Road and Parkfield Road, South. (All right, so I just have to say: the quality of the satellite imagery is MUCH better for Manchester than for rural SE Ohio. What is up with THAT? Is it just that there are more people to spy on here?)The flat is fully furnished and even has crockery and linen.

So if I had all that time you might think that I would be posting like a fiend to the blog. But I was somewhat inhibited in my literary aspirations by the absence of Internet at the flat. Now it is indeed the case that I could write my post at home and then put it on the Internet at work, but somehow the instant gratification of blogging appeals to even those of us who are deferred-gratification people. But now I am connected at home! Indeed, I have high-speed internet at the flat, something we could only dream of in the woods of Rhoric Heights. So blogging away I am. And this is quite nice recreation, and is a good reason not to go and calculate some more Feynman diagrams.

Speaking of excuses not to go be a work-a-holic: Judith, Judith's husband Mike Birse, and I did go for a long walk in Wales on Saturday. That was good: we were lucky enough not to be rained upon (a constant threat here in the British Isles). We got to walk on the "Offa's Dyke Trail". This is not, as you might guess, a historical tour covering the path to legalization of same-sex marriages in Scandinavia, but instead refers to a barrier constructed between England and Wales sometime in the late eighth century. And yes, it really did look like that picture. OK, it looked like that except the sky was not blue.

Indeed, the sky is rarely blue here. You know, it was really warm in London yesterday. They said so on the BBC. It was forecast to reach a whole 23 degrees C. (That is about 75 in uncivilized temperature units.)

But there is compensation for the milder weather in the long evenings. As I type this it is 9:42 pm and it is still twilight outside. A month after the solstice. Northern latitudes do have their compensations. Although whether I would feel that way on December 21st is another matter. However, by then we will have moved on to greener fields and pastures new. Well, browner fields actually, since we will be in Australia. This makes me think that this whole sabbatical year could be regarded as the Physics equivalent of "Endless Summer". Only with nuclear physics replacing surfing.