St. John’s, St. John’s, a helluva town.
Cabot Tower is up, but the Battery’s down.

With apologies to Leonard Bernstein and the authors of the Broadway musical On the Town….
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That’s Chinese food you see here. I am back in Beijing where they just call it food, of course. With three colleagues from Memorial I am here again for the PhD recruitment fair. We are expecting to see over 2,700 registered potential doctoral candidates flood the meeting hall where our tables will be set up over the next few days.
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I tried not to skip last week’s posting but I have been spending way too much time on planes this semester and just could not manage a blog. I’m back now, though, for a little while, at least. I just returned from the annual meetings of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies in Ottawa where we celebrated, talked, and watched the American elections on giant TV screens in the ballroom of the magnificent Chateau Laurier. It felt like the perfect Canadian experience, especially with a US Embassy party happening next door. There was a fabulous photo moment when the Governor General of Canada, his Excellency David Johnston, ran into the American Ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, as we were escorting the GG to the ballroom for our gala. If I could have I would have snapped a photo of their smiling, handshaking encounter but not only would it not have been appropriate but I was not in possession of my camera-enabled BlackBerry.

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