I've been treated like a prince in Princeton. I'm writing this in my hotel room on my final night here, but it's been a very eventful journey so far.

The flight here was one of the worst I have ever taken. I was flying BA a.k.a. ''Bloody Awful' from Shitrow Terminal 4, and surprise surprise, we took off an hour late. I may have accumulated about 3 round-the-world-trip worth of air-miles over the past few years,but for the 1st time in my life I was treated to an aborted landing. The plane was about 10 feet above the runway at Newark when the pilot hit full throttle and pulled up, so we had to go around for another approach. On terra firma, I was pulled aside at immigration for additional processing, simply because Malaysia is apparently a terrorist nation according to the forever-brilliant US authorities. So when I finally got nto Princeton at 2.30pm, it was about 3 hours later than I had intended.

Princeton itself is a nice, if small, colonial town, and I won't describe it more because pics will be up when I get back to London. When I got into the astrophysics department, Charlotte the student admin offered to go out and get me a sandwich. Embarrassed and shy, I tried to refuse but she insisted. I was taken to meet Jim Stone the graduate admissions chairman, and he told me about their programme. I attended a talk by a professor from UPenn which the rest of the department attended as well, which was interesting because it was about cosmology, my field of interest, although I didn't understand all of it. In the evening, I had dinner with the visiting professor, a Princeton professor and several students.

Most of today was occupied with meeting wth literally half of their faculty (the department here is very small, only about 15 professors). I met them individually for about 30 minutes each, and we discussed both my interests and their research (as it turns out, mostly the latter). Some of these guys literally wrote the book on their respective fields, and I was impressed that they cared enough about getting good students that they spared time for me, even if I may not end up working for them, or indeed not choose Princeton at all.Everyone was nice and friendly, but it was immediately obvious they really are world experts at what they do. A couple of them had interesting characters as well. Robert Lupton is a pony-tailed Englishman who goes around barefoot (yes, barefoot!), and has not lost his dry English sense of humour despite several decades here. Another was Rich Gott, who has intense eyes (as in there is a glint in them) and spent our meeting telling weird stories in addition to giving an impassioned extolation of Princeton's virtues. i later learned from the grad students that he has been known to rant at students for 5 hours nonstop, and likes writing papers on topics like time-travel and aliens.

During the breaks in my schedule, I had the opportunity to mix with the students, and they brought me out for dinner as well. They told me about the student life here as well as telling the not-so-good things here, which shows that they were being frank.They were a nice bunch and I got on well with them.

I'm off to Boston tomorrow to visit Harvard, and it'll be interesting to see how that place contrasts with Princeton.

Yesterday evening, I took out my guitar for Mikhail the Romanian guy to take a look (see previous post). He's been playing since he was 10, but hasn't played for the past 2 years. In fact, he doesn't even keep long nails anymore.

After I played him a couple of pieces (I'm a bit rusty as well as I haven't been practising regularly in some time), I handed him the guitar for him to try. The moment he started playing I could tell that he's a very good guitarist, even if he's really rusty, more so than I am.

He played parts of a couple of pieces (as he forgot them halfway through), then to my surprised he started to play Bach's D minor Chaconne (a properly played version can be heard here), one of the most difficult (both technically and musically) pieces in the classical guitar repertoire. He was playing quite hesitantly and with mistakes, but considering that he hasn't played for a couple of years, it was pretty damn impressive.

Before I continue, I should admit that I'm usually a lousy listener; I have fallen asleep at concerts before, and even when I don't chances are my mind will get distracted and I don't fully appreciate the music. However, with this guy playing the piece in front of me, even if in a rusty way, I found myself following every note and internalising the music. While his playing was imperfect, this was the first time I truly saw the beauty of the Chaconne even though I've heard it many times.

Later in the night, I put on a recording of the Chaconne to try and recapture the beauty again, but it just seemed flat and lifeless.

This just goes to show that music is ultimately a means of communication: I had never spoken to a Romanian before, and yet this stranger could open my eyes to a beauty that I could never perceive before.

I'll be in the US for the rest of this week, so there won't be any new posts till I get back!

I was having lunch in the dining room today, and I sat in front of a new person I've never seen before. We started off a conversation, and I learned that he was Mikhail (sp?) from Romania, and that he was around in London for a job interview.

After a pause in the conversation, he suddenly asked me, 'Are you a guitar player?'. I was surprised and more than a bit discomfitted, and replied in the affirmative. I asked him how he knew, and he said that he noticed my right-hand fingernails were long.

It's kind of like a secret sign for a mysterious brotherhood, that 'brothers' can recognise each other even when they don't know each other.

Fact of the day: there is apparently a Chinatown in Lagos, Nigeria!