Our academic programme officially started on Thursday with our first class, which is on the Structure of Stars. The first lecture was on fairly basic stuff, most of which I already knew, so I can't say much about how it'll go. Apart from that, I'll be taking an class on relativity in the Physics department, and we also have a interesting seminar courses where we take turns presenting papers to the other students on current research topics.

I have also chosen to do my semester project with Renyue Cen, a Chinese lecturer working on cosmological simulations. It may seem somewhat of a coincidence that after working with Kinwah for 2 years in UCL, I'm now working with another person of Chinese origin, but honestly, I chose him because he had an interesting project and not because of his ethnicity. (I'll talk more about the project later...it's about the reionisation of the universe but I don't really know very much about it at the moment).

I always knew that Princeton would be a very challenging experience, and it was made clear by people I spoke to that graduate school will be tough, but it didn't quite hit home until I got settled in. There are about 20 graduate students in Peyton Hall (i.e. the astro department) at any time, and obviously I've already met the other 4 students of my intake, but apart from that, I think there's still a half-dozen students whom I haven't yet spoken to, and a couple of them whom I haven't even seen at all because they haven't emerged from their offices. And I've seen the words 'bleak' and 'difficult' used to describe the existence of graduate students here, so that's not too reassuring.

Anyway I'm currently excited to be starting work. I have no doubt that it will tough, but I came here to learn new things, and the challenges I'll face can only force me to learn more things.

At a reception given by the Dean of the Graduate School, I spotted John Nash getting himself a drink. Surprisingly, there wasn't anyone accosting or surrounding him as I had expected. A girl I was talking to said that a friend of hers had approached him for an autograph, and Nash declined and walked away.

I guess that while most celebrities like actors and singers are out to be famous as their raison d'etre, academic celebrities never asked for their fame. There are easier ways to get famous, like joining the Pop Idol auditions.

In the past couple of days, I have had conversations on the linguistic confusion in Montenegro, the political situation in Syria, the Argentinian accent, cosmology experiments, the experience of being in Beirut during the recent war, and carillon bells.

Princeton is shaping up to be really interesting.