Bugger me gently.

My niece and nephew. A photo I uploaded a while ago, but haven't had a chance to use.

I shall use the modern miracle of bullet points to explain my wonderous and harrowing journey so far.

• I spent most of the time in Chicago pretending to work on the book chapter, by making superficial changes to it and rambling on with reassuring technical nonsense when quizzed about it. In the interim, I was furiously swotting away on learning the theory of options pricing. Also decided that Chicago was a gay place to do a postdoc.
  
• More recently, I discovered the above probably warrants as a paragraph, but grimly pressed on.
  
• I flew to Trondheim in Norway for a postdoc 'interview'*, and gave a seminar. Loved the place, learned a lot of fun facts about Norway that I shall use to both amuse and bemuse people in bars.
  
• Flew to Oslo (also in Norway, duh) to have an 'interview' for a position in Nice (which is in France). START THE CONFOUNDERON 5000.
  
• Flew to Nice to have a look to see if I like the place. I was also meant to meet someone there, but this fell through while I was in Chicago. Chia picked me up at the airport, and we had a look around and visited the offices. I decided Nice as a city is crappy, that the position is too bound up with French beaurocracy, and that the pay was crappy.
  
• Spent a few days with Chia driving from Nice to Rome, while still cramming for the finance interview. Had a fabulous time. I dropped a whole load of bling on an Italian suit in Siena for my interview** in London.
  
• Got to London yesterday, rolled up to B-roq's, got a haircut, bought a shirt and tie. The shirt turned out to be some sort of clown suit which required cufflinks (A fitting room assistant at Marks&Spencers has been added to my "People to send to forced labour camps when I'm ruler of all the known multiverses" list). Thankfully, B-roq had an appropriate shirt.
  
• Went to the finance interview today. Which is where we resume our regular format.
  

The interview went from 1pm to 6:30pm and involved 5 people. They rode me 'round like an drunk, unconscious hooker in a distopian, post-apocalyptic, seedy bar movie scene. The questions involved brain-teasers, calculus, probability, and some basic option pricing stuff. It was nerve-wracking, and a little surreal to be sitting around in a luxurious interview room, dressed up like a funeral director, pondering over some silly question about arranging marbles, while being carefully observed by people with doctorates in physics, mathematics, engineering, computer science, and finance. Strangely, I nailed some very difficult questions, and fumbled around like a buffoon with some very, very basic ones. I honestly have no idea how I went.


Footnotes:
* Not so much an interview as a sales pitch. The positions are mine if I want them.
** Not so much an interview as statutory rape.