At Minneapolis airport-- I have a 3 hour layover before the flight to London Heathrow. Actually 3.5 hours, but I spent 30 minutes walking around the airport-- something like .9 miles around the parking structure. Can't complain, I was bumped to first class on the flight from Madison, and I saw an interesting vignette. While I was waiting to board in Madison, there was a passenger who spent a few minutes at the gate podium trying to get an aisle seat on his next flight, at least from the snippet I caught. He was quite disappointed to be turned down, but I have to conclude either that he's not a frequent flyer, paid less for his ticket, or bought at the last moment, because getting aisle seats isn't that difficult, usually, and he said he checked online. It was interesting, because he appeared to have no carryons-- though I think in fact he had put all his stuff in the business center area at Madison and was simply comfortable walking around without it. It was, to some extent, oddly suspicious, I was tempted for a moment to mention something, but to whom? Security? The gate staff? This isn't an El Al flight, it's a flight to Minneapolis from Madison. I pretty much forgot about him until halfway through the actual flight, and there he was, hanging around in the first class cabin with the flight attendants. He had a cup of something, so he must have come up and requested a drink because they don't serve to coach class on that short flight. And, in fact, they usually keep the coach passengers out of first class, but there he was, chumming it up with the attendants, and, in fact, he stayed up there until the very end of the flight, long after the seatbelt sign went on, right until the pilot announced the landing. It was odd- there was something odd about the whole thing. On the one hand, I felt the righteous Glenn Beck-ian indignation of the elite-- I'm in first class by right, might, or money, and you've no right to be up here-- and on the other hand the more blue state underdog sentiment-- go ahead and work the system-- you were in coach but apparently were interesting enough to merit tolerance by the flight attendants-- maybe you even got a pack of peanuts out of it. But he had a strangeness to him, an intensity-- he was average height, average build, perhaps just slightly Italian or Middle Eastern complexian and physiognomy, Dark hair and just the hint of 5'oclock shadow. A bit of Henry Fonda and a touch of Stallone, perhaps, without the bulk or bruteness. But something odd, out of place, though I can't put my finger on what it was.
Anyway, I'm off to the UK for 8 days-- the Ghoshal conference on managerially relevant research (of all things) where I may even present our strategic flexibility paper, and then 3 days in Edinburgh for venture community development and apartment hunting. This is, in some ways, the inflection point trip-- after this there will only be one more visit to Imperial, to defend my dissertation on 1-Sep, and after this there will only be the move to Edinburgh for all of us (assuming all the visa stuff gets worked out properly). So this is the last trip before the move-- the last of the upward steps to the pinnacle-- it's all downhill after this.
There's been some small developments worth mentioning, I suppose. The house sale continues to move forward-- we will close on 28-May as the 31st is, of course, Memorial Day, something neither the buyers nor we picked up on the first go-around. The buyers are being very kind to let us stay in the house until June 10th, the day before we leave for Costa Rica. Lynn has finished her last day of work and is now committed to getting ready for the move. There's still so much to do-- belongings to dispose of, decisions to make about what to ship, logistics, and so on. We got indirect confirmation from the Primary school in Scotland we were most interested in that they don't have a space for Taran, so we're going to look at a secondary area south of the City Centre that many people have mentioned to us: Marchmont. I'm sure that will be fine as well, though it's funny that both Lynn and I got slightly connected to the idea of being in Stockbridge. I think it was the one apartment that had a piano, and the fact that the public library was right next to the school. Well, there's only so much we can do about all that. As Kate, the relocation person says, the school issue may be trickier than housing-- I wish we could ensure the school placement because I'm sure we can find something in the catchment that would work for us.
Listening to Eno's "Ambient Music for Airports" -- self-evidently appropriate, but still fascinating. I'm not quite sure where my interest in Ambient/Trance music blossomed out of, and goodness knows there's much I simply can't tolerate, but Eno's work is, on the whole fascinating-- relaxing and yet novel at the same time.
I'm very hopeful I'll be able to get work done on this trip-- specifically building and filling out the third study component of the dissertation and updating the introductory literature review and the introduction that binds it all together. If I'm diligent, I could theoretically send a draft to Gerry by the end of the month and finalize it before we leave for Costa Rica-- what a relief that would be.
The meeting schedule at the Uni (UK slang, I guess) looks good-- meetings with innovation-related managers in other schools. I'm enthusiastic about the possibility of building some connections, but the tech transfer systems in place at Edinburgh are already sophisticated, as far as I can tell, and I'm guessing my role is more associated with finding a way to integrate activities at the business school, or arguably, develop activities at the business school that could integrate with the tech transfer and venture creation programs already in place. Either way, I'm excited to learn more about it and see what I can contribute and build.
There are also meetings with entrepreneurship faculty, and I'm hopeful I'll get a better sense of the teaching context and my likely responsibilities. I'd rather not have to figure out a curriculum after getting back from Costa Rica-- Celina's emails about prepping for her EMLyon courses have been instructive about the challenges of preparing course on a tight schedule. I've not had to do that for a long time and I'd prefer not to go back to that model.
It turns out that Paul, Ellen, their two boys and a guest will be joining us in Costa Rica for 10 days. I'm sure they won't be hanging out with us the whole time-- they are much more adventurous than we are and will likely sample much more of the local culture, whereas we're relatively happy to be surfing tourists. So we'll have 3 weeks with no visitors at all and then the DeWalds and the Reckwerdts will show up in quick succession-- it will probably work out perfectly as we'll probably be right at the edge of driving each other crazy by then :)
Well, this seems like a good entry for now. Cheers from G8.
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