More linguistic frustrations

I was rather hoping to be both learning about and simultaneously blogging about string cosmology this month as the KITPC program started up (and continues for the next two months). Sadly, because I was the only non-Chinese speaker for the first two weeks of the conference, all of the lectures introducing the subjects were held in Chinese. I gave up after just a couple of days.

Tom Banks came out for the third week and gave some excellent lectures on holography and De Sitter space, a subject which I've been reading up on since. From now on all of the lectures should be in English, but I will not be here to report on them (leaving on Sunday to Chengdu). There are many things I will miss about China but the lack of input from talks in English is one thing I'm really looking forward to getting back to. As I speak with my collaborators who have been racing around Europe all summer to conferences I see that there is still some considerable way to go in the true integration of West and East on a scientific basis. Things are at least steadily improving and the KITPC is a good step in the right direction.