STRAIGHT TO THE TOP

On Thursday night Roger and I went to a dinner for the top Computer Science students at Adelaide University. We were there because Alex was the top Honours student. Of all the many tables in the beautiful room at Ayers House we were directed to sit at the one closest to the speaker. I looked at the name tags of the others who would be sitting with us. They were all professor this and that - Alex's lecturers and supervisor and so on - as well as Alan and Susan Noble. Alan Noble is head of Google in Australia. Alex is very quiet about his achievements and it was quite amazing to realise, at this late stage, while talking to all these people during the evening that they hold him in such high regard and his presence as the only student at that table was evidence in itself.

When people are so passionate about what they do they are great to talk to and I enjoyed myself enormously. As well as being a fun bloke, the man next to me was having some problems with the soil in his vegetable garden so we got on famously! After the speeches, when we were all back at our tables again, I asked Alan ( Mr. Google) the big question - "Why is Blogger such a pain in the bum to use? eg When you import a photo into the blog why does it go to the top of the post, which always messes up the layout of the whole rest of the post?" Of course this is not his field at all but when one has the ear of the top man in the country one has to make the most of it! He agreed it sounded pretty crazy and suggested Alex get into it and fix it for me. You see, Alex is working at Google in Sydney for a few months before going to Oxford to do a PhD. His work is secret but I am sure he can diverge a bit to help his mum now he has the word from Alan! So, I am writing a list of problems for Alex to see to. Let's hope we get some things sorted! Alan is a totally left-field kind of bloke from Adelaide, with innovation oozing out of every pore and who even speaks Japanese too but doesn't, sadly, grow any vegetables...yet!

The food was truly excellent - a thing I rarely say when I go out, as we eat so well at home. The coffee was so bad, though. No excuse for that. Evidently the wine was top class but I didn't have as I don't really like it and since they didn't offer me limoncello I drank water.

This post is not about seeds, directly, but blogging is pretty darn close to seedsaving in the whole world scale of important things, don't you agree? You will all know who to thank when this photo import thing is fixed! And if a person can't brag about their children on the blog, where can they?
............................................................................................ Alex at our shack........................