Noam reminded me that Paul-Andrés was giving a seminar today…: jcreed

Noam reminded me that Paul-Andrés was giving a seminar today at 2pm, so at 1pm I hurried over to PPS on the metro, arriving there at 1:30 to find... nobody around. Tried to grab a quick lunch (another "with an egg on top" sort of meal) while eyeing the clock, and got back at like 2:10, totally afraid I was missing the beginning of the talk, to find... Paul-Andrés was in his office, and a handful of people had drifted into the seminar room. The talk started maybe five minutes later. Paul-Andrés started saying that since I was still around he'd do the seminar in English, but I felt sort of bad being That Guy, so I smiled and shrugged and was like "ehhh, c'est mathematique" and he switched back to French.

I can say this much: intense category theory makes not very much less sense delivered in a foreign language.

But seriously, I actually had a lot of fun trying to keep up, and I understood more than I expected. The blackboard-writing served as a useful Rosetta stone, allowing me to see familiar mathematical turns of phrase, and hear how they are rendered in French.

The seminar went on until like 4:30(!), and then Noam and I talked for a good while after, and then walked over to Cité Universitaire for a bit of a picnic with some other friends of his. I was feeling pretty solidly not-introvert-tired on the walk over, but the weather was just a bit too cold for me to actually relax, and I ducked out after not too long.

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