five years in Edinburgh

Got an email with this tantalizing offer of a five year postdoctoral position in mathematics at the University of Edinburgh:

Chancellor's Fellowship (five positions) [tenure-track posts at Lecturer or Reader
level]

Applications are invited for up to five Chancellor's Fellowship posts in
Mathematics. Each Fellowship provides a research-focused reduced-teaching position
for up to 5 years, followed immediately by a standard open-ended (ie "tenured")
lectureship or readership post.

Applicants should have research interests in any area of:

Applied and Computational Mathematics
Financial Mathematics
Mathematical Physics
Operational Research
Pure Mathematics
Statistics

One of the positions will be specifically dedicated to algebra (Representation
Theory, very broadly conceived).

Applicants will have a research record of the highest calibre, exhibiting the
potential to become an international leader. We welcome candidates whose interests
may also reach out to other disciplines.

Appointment will normally be made on the Lecturer scale, £37,382 - £44,607.
Dependent on experience, and in exceptional circumstances, appointment may be to
Senior Lecturer/Reader level for which the salary scale is £47,314 - £53,233.

Interviews will be held during May 2013. Applications containing a detailed CV and
an outline of a proposed research programme should be made online

Another coincidence…

After the coincidence of bumping into Marc Suchard in an Edinburgian Indian restaurant on Tuesday night, I faced another if much less pleasant coincidental event: for the third time in a row, my bag went missing on a Air France flight to Scotland… This happened first for the mixture meeting in 2009, costing me an attempt at Tower Ridge on Ben Nevis, then again when I took part in the colloquium celebrating Mike Titterington last May. Since having three independently lost luggages on three (or six) trips is very unlikely, there must be a reason to this pattern! Besides a conspiracy theory about the airline pushing me towards other companies because of my grumpy patronage or my unsuccessful requests for Irn Bru, possible reasons are late checking-ins (even though this does not apply in the last two cases) and use of a [small] backpack that is always turned into an “oversized” piece of luggage by the airline ground personal (does not apply to the first occurrence), but I do not carry particularly suspicious items, not even haggis on the way back… There must be a better reason than that!

Edinburgh sunrise