A belated Happy New Year everyone! I hope you didn’t get snowed in – oh yes, it’s been a few weeks since the big freeze, but we’re still talking about it!

I was lucky enough to book a flight back to Manchester that didn’t get delayed or cancelled due to the weather conditions, so I made it here safely – after already slipping the very first day the snow started! Fortunately (ish…), that was the day right after my graduation, so I didn’t have to hobble over the stage. I had my graduation on 16 December, and I was quite excited (my first real graduation with hats and gowns and all that.) The ceremony was good, we had a nice reception at the School of Computer Science (plenty of food!) and it was great to see all the people from my MSc course that I hadn’t seen since summer.

I’m currently planning some more WiSET (Women in Science, Engineering and Technology) events, one will be a social with tea and cake (Wednesday 10th February). The other one will be a speed networking event in March (on Wednesday the 17th) with quite a few big names (so far I’ve invited IBM, Microsoft, Imagine, EA Games, the Department of Health and more!), let’s hope they can make it!

In other event news, there’s a few nice things coming up that might be worth attending – I’m quite excited about the next Girl Geek Dinner this month at the lovely MadLab, I’ll try to convince the organisers that I really must attend the Lovelace Colloquium 2010 and there’s another Turing Lecture coming up in Manchester. And my dear friend Luke has organised a “Cake shaped like the internet” competition. Geektastic!

Oh, and I’m doing research as well, of course. Most of the time, actually. I’ll talk about my work a little more in the next post 🙂

In terms of food, I must admit – I’m in love. Call it addicted, that is. I’ve discovered that the cafe in Blackwells book shop, the one in the university precinct, makes the best and biggest salad boxes on campus. While they are rather pricey, they are just SO lovely, I can’t make it through the week without at least one Blackwells day. Highly recommended.