Lost in Egham

The conference sessions started at 9, but it was still about 9:15 before I could drag myself out of bed and shower. I got myself showered and shaved and made it in time for the first coffee break. The first conference session I attended was actually very interesting and quite good. Although I have no shortage of ideas for research, the sessions helped me think of some extensions to an idea that has been fermenting in my mind for a few years now about the implications of conceptualizing "hope" and "anticipated regret" as two anchors of a single emotional dimension of forward-looking counterfactual thinking. It helped me think through some other ideas on the implications of this conception for message framing and consumer satisfaction definition. But, most of you reading this blog couldn't care less, so I'll spare you the details. I do have a full page of notes, though.

Lunch consisted of many plates of sandwiches labeled "meat," "fish," and "veg." I sampled several of these sitting outside and enjoying the sunny but pleasant weather. Since I still hadn't bought a SIM card for my phone (the free sim card I ordered from t-mobile.co.uk never arrived in Purley), I decided to take the short walk into Egham town to see whether they had some mobile phone store where I could get a sim card and top it up.

I got lost even before I left the campus. I tried to follow the campus map, but it wasn't that well labeled. It was after walking for ten minutes that I discovered I had walked past a side road I needed to take and was on the other side of campus. Lots of campus construction did not help and after more aimless wandering, I found the narrow path that was supposed to lead to Egham town centre. Once I left the campus gate, I found myself right in the middle of a residential area with numerous local streets and no signage to the town centre. I wandered aimlessly in the same general direction I was heading and occasionally asked people which way to go. They all seemed to suggest that I just needed to walk in a certain general direction and that giving specific directions would be too complex. It was quite nice to walk through these typically English neighborhoods even though I kept walking and discovered that this town centre was about a mile or two away. Don't miss the Austin Mini on the street in the photograph.

Finally, I made it to the town centre which was really not much to write home about. It is basically a narrow street with various retailers on either side of the street. I stopped in to the "Iceland Supermarket" and asked them about a mobile phone store and was told there wasn't one in Egham. The clerk did say that the Tesco Supermarket down the street may have SIM cards and I walked down to Tesco. I find supermarkets irresistable when I travel abroad and spent some time wandering the store. I made sure that they still sell "Kinder Eggs" in England and also made a mental note of other chocolate to buy before I head back home. When I was a kid, my parents would travel to England and bring home Cadbury caramels and Curly Wurly. Both are still available and worth buying for nostalgic reasons. Neil liked the "Nestle Aero" chocolate bars when we were in France some years ago and I may pick up some of that too. But, I'll leave that for Newcastle. I also bought some beer from a display that said "sample our local brews." Couldn't resist buying a bottle of "Hobgoblin" from "Wychwood Brewery." I then wandered over to a rather strange mural on the street that looked very "olde englysh" but had no explanation (see picture on the left). I looked around and realized I had no idea which way to head to get back to the University.

After walking along a bit, I decided to ask a lady how to walk back to the University. "Oh dear," she replied. "You're quite far away. It's at least a half hour walk." "That's fine," I replied, "I have time." She looked around for a moment and then said pointing in a general direction that was directly opposite to where I was heading, "Well, it's up there on the hill. Just head in that general direction and you'll see the tower on the hill in front of you. Just keep heading towards it." After heading back the way I came, I did, in fact, see the tower on the hill and wandered through the residential streets keeping an eye on the tower. Surprisingly, after asking only a couple of people on the way, I managed to get back to the gate I had taken to leave the campus and found myself back at Wedderburn Hall where I am staying. If you look carefully in the photograph, you can see a little bit of the tower poking up above the treeline in the background right in the center of the picture.

Now I really felt the impact of the lack of airconditioning or any air-flow that I had mentioned yesterday. I'm back in my room after a long walk and sweating profusely. There is no fan to cool down with and no airconditioning to relax to. There was nothing I could do but strip off my clothes and splash cold water on my face and upper body. It took a good half hour to stop sweating like a pig sitting in an airless room. I don't get what people here do. There must be some magical system they use to cool down in these rooms that I am not privy to. I can't imagine they plan on cooling down with a pint of warm beer. At the conference breaks, even the water tables have water and juice at room temperature ... If anyone has any ideas, please post them here.

I have to add one little interesting note here that may subject me to some ridicule. I found it slightly interesting that when I stopped people on the street and asked them for directions, I tended to put on a slight English accent. Now, before you say anything, I wasn't doing my Harry Potter imitations that leave the kids in stitches. However, I noticed that I would change the pitch of my phrase slightly whenever I asked directions here. The slightly sing-song upward pitch at the end of the question is different than when I ask directions in the US. This is not intentional at all. I am not *trying* to put on a British accent, but weirdly enough, I tend to naturally talk very slightly differently to locals. I even notice that my accent unconsciously changes when I talk to my Indian friends compared to when I chat with American friends. I'll try and add some sound clips to this blog to try and better explain what I mean.

In the evening, we had a reception in one of the two courtyards of the Founder's Building. This building is the campus centerpiece and is a spectacular structure. The history of the University is interesting in its own right. Thomas Holloway (after whom the University is named) was a snake oil salesman in the early 19th century. He made millions selling a remedy for everything from asthma and "womens' problems" to consumption and cancer. Of course, his "remedy" contained no active ingredients, but thanks to the well-established "placebo effect" was seen as an incredible remedy. Since Thomas and his wife had no children, at some point he turned philanthropist and wanted to distribute his millions of pounds. He built the Founder's building for the University and it was inaugurated by Queen Victoria in 1888. That's Mr. and Mrs. Holloway you see in the picture of the courtyard on the right. Interestingly, his second big contribution was to build an insane asylum in the same area. Some would argue that these were both completely congruent contributions. Others have pointed out that a University founded by a snakeoil salesman is a particularly appropriate venue for a marketing conference. I have hopefully pre-empted many of your comments by including those arguments right here in the blog post. I started the evening with some "Strongbow Cider" and the continued with a couple of glasses of Pimms (apparently a very common local drink), which, if you follow the link, you'll find is 25% alcohol! A large group of us then headed to a local Indian restaurant (Megna, by Englefield Green) and enjoyed a couple of beers and some great Indian food. A smaller group of us then headed back to the lounge in Wedderburn Hall to enjoy the three bottles of beer I had bought at Tesco earlier in the day.