Back in Copenhagen. Turns out I was wrong about the couched area — it's still there, just hidden behind the smoking room.

Trondheim was a lot of fun. I was there for a thesis defense. It's a lot more formal than in the UK; the candidate has to do two lectures (one on the thesis, one on a related topic that they find out two weeks before) and then they get a public examination. We were in a very impressive room, with two lecturns, like a court. The whole experience was a bit strange—there's a large degree of theatricality to it. On the whole, I think it's better than the UK one which consists of three people sitting in a room for 3 hours; it's rather anti-climatic, while the Norweigian version has a sense of occasion about it.

I have a theory, though, about feedback in science. It's well known that once you start to do well in science, then success breeds success; you get better known, more opportunities come your way and so on. I've been starting to wonder whether this is, in part, due to airports. The more successful scientists travel a lot (much more than I). The truth is, in this day and age, airports are great places to work. There is nothing else to do, laptop batteries last long enough. Travelling gives you intermittent access to the internet, so you can get what you need, but can't spend hours reading BBC News as a work-avoidance strategy. In the last few weeks, I've got lots of stuff done, as well as writing blog posts of course.

I am going to test this theory next week, by spending the entire time in the airport. Newcastle is only a 15 minutes from my house, so I plan to go up at 9 and sit on the concourse till 5. But will the magic still work if I don't have a valid ticket? I will report back.

Right, boarding...

I'm sitting in Copenhagen airport, next to the inevitable statue of the Little Mermaid, which resides between a lift shaft and a coffee shop. I'm travelling to Norway to do a thesis examination; I'm quite looking forward to it, to be honest, although I wish it wasn't in public to be honest.

I haven't been to Copenhagen since 2001, I think, when I was here for ISMB. The flight in was pretty bad: small plane, big bumps. My memories of the place are confirmed; it's a nice airport, airy and light. I have a veggie noodles which was actually pretty good. The nice balcony that I remember, on the first floor—low seats, lie down couches, free from children—now mostly houses the smoking and kiddies area (separate of course) and, so, has transformed from the most to least desirable part of the entire airport.

I would have loved to pop into Copenhagen itself—I seem to remember it's not far—but I have to re-read a thesis. What with the trip to Japan, I haven't had time to do it before, hence it's become an airport job.

I'm not doing my carbon quota any good here, about another 200kgs up in, well, whatever the combustion products of a plane are.

11:30

Now in Trondheim. I've never been so far North (well, not while on the ground). It disappointingly warm at -3C and there's not that much snow around either. Trondheim, from a drive through and brief wander, is cool (sorry). There's an amazing number of pubs (half of them are "British" — I've walked past "The three lions", "Little London" and "Macbeth" already; I'll leave you to work out which is the Scottish one. The street I am on, also has a curry house, a vietnamese and a chinese resturant. I could almost be at home, except for the unfeasibly steep angle on the roofs.

I'm also a new person from before. I've seen the Northern Lights. Not seen them well, I admit, through the window of the plane, with the reflection of a reading light in my eyes. But, I have always wanted to see them, I always knew that some day I would, and now I have.

We've had a series of good meetings, I got lots of chance to talk about metadata. It's clear to me that there is plenty of work to be done, but that it's starting to happen. It's not clear to me who will play what role, nor whether we will just repeat the history of bioinformatics. I guess neuroinformatics has the opportunity to do something new, ignore the legacy, that it could even avoid the pitfalls; having said that, one of the biggest pitfalls of bioinformatics was doing everything afresh without looking into the rest of the world.

Yesterday, I got a proper chance to do the tourism thing; we ended up in the electric district, partly by chance — Paul had a guide book, but the hotel wouldn't let us back into our rooms to retrieve it, so we have no above ground map. The electric district is, like the rest of Tokyo, an information overload but more so. At any time, you can here four or five recorded voices, there are flashing lights and music, and signs in Japanese and English everywhere. After that we went down to the palace gardens but they were shut by the time we got there. Evening was food with our ever gracious hosts; lovely again.

Back on the plane now, we are suspended above a Siberian wasteland. Perhaps 2km below, highlighted against the curve of the world there's another plane running parallel to our course. Another ton of carbon released into the air.

So, this is my second time in Japan. It's slightly less confusing than the first; so far, we have been banging against one cliche after the other. It took us a little over an hour to get to the hotel from the airport; we got there at 11, to be told that the rooms would be available at 4pm. Exactly 4pm. So, we went into Tokyo and had lunch sitting on the floor — not good after a flight, I thought my knees were going to seize up. It was good, though, even managed to get something that was mostly veggie. We got back to the hotel at 3:40pm; we were directed to seats till 4pm, where upon the receptionist was prepared to give us the room keys which had been in the pidgeon holes behind her for the last 4 hours.

The hotel is basic but okay. The toilet has, disappointingly, only three controls: shower on, shower off and level. The latter controls the pressure of the cleaning jet which varies from gentle tinkle to colonic irrigation.

Evening was another meal. My eyes rolled when I saw another low table, but it was one which you could put your legs under. The meal was great and involved several varieties of sake.

Got back to the hotel at 9, and after many hours of being awake slept like a log.

Well, depressing though it has been, I'm pleased to say that I managed to get the forth hit on google, when searching with "Adrian Wolfson", alongside all the poor tabloid journalism.

In the end, I turned out to write quite a lot about his death. As well as the blog piece, I wrote some short words—I think that the plan is to put these into a book of remembrance. Depressingly, I am not going to be able to get to the funeral, as I am in Japan (actually I am over China now, on the way). I would have enjoyed meeting my friends again; truth be told, the chances that I will see most of them again are now very small. Ade was my main point of contact.

I don't think my remembrance is particularly good. I think the blog is far better, but I stick it up here anyway. Perhaps, it will help with the google hits.

Sometimes I feel that new technology is designed by perverse people, strictly for the purpose of raising negative emotions from the rest of us mortals. For example, I have a cordless phone in my house. My parents bought it for me a few years ago. It has worked flawlessly since, if I exclude losing the handset when the battery was already low; next time I needed it, the battery had totally gone so I couldn't use the "make it ring" function. Was 2 weeks before I found it—the laundry bin if you are interested.

The address book, however, seems designed for mockery. There's only space for 15 contacts. So this is what the designers think of me, that my social life is so miniscule that I only phone up 15 people? Worse, is the reality of the situation that I only have 11 numbers in it and, of these, one is phone banking (I'm scared of the internet) and the other is for recovering my mobile when I throw it in the laundry bin.

Now, though, it's got worse. The first entry is for Ade Wolfson, whose death I am still coming to terms with. I change the addressbook rarely enough (i.e. never), so that I've no idea how to remove the entry. It sits there, poking me everytime I make a call. This little thing seem cruel.

Perhaps, though, it cuts both ways. I remember my grandfather's funeral. It was summer, and a warm day. Inside the church was cool and pleasant. During the service, a butterfly fluttered around the pews, flying up to the ceiling. It was a beautiful moment. In an incredible act of irrationality, I couldn't help but think that this was my grandfather, flying away and it was comforting to me. Later, my brother talked about the butterfly; he'd been thinking the same thing.

My last attempt to get a pair of shoe laces were met with some difficulties. It was, therefore, a source of distress to find that both of them broke, one after the other, in the same shoe, in a little more than a week; Timpson's have fallen of my Christmas card list as a result. So I then tried a second set. Four shoe shops before I finally found a set. These have now broken also.

So, today, I went out again. Schuh had only one pair for boots (thick as a phone cable, long enough to garotte an elephant) and one pair for formal wear (2 individual strands of polyester, topped with a bit of plastic). Clarks had only brown laces. The guy in John Lewis' shoe department said "well, I'd expect them to be around here". An older and wiser member of staff directed me downstairs, where a third pointed out the laces — "on the right, in the last fixture, just after the ironing boards".

I am now a proud owner of two pairs of black shoe laces, cost £1.20. Apparently, the manufacturers have been "in shoe care since 1911". I will report back; if this pair fails, I have decided, despite being a veggie, to go onto the town moor, slaughter one of the cattle and tan it's hide, from which I will fashion leather laces. I've now spent five quid on shoes laces for one shoe which is pretty old anyway. I realise this is taking the disposable society a little far, but perhaps they sell shoes for less than this.

I've known Ade Wolfson for about 16 years now. In that time, he has been a good friend, a good colleague and a source of endless humour. Last week, he died. The facts of his death are a matter of public record: he killed himself, shortly after being charged with committing a sex act in front of a child. As I think about these facts again, that I have turned over in my mind many times, they still seem as strange and bizarre as the first time.

I met Ade while at University (or just shortly after). We worked together for a small charity, looking after children, providing them with a holiday, when they were unlikely to get another. Neither of us did this work out a sense of do-gooderism. For myself, I never really liked children that much, but I enjoyed the domesticity of running a holiday, as well as the sense of commonality of a bunch of young adults, struggling well outside of their experience to provide these holidays. Ade was much the same, except for the bit about not liking the children. He was a natural: he could settle the homesick, enthuse the recalcitrant, calm a pyscho-nutter. His story-telling was legendary within a year. It was no surprise when he became a school-teacher; anything else would have been a crime against his talents.

As we moved further away from University, we kept in touch, initially through the charity, and later for ourselves. We spoke infrequently but regularly. We both started to display a touch of Homer Simpsonness in our appearance, but other than that we had little in common. Being a school-teacher provided Ade with a gold-lined rut; he loved what he was doing, but worried that it would speed him toward middle age in his twenties. For myself, the insecurity and lack of responsibility of a contract research scientist threatened to keep me as an eighteen year old in my thirties. We spoke about this at times; other favorite topics were the state of his plumbing and Harry Potter; Ade had introduced me to Harry around book 3, while I was living in London. Over the next few years, we completed a post-modern analysis of the plot ahead of publication — for the record, he guessed about Dumbledore, while I got Sirius.

We saw each other rarely. I think the last time was nearly 5 years ago. He lived in south London; I consider the capital to be less habitable than Mars. We tried to hook up a few other times, but it didn't happen. I am left with a memory of him, a kind, wonderful man, with a great laugh and an overgrown beard which he had, in reality, long shaved-off.

His death is a tragedy and distressing to many of us who knew him. That such a straight-forward man should die in such melodrama is unfitting to say the least. That he chose not to defend himself, as I am sure that he could, that he could not find the support from all those who loved him, is painful to us all. But since I heard of his death on Saturday, I have also thought much of the time in his presence, of the stories we were part of, and the friends that we were. I've enjoyed re-living these memories more than I can say.

Adrian Wolfson, RIP.