The guest speaker for our March lunch to be held on Wednesday March 22nd will be Dr Nigel Simpson.
The title of Nigel’s presentation is: “Beer, Birds and Song”.
The background to this intriguing title for Nigel’s talk will hopefully be made clear to attendees.
The lunch will as usual be at the Kelvin Club (www.kelvinclub.com) where we shall meet from 12-30 pm onwards. We’ll plan to sit down to a sumptuous two course meal at 1 pm, and the formal part of the proceedings will conclude by around 2-15 pm.
OUSV and CSV members and guests will be especially welcome. Places are limited, and you are encouraged to book early via the OUSV Wild Apricot website.
The price for OUSV and CSV members and guests will be $60. For non-members the price will be $70.
Some details about our guest speaker:
Nigel Simpson read Chemistry at St John’s College, Oxford, and moved to Wolfson to complete a DPhil. During his time at Oxford he became involved in theatre and above all in opera, where he was Chair of the University Opera Club, to the point where his extraordinarily patient supervisor suggested that if he intended to complete his thesis, then spending at least some time in the laboratory might be a good first step.
The subject of Nigel’s research provided no obvious career path, though subsequent theoretical developments have led to the only plausible explanation for how the Bar-Tailed Godwit makes its astonishing trans-oceanic flight from Alaska to winter in New Zealand, before returning in the following Northern Spring back to Alaska. It must navigate with great precision, for if it misses its target, exhaustion and dehydration will overtake the bird and, Icarus-like, it will plunge into the sea and drown.
Trans-oceanic flights clearly fascinated Nigel, and he embarked on one from the UK to Los Angeles, where he stayed for eleven years. However, endless Californian summers, a dearth of cricket and unappetizing beer caused Nigel to embark on another trans-oceanic migration, this time to Melbourne, where he has lived since 2001. Unlike California, summer is not endless here, so with 4 seasons in a day, he reckons he has endured 32,000 seasons in this part of the world.
Nigel’s day job is with a large scientific analytical instrument company, but his passion lies in his volunteering activities in community emergency services, education, the arts and other non-profit organizations. Nigel is a member of the Management Committee of “Chemistry in Australia”, the magazine of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, and for several years was on the Board of Camberwell Girls Grammar School. He found a surrogate for being on the stage in radio broadcasting – suggested initially by his wife who thought he had a great face for radio – and for the past eight years Nigel has co-anchored a four hour opera program on Wednesday nights on 3 MBS FM Radio, occasionally producing specialist programs to complement public events.
Nigel’s wide range of experience here and overseas guarantees a fund of amusing and interesting anecdotes which will entertain and enlighten his audience about radio, opera, birds and related topics.
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