The early morning.
Lu Zhou was sitting in a restaurant at the Corinthia Hotel, enjoying some toast and coffee. After reading some emails, he logged onto arXiv and browsed the latest research results in algebraic geometry, differentiable manifolds, and number theory.
These days, the mathematics community had been relatively quiet. Nothing particularly interesting had been posted. In professional academic forums such as MathOverflow, most of the discussions were not about academic problems but rather gossips about the mathematical world.
Even though not everyone received an invitation to the ICM conference, the vast majority of mathematicians were following the conference happening at St. Petersburg closely.
Lu Zhou was reading a post about the predictions for the Fields Medal prize when a Russian man with a pair of sunglasses hanging from his shirt across from him asked, "Can you do me a favor and try to stay in the hotel today?"
