Packing

I just finished packing for my trip home. Would you believe that at least two thirds of my suitcase is filled with chocolate boxes? It's the first time that I've been able to bring back gifts for people from overseas since I don't need to bring everything back with me since I'm coming back in a couple of weeks. I'm so looking forward to this trip, it's what has sustained me through the past couple of months.

Fête de l'Escalade

This evening a group of us went downtown to watch a procession which is part of the Fête de l'Escalade which is celebration in Geneva in memory of the night attack by the Savoyards in 1602 during which they were defeated.


It was kind of cool to see all these people dressed up in full historical costume with horsemen, musketeers, crossbow marksmen, torch-bearers, drummers and pipers. Totally worth the freezing cold, though the vin chaud and soup helped a little with that.

Christmas Lunch

I know it's a little early for a Christmas lunch, but this was the only time (with travel and exams) that all four of us in my apartment were free for a meal. It is sometimes a little hard to keep the conversation going between the four of us, as we are all different people with different backgrounds and interests, but I think I was lucky, as we do all get along and haven't had any issues whatsoever. We all made a dish each, and I had Christmas internet radio streaming, and it was all very nice and pleasant and now I'm completely stuffed.

And Even More Skiing and Cheese!

Today a group of us went to Crozet for the day (so convenient!) and then afterwards I hosted a fondue in the Australian apartment (as I found a set there the other day).

I did my first red run, though accidentally (it was scary!) and this time regulated the amount of cheese I ate (and drank more wine)...


By the way, the run you can see in this photo under the lift is a blue one. Not very steep and fairly wide and smooth.

Even More Snow!

This is the view out of my lounge room window this morning! The snow didn't melt overnight this time!

More Cheese...

This afternoon was the end of year party of the University of Geneva physics department of which my group is part of. This party involved an hour of talks from each of the groups in the pepartment, followed by raclette, which for those who don't know is melted cheese with potatoes, gherkins and pickled onions. After Sunday, even the smell of cheese was making me fel sick, so I ate a very small serving and escaped as soon as I could.

Cheese Hangover...

After skiing yesterday, I had a fondue with the University of Geneva group and this morning have learnt that it really hurts if you have lots of cheese and not enough wine... owwww...

Even More Skiing!

This afternoon we went skiing at Crozet, the nearest ski resort on the Jura, of which the car park of the lift to the slopes is only a 10 minute drive from CERN! So close! And look at that view! I'd never seen it so clear before, being able to see all the way across the valley and to The Saleve and The Alps from the top was amazing.

Fête des Lumières

Today a group of us drove out to Lyon for the Fête des Lumières which is how the city celebrates The Feast of the Immaculate Conception. We left in the morning so we could get some sight seeing done since none of us had been to the city before. Here are a few photos from the day.


This is a view of the newer parts of the city. I really like the colours of this photo with the reds of the roofs and bridge, the blue of the sky and different coloured apartment blocks.


The view of the central area of the city from a hill on which Lyon was founded...


...by the Romans, of which there are still some ruins, of which this amphitheatre is the most impressive.


This was one of the main streets of the Fête, and there were so many people there. It was really nice to be a city, where there was life after dark.


And this was the best light installation of the Fête by far. Look at the accuracy of those lights! And how they add detail to the church where there was none before!

More Snow!

It's currently snowing outside my office window! Which is something I find very distracting and like to watch, since well, I'm not very used to it. I feel like such a newbie, being all excited about pretty white stuff looking like icing on top of mountains and falling from the sky. Snow falls so differently to rain or hail, as the flakes are so light, without a strong wind, they each take their own path to the ground which is kind of mesmerising...

Another Fingernail Update

Today I had a check up which was supposed to happen last week, but I misread both the day (mardi->mercredi) and the date (25->26) on my appointment card and missed it, and had to ask my office mate to call up and make another appointment for me. It was better this way anyway, as my usual doctor was there and last week she wasn't so I was going to see her replacement, whose English isn't as good.

Basically, all is well; even with the darker spot near the tip of my finger, the red spot in the middle of the nail area, and what I thought was my cuticle growing back is actually nail, meaning they didn't remove all of the germinal matrix; and I have to relax, it won't be fully healed for about a year after the operation, so anything I see now is just intermediary. Oh, my hip is also healing okay, less red, though still swollen, but that can be fixed with cortisone injections if needed.

My next check up will be after I come back next year, with both my doctor and my surgeon.

LHC Incident

So it's been ages since I've written about work. I suppose it kind of looks like I'm on holiday from my recent entries. But I have been working fairly hard, maybe not as hard as other people around CERN, but definitely harder than I was at home earlier this year. And this is despite the LHC accident on the 19th of September. A lot of people have asked me whether this delay in the machine schedule will affect my PhD. The answer is unfortunately yes; because while I don't need real data to write a thesis, it would be preferable. But there is still heaps to be done to prepare for data. And things which can be done with the limited first beam data which was collected and the extensive amounts of recorded cosmic ray data.

This week at CERN is an ATLAS Week, and as is customary during these collaboration weeks, there is always a talk by someone from the LHC project to tell us about the machine status and plans. It has been strange for the past few months, not knowing what is going on, and hearing about things from outside media sources, rather than internal emails or notices. I thought the speaker did a really good job of providing us answers with lots of details, which will hopefully stop all the speculation of what happened and what will happen from here. The talk really addressed all the questions which have come up in all the lunchtime and coffee conversations. If anybody is interested, the slides of the talk can be found here.

More interesting than this talk, however, are these photos, from the talk presented last week by the CERN Director General, of which the slides can't be accessed anymore, but the permissions were changed too late, and people had already taken photos from the talk and posted them online. So I figured it would be okay for me as well, as seeing the damage is very different from just reading about it.

I must make a disclaimer here and say that I am no expert on the incident, or even accelerators, and what I'm going to say here is my paraphrasing of various talks and reports.

On September 19th, seven out of eight sectors of the magnets on the ring were fully commissioned with for 5TeV operation, while one has been commissioned up to 4 TeV. The timing here part of the speculation, as while a transformer was being replaced on the other side of the ring, the commissioning of this final sector resumed.

While the current was being ramped up in the magnet circuit, a resistive zone developed in the electrical bus region between a dipole and a quadrupole, an area which is not monitored by the magnet quench detecting system. Then the resistive voltage grew to 1V and the power converter, unable to maintain the current ramp, tripped and current started to decrease in the circuit and an energy discharge switch opened, inserting dump resistors in the circuit to produce a fast power abort, which is what is supposed to happen in an event such as this.

An electrical arc then developed and punctured the helium enclosure, leading to release of helium into the insulation vacuum of the cryostat. An electric arc is an electrical breakdown of a gas which produces an ongoing plasma discharge, resulting from a current flowing through normally nonconductive media such as air. This activated the pressure relief system on the vacuum enclosure, however the system wasn't able to handle such a high pressure, which resulted in large pressure forces acting on the vacuum barriers separating neighboring subsectors. These forces displaced dipoles in the subsectors affected from their cold internal supports, and knocked the cryostats housing the quadrupoles and vacuum barriers from their external support jacks at positions, in some locations breaking their anchors in the concrete floor of the tunnel.

This damage is what you can see in the photos below, this first photo shows what happened to the region between two magnets when they moved.


and this photo shows the the movement of a magnet off its floor support.


It's kind of amazing to see the damage, and looking at the photos it is easy to despair, particularly knowing at there were 39 dipoles and 14 quadrupoles in the incident area. But repair is well underway and all of the magnets in the area and the surrounded segments will be removed and new ones will be installed, after been cold tested. A lot of effort has also been directed to being able identify resistive splices at low current, to avoid another such incident. Many additions have also been planned, the quench detection system will be improved so that the bus regions will be monitored, the ground support of the quadrupoles will be improved, and more devices will be added to aide in alleviating high pressures in the vacuum chamber, should they occur.

The plan is have the machine cold by the end of July next year. Good luck to all the physicists and engineers working on it, they definitely deserve acknowledgement and credit. It's easy to forget and to treat the machine and the detector as a black box which will provide numbers to analyse, but lots of people have worked very hard on it. And looking at what they have to fix, you can't help but respect them and not be impatient for data, because it is a very complicated system.

More Skiing!

After last week's adventure, I was a little wary about going skiing this weekend, particularly since the weather looked like it could be questionable. But luckily for me, the lifts on nearby Jura at La Faucille were open, and so one of the CERN fellows was willing to organise a trip up there and also teach me how to ski.

So we meet up for half a day on the slopes at 11am at CERN. There are five of us all together, three experienced skiers, one beginning snowboarder and me. We pile into two cars and head on up there, taking the back roads through the Swiss and French villages along the way to avoid the Saturday morning traffic.

It's a small resort, and low by European standards at around 1300m, but it has the advantages of being really close, like we were able to get up there by noon, and has a magnificent view of the Alps, which I was unable photograph as I was worried about dropping my camera on the ski lift and then at the top, the safety barriers were in the way. Not to mention, since I can't really ski, all I need is a green or blue slope to practise on, and there was a fairly easy blue slope open, of which this is the start of:


So I learnt how to parallel turn, which was so much easier than snow plough turns, but am still not very good at controlling my speed, and tend to fall down randomly, though I've since figured out that that is because I have my skis too far apart and my weight backwards. But yeah, it was great fun and I want to go again soon! Thanks heaps to those who were so patient in teaching me! You know who you are. *smiles*

Turkey Day!

Today is American Thanksgiving day, which according to Wikipedia can be traced to harvest festivals which have been celebrated in many cultures since ancient times; the American holiday has religious undertones related to the deliverance of the English settlers by Native Americans after the brutal winter at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Whatever, the important part is that most people celebrate by gathering at home with family or friends for a holiday feast. Which is what I did. *grins* I was invited to a thanksgiving dinner where the girl hosting it had a list of recipes where people were to choose one and make it, or suggest something else. I choose bread pudding since I made one last weekend and that turned out quite well.

So there was eight of us and oh so much food. A whole roast turkey, of which we only ended up eating half, and cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and carrots, roasted country cut potatoes, bread and sweet potato souffle. Then for dessert there was bread pudding, ice cream and fruit tart. No pumpkin pie as nobody could be bothered making it from scratch without canned pumpkin.

It was a very impressive spread, equal to what I would imagine a family would have in the States. I was so full by the end of it. We did try to do everything properly, we even had a downloaded week-old American football game to watch since that's supposedly tradition as well. I guess what was probably different was the amounts of wine which was consumed and the lack of drama due to the fact we were friends getting together and not family. All in all a really enjoyable night.

A Skiing Adventure...

Today we decided to go skiing. Wow, where to start with this story...

At the decision to go I guess, that's the beginning... It's been pretty cold all week, and there is snow on most of the resorts, but it's too early for them to be open. Because, as people tell me, a good piste has a solid base with a powder topping.

We were watching the weather and the resort conditions, and the first plan was to go to Verbier in Switzerland, but the lifts were closed yesterday due to high winds and the forecast was for stronger winds today, so they decided on Val Thorens in France, which is supposed to be a two and a half hours drive away.

So I drive over to St Genis at 7am, and we load up the cars with all the skis, poles and boots and get going. So there are two cars, five people and three GPS units. And we still get lost. Firstly because the unit in the car leading told them to get off the motor way and take a pass through the mountains instead of around. And then later our one tells us to ignore the sign pointing towards the resort and take this small, icy, unsalted, unbarricaded one lane village road. That was quite a scary drive, which we made it through and got to the lower resort of Les Menuires, which was all closed. So we started off to Val Thorens, but the road was too icy for the car, which didn't have winter tires. We go back and buy snow chains for it, but we couldn't use them in the end as the suspension of the car was bent and the chains rubbed against the support, which did not sound safe at all. So we end up calling the others, who had made it to Val Thorens with their winter tires and one of them stayed up there with all the gear, and the other came down to get us.



And we finally get to the resort. Which is absolutely gorgeous. At 2300m, it is literally on the top of a mountain, and there were ski lifts going as high as I could see, though they weren't running since the piste probably wasn't skiable yet. The lower slopes had snow machines so that the snow was good. And this was sometime after 12pm, all the delays added two hours onto the drive. So we decided it was too late to find ourselves an instructor and the other guys agreed to teach us beginners. We learn about putting skis on and snow plough on a gentle slope with no lift, so we also learn how to walk uphill, and then it's time to try out a real slope. We then get on a chair lift, and we're on it for what seems like ages, and it's beautiful, but also scary, because as high as we are going on the lift, we will need to ski down. Up there we learn about turns in snow plough position, about first leaning on your inside leg then your outside leg, and we make tight turns all the way down, skiing across the hill most of the time. The more experienced guys then go off to play and leave us beginners to fend for ourselves. And it didn't go so well. There was a small slope, which had a j-bar lift, which I fell off twice my first try. Once at the bottom in front of all the people lining up and once at the top. So I decide to give the skiing a rest for a it and just stand around. But that got boring, and I ski down the small slope and brave the j-lift again. Twice. *grins* Then I get talked into going onto the chair lift again, and that was a really bad idea, as it was late, and it was hard to see the condition of the snow, and I ended up just following the most experienced guy down, until we get to a fairly flat section and he tows me the rest of the way as I was exhausted.

Gosh, writing about this makes me tired. And this wasn't all that happened... so we walk to the car park while the others ski there, and wait for the car to get retrieved from the car park. And it turns out that while in the sub zero temperatures of the parking lot, the driver seat window has frozen open. Supposedly it was faulty before, but now it is stuck there, which seems kind of inconvenient, but the car is still drivable, so three of us get in the back, after getting all the poles and boots into the trunk, and the others slide the skis over the so we are balancing them very carefully between our heads and resting them on the passenger seat back. And this is down we head back down the icy road to the lower ski resort here we left the other car. On the way however, the car complains about low oil and overheating. The oil complaint is understandable since it has been a while since the oil was checked, but the overheating is worrying, maybe the water in the radiator didn't have enough antifreeze in it and froze. We figure it should be okay going down from the mountain as the engine won't be working too hard and hopefully the water would have melted by then. Which would have been okay, if that was the problem. But later on the drive, the engine is still overheating, but the water isn't frozen. So we drive around for a while looking for an open garage or even a petrol station. Which is very rare on a Sunday night in country France. So we sit in a deserted petrol station for a bit, trying to figure out the best thing to do, since the car isn't under breakdown recovery insurance with my friend driving it in another country. And we can't just leave the car there overnight and everyone pile into the other one back to Geneva because all our ski gear is in the car and the window is frozen open. After quite a while, we figure the best thing to do is to drive back to the larger town, Albertville, and for him to get a hotel for the night and try find an open garage in the morning. So we go back, passing a VW garage on the way, which is promising for the next day and he is able to check into an Etap Hotel. So while he is enquiring about a room, it starts snowing, so we high tail it out of there as we don't want to get stranded there as well. When we get onto the highway, the visibility is so bad with the wind and the snow that we decide to turn back, but there isn't an exit until a toll way, where there are other cars and where we have to pay. So we continue, following the lights of the car in front of us, until it clears up and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. The rest of the drive back, though it did snow on us again, and there was some heavy rain, was never as bad as the first part, and we make it back to St Genis fine, and I drive the van home and arrive just before midnight...

Phew. So it was a very eventful day. And one which I do not really want to repeat. I do want to give skiing another chance, but next time, we'll need to choose which cars we take more carefully, look at maps first if it's a new resort for everybody, and hopefully get more time on the slopes than in cars.

Snow!

It's snowing outside my bedroom window right now! So pretty! Just little flakes of snow coming slowly down and melting on the ground. Maybe it'll get cold enough tonight that tomorrow morning it'll be all white!

Apartment Inspection

Last Friday, everybody in my apartment gets a letter which said:

Nous vous demandons de pendre note que nous effectuerons un constat d'entretien et de proprete des appartmements et des chambres le jeudi 20 novembre 2008 entre 9h00 et 13h00

So I spent a couple of hours on Sunday cleaning the bathroom and my room and the three of them spend Wednesday night cleaning their rooms and the other shared areas. The apartment looks so nice and shiny.

And obviously the inspector thought so too, so there was a notice on our dining table when we got back in the evening:

Suite au controle de ce jour, j'ai trouve votre logement bien range et propre. Je vous remercie pour votre collaboration, et vous envoie mes meilleurs salutations.

Yay! No paying of fines or losing our places!

A Real Castle!

*text later*

Bills, Bills, Bills...

The bills for my hospital visits have started to roll in, and it's starting to really hurt my bank account. In rounded numbers, my first biopsy was 200chf, the removal of my fingernail was 400chf and the last bill, which I received today, for the skin graft was 1000chf. *sigh* I have to pay them all myself first, then send the bills to my health insurance which will reimburse me 90% of what I've paid over 500chf. *pouts* At least I'm getting most of the money back... And I don't have cancer...

Fingernail Check Up

I was quite looking forward to the check up I had today, firstly because my skin graft had fallen off last week and before that, I had found a thread protruding from my hip scar which hurt when I touched it, so I was kind of worried about the progress of the healing.

So after a small mix up at the hospital where I was waiting for half an hour outside my doctor's office while she was calling up the reception desk to ask where I was, it turns out all is okay.

Kind of. She wasn't too worried about the skin graft falling off as only the top layer fell off and the lower layers are still there and helping new skin form. She was more worried about a red bump in the middle of my fingernail region, and gave me some cream to put on it to stop it from growing. And the plastic thread coming out of my hip scar was from lower level stitches where the tread is supposed to dissolve, so she does cut it off, and then gave me another cream for the area to stop help it settle down.

So now I have one cream for my hip, which I need to apply every night before I rebandage the wound with a compress then the tape, and two creams for my fingernail, one I have to apply once every two days and the other every day before rebanaging with the adaptic, then a compress and tape. Luckily, I'm getting quite good at the bandaging with my left hand...

Mountain View

Today was a mountain view day, ie, one where Mont Blanc is visible from Restaurant 1 at CERN. Here is a photo taken from my lunch seat:



This of course looked better in real life, but you can kind of see the beauty of the scene. I include the pylon and the dipole for realism. That and the fact I couldn't be bothered getting up and getting a better angle.

Fete de la St Martin

This evening, a couple of American students and I went to a Fete in Peissy, a small village about 15 minutes drive from my place. Now by "Fete" this village meant open cellar... all the cellars in the village were open for wine tasting, which was free after a purchase of a souvenir wine glass. I have no idea why they attach St Martin's name to this event, particularly since, according to Wikipedia, Martin of Tours was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold.

Anyway, we weren't going to complain about open cellars, whatever the reason for them. *winks* We arranged at meet at 4pm, but it turns out that this wasn't enough time to get to all the cellars, we only did 3 properly before the fireworks at 6:30pm. Can you believe that they can organise fireworks at 6:30pm? It's crazy how early it gets dark here, we are still more than a month away from the winter solstice!

We did go to two more cellars, but didn't really try very many wines from these two. We then went looking for dinner, and found ourselves fondue at what looked like the only cafe in the village. I was surprised at how tasty and filling melted cheese and bread was.

Overall, it was a very pleasant evening, during which I learnt a fair bit more about wine and which I like. Okay, I knew that already, fruity, not dry, with a preference for white, but I'm learning to appreciate red as well. I think my favourite will still be dessert wine though. I tried such a good muscato at one of the cellars, though I didn't end up buying it, as nobody else I know would enjoy it with me. I did end up buying a red, just for the story of the name: Gondebaud, after a Burgundian who passed a law in 443 which punished the theft of grapes with death. Also got myself a rose and a white to make a pretty colourful collection. Now to be invited to a party or two for excuses to open them!

Bond

Guess what I've just gotten back from? Watching the new Bond movie. *grins* Surprisingly, it came out here on Tuesday, before the States and Oz, so I just had to go and watch it. Now, I've only watched the most recent Bond movie, Casino Royale and really enjoyed that. I didn't enjoy this one as much, but it was still very entertaining. I won't say anything more so I don't spoil it for anybody. *smiles*

I will say that it was a little annoying watching it over here, as opposed to at home. Firstly, they didn't have allocated seating, so we had to get into the cinema before time to get decent seats. Secondly, they had about 20 minutes worth of advertisements, which weren't interspersed with trailers like at home. Thirdly, there were two lines of subtitles along the bottom of the screen - German and French. Which were annoying at the start, but I learnt to ignore them. Last, but not the least irritating, when the movie characters spoke in a different language, they didn't have English subtitles for it. Meaning we didn't understand some of what was going on...

US Election...

So Obama has won the US Election, to the relief to almost all the people I know, both American and otherwise, including me. In my uninformed opinion, which doesn't really mater in the end, he is the better candidate for the job.

It has been somewhat intriguing to see the international interest in this particular election. There was so much in the papers at home earlier this year with the preliminaries and Clinton and Obama. Last election, I was in LA and there wasn't that much coverage about it within the country and nobody at home knew about them. And then, there was the decision for Palin to be the on the McCain ticket, which was much commented on. And then all the coverage and conversations and events over the past week.

No other country's election would create so much dicussion. But then, I guess, no other country really affects the rest of the world as much as the US of A.

Ski Sessions

Just got back from an information about skiing opportunities with the University of Geneva. I was interested in finding out more information about their Saturday sessions. Unfortunately for me though, it was all in French and I couldn't understand more information that what was on this website than the fact we had to sign up for the Saturday session by Thursday. I don't know where or when the bus leaves from Geneva and when it returns. I just shot them an email in English asking for more information, I do hope they reply.

Bernese Alps

Today me and a few American students from CERN rented a car and drove out to the Bernese Oberland to do this hike

So those photos on the information page were taken in summer, it is quite different after a snowstorm.

Here is the view five minutes from the car:

Picturesque, isn't it?

It was quite scenic, walking along the trail, through the snow, along a creek, under the trees, looking up at the mountains, the snow covered peaks, the green of the evergreens, the red and yellow of the autumn trees and the snow on the valley floor. Just look at all those colours!


And that view! (Sorry about the photo stitching not working properly)


It was really nice walking along, looking around and hearing the new snow crunch beneath our feet. Snow is really pretty.

After reaching Tschingelsee from Kiental via the trail, we ate lunch and walked back along the road. We decided that walking downhill in the snow would mean spending too much time on the ground instead on our feet, not too mention the sun had left the valley and it was getting cold, particularly since our shoes, socks and pants were soaked.

We then drove around the area, to the Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald valleys. Now I went to both of them last August and loved them, Lauterbrunnen with the sheer rock faces of the narrow gorge and all its waterfalls, and Grindelwald with the rolling greem hills dotted with cute little wooden Swiss chalets. Both surrounded by snow topped mountains.

However, it was quite different with snow and no sun. Still breathtaking but it's a constrasting beauty, more cold and stark and a little depressing with the lack of colours. I don't know, I apreciate it, I think it takes a little getting used to. Maybe my cold and wet feet were distracting me.

After dark, we went down to Interlaken, where we found a Hooters, which one of the Americans found hilarious, and some dinner, which was very tasty, before heading back to Geneva to return the car at the aeroport and take the bus home.

Twas a long, but very enjoyable day.

Halloween

So last night was a Halloween/Goodbye party for one of the girls I know from my previous apartment. It was a fun get together, it was nice to hang out with people outside CERN. Here is the jack'o'lantern from the party:



He looks pretty cool, I think I'll try make my own someday. *smiles*

Ski Stuff!

So I've been grumbling a lot about the weather recently. It's wet, it's cold and it's dark. But today I've been a little excited about it all. There was actually some blue sky in the morning, and the snow on the Jura was visible on the way in, and then the Alps were visible at lunchtime. Though slightly depressingly grayscale. Very pretty stuff still though.

But, most exciting of all... I just hired ski gear! Skis, boots and poles! For the entire season, I don't have to return them until the 30th of April! Now I just need a pile of accessories, and to learn!

Fingernail Update

Oh yeah, I was out and about town today as I had a hospital appointment. My finger is supposedly healing fine, despite what it looks and smells like. I will have to keep it bandaged for another month or so and it'll probably hurt for another month after that as well. They were a little worried about my hip scar still being swollen and red though, so I have to go back to bandaging it, and they might give it cortisone injections later. But yeah, nothing too worrying and I just need to keep looking after healing. I will be going back in two weeks time for anther check up.

French...

So today I had to deal with a couple of new French experiences, the first being a hair cut, which was kind of traumatic, and the second, being a salsa class, which wasn't too bad... I really need to learn the language if I want to do anything outside work...

Valias

Was finally feeling well enough and had the time to do something, so I had a plan to go to Neuchatel yesterday, but somebody else had the much better idea of hiking and wine tasting in Valais. *grins*

We didn't end up getting much of either done, but it was an enjoyable day. Sunny and very pretty. It felt so good to be outside and away from my computer. With my operations and work, I can only seen CERN, my apartment and the supermarket in almost three weeks. The valley is gorgeous, narrow, with glimpses of snow covered peaks towards the south and covered with vineyards on the north side. The mountains are steeper and rockier than around Geneva and it's also drier, so grapes grow better.

Here is my favourite photo from the day:

These are the two castles in the middle of Sion, the captial of the region, which we walked to from the centre of town.

Asian Food!

So tonight, I went out for dinner with some of the British students, and we went to an Asian restaurant out in the Plainpalais area, and I liked it so much that I'm going to mention it here:

Feuille de Banane
29 Rue de Carouge
1205 Genève

I will definitely going back here throughout the duration of my stay here. It was a little oily, but it was fast, cheap (for Geneva) and tasty (which has been a rarity for the Asian food I've tried so far).

ATLAS Shifts

I've just come back from my first and last set of ATLAS trigger shifts for the year. I had signed up for two sets more next month, but they got cancelled.

So what do I do as the trigger shifter? Well, according to the screen capture of the ATLAS webcam below, I amuse myself by trying to wave at the correct time.



No seriously, my job is to monitor the data rates between the different trigger hardware levels and the event recording. This involves watching graphs. Lots of them. There are over 200 of them that I got look at if I really wanted to.

I'm going to say that I don't think I was a very good shifter. I didn't know very much, so couldn't really answer people's questions and also had to spend most of my time preparing a presentation that I'm giving tomorrow. It was an interesting experience though, and one that I'll probably be repeating in the future...

Some Good News...

So I just got back from yet another visit to the hospital. But for once, it was a fairly pleasant experience. It turned out that my appointment was the last of the day, and I was late to it, so I didn't have to wait too long to see a nurse, or the doctor. And their broken English was more bearable as I was expecting it. And this time nothing hurt too much, since all they did was remove the stitches on my hip and change my dressing and bandages. Though it turns out that both wounds are inflected. I think I didn't keep them dry enough throughout the week. I got prescriptions for the materials to change them myself every day. And the antiboitic cream to spread on it. Would you believe that my finger looks really gruesome and smells awful as well now? I took photos when they left me alone and I was waiting for the doctor, but I won't upload them and gross you all out.

Anyway, the good news is they are pretty sure that they removed all the malignant cells, so I won't have to undergo any more treatment, just a check up in a couple of months, just to be sure (and one next week to check on the progress of my finger). I also asked about what could have caused this melanoma, since we all know that skin cancer is caused by overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, but how could I keep my hands out of the sun or apply sun screen to my nail beds? And it turns out that melanoma in the hands and feet is a genetic predisposition of people from Asia. So I couldn't have done anything to prevent it, though I guess I could have gotten it checked out earlier. But at least I listened to my ex-flatmate and went to the hospital back in July...

Post-Operation Check Up

Today I had my post operation check up. It was very awkward as all of the nurses in the check up area do not know English and I don't know any medicine French. Also, my two usual doctors are on holiday for a couple of weeks, so I had a replacement doctor, whose English wasn't that great. At least there was nothing to report, since he didn't have any results yet. I just had both the wounds checked for infection, and the stitches taken out of my finger, which wasn't very pleasant at all. They also weren't very pretty. The cut on hip is about four centimeters long with diagonal stitches. The finger is really ugly, all blood encrusted and black. Sitting there looking at it, it really hit me that I won't have a normal finger anymore. *sigh*

Homemade Pizza Party

Short version: delicious food, good wine, interesting company = fun night

Final Operation

Today I went back to the hospital for what I really hope is my last operation relating to my fingernail.

They were running very late and I had to wait for an hour and a half after my appointment time to go into the theatre. They tell me that they now think it was the beginnings of a melanoma. So today they would be taking more of finger out, as well performing the skin graft, taking the sample from my hip.

This meant I was getting cut up by two people in two different areas of my body which wasn't fun. The finger work wasn't too bad other than the injections, but the hip work was a little weird as I could still feel the pressure from the scalpel and scissors, even if I couldn't feel any pain. The sewing up of that cut also hurt a little as my skin is fairly tight around that area without the extra pressure of being pulled to cover a cut

Afterwards though, it's been my finger which has been bleeding and hurting heaps. I'm typing this entry with my left hand as it hurts too much to do it with right. I am indebted to my collegue for picking me up and driving me home, dropping by the pharmacy and supermarket on the way.

Scholarship Dinner

*text later*

ATLAS Start Up Event

*text later*

Operation

Today I go to the hospital to properly talk to the doctor and the surgeon about the results of my biopsy. I misunderstood a little from the three minute talk I had on Monday. So it turns out that the cells in my nail bed weren't normal (which was kind of obvious from the growing dark brown streak on my fingernail) but they weren't able to tell whether it was just an abnormal mole or a melanoma. However, it didn't really matter which it was, since the action for either of them is to remove my fingernail and nailbed. And since they would have to remove two thirds of my fingernail and the nailbed to make sure they have all the affected cells, it would be easier to remove the whole nail and nailbed. This means that my nail will never grow back, but they would do a skin graft so it's not too gross.

Time frame wise, they want to do this before Christmas, in case it is a melanoma, they don't want to risk it spreading anywhere else, since skin cancer in nailbeds is usually fairly agressive. Now, since the surgeon is taking the second half of October and the first half of November off, I can either get this done next week, or they had a cancellation so there is time in quarter of an hour to squeeze me in, if I decide to go ahead with it. So after a call home, I decide to just get it done then, so that next week I can start getting the skin graft.

The surgery wasn't too bad, just like the biopsy, but this time, they removed my whole fingernail and nailbed, which was kind of gross and also means more bleeding and pain later. They will test these larger samples for malignancy and hopefully tell me the results when I go back again.

So yeah, I'm okay, but am missing a fingernail and have a wrapped up finger that I'm not allowed to get wet and which hurts when I put any pressure on it whatsoever.

Results, Somewhat.

So, I go to the hospital this morning, only to find out that the receptionist last week stuffed up and forgot to put my appointment into the computer. This meant that I had to wait ages to see the doctor and then when I did see her, she only had a couple of minutes to talk to me in between her other patients. And in these three minutes, the only thing I really get is that they couldn't discount the possibility that some of the cells are malignant, and so the whole area will need to be removed and they want to perform the operation as soon as possible. I will be back on Thursday for a consulation with the surgeon.

Birthday Party!

*text later*

Bike Path!

Last weekend, while we were walking from Satigny to Vernier, somebody pointed out the bike path that runs from Vernier to CERN, so I've been taking this instead of the road this week and it's great. It's a little longer than the road and it's not all bike path, but it's so much better not having to stop and start all the time and being worried about when to go at roundabouts. If you are interested in the route, I have it up here.

Overseas Birthday

It was my 25th birthday yesterday, the first birthday I've had overseas for a while, despite all the recent travelling. And it wasn't too bad. The day before I received a delivery from my supervisor from my boyfriend, which was really sweet, since it must have been quite awkward for him to go and meet her. Thanks so much dearest!

Then yesterday, though I had to work all day to prepare a presentation for the afternoon, I went out for Chinese dumplings with all the Australians at CERN, which was nice. The guys were late and we were getting hungry, but they were forgiven when they came bearing a gift. Thanks guys!

And today, while I was preparing dinner, my housemates and a neighbour accosted me with yet another present! That was really generous of them, since we've only known each other for a couple of weeks. Thanks heaps!

Stay tuned for the party on Saturday night...

French Class

Today I went to an evening French class at the University of Geneva. It was a bit of a disaster really. As part of my scholarship, I am able to attend French courses at the university for free. However, since I am based at CERN, I can only go to the evening ones. They only run evening classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the level is too high for me, at Intermediate 2. I think I am in between a Beginner and Intermediate 1 thanks to all my previous classes. It was an oral class, aimed at practising speaking French, however I don't know enough French to practise speaking it, so I was fairly lost, which was very unfair to my group. I might have to try a different class next week, or do some self learning at home. I get a fair bit of practise with my housemates, but I need to learn some more words, and more complicated grammar. I have realised that I can only speak in the present tense, which isn't very useful in everyday conversation.

No Results

So I went back to the hospital this morning all eager to find out the results of my biopsy, only for the appointment to be a post-operation check up, to change the wrappings and check that it wasn't infected. I will be going back next Monday for the results. I asked them this time what the appointment was for instead of assuming.

Party!

Last night, our neighbour held a welcome party for all the students in the building. He invited everybody by putting invites into all the mailboxes, which I thought was pretty brave. It was a pretty fun party, though again my language skills were tested. The difference between this party and the recent ones I've been to is the dancing, there isn't usually much of that at a party hosted by physicists. Like here is a random congo line! There was also many bad attempts at the zorba.



This photo below is of me and my two housemates who went. On the left is the girl from Argentina and the guy in the middle is the one from Madagascar. So now you all have faces to put to names if I mention them again. The guy from Madagascar is also on the same scholarhip as me, which is why he is also in the photos from my previous post.

Excursion!

Today I went on a excursion around the Swiss countryside organised by the University of Geneva for Swiss Government Scholarship holders.

The morning was cold and cloudy when we started out at the Quai des Moulins in the centre of Geneva. We went on a boat ride west along The Rhone river, which flows out of Lake Geneva. It was a strange trip. The boat was a closed boat, so I got a little headachey on it, with the noise and lack of fresh air. It was also hard to see the scenery, which was pretty, with high river banks, covered with trees and glimpses of wildlife. We saw a couple of cool birds (which I couldn't identify at all) and... a wild boar! It looked just like one of the boars in Asterix!



The boat trip ended in Peney, from which we walked north to Satigny, through a forest, along a creek. It was a little muddy and cold because of the trees, though the sun had come out by then. It was also a little strange, since the organiser didn't stay up front to direct us at the various intersections, so there were times when we would have to wait for the whole group since we couldn't tell which way to go. The walk was pretty, but without a proper guide, I don't think any of us got much out of it. Personally, I took it easy and hung around people who spoke English well, as I did not feel like socialising in my very broken French. This narrowed the group of people I could communicate with to very few of the people there, but at least now I feel as though I've made some new friends.



In Satigny, we had lunch at that looked like a country club restaurant, as it was fairly posh and overlooked a very nice soccer field. We were served a three course meal, along with matching wines. Something which none of us were expecting since we didn't have to pay for the day at all. The starter was a salmon pastry, which wasn't too bad, except that the fish wasn't fresh, so it smelt. It was served with a white wine. I didn't catch a look at the bottle, but I'm sure it was from the region, which is Switzerland's largest wine-producing area. The main was roast duck with mash and vegetables, which was really tender and tasty. This was served with a Gamay which was definitely from the area. The dessert was I think a chocolate panna cotta, which was served with coffee, which definitely suited it much better than a dessert wine, since the bitterness really set off the sweetness of the chocolate.



I then decided that since it was such a nice day and we had passed my village on the boat trip, that I was going to walk back instead of taking the train then the bus. It ended up being a really nice easy walk, sunny, but with a cool breeze, on flat small country roads with views of both sets of mountains around Geneva. I also convinced a couple of other people to go with me who also lived in the same apartment building as me.

Biopsy

So, as I mentioned back in July, I went to the Hospital to get my swollen face and my dark nail checked out. Today was nail biopsy day. It went fine, my finger is now all numb and wrapped up. I am going back on Monday for the post operation findings. It was a little unnerving going to a hospital in country where you don't know the language. It was also a teaching hospital, so the girl who was performing the operation was an intern and was being supervised, with a couple of other interns watching, just well as two nurses. Making six people in the operating theatre. They would speak in French amongst themselves then decide whether to tell me something in English or not. The whole intern thing meant that it took longer than usual, and I got injected more times than I needed to as she didn't do it right the first time. I also had to wear a hospital gown, which I wasn't expecting, but should have realised, since obviously it would be performed in a clean room. Stayed tuned for the results...

Work and Presentations

Last week, I finally got my sliding window algorithm working. Which means I had just enough time to run it over piles of data and modify some analysis code to create some results to present this morning. At two meetings actually. I presented my own work in our weekly internal Australian analysis meeting between the Melbourne and Sydney experimental particle physics groups and any people at institutions overseas. And one of the conveners of the ATLAS Egamma Trigger group presented a condensed version at the Egamma workshop in Hamburg. Here are her slides for your interest:





Supposedly people were quite interested, and I have a fair bit of validation work to do. Which I don't mind as it's much better than chasing segmentation faults. My supervisor also wants me to present the work in more detail at another meeting sometime, so I'll need to understand the results better by then, so I'll have something new to say... and also run more code so I'll have more results to show...

Full House...

Coming home this evening, I met our last housemate. Guess I haven't really talked much about my new apartment yet. It's a four bedroom place, two smaller bedrooms and two larger ones. I luckily have one of the larger ones. It's right next to the entrance to the place, the kitchen and lounge/dining area, so it's lucky that I'm a heavy sleeper. It's a little annoying though, since the kitchen has no ventilation, we have to cook with that door open, which means I have to close my door so everything doesn't smell. I don't want to be antisocial, I just have to be. I also am afraid that my music and singing to it will annoy other people.

So yeah, from the entrance, you can see three doors and the living/dining area. One of the those doors is my room, another is the kitchen, where I have two cupboard shelves and one and a half fridge shelves and half a freezer shelf. The third door leads to a hallways, off which the toilet, bathroom, and the three other bedrooms. Oh, and two hallway cupboards which are for the people in the smaller rooms.

People wise in the place, there's me in the first room. You know about me. The next room along belongs to the guy from Madagascar, who has lived here for a year already. He is on the same scholarship as me, but has a year extension. He is currently during a masters in information systems. The third bedroom belongs to the guy who moved in today, from Bern, who is doing a bachelors in international relations. He is in the room where the Canadian guy I mentioned earlier moved out of last week. And the last room belongs to a girl from Argentina, doing a masters in development. We get along quite well, which is really nice. I think the fact that her English is almost fluent helps with that.

It is nice living with non-physics people. And people who I can learn French from. It makes me feel like I'm getting more out of this stay than work.

Oh, speaking of learning French, I went to an information session for the French courses I can take at the university for free during the semester due to my scholarship. So the good thing is that I understood most of the session, even though it was in French. But the bad thing is that the only classes in the evenings are Intermediate 2 level. I'll try them out next week and see how lost I am... I am thinking of going to them anyway though, since they are free.

Studious Me!

So here I am in this photo in the FermiLab Today accommpanying an article about the summer school I went to there last month. I got interviewed for the article as well, but obviously I didn't say what they wanted me to say, and so wasn't quoted. I'm just glad that the photo was taken early during the school, when I was still all studious and didn't have my laptop open during talks. *relieved sigh*

First Beam!!

Today really exceeded my expectations. So like I said yesterday I said that "if we are lucky, we'll get one beam going one way and after they dump that, they'll try the other beam" However they were able to do both today, and both beams were circulated around their respective beam pipes, both within an hour of them starting, and the first under extreme media scrutiny.

So what I do today while these historic events were unfolding? So at 9am, the LHC project leader, Lyn Evans gave a talk from the LHC control room about what was going to happen, however, I was unable to connect to the webcast due to the limited number of available connections. But this didn't phase me, as at 10am we had a link up to Melbourne, where we would be on a panel, answering questions from an audience of students at the Museum. So we go to the ATLAS media centre at 9:30am, and watch the broadcast from there until it is time to call Australia. Here we are setting up:



It wasn't too bad, we just answered questions while watching the webcast in the background without sound and keeping them updated on what was going on as they weren't able to connect to the webcast. And the first beam went all around the ring an hour after they started, while we were connected, which was quite exciting. The organisers brought cups of champagne for us to drink during the link, which was nice.



After we disconnected, we hung around the media centre until they told everybody who wasn't supposed to be there to leave, and we went down to the ATLAS control room to observe the hordes of people there, disturbing the people on shift, which you see above. Since ATLAS is the closest experiment to the main CERN site and the Globe, where all the press were congregating, they had a lot of media groups come in to record stories and interview physicists from their country. By this stage, the visualisation people had a decent picture of an event to project onto the wall for all the reporters, which you can see on the rightmost projectors. We also went upstairs to visit one of the guys in there, but they looked really busy, so we left.

And that's as close to the action I got. After that, I just did work and watched the webcast from the Main Auditorium, where we watched them get the second beam around. So these next photos aren't mine, but are official LHC/ATLAS pictures.



This first is of some of the LHC monitoring screens at the LHC control centre. I wish that was closer to the mean CERN site so I could have snuck in there. It looked quite exciting with all the clapping and champagne bottles being opened.





These two pictures are exactly what they say they are, visualisations of first two events in ATLAS. These two events are the spray seen when the beam hits the collimators in front of ATLAS. If you look closely at the energy deposits, you can see that they are asymmetric, and this is because there is only one beam and one side of the detector gets splashed first. The line in the first event we think is a cosmic muon which just happened to be at the same time.

If you want more details of what happened, CMS did a very nice commentary of the day, which can be found here

LHC Start Up...

If you haven't heard that the LHC is starting up tomorrow, you haven't been keeping up with the news. It's been in all the newspapers I know of. For a fairly comprehensive listing www.interactions.org archives articles about particle physics and it has been flooded in the past couple of weeks.

I thought I'd also add my two cents and write an entry about it. I would like to start off by emphasising that the world will not end tomorrow. And seriously if you are reading this blog because you know me and and you believe that load of rubbish, well, I might just have to disown you as a friend, or you better have a good excuse, like you've never studied science.

What is happening tomorrow is the first circulation of particles around the entire LHC ring at already studied energies. If we are lucky, we'll get one beam going one way and after they dump that, they'll try the other beam. They will not bringing the particles up in energy or colliding them. So of course the answer to Are we all going to die on Wednesday? is a resounding no, see www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com.

While is business as usual for me, since I don't work on the very first data, it is exciting that something is finally going to happen. Actually, it's not entirely business as usual, I am going to be part of panel linked back to Melbourne to do a very short presentation and field questions from high school and university students. And I'm going to have the webcast playing on my laptop while I work.

I'm already wasting a fair bit of time looking up the live status of the LHC, and I would do the same with ATLAS as well, if I knew the website. Parts of ATLAS have been turned on to track cosmic particles traveling through the detector taking data sporadically over the year, so this won't be the first time the detector will be turned on, but it will be the first time it sees beam.

And in the months after this, we'll get to see more and more energetic beam particles, and collisions. We will be using this data to calibrate and understand the detector. I don't really think anybody will really trust any physics results that are found that soon after turn on, unless it is the rediscovery of what we know exists. So it'll be a while before we will be claiming anything extraordinary...

A Busy Weekend...

This weekend was definitely not as restful as last weekend, but I don't mind, because it was due to my Dad visiting. *smiles*

He was in Monaco for a week for work and decided to drop by for a couple of days on the way home. Luckily for me, he didn't get in until late Saturday afternoon so I had time to clean up, call home, and a bit of work before going and picking up up from the airport. It was nice to see him again, I don't think I've seen him since May, since he had been in Houston for a couple of months when I left for Geneva in July.

After stopping by my new apartment to drop some stuff off and show him where I'll be living for the rest of the year, we went back to the Australian apartment where I'm staying now as there's nowhere for a visitor to sleep in my new place. This visit I actually met two of my housemates and had very basic French conversations with them. One of them is from Madagascar, and the other is Canadian. Unfortunately, I just used up all my whole French sentences in those conversations, so I hope they know some English and are willing to help me learn French.

Back at my place, he checked his email to see if any of his friends in the area were free. He's subscribed to a forum with people from his high school back in Vietnam and gets heaps of emails a day from this. It also means he knows heaps of people all over the world, predominantly in French or English speaking areas. It turns out that one of his old school friends was in Geneva visiting CERN for a couple of days, as he is a theoretical physicist in at University of Virginia. So we met up with him for dinner. It was a little strange to witness this reunion of school acquaintances who hadn't met up in over twenty years.

Then on Sunday, it actually cleared up, so I could take him properly sight-seeing. We when into town, walked around the university district and the old town area, then went down to the lake, went on a cruise, then walked around the lake. And then I ran out of things to show him since he wasn't interested in going to museums or United Nations. Geneva is a very small city, with only a couple of notable landmarks or pretty neighbourhoods. Luckily I had another idea, which was to go take the cable car up the closest mountain for a walk and the view. I was hoping that from up there, it'll be possible to see the Alps, which were obscured by clouds.



Unfortunately, the Alps were still obscured, but there was an amazing view of Geneva and the Lake. We were also lucky as there are a festival or something at the top, so the cable car was half price. They had some craft and food stalls up there, and these three guys. I'd seen alpine horns last year, but only caught them as they were finishing. I'm actually quite impressed, since there were three of them, harmonising quite well, they can't be that easy to play, though they don't sound all that fantastic, because they don't have holes, so the notes are made by mouth shape.



After we came down again, we went in search of dinner and ended up finding a Vietnamese restaurant, which was not to expensive by Geneva standards, though al course more expensive than at home. It wasn't too bad, so I know where to go when I get craving for things I can't be bothered cooking.

Today, he came in with me to CERN, and I took him around the public exhibition and the main ATLAS research building, which is all I think I have access to. He then sat in my office, reading stories on the internet, while I worked. This was a reverse of the situation of many years ago now, when I would amuse myself in his office. So, he saw both places where I will live while I'm here and where I work and the people I work with and can report back to my mum about it.

Then this evening I moved into my new apartment, since another student from Australia had arrived and needed the room I was staying in. The room really does look better with a little more colour in it. There are a few more decorative things I would like though, a couple of floor cushions, a mirror, maybe a rug and something else for my wall. And a few practical things as well, such as hangars and hooks for my clothes and stuff. It'll slowly become home...

Information, in French

is kind of hard to understand if you don't know the language...

This morning I dropped by my new apartment to do the inventory, which I promised the lady I would do this week, since it says within five days of signing the lease. It is a student apartment, four students, two male and two female, with one bathroom, one toilet, a kitchen and a lounge/dining area. It's not too bad, it's fairly new and fairly neat. The furniture provided will do, but doesn't look very comfortable, being all plastic or wood. It is also fairly stark and utilitarian, not very homely, but that'll slowly change when I move and settle in. My room is L-shaped and contains all you'd expect in a student apartment, a bed, desk, bookcase and wardrobe. It's a decent size and has a wall of windows, which is nice, though they look out to a car park. But I'm going to complain about natural light. I didn't meet any of my flatmates, I guess it was too early for them to be up considering it's their holidays at the moment. I kind of wish one of them was though. I was having issues remembering what all the French words for furniture, fittings and trimmings were.

After this, I took the bus down to uni to attend an information session for international students on scholarships. Which was in French. *sigh* I really need to learn the language. Everybody else there seemed to know it. I wonder how many of them were offered the free French lessons as part of the scholarship. I wasn't because I don't need French to work here. I think I'll need French to live here though. *sigh* Luckily I had done most of the administration he was telling us on Monday, so it wasn't too bad, and I understood most of the other stuff, since he had slides, and what I didn't understand I asked him to translate into English for me afterwards. Oh, and he told us about French lessons offered at the university that we could take for free, which I will definitely be taking up... I feel so helpless only knowing English in a French speaking city.

Work, Work, Work and More Work...

There is an ATLAS Egamma workshop on in Hamburg in 10 or so days, and I want to have some results to show by then, so the week has basically consisted of: go to work, work, go home, eat and cook, and continue work. Even today, Friday. Well, it also has been raining almost nonstop for the past couple of days, so there really isn't anything more exciting to do in the evenings.

It's quite frustrating work really, developing an algorithm within the ATLAS trigger framework. It's taken me quite a while to understand who it all works, and I still don't really fully get it. If I did, I would be able to track down the memory problem I have at the moment, which doesn't happen in my code, but is caused by my changed, because it doesn't occur when I revert the code back to the original version. *sigh*

Administration, the Swiss way...

involves lots of waiting and paperwork. Today the first day I could go and do all my University of Geneva stuff. So I started at 10am, and didn't finish until 4pm. First up was the International Relations Office at the University, where I picked up my scholarship money order for the month, and some forms. The next stop was the University cashier to cash the money order in. Then I had enough money to go to the Student Residence Office sign my lease, pay my bond and pick up me keys. Unfortunately I needed to wait about an hour before seeing the person who was in charge of new students renters. Fortunately, she had so many students waiting for her, she let me have my keys before going to the bank with the form to pay my guarantee, as long as I promised to do it the same day and fax and mail the forms back to her as soon as possible. It was a little strange signing a contract in French. I will have to go to the apartment sometime this week to do an inventory check and maybe meet my new flatmates. After that I headed to the population office, 20 minutes bus ride away to hand in my forms for a residency permit. Where I had to stand in line for quarter of an hour to get a ticket to wait in another line. Love that efficiency. It was very quick and painless once I got to a counter about an hour later. I didn't even have to pay the fee due to the scholarship. Then I headed back to CERN, about an hour by public transport, so I could open a bank account there. I figure that would be easiest since that's where I'll be spending most of my time while I'm over here. I had to convince the lady to give me a bank account though, my CERN contract didn't have a high enough percentage of time spent here and I didn't have my residency permit yet and forgot to pay a temporary one. Luckily having the paper work from the my scholarship and my apartment was enough to convince her that I really needed an account. So now I have a Swiss bank account. *grins* Not one of those cool ones though. *sigh* I still have a more administration to do next week. Fun times.

It's the Weekend!

This has been both a restful and busy weekend so far. When I came back on Thursday, I found out that we were going to host a bbq/party on Friday, which was fine with me as it was something to do. *smiles*

The bbq was very civilised, only about 6 people, eating and drinking with a couple of cds playing. But then a whole group of about 12, mostly American people come from their weekly bbq, and one of them in particular was very loud and annoying, and kept making awful punch with our decent alcohol. We lost two thirds of a bottle of Absolut Vodka to him, which I wanted to have with cranberry juice. He also attacked some tequilla and scotch and rum we had lying around, but that was all old stuff so we didn't mind. He and his friends also monopolised Anthony's laptop, which was providing music after the cds, leaving it very loud and wouldn't let us turn in down. He also crashed on our couch and woke us all up in the morning. peh. I forgot how stressful it is hosting a party, worrying about the running out of food and drink, and furnishings.

We were lucky and nobody broke anything, though a couple of drinks did get spilt. We only spent a couple of hours cleaning up on Saturday, to stop the whole place from stinking of beer. We won't be having another party any time soon. Though I guess I should have a flat warming once I move into my new place. That maybe a little more civilised since it's further away from CERN.

I spent the rest of the night reading the third book of the Twilight Saga, which mu Aunt bought for me on my last day in LA. The series is quite addictive reading. It is a good combination of action and drama about humans, vampires and werewolves. I've been losing a fair bit of sleep over it.

Saturday night we went to another party in our apartment complex, which I didn't really enjoy. I wasn't in the mood for more drinking or small chat with people I didn't really know so only stayed for an hour.

Today wasn't at all what I expected, I dropped off my flatmate at his cricket match so I could have the car to go to CERN and catch the bus into town to go to the lake, however, there ended being a fatal flaw in this plan, in that I couldn't get back into the apartment.. I put the key in, and I accidentally locked, then unlocked then locked the deadlock, but couldn't actually open the door. Then the lock got stuck! I tried for ages to get it to move, but ended up bending my key the key, so stopped as I didn't want to break it in the lock. I also checked all the windows and they were all locked, and I would have to break the half-fixed one to get in again.

Luckily I now know the person living next to us, and asked him to help, and he got his friend who has broken into many an apartment in this complex with a knife and a dvd case. However, he can only do this if it's not deadlocked. So we tried oiling the lock, but it wouldn't budge. And then we sat around thinking about what to do and decided to go to back to the cricket game to ask my flatmate's opinion, since he has to live in an insecure apartment as well if I broke a window and would have to call somebody if the lock was broken. He came back with his keys and a cricket bat to break the window if neccessary. Luckily for us though, his key was able to open the door, probably because his wasn't bent and the oil had gotten to every part of the lock by now. *phew* It was the best possible outcome in this situation, though it made us look a little stupid.

Now it's kind of late in the afternoon and I can't be bothered going all the way into town (minimum 45 minutes one way) and so will go with the other guys to watch the end of the cricket game. It should be relaxing, sitting in the sun, and since it's cricket, it'll be nice and easy to watch, not too much concentration involved.

Oh yeah, I haven't even said what happened when I was driving to cricket. So when we were driving into the CERN site where the cricket field is, i kind of veer the wrong way (left instead of right) as I'm confused about the side of the road I need to be on and he said left, but he meant the left lane of the right side so, I swipe my card in and drop him off at the field and then this car drives up, blocking my way. I got all confused as this meant it would have been driving on it's left and so I go left and they go to their right and block me again and then, they signal for me to stop. Two CERN security people then walk out and come to my window they ask me for my "permit" which I thought was my permit to be on the CERN site, my CERN id, because we've all gotten emails about how security has been upgraded at all the sites but they actually wanted to see my drivers licence! I wasn't driving that badly! But later Anthony explained they recently there have been some dodgy goings on with the CERN vans one incident was 8 apanese student crammed into a 5 seater van so I guess they were suspicious of Asians they tell me go after analysing my Australian licence for a bit. They first thought i was american from my bad French though, but yeah, that was unexpected and annoying. I only reckon it was because I was Asian that they needed to check up on me, they would have asumed I was British if I were white and going to the cricket I reckon. peh. I'll get the other guys to drive their car afterwards.

Whirlwind Visit

After summer school ended, I flew to LA to visit my relatives and friends and now I'm in the airport on the way back to Europe. It's been such a short visit, I wish I had organised a couple more days, I really would have liked a bit more time with everybody, but I really do need to get back to work; when I was booking flights, my supervisor said I should only take a couple of days off.

So what have I done with the four full days I have here? Quite a bit. I wanted this to be a relaxing break, but I've been very busy. It has been nice to be busy with fun things though. Where the only things to be worried about are what to and eat next. Where I say what I want to do and other people drive me around. Thank you so much everybody for giving me some of your time. I know how busy you all are with work and there are other people you want to spend time with.

The visit didn't start off too well. After a five hour wait for my flight to LA, my plane ended being an hour late due to a late arrival. Then, they didn't give me any free food so I was starving by the time I got to LA! I completely forgot how bad service was on American Airlines. Luckily my aunt was there to pick me up, and take me down to Little Saigon for pho. mmmm. I had made a plan not to eat anything but Asian food out for the visit, and this was a great start. *grins*

Saturday was spent with one of the guys I met at UCLA while I was on exchange and his girlfriend. It could have been very awkward since I had never met his girlfriend, but it wasn't too bad. We started our time together with a late dim sum lunch, which was very tasty and totally within my Asian food plan. *smiles*

Then we went to Griffith Observatory, which I wanted to go to in the past, but it had been under renovations for years. Being free, there weren't too many fun hands-on exhibits, though there were heaps of rotating spheres explaining day and night, seasons, tides, moon phases. And there was the newest wall showing a small part of one of the sky surveys, which was cool. It is amazing that we only see a very small fraction of what is actually out there with our own eyes, and some of us don't see anything most of the time anyway due to weather or light pollution.

But the exhibit that I actually learnt something from was a very simple one. They had a wall, with information about each of the planets, with a set of scales for each one, showing what you would weigh on the planet. Now, it was a little misleading since they also only gave how much more the planets weighs compared to Earth and it's volume, but not it's radius. And it turns out that only on Jupiter would you feel substantially heavier than you do on Earth, everywhere else, the weight of the planet doesn't scale as it needs to do much the radius, since gravity is proportional to mass divided by radius squared. Even more amusing, while we were going around and trying to figure out why we were so light on the other planets, another guy kept telling us that "weight doesn't have to do with mass, but with how fast the planet is rotating". We had to work very hard to keep straight faces as he told us this for the third or fourth time. *grins*



The other reason I wanted to go to the observatory was for the view over the LA basin. Here it is in all it's glory. Isn't the urban sprawl and smog lovely? I couldn't even see the ocean! You could see hills and the Hollywood sign in the other direction though, which was kind of cool. It is kind of scary how dry and barren the hills are though. I guess it's to be expected since the area is a semi-desert.

After the observatory, we hung out at a coffee shop before it was time to go to the next attraction, which was the LA production of Wicked, the musical. I've wanted to see this ever since my sister and I were in New York and it was playing there, but it was too soon after it was opened so it wasn't possible to get half price tickets yet and there were so many other shows on that we wanted to see. Then it just opened in Melbourne as I was leaving for Switzerland last month, and I was worried it wouldn't be playing by the time I got home. I quite enjoyed the musical, despite going with two people who had already seen it before and for whom the story wasn't surprising and kept comparing the performers to the recording and other production. I liked the twists and turns of the storyline, which I won't discuss here in case I spoilt it for anybody, but was slightly disappointed in the quality of the performers (not really in tune) and the production (microphones levels were off). I was also having issues staying awake due to the lack of sleep during the previous couple of nights.

Phew. That was only Saturday... Still three more full days to go!

Sunday was family, which started with a late breakfast, even though all of us were up early, none of us realised the others were up. We then went kayaking in the Naples Canals, starting at the bay.We rowed to the end of a canal to see the moon jellyfish which like to congregate there. Just like in Finding Nemo, the tops of their bells aren't poisonous, so you can reach down and touch them. I even picked one up! But I think that might not have been a good idea as it didn't move again once I put it back in the water. But then, it didn't sting me, like it's supposed to, so maybe it wasn't alive to start off with... *blushes*

It was so nice to be in the sun and on the water. I had forgotten how hard rowing was, particularly against the current, but luckily for me, my Uncle wanted his exercise and was happy to do most of the work. *grins* On the way back, we saw his brother out with his little sailing boat, and I was able to get a ride.



There I am, balancing on the front of the boat. I was quite worried about it capsizing, since both of them told me that that was a real possibility with the extra weight at the front. Luckily, that didn't happen, and I stayed relatively dry and didn't even get hit by the boom. It was fun, I kind of would have liked to try steering the boat myself, but we didn't really have the time to and I didn't want to wreak the boat. I felt quite spoilt really, getting driven around in my Uncle's MX5 (Miata in the States) with the top down *grins* then going on a shiny new sailboat.

After the fun was duty time, and we went to visit my grandparents and cousins. This is always an awkward visit for me, since I can't communicate properly with my grandparents, I can understand their Vietnamese, but they can't understand me, since they don't know English and I speak very little Vietnamese. Nevertheless, it was nice to see my grandmother and my grandfather again, who just had a stroke a couple of years back and is slowly recovering, but has trouble talking and walking. They both looked happy to see me, but they definitely weren't as vocal about it as my cousins, who remembered who I was and were glad to see me, at least the younger two at any rate. They were surprisingly older and taller than I remembered, and so were less annoying. I think they were glad for some new source of amusement since they had been stuck at home all summer holidays, and kept inviting me over to play later. I kind of wish I could have, but I already had plans for my other days in LA. I don't think I would have had the energy to keep up with them though.

After dinner with them and some of my other relatives, my relatives dropped me off at another friend's parent's place and we drove to his place in Santa Barbara, which is where he now goes to physics graduate school. It was quite a contrast going from his parent's place to the his place, which he shares with four other physics grad students, going from neat and clean, to not so neat and clean. We played some Rock Band, which was quite fun, particularly the drums. Unfortunately, I didn't know most of the songs, meaning that I couldn't do the singing part for many of them.

Monday was basically spent at the beach, two different ones, with a lunch break between as well as a tour of UCSB. Situated between a small mountain range and the coast, Santa Barbara is a very pretty place, with Spanish influenced architecture in the download area and lots of palm trees. But I wasn't there for the place, I was there for the beach.

So we started out going to the beach nearer to my friend's place, where you park at the end of the road and take a walk through some trees and shrubbery until you reach a small cliff and look for a non-eroded path down. The area was very pretty, bad the beach was a little disappointing due to the morning mist, which hadn't cleared off yet, so the water looked all grey and the oil rig and boat in the distance wasn't very picturesque at all. We hung out there for a while and I amused myself playing at the water's edge, trying not to get wet and watching a group of birds doing the same, though they weren't playing, they were trying to eat bugs in the sand in between waves. They looked quite funny running up and down the sand all the time *grins*



On the way back to the car, we took a different path, which took us by a whole group of eucalyptus trees, and I couldn't help taking this photo because if I didn't know better, I would have thought it was taken in Australia somewhere. It is kind of weird being back in LA. It's at the same time familiar and foreign.

We then tried to find a Japanese place with was open for lunch after 2pm, which I thought in the US wouldn't have been a problem, but I forgot that we were in a small town. We eventually found one open and snuck in before they closed, and then ate so slowly that they kept hinting for us to leave, which we mostly ignored.

After lunch, we went to UCSB. I do not know how anybody does any work done there. The campus has the best location. It has its own beach, is bordered on three sides by coastline and has it's own lagoon. And since it's in Southern California, it supposedly only rains ten days a year. This is reflected in the building design. The normal physics building actually has balconies for corridors, which would not be possible in anywhere wetter or colder. The university also has a separate Institute for Theoretical Physics, which has a very impressive building situated almost right on the edge of the cliff. The building is built around a courtyard, with the academic's offices facing out and the postdocs and students facing in. There are random backboards in the corridors and a very nice 'contemplation' room facing the ocean. Quite a difference compared with the normal physics building where my friend doesn't get any natural light in his office.



After driving around and looking at the ocean from inside, it was hard to resist its call, and it was time to go to the beach again. This time, one which was easier to get to, the one right next to the university campus. See those buildings in the background of the photo? That's the uni! People must get desensitised after a while and the beach isn't so special anymore.

So that was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were fairly quiet, driving back to LA, with some factory outlet and ordinary shopping along the way, Korean BBQ dinner with my relatives (yum!) and meeting up with my friend again, before coming here where I'm about to board the plane.

The End (of School) is Nigh...

So tomorrow will be the last day of the summer school and to be honest, most people are are a little physics-ed out. This is particularly evident in the discussion sessions, which aren't nearly as lively as they were last week. I think having the day off on Sunday reminded us all that we were in the foreign country and stuck in lectures all day. Personally, I've found it much harder to concentrate this week than last week and have resorted to using my laptop during lectures to keep me warm and awake.

Today was much easier than the previous days though, as we only had two lectures, followed by an excursion to the Addler Planetarium in Chicago, followed by dinner at the University of Chicago.

So we were buses out to the planetarium, where we saw two shows at had some time to roam about the place. The shows were a little disappointing; the first showing off 3D visualisations which were cool, but nothing special, and the second was a planetarium show about the different types of collisions in the universe, which was interesting, but because it was in the planetarium theatre, and with the reclining seats, I fell asleep. They also didn't do the customary thing of showing us the stars beforehand which I wanted to hear since I don't know the stars in this hemisphere that well. The displays in the planetarium were kind of cool, they had quite a view hands-on exhibits, the coolest being a model Mars Rover which you could remote control behind a wall, only using input from a camera mounted on the front of it. The only issue was that there were lots of kids around hogging all the exhibits. It must be school holidays here or something. The view from outside the museum back towards Chicago was amazing despite the weather though:



After the planetarium we went to the university, and had to sit through a talk about the physics department there. It was followed by a talk about cosmology, which would have been quite interesting, apart from the fact that the seats were uncomfortable, the room was humid and I had had a week of physics beforehand. Then are was the school dinner, which was also a bit of a let down as it was a buffet, but I guess this was a school, not a conference and it has basically all been free for me, so I really can't complain.

Steak Fry?

Today I learnt that 'Steak Fry' equals 'BBQ' but with different meat and bread (steak and baguette versus hamburger/hotdogs and buns). Oh, and there are bandannas at a steak fry. I think we were supposed to use them as serviettes since they came wrapped around our knifes and forks, but that seemed like a waste, so we all decided to wear them instead:





Note all the different ways that we found to wear a square piece of material and I also want to acknowledge that the above photos weren't taken using my camera, but by one of the British students.

The Third-Most Populous City in the US of A

Coming from Switzerland, Chicago and Illinois are a bit of a shock to the system. It is amazingly flat here. Not a mountain or high hill to be seen anywhere.It was kind of surreal flying in last week, flying down from Canada, down the massive Lake Michigan and then all of a sudden, there were skyscrapers on the edge of the lake then urban sprawl. America is also a bit of a shock to the system. The huge cars and roads here really can't be found anywhere else in the world.

Today we finally got the day off and they provided buses to and from Chicago for us to explore the city which is just visible on the horizon from FermiLab. It is interesting to note that it is ranked as the third mot populous city in the country, it only has 3 million people within the bounds of the city, which is less than Sydney's 4.2 million people and actually less then Melbourne's 3.8 million people. It must have something to do with how the bounds of a city are defined.

Working around the downtown area, you feel so small as the buildings are so tall, and it's actually quite pleasant to walk around as they always provide shade. The levels of the city are also kind of crazy, with one of the streets having three levels. A walkway at the river level, an upper boulevard and a lower roadway. As well as the multilevel streets, there are also supposedly multitude of tunnels under the city, for the subway, for water supply, old freight and supply tunnels, now used for utility and communication lines.

Other facts I found interesting about the city is the canal that was built so that the sewerage of the city via the Chicago River wouldn't flow in their water supply being Lake Michigan. There was already a canal there for shipping, but they deepened it so that it would be lower than the lake so water from the North branch of the river would go to the canal instead of to the lake. So now the treated sewerage goes down to St Louis rather than out to the lake and they can deal with it. The other towns around the lake weren't too impressed with this, worried that the canal would take too much water from the lake, Chicago then built a lagoon and lock system to restrict water flow.

Anyway, enough about the city and my impressions and onto what we did. We first walked around to look for a cruise company office to buy tickets for a cruise around sunset. Then we walked along the river to the Sears Tower to go to the observation deck on the 103rd floor. Sears Tower was once the tallest building in the world, and they still claim to be if you include the two television antennae on the top. It was built in the 1970s in only 3 years and is designed like a set of tubes, all starting at the base and only one goes the highest. Supposedly on a clear day you can see to 4 different states.



As you can see from this photo, it wasn't perfectly clear by the time we got up to the SkyDeck, but the view was still magnificent. Lots of tall buildings and the Lake looking eastwards, and flat land as far as the eye could see westwards. It was also very cool as there was an Air and Water Show on in Chicago that day, and we could see the planes from the deck. I've always found it strange viewing foreign cities from above as I don't know many of the landmarks to look at, but it's cool to be that high up in a building. It was very very full of people though.

After coming down, we went in search of Pizzeria Uno/Pizzeria Due for the original Deep Dish Chicago style pizza. We found the restaurant eventually, with the help of a mobile phone equipped with Internet and GPS, ordered an individual pizza each, and waited. Deep dish pizza seems to take longer to cook than ordinary pizza due to the thickness of the crust and filling, it's kind of like eating a pizza flavoured pie, particularly since the sauce is on top and the filling on the inside, so it doesn't dry out. It was very tasty, though I wasn't able to finish it.

By this time, we were tired and it was over 30 degrees out, so we walked the main shopping street in town, stopping at the Apple store, to the Hancock Tower, then out to the lakefront, where we were going to swim, until we saw the rubbish in the water and all the people there. So we just went to the park at the start of Navy Pier and rested. While we were there, we saw this little guy pop out of the bushes, hop around and eat grass. He wasn't scared of us at all.



Then it was time for our cruise. First we went around the Chicago River, with the guide pointing out the interesting buildings and explaining their history. There are a couple of ones I remember, but I won't bore you all with it here. The most interesting one, engineering wise, is the Boeing Headquarters, which the train lines run below, meaning that they weren't allowed to put columns down to the bedrock, so instead a whole wing for the building is supported from above by steel trusses, which looks very disturbing from the lower river level.



The boat then headed out towards the lake, after going through the lock system. And I look about 20 skyline/sunset photos, of which is one. I also learn about what changing the ISO on the camera does, which I used in the next photo.



This Cloud Gate sculpture was the first and last stop of the day, which is just a huge reflective jelly bean, which somebody must have to clean everyday and also stop pigeons from leaving white matter on it. It looks very cool on the inside, with the warping of the reflective surface and making interesting images. I have heaps of photos of this as well, but this is one of my favourites, with the lights and curved buildings.