Apart from the distraction of having apply for the visa, my week so far has been characterised by almost nonstop studying (attempted nonstop studying, to be precise). I've mostly been crunching the stuff revolving around quantum physics, i.e. bits of my maths course, the quantum mechanics course, and the atomic and molecular physics course. For the former two, I can follow the arguments and derivations, but the challenge is in stepping back and seeing everything as a harmonious whole, which is not easy. It requires a complete divorce from the 'common sense' of what we intuitively feel things work. As Niels Bohr apparently stated, if one is not confused by quantum physics, then one does not understand it. I certainly got plenty of confusion, but it's still arguable if that has anything to do with understanding it!

For my Atomic & Molecular course, I am faced with a nightmare situation: crap lecturer. He has an enormous reluctance of actually writing things down on the board while teaching, so we often have to scribble stuff down while he talks without pause. Even his online notes make little sense, and are (I have since discovered) riddled with mistakes. The course is badly structured as well, although this may not be his fault...what he taught us was a lot of results without the underlying derivations and concepts, which makes it easy to memorise but difficult to understand. I spent over 16 hours in the past couple of days trying to piece together information from the reference books which might lend some sense to what he gave in his notes. And I'm still only half-way through. This is a real pity, because the subject matter of the course is something that truly interests me. Even when I was trawling through the books, trying to make head and tail of things, there was a part of me that was truly fascinated as well.

I just wish I didn't have to put up with lecturers like this. For quantum mech, we're lucky to get Andy Fisher. He makes the subject so clear and lucid, which is important because its a foundation for many fields of physics. He is incredibly knowledgeable, yet he's the only lecturer who's ever been brave enough to say "I don't the answer to that, but I'll think about it and tell you tommorow". When I become a lecturer, I can only hope that I'll be half as good as Fisher is.

On Monday morning, I dragged myself out of bed early because I had to go to the US embassy to apply for my visa. Despite getting slightly lost, I still got to the place about 10 minutes before my scheduled 9 am time...as I got close, a enormous queue of visa-applicants indicated where the embassy was, and banished any illusions of actually getting any applying done at 9 am. The embassy itself was in Grosvenor Sq. near Oxford St., and two sides of the square were taken up by the US embassy buildings, with the main one a large and magnificent complex with a statue of a golden eagle topping it. Statues of Eisenhower and Roosevelt were placed in the square it self. Apt surroundings to represent the New Empire, where the Old Empire once reigned from.

There were hundreds of people in the queueing up to get in the embassy, and it was a cold morning. I had a book with me, but nevertheless it wasn't fun because my fingers were threathening to freeze off. After inching a bit closer to the head of the queue, it was clear that the queue was for the x-ray/metal detector procedure. After over an hour, when I actually got into the building, I had to pick up a number and wait some more! This was starting to feel sneakingly like trying to apply for a new IC at the JPN. When finally my number came up after over 3 hours of cumulative waiting time, I went to the Counter 5, where a fairly old lady, impressively, managed to avoid looking bored while flipping through my passport. As my 'interview', she asked me a grand total of FIVE questions: "What are you studying?" "What are you going to be doing in the United States?" "When are you planning to fly there?" (Looking at the list of my educational institutions...) "At what age were you in high school?" "Where did you do your elementary school?". After less than five minutes, she said, "We'll need to do some administrative things before we can confirm your visa...", and told me how to send my passport over to get the visa stamp, hopefully in two weeks time. That concluded, I took my passport with me and left. FIVE minutes of service from the Unites States Government after over THREE hours of waiting. Somehow I felt cheated.