I cannot recall ever having to make sacrifices in my life. It has always been easy for me to do what I want to do, without having to encounter too many obstacles or give up things I hold dear. I have been blessed as far as my talents and abilities are concerned, and have never had to worry about financial matters. It was always something that I've taken for granted...maybe I've kidded myself what 'sacrifices' I've made are admirable and something to be proud of. As I've gotten to know some of my colleagues at the Institute better, I've had a better perspective on such things.

Most of us in the STScI summer program of 2004 are either physicists or astronomers, but there are a few exceptions. Raquel Shida might confuse you a bit if you ever met her. She looks every bit the average Japanese girl, but if you try to speak to her in Japanese (as I did), she would give you a confused look. That's because she isn't Japanese, but a Brazillian. In the same way I'm ethnic Chinese but Malaysia, she's ethnic Japanese but of Brazillian nationality. Her project is pure astronomy, mostly data reduction, and she's totally commited to her work, more so than anyone else...she is almost always in the office, late into the nights and in the weekends. But she's not an astronomy or physics student...she's a third year ARCHITECTURE student. But she's a very avid amateur astronomer. For scientists, one important sign of achievement is the amount of papers published, and Raquel has TWENTY FOUR papers listed to her name in the NASA abstract retrieval service. She has been observing variable stars, and writing papers on her observations. She's obviously as passionate about astronomy as most of us, if not more, yet she isn't doing a related subject. When we asked her about it, she said that she wasn't sure about of being to make a living as an astronomer when she was first applying for university, and decided to go for something safe instead. But it seems that now, she has decided to go for her interest, and she'll be wanting to do a physics or astronomy degree after she finishes the current degree.

Melanie, or Mel is from UCL as well! However, she's 3 years my senior, and she just graduated and is going to do a PhD in Cambridge this upcoming academic year. She seemed like just a typical bubbly girl around our age, except that she isn't our age. She's 27 years old this year, and her path to astronomy was not easy. She did a degree in accountacy at first, before realising that she hated it. After graduating, she had to work for a couple of years to earn money before going into a degree course in UCL. She said she couldn't bear the thought of slaving away for 30 years in accountancy, even if the money was good, so she'd rather earn less as an astronomer but be happy. It must have been difficult to take the plunge and do something new at the age when most other people are starting their working careers. I do not know if I would have had the courage to do the same in her place.

I have had a privileged life, and I shouldn't complain when little problems and setbacks turn up in life. I've already had a good hand of cards dealt to me from the start.

Sometimes, I wonder why I am such a loner...over the past few weeks, I got reminders why I prefer things to be like this.

Usually, our weekends have been the chance for us to travel to nearby cities or attractions, and to take a break from the hard work during the week. This weekend, we hired a few cars so we could have some freedom: we visited the Six Flags amusement park 40 minutes away from Baltimore, and on Sunday we drove all the two hours up to Philadelphia. Six Flags was pretty fun, although it would have been a bit nicer without all the queuing, and Philadephia is a reasonably nice although slightly dull historical city, but that's not the point of this post...

I always find it's easy to get along with people when your interactions are for short periods of time: it's when you hang out with them that friction and conflicts start to develop, and maybe you will see sides of them you will not normally see or realise....in fact, you will see sides of yourself that you will not normally see.

In our excursions, the infamous laid-back Hispanic attitude starts to get irritating...when we're walking in a group, within a few minutes those of us constrained to speak English will soon realise that the Colombians, Spaniards and Brazillian are lagging 50m behind us, walking in their own leisurely pace and jabbering away in Spanish (Raquel doesn't really speak Spanish, but Portuguese is so similar to Spanish that they can actually understand each other). I don't know about the others, but I've found this extremely irritating, because we can be walking along one moment, and realise that we can't see where they have disappeared to, and after 5-10 minutes of frantic back-tracking, we'll find them busy taking pictures of something or other(this is a trait that I would have attributed to the Japanese, but I've since learned that Hispanics are like this also). They can at least have the courtesy to inform us that they want to stop for a moment!

Hispanics eat their dinner at 10-11pm at night, so even though when they're out with they'll concede to eating dinner at normal hours, their behaviour is as if they don't emphatise with our hunger...we can be desperately walking around looking for a restaurant, and they'll still be dragging along in the characteristic manner. There are also times when some of us want to do something different from the rest of the group, and we end up splitting up. This seems trivial, but it's not so nice sight-seeing when you have to plan your itinerary around rendezvous with the other guys at a specific time and place (since we're mostly foreigners, there are only 3 mobile phones out of the 15 interns). And I hope this isn't developing into a theme, but it often seems like the Hispanics are the ones who want to split off to do something else.

Apart from that, it seems like my temper gets on short fuse whenever things don't go smoothly, which is usually the case in trips. Little things that I don't normally notice start to irritate a part of me...the rational part knows its insignificant and of no consequence, but another part just starts getting really indignant and feels like yelling out. Today at Philadelphia, I was walking with the group (or rather, in the general direction, since the first and last person in the group was like 50m apart as usual) . As I was walking up a flight of stone steps outside a building, Matthias suddenly squirted water at me and made my entire shirt wet. I was startled, and I yelled, 'F***king hell!'. Normally, I would have then just laughed and chased after him, but I fumed and shouted 'YOU F***KING SON OF A BITCH!!!'. Everyone was completely shocked at my reaction (including a bunch of old ladies who were sitting nearby). Part of me was just out of control, while the calmer part couldn't assert itself.

There is also a more gradual build-up of irritation towards certain people in the group from probably insignificant little things, and sometime I might just lose it at them.

I guess that usually being a sociopath means that I avoid such friction with people. I think that I prefer having a small number of good friends rather than a large number of less intimate ones...it's much easier to iron out differences in opinion, and when you know someone better you're more likely to wave off little disagreements. Apart from that, I would like my friends to know me more intimately...I think that apart from the public 'face' that I project, there's a lot more to me that I don't show.

With this internship, one good thing is that we all share a passion for astronomy and science, which is something few people I've met prior to this have, so in this respect I've been able to be open about myself in a way I never did before. However, I think there's more to me than a love for science, and I think none of my colleagues know that side of me.

p.s. I might have complained about the Hispanics, but that's a bit unfair because cliques always form whenever a few people with the same language or nationality happen to get together. I find that Hispanics are very easy-going, with a great sense of humour and always ready for a laugh, and Esteban, Rafael, Miguel and Gara are always great friends.