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.

Matthias Wapler exasperates the hell out of me sometimes. On the coach to NYC, as we settled down for the journey, he pulled out a book: Differential Geometry for Theoretical Physicists. All I could do was shake my head, speechless. Fine, he's a Berliner. Fine, he's about to start his PhD in string theory in the University of Waterloo near Canada. And fine, he did his undergraduate degree in Imperial College, THE ENEMY. All this I could forgive with my infinite well of mercy, but pulling out a maths textbook on a tour is pushing the limits.

Even as he lay in the bottom bunk of the tiny hostel room we were sharing in our first night in NYC, 1am in the morning (or night?), he was reading the damn textbook! I got the top bunk because Matt had dislocated his kneecap in a roller-blading accident a couple of weeks ago, and it was stifling in the non-air conditioned room. Outside was the street, and there were vehicles constantly rumbling by or people talking at (what seemed to me) the top of their voices. At least there was a police station a few buildings down across the street, which was a good thing, but that wasn't going to help me sleep. Eventually, a fitful slumber overtook me, as the city that never sleeps carried on outside.

The next morning, after we met up with the others outside the hostel (the Hispanic guys were, as usual, 30 minutes late), we went to grab breakfast at a little deli nearby. It was one of those little delis with a serving counter and a row of counter-style seats along the opposite wall. I sat at the edge of our group, and neat-looking, dark-haired man in shirtsleeves asked me, "Excuse me, but where are you guys from?". It's difficult not to notice that we're not from around, what with the Hispanics talking very loudly in Spanish. "We're from all over, but I'm from Malaysia", I answered. His eyes lit up and he said, "I was there for a couple of months last year", and he said that he was backpacking in the region. He then asked us what we were doing there, so I told them that we were summer students visiting from Baltimore. "Oh, are you guys working in Hopkins?" "No, we're at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is in the area". His eyes lit up again and he said, "I'm a mathematician", and it was then that he showed me the book he was reading, which was by Kurt Godel, but the title was so abstruse I don't recall it. We chatted a couple of minutes more, and it turns out that he's a PhD student doing pure maths in Columbia University. An interesting encounter....

After we left, we walked a couple of blocks to the intersection with 5th avenue, where the Flatiron building was located. The Flatiron building is so-called because with its triangular shape, it resembles a really tall iron (the thing for ironing clothes, not the metal). After satiating our collective photographic needs, we took the subway to Grand Central Station, where Bonnie, Matthias and I had already visited the day before, but the rest haven't.

Inside the large hall of the station, I noticed Tom seating down at a corner rummaging through his things. Tom has one of those large SLR digital cameras, and out of all of us he's the resident photo-maniac, so for him not to go exercising his camera shutters was unusual. A few minutes later, he walked to us (or what remained of the group, as everyone seemed to have dispersed in search of photo opportunities), and solemnly announced, "I've lost my credit card". He had to go through the entire process of calling up his bank to cancel his card (and this was Sunday), while me and a couple of others went to round up the stragglers.

After leaving the station, we decided to walk to the United Nations Headquarters at the East River bank. Outside the blue-coloured building stood hundreds of empty flagpoles (we later learned that the member nations' flags are only displayed on weekedays). We went through the usual security checks and entered the building, and we decided to take the guided tour through the building. After a rather long wait, we were ushered into the tour by a Chinese lady. We were shown the Security Council, Trusteeship Council and General Assembly rooms (which were all empty for the weekend), and along the way the lady gave talked a bit on the role of the UN, its structure, history etc. It was very interesting to actually go into the Security Council and General Assembly rooms, where global politics happen everyday, and I found the guide's spiel pretty informative as well.

Walking away from the UN, we bumped into a street market stretching along 3rd Avenue, where traffic was sealed off and there were stalls selling food and miscellaneous junk. After a considerable amount of procrastination thanks to the Hispanics' insistence of taking pictures of everything, we grabbed a quick lunch at the foodstalls there, before Matthias, Bonnie and I peeled off to visit the Empire State Building.

The others were staying 4 nights in NYC: they left Baltimore on Friday evening, and they're only departing for it on Tuesday evening. Bonnie, Matthias and I are less eager to spend money and time in NYC, so we only came on Saturday morning and are leaving Monday evening. As the others were planning to visit Empire State Building only on Tuesday morning, it was decided to split the group so that Bonnie, Matthias and I could visit Empire State, before having a rendezvous at the west shore of the island for an evening cruise.

The Empire State Building looms over everything else in mid-town NYC, and it's currently the tallest building in Manhattan after the WTC towers were destroyed. The lobby downstairs had a very 1920s art-deco interior, reminding everyone as to the age of the building, a remarkable 73 years. We spent the next hour or so in queues before we finally got into the lift to the 87th floor observation deck. The observation deck is outdoors, and the railings at the edges were swarming with tourists eager to get a vantage point. The view of the entire island of Manhattan and beyond was simply stunning, and it's difficult to get a better appreciation of the size and density of the city in any other way. The entire island is simply packed with buildings, with numerous skyscrapers reaching for the sky. There's not much more I can do but to point you to my pictures.

At 6pm, we met up with the others at Pier 87 next to river, where we took a boat ride around the south end of the island and back. The cruise was crowded with people, but everyone was told to keep seated, so everyone had good views. Again, what I can say would make no justice to the sights of Manhattan by sunset. However, there was a guide giving a talk about some of the landmarks, and he also told us a bit about the history of New York city as the gateway for millions of immigrants from other lands seeking a new life. As we steamed by the Statue of Liberty, he gave us an account of the typical experiences of the immigrants arriving by sea at the city. As the light faded and the boat sailed back towards its pier with the Statue of Liberty getting smaller behind us, he concluded, "From everywhere, there has been someone who has passed through into New York City, and that's what makes it the greatest city in the world". Even though I'm a Londoner, I'm inclined to agree.

By the time we docked, it was past 9pm. There was this diner in Times Sq that Bonnie wanted to take us, but it was a considerably longer walk than the distance on the map suggested. We finally arrived at the Stardust Cafe, and we had to wait a while longer before they could seat the nine of us. The reason the restaurant was unusual was because the waiters and waitresses would take turn to sing through a microphone. Apparently this is was where wanna-be Broadway actors and actresses worked while awaiting their big break.

After dinner, it was almost 11pm, and Miguel wanted to take us to a jazz club, and we walked a considerable distance before he realised that he had completely misread the map and was taking us the wrong direction. We went to a subway station to try and take a train there, but we had to wait for over half and hour before the train arrived. By this time, Matthias and Raquel were saying that they weretired and wanted to return to the hostel, and I decided to retire as well...

To be continued...

  Manhattan island lies like a giant scar on the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers, with its very earth covered with spires and conurbations. The multitudes scurry like insignificant ants under the shadows of its edifices, a riot of colour and noise. 

  I sat next to the half-empty bus next to Bonnie, my head buried in my book as I tried to while away the four-hour ride from Baltimore to NYC. Suddenly, Bonnie nudged me and said, 'Look, there's downtown'. I looked up at the window and before me, across the Hudson River, stretched the skyscrapers of southern Manhattan across my entire field of view. It's a HUGE city...that's the first thing that struck me. The bus slowed down at the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel, which goes under the river to the city.

  After half-an-hour, we were buried in the NYC traffic. The streets look gritty and crowded with people. Eventually, we managed to crawl our way through. At around 1pm, Bonnie, Matthias and I were dropped off at the intersection in Broadway and 32nd St. The other interns had arrived last night, but the three of us weren't too eager to spend money for an extra night at the hostel, and elected to leave on Saturday morning instead. As we walked the dozen blocks or so towards the hostel, we walked by the poor inner city, which was crowded with new immigrants. I saw Africans whose accents showed that they were obviously newly arrived to the States, walked by Indian jewellery shops. The area was dirty and crowded, but there was a bustle to it that I've never experienced before, At one point, I whispered to Bonnie and Matthias that they seemed to be the only white people around. We got to our hostel at Chelsea borough without incident, and after checking in we set off to try and rendezvous with the others. Gara had told us that they'll be visiting the museums around Central Park in the afternoon.

  The NY subway is absolutely filthy. There was rubbish strewn about and puddles of what I hope were water at the staircase and entrance, but at least the trains were air-conditioned. It was $2 a ride, which was an absolute bargain compared with the London Tube. After a brief ride, we emerged from the station a couple of blocks from Central Park. Central Park is a huge rectangular chunk of greenery embedded inside Manhattan, the only sizeable park on the island. A lot of the museums, including the Natural History Museum and Natural History Museum seemed to be in or around Central Park. As the sheer size of Central Park and Manhattan in general hit us, we tried to send a text message to Gara (she had her Spanish phone and was roaming here) from Bonnie's phone, but with no luck. We wandered through Central Park, with what seemed like half of the city's denizens apparently deciding to either go jogging or cycling there that afternoon.

  Bonnie asked us if we wanted to go to a section of Central Park called Strawberry Fields. Both Matthias and I had never heard of it, and Bonnie was aghast, 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN you've never heard of Strawberry Fields? The Beatles have a song by that name...'. Well, we're physicists after all (later, it'll transpire that Tom had never heard of Strawberry Fields either). It turns out that there's a plaque dedicated to John Lennon there as well, and there was a busker sitting nearby screeching out Beatles songs, strumming along with his ancient-looking guitar. We continued to wind our way across the park, and as we approached the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the crowds started to thicken. Esteban had mentioned really wanting to visit the Met, so we decided to try out luck there. When we went into the lobby, the hordes of tourists and $7 entrance fee suggested that going in to look for them was pointless. It became obvious that trying to find them in the vastness of the city was utterly pointless, so we started to plot out our own sightseeing plans.

  After sitting at the steps of the Met to recover out breath, we decided to make our way down to Midtown, taking the subway to Grand Central Station, a large and imposing neo-Classical building to my untrained eyes.  Across the street loomed the Chrysler building, which was the tallest building in the world before the Empire State Building (apparently all the tallest buildings in the world were in NYC for about a century before Sears Tower in Chicago came up). We made our way through the bustle of the city to Rockefeller Centre, where the plaza was decked out with flags of the countries of the world, with the Rockefeller building looming over everything. In the plaza, there would be a skating rink during winter, and there were some garish golden statues and a self-congratulatory plaque with Rockefeller's philosophy.

  A couple of blocks away was the cathedral of St. Patrick, probably the largest and most notable churches in the Big Apple. St Patrick is of course the patron saint of Ireland, and a lot of New Yorkers are of Irish descent. Outside the cathedral, we glimpsed inside the magnificent and ornate interior, where a crowd was beginning to gather, presumably for Saturday evening Mass. As Bonnie puzzled over the map for our next destination, I noticed one thing about NYC traffic: most of the vehicles seem to yellow taxis. Later, as we walked by a few parking garages, the fact that most of them accept credit cards made it clear why most New Yorkers prefer not to drive.

  At around 6pm, after some wandering, we found ourself in the riot of bilboards and people that was Times Sq, where many of the theatres were located. The amount of traffic and people there was almost disorienting. After standing there like dummies for a while, we decided to get dinner, and Bonnie suggested TGI Friday's nearby. The food was overpriced, this being NYC, and fatty, this being the USA, but we filled ourselves up after a hard day's sightseeing.

  After dinner, Gara still hadn't responded to any of Bonnie's messages or calls, so we had to figure out how to spend the evening before hopefully meeting up with the others at the hostel. It turned out that there was a comedy club at the basement below where the restaurant we ate, and since the entrance fee was only 10 bucks, we decided to go for it. There was a series of standup comedians scheduled to do their act, and the first guy was the quasi-MC. He came up on stage and started to ask the audience about where they were from, what they were doing in NYC etc, and then proceeded to make fun of everyone, before introducing the other comedians to do their act. The humour was definitely adult, and there was no holding back as far as expletives and sexual content was concerned. I was mildly surprised at all the f-words being thrown about, and the couple of times when the comedian thrust his hips back and forth when talking about sex. There was this guy who came up and started making political jokes about Bush, and when he didn't get his expected audience response, he started to flounder very obviously, and I didn't find him very funny, but felt sorry for him. My favorites were this black guy who did a few hilarious skits about his Mexican neighbour, Indian tourists being detained by police and his girlfriend's cat which was apparently permanently on heat. The other good one was this bloke with huge sideburns and manic, staring, eyes, and he was so absolutely wound up that it was totally hilarious. 

  When the show ended, it was 10.30pm. We got out into Times Sq, and the place was still crowded. We found out that Virgin Megastore there closed only at 2am, so we went in there and hung out for a while. At around midnight, we decided to return to the hostel and try and leave a note for our missing comrades. As we walked towards the entrance of the hostel after taking the subway, I spied from afar a lanky red figure which looked extremely familiar. Esteban!

  The other interns were outside the hostel entrance, and we rushed together and started swapping stories. Apparently they were about to start knocking at our doors, and for most of the day we seemed to be one step ahead or behind each other. They were at the Natural History Museum around the same time we were outside, and they even ate at the TGI Friday's while the three of us were downstairs watching the comedy show!

  The Hispanic guys, nutters that they are, wanted to drag us out again for clubbing, but most of us were so exhausted that we decided against it. So, apart from Miguel, Rafa and Esteban who merrily went out again, the rest of us retired for the night....

To be continued....

...and the pics from the trip are here , in the meantime...

These days, work has been a lot more focused and I have a lot less time to spend goofing about the office (although I'm NOT giving up my afternoon siesta).  It certainly helps that for once Dr. Meixner (from here on I refer to her as Margaret as I usually do) is actually around the office rather than being away on conference or holiday as she has been for most of the past few weeks. Every time I get stuck in a rut I can now go ask her questions rather than stew in my own juices.

Today, when I was sitting at Margaret's office discussing work with her, I mentioned my observation that from the paper's I've read, the sort of work discussed doesn't seem to a very precise science. She replied: "Well, welcome to astronomy!". Seriously though, I think part of my problem is that I'm not here long enough to learn things in as much detail as I would like, so my work is often very hand-waving (to use a favorite phrase of Prof. Miller's), and sometimes I'm not entirely certain as to what I'm doing. Still, from Margaret's responses to my work, it appears that I'm bumbling along reasonably well.

I bought a bunch of CDs while at Towson Centre the other day, and I've been slowly listening to them (since I blew a hefty sum on them, I'm not going to buy any new music for some time). The first CD I popped into my Diskman was a recording of a few of Beethoven's piano sonatas. It's my first album of Beethoven's piano works...I've heard some of them in concerts before, but it's difficult to gain a good appreciation of a piece of music from first hearing. There was a time when my impression of Beethoven was that his music was very dark and impenetrable, with (it seemed to me) few of the joyful melodies of Mozart or the overt romanticism of the late Romantics like Dvorak or Grieg, for example. I'm glad to say that I'm beginning to gain an ever deeper appreciation for Beethoven, and I'm beginning to see sides to his music which I've somehow never noticed before. Apart from my own personal prejudices, there definitely is a distinctiveness of his piano sonatas from his orchestral works.

As for my own playing, the visit to Todd at Annapolis had a greater effect on me than I thought. From his advice and tips to me regarding scales, I was astonished yesterday that I can finally burn scales at around 190bpm! And from the encouragement given to me by the other Guitar Forumites where I posted my recordings, I feel as if I've just awakened from a long dark sleep, running from the shadows of my own perceived weaknesses and lack of talent. I've been enjoying playing my guitar with the same enthusiasm that I used to have when I first started out. At night, I've been sitting on my bed with my guitar, with the lights out, playing softly to avoid awakening my flatmates....

  After the weekend at Annapolis with Todd, it was as if my love for music surged back into me, so I've been spending most of my evenings with my guitar rather than maintaining this blog.  On Saturday, we went to a large shopping mall in Towson, about 30 minutes bus ride away, to watch Spiderman 2. I took the chance to pop into Barnes & Noble to buy a couple of books and CDs beforehand.
 
  The movie itself was vaguely interesting but pretty much forgettable, and after it ended Tom was going on and ON about the physics of Dr. Octopus' fusion reactor! Yes, I know it's ridiculous and laughable, but it's a comic book movie for goodness' sake!
 
  Sunday night, we had a potluck party at Bonnie's place, where we were supposed to bring food from our own countries. I couldn't find fresh chilli and spices at the local supermarket to make curry, so I had to settle for chicken wings instead. After the stuffing ourselves as much as we could, Bonnie, Mel, and the Hispanics settled down to the task of getting drunk at the dinner table, while the rest of us sat around the living room chatting (although we did try our best to make Tom drunk, even though he was innocently sitting with us).
 
  Our conversation centered mostly on Bess' dilemma. She's a girl from Hong Kong going into her last year in Electrical Engineering in Cornell. However, she is interested in cosmology, and she is currently grappling with the question of whether to go into research or to get a job immediately after graduating.  She feels obligated to her parents to get into a secure, safe job in which she will not be satisfied, yet she says she feels 'guilty' going into.
 
   We had an interesting time sharing experiences and thoughts...it seems that a lot of her doubts has to do with a lack of confidence in her own ability to get a secure job in scientific research. Our reaction was: YOU WILL BE GRADUATING WITH A DEGREE FROM CORNELL! She may or may not get into the university she wants, but as far as we're concerned someone of her calibre will definitely get into a graduate program somewhere.
 
  It was an interesting evening, and we didn't leave Bonnie's place until 1am.  The talk we had helped me clarify some of things I have in my mind as well. There were times when my motivations were perhaps misplaced or not in the right place, and it was important to hear the same things from the other people in the same stage of life as I am, and sharing the same passions and ambitions.

The mp3s which I recorded in Todd's place on Saturday are here and here. It's the first time I've recorded on proper recording equipment, and it's each piece was done in only one take...

Before I say anything more, may I direct you to www.tomrobitaille.com . So who is Tom Robitaille? From the website, Tom seems like, well, a giggolo (what other occupation requires one to advertise his 'inseam' and 'outseam' dimensions?).

To me, Tom Robitaille is the quiet and slightly strange half French-half British astronomy student sharing the same office as me at the Space Telescope Science Institute (here is his pic). However, thanks to the vagaries of identitical names and being beaten to the post in the domain name stakes, the Google-happy world now knows Thomas Robitaille as 'Mature, athletic and versatile, Tom is available....'.

Lesson: buy up your domain name NOW before some giggolo/prostitute sharing your name gets it first.

There was a time when I was 17, before I applied to university, when I walked up to my parents and told them that I wanted to go to music school. Being conservative Chinese parents, the thought of their first-born son going into music school must have been shocking to say the least.

The part of me who wanted to become a musician imagined me becoming the next John Williams, playing at Lincoln Centre or Wigmore Hall to packed audiences. I have never actually met any professional musicians (my guitar teacher then was an amateur), so I had little idea of the trials and tribulations involved. Naivity perhaps, either way the path I took was totally different. I have kept on playing the guitar all these while, although there were times when frustration set in at my own lack of talent, inspiration dried up or there was simply not enough time for me to devote to my music.

This morning, despite being a Saturday, I dragged myself up from bed at 9am. I was supposed to go to Annapolis, a town about 40 miles outside Baltimore most famous for being the site of the US Naval Academy, to meet Todd K. Todd is one of the regulars at one of the internet classical guitar forums I regularly visit, and since I would be in the general area, I decided to take the chance to visit him. The easiest, and most expensive, way to get there would have been to take a taxi to the Greyhound station and take a coach from there, but this would have cost me about $25 one way. Being in parsimonious mood, I took the cheapest option, which involves taking the Light Rail and then changing to a bus. I left my apartment at 10am, and I alighted from the bus at downtown Baltimore at about 12.30.

After calling him from a public phone, he walked over to bring me to his house, which turned out to be only about 5 minutes' walk from the town centre. His house is in a rather untidy area, but as a plaque next to his front door informed me, it is a pretty old and historical house. The house was pretty quaint, if slightly untidy, and he led me to his basement which basically functions as his recording studio. There was a couple of large speakers there, a rack of equipment, a computer ('Oh, it's just a P4 3GHz with 3 Gigs of RAM...') and a pair of condenser mikes as well as other miscellaneous musical paraphernalia.

Todd's father was a guitarist, and he's been playing the guitar all his life, although he's only gone seriously into classical and flamenco guitar in the past few years. He makes a living by doing gigs at restaurants and teaching, and he pretty spends most of his time playing music. He's an extremely good player, although he plays with a rather unorthodox technique...in his right hand, he holds a pick between his thumb and index finger to play the bass strings, and his middle, ring and little fingers to play the rest (anyone who's seen a classical guitarist will know that they generally never use a pick or the little finger).

Apart from emerging for lunch in town, we pretty much spent most of our time in his basement/studio listening to each other play, chatting and listening to music. It was great fun to just get absorbed in music and hang out with Todd, especially since we had different approaches to music. He's in his 30s, and he spent most of his youth playing rock and jazz guitar, before getting into flamenco and classical guitar, whereas I am of the more orthodox approach, and listen to/play only classical music.

Most eye-openingly, I had a glimse of into the life of a musician, not that of the musician who's made it to the very top, but that of one who is content with just having the chance to do something he loves in life. It's a carefree life, since he's unmarried and has no one to support, nor is he materialistic. He doesn't earn very much, and of what he earns he mostly plows into recording and and musical equipment. It's not a high-flying lifestyle, but he gets to do what he loves with his life.

Personally, I feel some horror at the thought of such an unsecure, Bohemian lifestyle. I'm not a risk-taker, and I tend to go for the safe and familiar rather than the new and risky. Still, I admire the courage it must take to take the plunge and risk everything to pursue a passion in life.

It has been a great day out, and it has reinvigorated my love for music. Incidentally, he managed to talk me into recording a couple of pieces on his recording setup, and I'll post it once he emails it to me.

Have you ever had the feeling as a child when you were just happy to find out something new, or going somewhere you've never been before? That is the child's joy of learning, something which formal education has the most unfortunately tendency to extinguish in almost the most inquisitive child.

I am lucky that the start of my formal education coincided almost neatly with my discovery of the joy of reading. I still remember cracking open Charlie Brown's Encyclopedia, which I had pestered my father into buying the day before, early in the morning while lying in my bed at the age of 8. I think that's the most value-for-money investment my father ever made in me. Over the next half-decade, that set of encyclopedias (which included Children's Britannica) was my constant companion. I would take a volume into the toilet with me, and remain there for a couple of hours, lost in the words while remaining in less-than-dignified surroundings.

It was this which kept the flame of inquisitiveness and free-thinking burning in me through the darkest depths of the Malaysian educational system. In a country where the physics departments of universities are the dumping ground for students who couldn't get accepted in any other courses, I was foolhardy enough to want to become an aerospace engineer (to work in space exploration), and later a physicist. It was a dreamy ambition to discover things and open new frontiers, whether in exploring the Solar System or in the realms of science.

Doing physics in university has given me a lot of 'wow' moments, but the sense of wonder was somewhat diminished, as if I was looking through a glass wall at the discoveries made by the others. I wanted to be in their shoes during the 'EUREKA!' moment, when they realised or discovered things that no one else had known before.

In the past few days, I finally got a small taste of this. After weeks of learning the background science, reading the scientific literature on the subject and wrestling with the computer systems, I'm getting down to some actual scientific research at last! It's been very absorbing, and for the first time I'm one of the last interns to leave the office! I might have to start working weekends soon....

My pics from DC are here.

On Sunday morning, I dragged myself out of bed at 7am, and by 8 the whole gang of us interns were at the Wyman Towers bus stop, trying to catch taxis to the Greyhound coach station. After some desperate hailing (streets tend to get pretty deserted 8am on Sunday mornings, we were at the station. It was a grey morning, and the sun wasn't out. For the past couple of weeks, while we were stuck in a windowless office at the Institute, the weather had been absolutely perfect, but it HAD to be like this when we decide to go out.

The rest of the one-hour coach journey was pretty uneventful, and soon enough we were at DC. We set off on foot from the station towards the Mall, where most of the sights in DC are. The Mall is laid out similarly to a park in Paris (I was there last year, but I can't remember its name), with the Capitol Hill at one end and the Lincoln Memorial on the other, with the Washington Monument in between and the White House near it. After walking for about 15 minutes, we got to the pool in front of Capitol Hill, where the Capitol building stood, a large and imposing building. As we stood there taking pictures, it began to rain! We hurriedly ran towards some shelter, but after a while we decided that if it was going to keep raining, we might as well try and spent our time inside the museums. We walked under the rain towards the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum about 15 minutes away, and by the time we got there we were pretty much soaked.

The central area of the Mall is mostly occupied by several museums run by the Smithsonian Institution, such as the Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum, American History Museum etc. The Air and Space Museum was a place where I wanted to go to since I was a really young kid...when we got there, right in front of the entrance were a bunch of actual historical air- and space-craft, including the Apollo 11 command module, the X-15, the Spirit of St. Louis etc. We spent most of the afternoon there as rain continued to pour down outside. Me and Tom decided to go and see the IMAX theatre, which showed a pretty good movie on the Space Station...I must say I also enjoyed prattling loudly away about astronomy with Tom before the show started. After that, we went to see the exhibits, and I was somewhat perplexed by his enthusiasm and interest at the astronomy exhibits...we're supposed to know that stuff already for goodness' sake!

Later in the afternoon, when the rain became a drizzle, we left the Air and Space Museum, and started walking towards the Washington Monument. There was a Latin American festival that was going on in some large tents pitched in the middle of the Mall, and Esteban and Rafael dragged us into a tent where some Colombian musicians and dancers were performing. Ole Colombia! As it started to rain harder, we decided to soldier on and make our way to the Lincoln Memorial further down the Mall. By the time we got there, we were drenched, but still there was a huge crowd of people camped in and around the area to watch the fireworks scheduled for later in the evening. We queued up for some sandwiches at a refreshment stand, and found ourselves a spot in the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Fortunately, the rain stopped before it got dark, and the fireworks were absolutely spectacular and awe-inspiring, being fired from the base of the Washington Monument and lighting up the night sky over it. It must have inspired in the minds of Americans the words 'by the rocket's red glare...' from their national anthem.

After the fireworks, some of us decided to depart back to Baltimore, but I was among those who was to stay the night at DC. We walked to our hostel to the north of the Mall, and while we passed by the night-lit White House on the way, although we could only catch a glimpse of the Oval Office from a distance.

The next day, we walked back to the Mall, and we tried to get better pictures of the White House, but as we approached it, we and everyone else were told to leave the area by some extremely rude policemen who were clearing the area. We decided to try and get tickets for the Washington Monument instead, but by the time we got there, it was already sold out. However, a random lady just handed to us 3 tickets for the Monument, saying she didn't want them. Unfortunately, the tickets were all for different times, 11.30, 12.30 and 3pm. We drew lots to decide who would go up (I didn't get one), and then the rest of us went to the National Art Gallery while Tom and Rafael went up on their tickets.

The Gallery had a very imposing facade and a huge foyer with fountain and black marble columns, and I think the design was more impressive than the National Gallery in London. The collections were quite impressive as well, with a lot of famous works, although unfortunately I could only view a very small part of it. I particularly enjoyed an exhibit of landscapes by a late 19th century American artist called Sanford Gifford. His paintings are dominated by light interacting with vast and monumental landscapes.

At 1pm, we met up and went to have lunch at the food court at Union Station, travelling by Metro this time. After lunch, Gara, who held the last ticket, decided not to go to the Washington Monument, so we decided to go together to the Arlington National Cemetery.

The Arlington National Cemetery is where the USA buries its military dead, and there are over 250,000 graves there. While there, despite my opinions on current US foreign policy, I kept in mind that most of the graves there were of soldiers who died in more righteous wars. We visited John F. Kennedy's grave and memorial, where there was a eternal flame with plaques of him with his wife and two children who died at birth. We went from there to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where a soldier is constantly on guard, and we managed to catch the changing of the guard. The floor was marked black at the points where the soldiers march.

From there, we decided to move on to the Marine Corps memorial, probably one of the most iconic statues in the country. It was located just outside the cemetery, although by then we were completely knackered. After the memorial, we made our way to the coach station and back to Baltimore.

Washinton DC is a very picturesque city, with the central parts very well planned, with wide boulevards and very nice buildings...almost like Paris in fact (the architect who designed the city was French, after all). However, while being so close to the heartland of American imperialism, I could not help but feel a slight background discomfort as I saw the White House with my own eyes, with its army of guards surrounding it, and concrete barriers barring the entrances.

I shall dedicate this post to my colleagues, the fellow summer program interns at the Space Telescope Science Institute for 2004. Until now, they have been part of the background of my blog, so to make up for this, I shall devote an entire post to just describing them!

The first group of interns I met were Scott, Marie, Tom and Bonnie, the first Sunday after I arrived.

Scott is an American from Massachusetts, but he studies in Vassar College in the state of New York. He's TALL, and he towers above all of us. He usually wears a blank expression on his bespectacled face, but will suddenly break into quips now and then. As he was in the summer program here last year as well, he's the guy everyone turns to when there's a questions to be asked, whether it's about the finer points of working in the Institute, or about places to visit in Baltimore. I found him rather alarming at work, because from day one he was sitting down at his computer and hammering away at it (he's continuing his project from last year, that's why). He's the resident computer whiz, and if whenever I'm stuck at something, he's the one I turn to.

Bonnie is a typical American girl, with a taste for Long Island Ice Tea. She's just finished her astronomy degree at Case Western Reserve Uni at Cleveland, Ohio, but she's from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Unlike most of us she isn't based at the S215 office, instead being domiciled at the 4th floor at a vacant office to herself! Still, she makes it a point to hang out with us as much as possible.

Marie, or Lu Xiwei, shall we say? She was born in Beijing, but her family moved over to the States when she was 5 (she says she was actually at Tiananmen Sq. during the demos in 1989, but she left before the tanks started rolling in), and her parents are currently in Houston, Texas, but she's studying political science and biology double major at University of Southern California. What the heck is she doing in the Space Telescope Science Institute then? She's actually working in the Office of Public Outreach rather than in the Science Division like the rest of us, so she actually spends a lot of her time photoshopping Hubble images rather than hard astronomy or astrophysics. She's the shortest of us, and she has this wonderful smile, filled with her braces! She's Esteban's favorite target for teasing...

Tom is probably the funniest among us all, or to be precise he's the one we seem to laugh at the most, because he's just so wound up. As I mentioned before, he looks and behaves almost exactly like Niles from Frasier. He walks around with a huge SLR digital camera when we go out, so I have the habit of letting him take the pictures and then stealing them off him. He studies at St. Andrew's University in Scotland, but he lives in France. His mother is British though, so he actually speaks with more of a British accent with a tinge of French.

I think this would take a long time, so I'd leave the rest of the interns to some other post. As for the past week, it's been a BIT easier to get things done because I've started the habit of writing myself notes on the scientific papers I read, and somehow this helps me focus much better. During lunchtime, it can take me more than an hour, because I tend to be one of the first to get to lunch, and as the other guys start to file in, I feel it's not polite to leave the table, so I tend to sit there chatting for ages!

Today, we went to Inner Harbour for the benefit of a few of our newly-arrived colleagues, Raquel, Miguel and Gara. There are some sailing ships from other countries docked at Inner Harbour, which will be taking part in the Independence Day celebrations at Washington DC tommorow. One of the first ships we saw had a Brazillian flag, and Raquel dragged us all on board, as it was open to the public. Raquel is an ethnic Japanese girl(her surname is Shida), and she looks exactly like a Japanese, but she's Brazillian, and can hardly speak any Japanese. We went around the sailing ship (called 'Cisne Branco', or 'White Swan'), and we hung out there for quite a while. After that, rationalising that if you've seen one sailing ship you've seen 'em all (other sailing ships in the harbour flew Romanian, Mexican, Portuguese flags), we decided to adjourn to a restaurant so that the Spaniards and Colombians can have their lunch (it was about 4pm by then, but these guys have their meals about 3 hours later compared with most other people). I was challenged to eat a double fudge chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream by myself (naturally, my colleagues have long ago caught on to the size of my appetite), but I shared with Tom instead. I didn't really enjoy it...I don't seem to perform well when it comes to desserts.

After lunch, we went to Federal Hill again for the benefit of the newcomers, and when Bess saw the swings at the playground, she went ape and ran straight for them. However, she quickly realised that the swings were rather high up (too high for her legs to get her moving), and she was just hanging there until a couple of young kids came along and showed her how to get swinging. Soon enough, she was swinging merrily, but more drama came when she had to get off...we were goading her to jump off, and it was a while before she managed to get off. However, she managed to retain her dignity unlike Rafael, who went on it after her, and when he jumped off he ended up face down in the grass (Scott: 'I give you 10 marks for the jump and zero marks for the landing!').

We chilled out at Federal Hill, enjoying the view and watching the world go by. Miguel, one of my Spanish flatmates, was taking the chance to call his girlfriend on his mobile phone...while roaming! The fellow has already impressed me with his ability to talk nonstop on the phone with his girlfriend, and this time he was just sitting there in the grass chatting away for half an hour.

When we decided to leave, it was about 6.30pm. Some of the guys wanted to carry on sightseeing, but me and the others went home to recuperate for tommorow's trip to Washington DC to see the 4th of July festivities....

The latest pictures are here, just to whet your appetite before my big trip to the capital!

I just came back from watching Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 with the other interns. Our complement of summer interns is now complete, and the latest additions are my new flatmates Gara and Miguel from Spain, and Matthias from Germany.

As for the documentary itself, it's the first time that I've actually watched Michael Moore's productions, even though I've heard of him for quite some time. His films have never made it to Malaysia...is it simply because the subject matter is of no interest to the Malaysian audience, or because is it for some other reason?

The documentary starts of focusing on the Bush family's connections with Saudi business, including the Bin Ladin family, from George W. Bush's business days it the 80s and 90s, up to 10 September 2001. Then, there is a very powerful video clip, which shows President Bush visiting a primary school in Florida, AFTER the first plane had crashed into the WTC (he knew, but decided to go ahead anyway). When an aide whispers into his ear that the second plane had crashed in, the documentary shows him sitting in the classroom with the children, with a blank expression on his face, for a full seven minutes.

The angle of the documentary then moves to the Iraq war, and there are a lot of images which are rather unsettling. I thought this part of the film was rather contradictory, because on one hand it portrayed the US forces as insolent brutes committing atrocities against the Iraqis, on the other hand it tried to show the US soldiers as unwilling participants. The rest of the show tells the personal story of a mother who lost a son fighting in Iraq.

As far as I'm concerned, the movie was preaching to the converted: I already feel that Bush is an incompetent idiot, representating big business interests, and a threat to the world at large. However, I personally felt that the documentary smacked more than a little as propaganda. Nevertheless, so long as it gets Bush out of power, I have no complaints.

On another note, something like this would never come out in my own country. As many problems and flaws as there is about America, the people have a voice. I wish my own people could have just a chance to do more than be sycophants to the powers-that-be.

Then

A couple of weeks into my internship, I may finally have a clear idea of what I am doing! Previously, a query as to what my project was on would have elicited a brief mumble including the words 'protoplanetary disk' and 'theoretical modelling'. However, after a couple of weeks learning up the background knowledge and learning about the field, I now have a far better picture of my project.

Basically, there is a lot of gunk out there in space, gas and dust filling the vast emptiness in outer space (called the interstellar medium), as well as surrounding stars (circumstellar dust). My mentor has co-written a program called 2dust, which helps models the way light and energy from a star transfers through a cloud of dust surrounding it. The past few days have been taken up with reading up on a couple of young stars about 300 light years away which are interesting to study, because they have disk like dust clouds around them called protoplanetary disks, which are believe to form planets. I will need to figure out the parameters to input into the 2dust program, i.e. the shape and size of the dust cloud, the types of gas and dust in it etc, and try to make it match the observations made by telescopes. It's not too complicated, yet it will challenge my research skills and scientific ability. Even though there is a lot of stuff to learn, papers to read, and reams of information to think about, at least I'm finding this project more and more interesting. Of course, the fact that there are pretty pictures of the dust cloud (the spiky things are just to block out the star so that the dust disk can be seen) makes it more inspiring to work on.

The people I work with make things interesting also. Dr. Meixner is the leader of my research group, but under her there are a few more people, who are mostly graduate students. However, the person who stands out most is Dr. Ben Sugerman, who (I presume) is a fresh PhD. He is incredibly knowledgable, and has answers for almost all the problems groups members bring up at meetings. He's also incredibly passionate about learning in general, and he's always trying to teach us something new. Listening to the discussions at research group meetings is something that I anticipate every week.

Work aside, last Sunday I went to a baseball game with the guys (none of the girls could make, for some reason). The local team is the Baltimore Orioles, which was the team of Babe Ruth, if that rings any bells. The visiting team was the Atlanta Braves, which I have never heard of before. The game was held in the afternoon, and the game was quite well attended, with a bit less than 40,000 people in the crowd. The atmosphere was a bit more family-centred than the typical Premiership football match, there were a lot of housewives and young children. The game itself was rather boring, partly because I didn't understand the rules, but still it was rather slow-moving. The audience seemed to be there for the occasion rather than the game itself...they even had to rouse the audience through messages on the video screens saying 'Make more noise!!'. The game was three hours long, and we were stuck in seats without shade in the summer sun...by the time the game was over, all of us were sunburnt to a shade of lobster red.

Today afternoon, I opened my email, and there was an email from Scott suggesting that we go watch a baseball game this weekend. It's not too expensive (about $15 for decent seats, compared with about £30 for a ticket to a Premiership match), and it's part of the American experience. However, my Spanish flatmates are flying in this Saturday, so it would be best if we go on Sunday (there are games on both days). I clicked the 'reply' button, and I was about to type in my response when I remembered....Scott was sitting right behing me. Ah...the joys of modern technology :P.

Speaking of modern technology, I can proudly announce that I, too, have managed to crash a Unix machine. It's was on a program that my mentor co-wrote, which models the way radiation from a star travels and gets scattered through a clump of dust surrounding it. I had to select the parameters with which to do the calculations, and I guess I must have chosen something too big for machine to chew on, so the machine just hung. Having said that, I learnt later that even while running properly, it takes absolute ages to run through the calculations. Apparently, even with a blisteringly fast Apple G5, it can take up to a day to crunch its way through complex simulations...

My first weekend as an intern! On Friday night, it was suggested by Scott that we rent a DVD, order pizza and watch it at him and Tom's apartment. I had to go buy groceries from Giant (no, NOT the Malaysian one) supermarket nearby, so I decided to pass. I bought an enormous load of groceries, and when I walked out the supermarket exit, it was raining! Bereft of any other option, I simply walked the kilometre or so to my apartment in the rain, straining at the bags of groceries (the plastic bag handles have an incredible tendency to bite into my hands).

The next Saturday, I just woke up late, and fixed myself breakfast (and lunch barely half an hour later). Apart from cleaning up my apartment a bit more, I didn't do much until I met up with the gang at a nearby restaurant (I had my first American meal here, in fact) for dinner, before going to watch Harry Potter. The dinner was alright, although the portions were just a bit too small for my appetite and the prices involved. There were bottles of various sauces at the table, and among them was a bottle of chilli sauce labeled 'Predator', with a Jaw-style picture of a shark. I dripped a drop of it on my plate, dabbed a piece of chicken with it and ate. As I chewed it, I thought it wasn't that bad....until I swallowed it. It BURNED like hell going down, and it took me all my effort to keep a straight face. Several pieces of chicken (WITHOUT Predator sauce) and half a glass of lemonade later, my tongue was still burning!

After dinner, we took taxis to the Senator Theatre. This was one of the old-fashioned cinemas which had only one screen, and the decor was definitely retro, right down to the attendants' uniforms and the tickets (the first ones without a magnetic strip I've seen in ages). The men's room was labeled 'Men's Lounge', and there literally was a lounge attached, with armchairs and fireplace. The cinema even has a dog prowling around, as their mascot! As for the movie itself, as one of the six people in the world who haven't read any of the books, I shall not say much except that it's so-so.

The next morning, we met up at 10am to catch the bus to the Inner Harbour area, to go to the National Aquarium. It was a really beautiful day, without a single cloud in the sky, yet wasn't too hot either. After getting tickets, we went to see the Dolphin Show first of all. It was held in a indoor tank, and there were the dolphins doing tricks. It was fairly interesting (I wonder what is it with dolphins that makes us love them so much), although I reckon I would have enjoyed it even more if I was 15 years younger. As most of us didn't have breakfast, we went to grab brunch immediately afterwards. Bonnie brought us to this burrito place called Chipotle's. For the uninitiated, burritos are tortillas filled with beans, meat, and veg, and the burritos served at this restaurant are HUGE. As Scott put it as he picked it up to eat, it's the first time he ate something that was HEAVY to pick up. Having said that, I had no problems whatsoever finishing my burrito off obviously, and was still feeling peckish afterwards.

After brunch, we went to the aquarium proper. It's a pretty good aquarium, although nowhere as good as Osaka's aquarium IMHO. It was rather crowded, and it wasn't easy to get a good view of the exhibits. The highlight of the tour was probably when divers went into the stingray tank at feeding time to feed the rays. The shark tank was quite interesting as well, although I earned a few strange looks with my comments about sharksfin soup.

After the aquarium, we decided to go to walk to a hill overlooking the harbour, called Federal Hill. It was on the other side of the harbour from the aquarium, so it was a rather long walk. By the time we got to the foot of the hill, the girls had already thrown in the towels, so it was only us guys left to carry on the fight. The hill had a large American flag at its centre (still at half mast for Reagan), and it offered a stunning view of the Inner Harbour area as well as the financial district (enlarge the picture to get a better view). There was in fact a beach volleyball site at the foot of the hill, and I itched to play...

After that, we went back home and I had a jog around the Hopkins campus. It is a bit smaller than I'd expected originally, which is a good thing because I'm definitely out of shape.

On another note, I'm constantly impressing my two Colombian friends Esteban and Rafael with my comprehensive knowledge of Spanish obscenities and insults. Oh, and all my pics from Baltimore so far are here.

Work work work....or in my case, study study study. It's pretty much agreed that I'll have to spend the first fortnight of my internship just learning the ropes...getting the hang of Unix, learning up on stuff about interstellar dust, figuring out how to use a program used to model interstellar dust (which my mentor co-wrote). As I said, I seem to be a bit out of place in our office, as I'm the only one not hammering away at the keyboard, with lots of intimidating numbers and jumbles of alphabets on-screen.

There are usually 5 of us in the office...Rafael and Esteban from Colombia, Scott, and American, and Tom, the French guy. We were sitting around the office doing our own thing yesterday when Tom suddenly started going 'Grrr...' and clenching his hands. As we looked over at him, he exclaimed 'My machine's hung on me...', he moved his mouse around and indeed the cursor on the screen didn't move at all. As I mentioned before, all the computers in the Institute are Sun workstations running Unix. These machines are almost impossible to crash or hang unlike Windows. Now, Tom is a pretty short guy (about my height), and he is the spitting image of Niles from 'Frasier', both in appearance and mannerisms, i.e. he's a bit stiff and high-strung. So, we were all laughing at this, both at his feat and at his reaction.

A few hours later, Tom went 'Grrr...' again, and to our joy and amusement, he managed to hang his computer again! TWICE IN A DAY! Now, we've a little message written on our whiteboard: 'No. of times Tom has crashed his computer: 2'...

Monday morning. I dragged myself out of bed at 8.30am, by 9pm I was at the Space Telescope Science Institute where I start work. It was only 5 minutes walk away from my apartment, but I managed to be the last to arrive at the orientation. Orientation mostly involved us filling in forms of various kinds, including two extremely scary forms for our income tax exemptions. It was so intimidating that none of us foreign students have submitted ours yet.

After that, we were brought around the institute building. It's a fairly new building, since the institute was only set up less than 15 years ago to operate the Hubble Space Telescope. The building is within the John Hopkins University campus, and it's surrounded by trees, so at times it seems as if the building is within a forest. There is a room with several computers which is for the use of us summer students, which means that we get to work pretty independently, without anyone breathing down our throats.

I had a working lunch with my mentor, Dr. Margaret Meixner, who is a middle aged, motherly looking woman. We talked about her work and the sort of project that I could choose to undertake. Of course, relevant to this was my own level of knowledge and skills..."Do you know Fortran?" "No", "Do you know how to use Unix?" "No", "Have you done ANY programming before?" "Ummm...just a little bit once". After some discussion it was decided that I should work on a project to create a theoretical model on how dust around a young star behaves (a lot of her work seems to involve dust of some kind or other). To start off, I need to learn Unix and learn up some stuff from a textbook she handed me to photocopy, and report back to her in two days. I'm going to be working on my own a lot, in fact...she will be gone for a total of 4 weeks during my duration here (not all at once though), so I will really have to learn how to work independently.

So, having thought myself freed from studying after finishing my exams 2 weeks ago, off I went to the intern office to try and learn how to use Unix, and cram up about 70 pages of a textbook. So far, that's what I've been doing mostly...what seems clear is that my colleagues, the other interns, seem to have dived right into their work, with reams of data displayed on their screens, while I am staring blankly at the workstation trying to figure out how to open a program within Unix. At other times, I'm sitting there with the photocopies of the textbook, trying to force myself to absorb the stuff. Somehow it's hard to focus, without something concrete to do. In addition, the other guys seem to be pretty well schooled in astronomy, whereas I have done nothing more than elementary astronomy in my university studies.

In any case, tommorow I will be meeting up with Dr. Meixner, and we'll see where we go from there.

So, here I am in the USA. It's Sunday night now, so I've been here for two full days, but I'd better start nearer the beginning...

Friday morning, after a sleepless night of tossing and turning, which usually happens to me before I travel, I had breakfast and leave for Heathrow. The flight itself was pretty uneventful, apart from the fact that we took off 45 minutes late, and I had a rather large Nigerian guy sitting next to me, so it was rather cramped for me (fortunately I was in the aisle seat and not him). In the last hour of the flight, as we were orbiting Baltimore-Washington International, waiting for permission to land, we were just flying inside clouds, without a single glimpse of land or sea. It wasn't until the final 10 seconds before landing that we actually emerged from the clouds. Clearly, it was a rainy day in Maryland. Being from a quasi-unfriendly country, I had to go through a special registration process at passport control. I was half-expecting to get rude and intimidating customs officers, but I got a black lady officer who was quiet but polite, even though there were a couple of officers who were rather unfriendly looking. The process mostly involved her asking me mundane questions and entering it in the computer, and then taking my fingerprints and photo. Nothing big, but merely time-wasting. By the time that ended, I was the last passenger from the plane to pick up my luggage, so there was the rather intimidating sight of a dozen customs officers waiting to inspect my luggage. Fortunately, again I got a friendly customs officer, and he made banter with me while asking me (again) a few questions. I didn't have to open my luggage up, fortunately.

Inside the USA proper, I emerged into the arrival lounge none the worse for wear. The first thing that struck me was the terminal building was LARGE but quite empty. The place seemed almost as large as Terminal 1 in Subang airport, but they handle something like a flight every couple of hours. I got myself a taxi, and it took us something like half an hour to get to the apartment I'm sub-letting, which is just next to John Hopkins University. On the way there, we passed near downtown Baltimore, and I saw the stadium that got nuked in 'The Sum of All Fears'. By the time I got to my apartment, it was about 6-ish in the evening. As I got out of the cab, I saw that there was $25.90 on the meter. I took out $30, and I only just remembered that I had to tip, so I just let the cabdriver keep the change.

I was supposed to get the keys to my apartment from Caroline, a friend of my landlord who's living in the building right next door, so I went over there and rang her bell. When she emerged from her front door, I immediately thought that she must be Eurasian (or rather, Ameriasian). She was chirpy, and she showed me to my apartment, which was one the fifth floor of my building. When I got the front door open, I was momentarily shocked. The apartment was in an extremely large mess. There were boxes strewn about the place, dirty dishes were piled up in the sink, and the floor was ridiculously dirty. Caroline is a very friendly girl, and she gave me some advice on nearby shops and how to get about. I was also somewhat surprised when she offered to accompany me to dinner nearby (surprised because she already mentioned the fact that she has a boyfriend). We went to a diner about 10 minutes walk away, and I greatly enjoyed chatting with her. The level of service I got at the diner was far better than anywhere else I've been, except perhaps Japan. After dinner, I went back to my apartment, and an emergency occured: I couldn't get the front door open. After about 10 minutes of trying, I went over to Caroline's place again and with great embarrassment told her my predicament. She came over to my apartment, and she had no luck either. She used her handphone to try and call the maintenance guy to the building, and after some time she managed to get through to the right person. She handed me the phone for me to speak to the guy, and when he found out that I'm not the official lease-holder of the apartment, he said he wasn't going to travel 25 miles from home to get the door open from me. As I slumped in desperation, he said 'I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you can try using a credit card', before the call ended. So I handed the phone back to Caroline, muttered 'credit card' (this confused her quite a bit), and took out my ISIC card (no point using anything of value). After a couple of minutes of jiggling, to our great relief and amazement, the door opened! Well, it's worked in movies before, but I always thought it was some kind of urban myth...

The next day Saturday was spent mostly in my apartment, trying to get the place cleaned up. My two Spanish flatmates, Gara and Miguel, aren't arriving until two weeks later, so I thought I'd get the place into a reasonably habitable state before they get here. Apart from a quick shopping trip to a nearby mall to get some groceries, the highlight of the day way managing to get my laptop connected to the DSL connection in my apartment, which is a minor miracle considering that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

This morning, Sunday, I was supposed to meet some of the other interns for lunch at a nearby diner. I couldn't get much sleep last night because my body still think it's in London, and I woke up at about 7am. I got to the diner at 11.30, and three of them were already waiting there. There was Scott, a Massachusetts native studying Vassar College, NY; Bonnie, a Pittsburgh native studying in Cleveland, Ohio; and Tom, a French-Brit mix on my side of the pond, at St. Andrews Uni in Scotland. A while later, Marie, a Chinese-American studying in Uni of Southern Cali turned up as well. After brunch, we decided to go and take a look at the Institute where we're supposed to be working. The Space Telescope Science Insitute is inside the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) campus, but it's independent. The JHU campus itself is a very green, leafy place with lots of trees, and the immediate surroundings are a very slightly boring suburban area. After that, we decided to catch a bus to downtown Baltimore.

The bus took it's time to get to our bus stop, and when it arrived it was pretty full of people. I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MANY OBESE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE. It wasn't a majority in any way, but still there was noticeably a lot more than anywhere else I've been. Another thing that I noticed was that there are so many churches in this place...a lot more than in Britain, I felt. I guess Americans are much more religious compared to their counterparts from across the Atlantic.

Outside the immediate vicinity of the JHU campus, the surroundings immediately took a seedy cast, with peeling buildings and a far more run-down appearance. I hope this doesn't sound racist, but there were a lot of black people, inside and outside the bus. After about 25 minutes, the buildings of downtown Baltimore came into sight, and we got off at the Inner Harbour area. Inner Harbour is the innermost part of Cheasapeake Bay, and there were a lot of boats in the area. The Baltimore aquarium is also situated here, as well as the USS Constellation, the US Navy's last wooden sailing ship. It was pretty crowded as it was a Sunday afternoon, and we took our time going around the place. Nearby, there was an old power plant that is now a Barnes and Noble bookshop, and we spent a bit of time browsing it. By the time we left, it was already about 5.30 pm, so we decided to take the bus back to JHU. When we got back to the campus area, we all went home (all of our places are around the JHU campus area).

So far, it's been a rather disorienting experience to me. It's normal to feel out-of-place when coming to a new place, and not knowing anyone around, but somehow this is different. Americana is so ubiquitous all over the world, so actually getting here and being immersed in it is a somewhat surreal experience. The people here are friendly and cheerful in general, but I cannot help but feel that in general Americans seem to be insular and ignorant of the outside world. Other things also stand out, like their love and obsession with cars (in part driven by necessity), and their liberal use of their car horn when driving! Of course, the incidence of obesity is also rather disturbing. So far, much as I hate to say this, my impression of America is a country without direction, and at siege with the rest of the world.

I start work tomorrow morning. Will keep this updated, and get pictures uploaded as well.

No, I'm not in the US yet. I've just decided to procrastinate just a bit more rather than finish off my packing. After voting today, I went into uni to talk to a prospective supervisor for my research project next year. Dr. Kinwah Wu (following Western convention... his surname is Wu) isn't usually in the Department, because he is based in MSSL (Mullard Space Science Lab) which is outside London. I have emailed him a few times previously (along with a few other prospective supervisors, all from MSSL), so when he said he'd be coming into London, I decided to take the chance to talk to him.

He was at the MSSL's 'branch office' in Taviton St., where I usually have my tutorials there under Dr. Mason, my personal tutor. Dr. Mason let me in, and brought me to the room where Dr. Wu was. I had half-expected Dr. Wu to be a venerable grey-haired Chinese guy...instead, he can't be more than 30 years old. He's short and bespectacled, but the first thing that struck me was his manner of talking...fast, short bursts, words almost rolling into each other in a rather soft monotone. The accent wasn't something I could really place either.

He asked me if I was Korean (my name does sound Korean, admittedly), so I told him I was Malaysian, and in turn I asked him if he was from Hong Kong. He was born in HK, but brought up in Australia. He started off asking what my plans for the future were (I made references to this in my emails to him, by enquiring whether the projects would lead to published papers). I told him frankly, and he said, 'Well, my student Chris, two years your senior, is now is Caltech...', and he mentioned a few more ex-students who are now in places like Princeton, Harvard etc (implicit implication: he writes a good reference letter. He also told me that I'll need to be the 'best of the best' to get into the elite universities.

The trivialities out of the way, he went on to explain the project I was enquiring about. Basically, black-holes emit x-ray radiation, and they are trying to create an accurate theoretical model to explain certain characteristics of the radiation (that's the only way I can explain it without causing mass perplexity). There are several steps to creating a theoretical model: get to grips with the various processes that might be responsible and combine them, put that into a computational model to give predictions as to what the radiation spectra would look like, and then comparing the predictions with the actual observed data. The first couple of steps are being taken cared of by PhD and MSc students, so being merely a humble final-year undergrad, I would, if I choose, be doing the interface between the predictions and observed data.

Dr. Wu also showed me a presentation on the topic which he gave recently, and attempted it to explain to me as best as he can. As he explained, he became visibly animated and enthusiastic...as for me, I was struggling to keep up with what he was saying (and not quite successfully). He made various references to the fact that the stuff was beyond my present understanding (which was perfectly true, of course), and that more advanced projects would await me under his supervision in the fourth year (this project is actually under the supervision of another researcher, he's just the secondary supervisor). When I mentioned that I'll only be doing 3 years, and might instead be doing a MSc in maths, he almost recoiled in horror. 'No, no, no! To get into the top universities you need research projects in your CV. Any bookworm can get a top first-class honours, so they will be looking for something more than just academic results. If you do a maths Master's you won't do any research!'.

He went on a rant on how important research is for a prospective PhD student. In response to my statement that I am crap at maths, he said that he is an arts student in high school, yet his maths skills are the best at MSSL (impressive, but I'm not sure what his point is). He said that in the first couple of years in a US PhD, I will be getting hard maths drilled into my skull anyway, so there's no point wasting a year doing maths. At some point he also mentioned that he used to work for NASA, but didn't go into much detail.

I managed to get a word in edgeways, and mentioned that I will be spending my summer doing research in the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. He paused for a while and said, 'Oh....were you the one who asked Mark Cropper to write you a reference letter?'. Mark Cropper was one of my first year lecturers, and yes, I did ask him to write me a reference. 'Ah....Mark is one of my best friends in MSSL, and he has mentioned you....', at this point he seemed to struggle for words a little bit, and finally said, 'He regards you as his prize student'.

In any case, all good things come to an end, and I decided to take the project. However, the situation is now interesting: Dr. Wu has, shall we say, persuaded me as to the virtues of staying on for a fourth year. On the other hand, if I stay for a fourth year, I'll only get to do a research project in the 4th year and not in the 3rd year. The only way out: do the 3 years BSc, and do a separate MSc, still in UCL. I will be eligible to apply for full scholarships to cover my MSc, rather than having to rely on the paltry partial scholarship I have now. That's assuming I get the scholarship, of course...

On a more light-hearted note, at my final dinner at Netherhall House this evening (well, the final one for a few months at any rate), we were handed a sad-looking helping of rice and two suspicious-looking pieces of meat, with green salad and COLD chicken soup as sides. As I sat down at the table, I looked at the guy beside me, Fred from Mauritius, and we both couldn't help laughing. Later, I loudly commented that it must be 'Oliver Twist Appreciation Day', because they're making us ask for a second helping of slop, a comment which rather ominously coincided with some rather witch-like laughter from the serving ladies behind the counter. After finishing the food (which didn't take long, despite the dubious quality of the food), I made a quick survey as to the origins of the meat we just ate. Paul K from Uganda said 'Chicken', Alfredo from Mexico said 'Beef', and the most respected Fr. Joe, our resident chaplain said 'It's either pork or lamb'. FOUR different opinions from three people...impressive isn't it? However, as my fellow Malaysian Hon Weng put it, 'Outside, you'd probably have to pay 65 pounds to eat something like this...'

To sign off, let me congratulate my friend Si Xian, who just notified me that managed to win a JPA scholarship to study engineering in France! You go, buddy!

Ah...the irony of life. Not being 21 yet until August, I was not eligible to vote in my own country, and in any case the chances are that the value of my vote would be watered down by gerrymandering, phantom voters and other shenanigans (in any case, my constituency, Seputeh, is a DAP stronghold, so I don't think the opposition needs my vote there!). So, imagine my surprise a couple of months ago, when I received a polling card to vote in the regional elections here in London!

My initial reaction was to throw the thing away (and I did), because I simply could not believe that I, a temporary student in this country, had the power of the vote. As the polling date approached, what I read from the newspapers confirmed the impossible: I am eligible to vote for the mayor of London, the local council members AND the member of the European Parliament (MEP). And what's more, the pot's been boiling like never before. Tony Blair's Labour party (which got landslide votes previously) is suffering from Tony's Iraq policies, and the main opposition Conservative party is ALSO suffering because they supported Iraq, and add to that the emergence of high-profile splinter parties from both the left (Respect) and right (British National Party and UK Independence Party), the plot is REALLY thick this time round. With such split votes and a potentially low voter turnout, each vote counts for more than ever before.

This morning, despite my polling card languishing in a rubbish dump somewhere, I walked to the local polling centre (which was just a few minutes' walk away), told the people running it my name and address (they had my name in a list), and they handed me the ballot papers without even asking me for ID! Being the pinky weak-hearted liberal that I am, I obviously voted for the left leaning parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens (I split my votes for them more or less randomly between the different seats up for grabs). I did however vote for Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate for London mayor, because he was anti-war and has been doing a good job as the incumbent.

Anyway, I fly tomorrow for the US. Surprisingly, I'm not excited about this prospect, considering that I'm usually quite worked-up before I travel. Will keep this updated when I get internet access over there.

Cassandra was the daughter of Priam, King of Troy. After 9 years of being besieged by the Greeks, the Trojans woke up one morning to find the Greeks gone, except for a huge wooden horse by the beach. The exultant Trojans decided to drag the horse back to Troy in celebration. Cassandra had a gift, and a curse: she was gifted with the ability to prophesise the future, but cursed so that no one would ever to believe her prophecies. She prophesised that the great horse would spell doom for her city, but the triumphant Trojans refused to believe her. As history and the Brad Pitt blockbuster tells, her prophecy did indeed come true, and at night the Greek soldiers poured from the wooden horse to open the city gates for the Greek army hidden nearby.

For the past couple of decades, modern-day Cassandras have been trying to convince us that breakneck economic development could spell doom for mankind with its potential for climate change and pollution. Even as we revel in our riches and wealth (or at least the few percent of us lucky enough), our detritus and filth slowly chokes our planet. Environmentalists and scientists have been trying to warn us of the potential consequences of our actions, from the ozone layer problem, to the really big cheese, global warming and the little-acknowledged fact that petroleum sources are finite. Of course, the almighty dollar speaks the loudest, and whatever lies in the way of short term profit and gain has to be suppressed. So we have the Bush administration and the rest of the money-engorged US government (the US congress killed the Kyoto treaty even though the Clinton administration was in support) effectively covering their ears even as the climate is already changing around us.

All across Europe, weather patterns are clearly changing. Almost the entire scientific community apart from a few quacks are certain that climate change is anthropocentric (i.e. man-made). This is not a problem that a few magic-pill ideas can solve. It requires a massive change of public opinion, and a complete overhaul of the way societies and economies function.

As if to make things more interesting, last week crude oil prices went above $40 per barrel. The current crisis, like that of the 1970s, is of course political in nature, but it does bring to surface the stark reality that global oil supplies are finite. At current projected rates of increase in consumption, the world's oil reserves are not going to last more than 30 years. Indeed, there's talk that we've already hit 'peak oil', i.e. the amount of oil produced will continue to decrease from now on: gasoline prices are gonna keep going up from now, people. If no new sources of energy emerges to plug the gap, we're going to have economic problems that make the 1930s depression look like a walk in the park. Hell, it's going to be much more than an economic problem...almost everything in our daily lives depends on energy. Worst-case scenario is that all hell breaks lose, and anarchy reigns, with a helping of mass-starvation and war.

Our only hope is in new sources of energy and the new techologies to harness them, and that requires the powers-that-be to take their heads out of their collective asses and realise that much more is at stake here than just money.

On another note, I have added a comment function to this blog, so readers (yes, all two of you...) can add insults or sycophantic praises as they see fit...

Yesterday, I had a meeting with Neil Pickering, who's one of the chairmen of my halls of residence. He's one of the friendliest people I know, always with a smile and something nice to say. He was a resident here as well back in the 50s, and since then he's been the de facto liaison with other former residents. He's often travelling about, and he goes to Malaysia quite often. In fact, he's very active in the British-Malaysian Society. Which brings me to the point: He's organising a concert by several young Malaysian musicians, and I'm going to be one of them!

There will be four musicians in the concert: Jane Ng, a violin post-grad from RCM, May Yee, a piano post-grad from RCM, and Bobby Chen, who's one of the most prominent pianists to have emerged from Malaysia in recent years, and yours truly of course. Now, playing in the same concert as two music post-grads and a reasonably famous pianist (I've heard of him before this, so...) is no joke when I'm the only amateur among the lot! We won't actually be playing together though...instead, we'll play individually one after another. To make things more interesting, the Malaysian High Commissioner to Britain will be there, along with a host of other diplomats and dignitaries.

It's been decided that each of us will get about 15-20 minutes of playing time, and I'll be playing first. So, the challenge for me is to present pieces which are sufficiently within my grasp so that I won't embarrass myself too much, yet solid enough not to seem too flimsy in comparison with the other guys' repertoire. A wee bit challenging, considering that I haven't been practising consistently in months! Fortunately, the concert is schedule for October, so I'll have a few months to try and bring things up to scratch. This will be by far the biggest performance I've ever had to give.

Oh, and the other day I got back a 2000-word review that I had to do last term. The marker's comments were priceless: 'This is really excellent. Also very well presented and easy to read. Thank you for the pleasure of reading it'. :P

I went to Greenwich a couple of days ago. The weather has been wonderful this past couple of weeks, but in the morning, the weather was grey and drizzly. Joy. Anyway, Greenwich is on the outskirts of London, accessible by the London Transport system. I went with my Singaporean friend Guojing and a friend of his, and we took the Underground partway, and the elevated Docklands Light Railway (their equivalent of LRT) the rest of the way.

On the way to Greenwich, we passed through the Canary Wharf area, which was a run-down area before the 80s, but rejuvenated by Thatcherism during her reign, so the area is now a futuristic cluster of gleaming skyscrapers. Pretty reminiscent of Singapore actually. Elsewhere in London, everything is so aged (ESPECIALLY the Underground stations, many of which are older than KL), but in Canary Wharf, there's a sparkle and energy about the place (possibly because everything is so spanking new).

Greenwich itself is just across the River Thames from Canary Wharf, and the waterfront is dominated by the Cutty Sark, which is a tea clipper from the heyday of the sailing ship, and the Royal Naval College, with its Wren-designed buildings. After an abortive start (we 'accidentally' took a long underground tunnel which brought us to the opposite bank of the Thames, saw there was nothing interesting and being lazy bastards that we were, decided to take the DLR back into Greenwich...fortunately there was a station nearby), we went into the grounds of the old Royal Naval College, which is actually occupied by the Trinity College of Music and part of the University of Greenwich these days. We saw the Painted Hall, which was a hall which was quite literally covered with murals on the inside, from all four walls and the entire ceiling. The murals depicts the triumphant British Empire and things like that, just a little bit on the garish side, I thought. Lord Nelson's body lied in state here before his burial in Westminster Cathedral, and a plaque on the floor of the hall commemorates this.

Next to it is the Chapel of the College. As we approached it, we could hear organ music emanating from inside. At the entrance, we saw a sign which defined our lives for the past month or so: 'Exam in progress. Please keep silent'. However, since there was music being played from the chapel, obviously there was no exam going on that the moment. As we entered the chapel, we saw a table near the front with several stern-faced people seated, and looking at the organ loft above the entrance. Wrong. There was an exam, alright. An organ exam by the College of Music! The interior for the chapel was arranged typical of an Anglican Church, but it wasn't very ornately decorated save for a mural at the rear.

After lunch, we visited the Royal Maritime Museum. They had a special exhibition on Tintin, but unfortunately entry for that was not free, so we had to forgo it. Unfortunately, since Tintin was very much a part of my childhood, along with Messr. Asterix and Obelix :). The museum as a whole was quite interesting, with exhibits on the various topics like passenger liners, maritime trade, sea exploration (they had the boat on which Ernest Shackleton made his epic trip across the Southern Pacific). Unfortunately, we were rather pressed for time since we wanted to see the rest of Greenwich, so we didn't spend much time in the Museum.

The Royal Observatory of Greenwich is perched on a hill overlooking the Museum, within a park. It is here where the Greenwich Meridian is situated. Time from everywhere else in the world is measured relative to this location. It was predictably crowded with tourists taking pictures of the long stripe marking the Meridian, and they even had machines dispensing certificates saying that the visitor was at Greenwich at such and such time (for a small fee, of course). From the observatory, a fantastic panorama of London can be seen (albeit somewhat spoiled by a few obstrusive trees). The observatory itself is now mostly a museum dedicated to charting the quest to find a way to find longitude at sea (latitude can easily be discerned by looking at the position of the stars). Initially, it was thought that observing occultations of the stars by the Moon would provide a way of doing this, hence the observatory was set up to measure the positions of stars for this purpose). Later on, a better was found of using accurate chronometers to find the local time with respect to the time in a set position (e.g. Greenwich). As a result, most of the museum is a chronophile's paradise, with all sorts of clocks and timekeeping devices. The latter part of the museum is dedicated to to a few astronomical instruments, which of course is of great interest to me, but I didn't want to delay my friends by lingering too much. Having said that, the Observatory has a 28-inch diameter refracting telescope, one of the largest in the world (most large telescopes nowadays are reflectors, with the largest having a diameter of about 10 METERS, in Mt. Keck in Hawaii).

After that, despite the drizzle, I suggested that we see some Roman Ruins in the park, as indicated in my map. After walking around for the better part of the hour trying to find it, we found that it was no more than a small pile of rocks, to our great disappointment. We were hoping for at least a few pillars or something like that.

Following that, we decided to spend a little more time in the Maritime Museum's exhibits, but it was closing time anyway (5pm), so we didn't get to see much more apart from a whole section on Lord Nelson. So we left back to Hampstead.

It was an interesting day. The Greenwich was where the British Empire was predicated upon (the ability to navigate precisely gave the Royal Navy a decisive edge in the race for control of the seas), and the town still exuded the remnants of its proud history as heart of the Empire, in the grandeur of the Wren buildings in the old Royal Naval College. Standing on the hill of the Observatory, looking across the Thames valley, where the heart of global business still throbbed in Canary Wharf and the City, I felt that the echoes of the Empire could still be heard very strongly.

IT'S OVER NOW. Two months of near-nonstop cramming, 3 weeks of exam pressure....it's all over. In the final analysis, I guess I more or less studied to the level I set out to achieve, and apart from that stupid maths paper, I think I did reasonably well. However, I still have a talk to give and a poster to create, due in a couple of weeks, but in general I can give myself some breathing space. For once, I can ask myself 'What am I supposed to do now?', and answer 'I don't know', rather than 'study'.

I now have my internship in Baltimore to look forward to. I have already paid the first half of my rent for the apartment I'm subletting...I'll be sharing digs with a couple of Spaniards, Miguel and Gara, both from the Instituto Astrofisicas in Canary Islands. I'll be able to prattle away in Spanish by the time I'm done. My flight ticket is also sorted, although I've yet to book my connecting flight back to KL yet. I'm still thinking about it, as I'm worried first and foremost about having my luggage (especially my guitar) making a round-the-world trip without me, and also about missing my connecting flight, since I arrive in London from Baltimore at 9am, whereas the next London-KL flight is at noon, which should be enough time to transfer...in theory.

Anyway that's all for now...I'm too mentally exhausted to write more. Watch this space.

My past week can pretty much be summed up with one word: studying. From my waking moment to the second I crash on to bed, it's almost non-stop studying, with the only breaks coming from such obvious things as my bodily functions and the need to eat. I did however, allow myself little things like reading the newspaper, quick power-naps in the afternoon and the jog I let myself have in the afternoon just now...it's either exercise regularly or bloat up quickly from sitting on my ass for most of the day.

Nevertheless, it's never easy to motivate myself into such intense studying. At one level, it's purely egoistic: I did pretty well last year, and the expectation of everyone, including myself, is that I have to perform even better this time round. On the other level, I will most likely be applying for my PhD studentship on the basis of this year's results.

Still, doubts present themselves in my mind all the time. I would not have to work very hard at all to get my 1st class honours and hence qualify myself for most PhD programs. It's for the most elite of the universities that I'm hoping to qualify for, with the amount of work I'm putting in.

I have questioned myself repeatedly on this point: why in the world am I stressing so much over wanting to qualify for the very best. Is it because my self-esteem is so low that I want to prove myself? I'm interested in research in physics, yet I know that I am not a genius. Yes, I can follow and understand that stuff that I'm being taught, but that does not mean that I have the sheer intellect needed to really make a difference in the frontiers of physics. To get a PhD from, say, Harvard or Caltech would look extremely good on my CV, and it will give me a jumpstart in a scientific career, but would it really make a big difference compared with a PhD from a slightly humbler institution?

I am reminded of a Zen parable: There was a military doctor back in the feudal ages of Japan. Day after day, he would treat the injuries of numerous soldiers, only to see them return to battle and get killed. After some time, he is shocked by the carnage and the pointlessness of his duties, and he goes into a hermitage to meditate and reflect. After a long time, he suddenly gets a flash of insight and goes back to his work in the army. When someone asked him why he returned, he said, 'It is because I am a doctor'.

It is almost midnight now, and I need to get to bed. More studying awaits tommorow. It is because I am a student.

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.