Physics with space science is cool subject, especially that bit where I tell people what I study in university and get to see their eyes widen. When I started this course, I wanted to become a planetary scientist or, possibly, an astronautics engineer, but that was over two years ago. Since then I have had gotten a much larger overall view of the various fields in physics and astronomy, of things which I have not heard of before university.

Nowadays, if people ask me what I want to do for grad school, I find it much difficult to answer. I find that inspiration comes most naturally to me when I think about the big picture about the universe: cosmology, the study of the past, present and future of the universe. It is a field in which some of the biggest names in science have been made (e.g. Messrs. Einstein and Hawking), and which have completely revolutionised mankind's knowledge of his place in the grand scheme of things. When I think of the field of cosmology, I get a tingle up my spine about the unimaginable size and scale of the universe, and the insignificance of mankind. There are many outstanding problems in the field, and I feel the solution of these problems will revolutionise science in the same way Einstein or Newton did. However, I'm not really interested in the observational aspect of astronomy, which often involves cataloguing distances of faraway stars, a glorified combination of photography and librarianship (with due apologies to my astronomer readers!). It's the gigantic intellectual challenge of theoretical cosmology that excites me, but on the other hand abstract mathematics isn't my true strength, and there's another thing.....

I have often fancied myself as a humanist, as someone who looks beyond the parochiality of my individual self, family, race and nation, for the good of all mankind. It has not gone unnoticed to me that there are many problems besetting mankind right now, which I shall not even go into, but suffice to say that I want whatever thing I do to be for the benefit of mankind (or humankind, for all you feminists). Cosmology is a really pure science, in the sense that it has no direct and obvious application, although in common with all pure science, there are always spinoffs, such adding to our knowledge of science as a whole which might help other, more practical branches of science. I have no doubt of the value of cosmology to mankind in general, but I think there are more immediate ways in which I can contribute....

There is a joke about nuclear fusion reactors: it is always 30 years in the future. It is a power source of dreams: the energy of the stars, with the main raw material almost freely available in sea water, and little or none of the political and environmental problems associated with most energy sources we currently have. There is, of course, the little problem that viable commercial fusion reactors are still a few decades in the future. There are many problems with making fusion reactors, and while a lot of progress has been made over the past decades, there is still a lot of ground to be covered, with a lot of obstacles in plasma physics and engineering to be overcome. However, the promise of nuclear fusion is something that I can work for in full conscience, in the knowledge that the work I'm doing will help solve a significant chunk of the world's problems. However, fusion research is a huge field, and as an individualistic person, I have doubts about how well I can work in a huge group (OK, maybe there's the egoistic aspect about wanting to get due recognition for work done, which might not be in good supply in large group efforts). Also, the work within fusion research won't be as intrinsically interesting as in cosmology, but there will be the satisfaction about the social benefit of the work done.

There is the large dilemma between personal interest and social worth of the work done, that I'm facing here. At the moment, it looks as if I will be going into fusion research, but there will be a lot more introspection and thought before I commit.

"You look like a homeless person". Those are not the words that one normally uses to greet a friend whom one hasn't seen in nearly a year, but then most people aren't Mike Macdonald. I was waiting outside BK in Leicester Sq for him, and he had just come from Victoria, where he was just concluding the deal for the purchase of his second house in London. He asked me where I wanted to have lunch ("And no bloody Chinese food, obviously"), and I suggested Angus Steak House nearby. "No way, Angus is shite".... so I suggested that we have the lunch buffet at Chiquito, a Mexican restaurant next to Pizza Hut.

I first met Mike at the Singapore Guitar Festival over 2 years ago, and I did not notice this at the time, but he speaks in a strange mixture of a Scouse accent with a hint of Hong Kong and the occasional 'lah' tacked on to the end of his sentences. He's from Liverpool, but has been working in Singapore for the past few years as a financial analyst. He's not your average scouse though, since he can speak reasonably fluent Cantonese, which is because he once worked in HK.

He studied maths in university, and he was interested going into research in general relativity, but decided to go into market analysis rather than end up in 'Economy Class Land' (as he put it). Among other things, Mike is very clearly a genius. He did his O-levels when he was 13, and got accepted into Cambridge, but he decided to go into UMIST instead (apparently he thought Cambridge was too dull). He can play the guitar better than I can (at least that was the case the last time I heard him play, which was some time ago), yet he says that it's his THIRD instrument after recorder and piano. Not surprisingly, with brains like his, he's making loads of money, which is why I had no compunctions against getting him to buy me lunch. After all, he's only in London for a couple of weeks, and I probably won't see him again for a few months at least.

Intelligent and successful that he is, he has a tongue that is acerbic to say the very least. As PH observed when he met him, Mike is one of the best insulters that you'll ever meet. His vocabulary still consists of stuff you would expect from a working-class Liverpool background (his Scouse accent has been watered down, but having met his sister, I now know he's definitely from a working class family), like "I'm going to have to stick a mint up my arse by the time I'm done with this" when helping himself to the food at the buffet table.

Despite this, he is extremely intelligent and can still remember stuff from his university days which (presumably) he doesn't need in financial analysis. So, we were stuffing our face with ribs and chilli (I was, at any rate), and we had words like 'eigenvalues' and 'Riemann hypothesis' and 'Legendre polynomials' flying across the table. I was struggling to keep up my end of the conversation, like when he asked me about HOW we derived the Schrodinger equation.... I was even more lost when he told me how HE did it back in university.

He was always giving me advice on what to expect, and how to handle it, and a lot of it is on issues I've never even thought of. By 2pm, I had to go off to uni to register for the new term ("Oh alright...I have to bugger off that way though"). He might not be a friend I meet everyday, but talking to him never fails to be interesting.

I am back in London now. 13 hour flights are no fun, but after the first couple of times, one tends to develop strategies to deal with the interminable passage of time. Most people seem to pick sleeping, but I am utterly incapable of sleeping continuously on anything other than a flat bed. I find the 13 hours ideal for listening to music....most of the time, I have no time to just sit down for an hour or more to listen to a full symphony, so long journeys like that are perfect for that. I spent an hour or two learning Spanish, and finished an entire book: The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke. I haven't actually read any of his books in years, although I have fond memories of reading many of his books in my formative years. It was a fantastic book, and I read it from cover to cover.

Modern travel is supposed to be making the world smaller. I suppose that is true, but when 40,000 feet in the air, with entire cities and mountains on the ground seeming Liliputian, I can't help but feel that the world is still extremely vast, notwithstanding any pretensions we might have otherwise.

747s might be able to bridge the gap between continents, but it doesn't really help with the process of bridging cultures. Despite having been in London for most of the past two years, I still got culture shock and a sudden feeling of isolation. Maybe it's the knowledge that I will be a wayfarer for the next decade at least, with no place that I can confidently call home. I will regularly be going back to Malaysia during holidays etc, but nevertheless it's not going to be a place I can be settled in. I am fairly certain that I will still be in UK for my Master's but beyond that I have no idea where I will be doing my PhD, post-docs and any permanent positions I might hold (incidentally, 'permanent' is relative insomuch as scientific jobs are concerned). And to think as far as where I will settle down for a home....

Ambition is a good thing, but there are always sacrifices to made from things that most people take for granted.

A few weeks back, I was chatting online with a younger friend of mine who's still doing Form 6 in Catholic High. Wan Ru, to her credit, is one of the few friends who have ever been curious about my field of study to bombard me with questions. I knew she was very active in the the science/maths soc in CHS, so I jokingly asked her if she wanted me to give a talk about astronomy and stuff like that. To my surprise, she said that she will organise a talk by me in school. I wasn't really expecting her to say yes, since I had doubts about the level of interest that high students would have for this subject.

As the days went by, the date for the talk crystallised as she made the arrangements, but it was some time before I gotten around to actually preparing the Powerpoint presentation for it. When started making the first slides introducing myself, I had little idea of what to talk about: I had told Wan Ru that it was going to be something on 'astronomy and astrophysics and stuff like that', but I soon had the problem of having a topic that was too broad, and impossible to present in a single talk. I decided to start with a few slides talking about astronomy in antiquity, with a slide showing an Assyrian sky map and another one showing Erastothenes' calculation of Earth's circumference. As my account shifted towards Ptolemy and Copernicus, I realised that an account of the evolution of mankind's view of the universe is fascinating and should be able to keep the attention of the students. Nowadays, this subject has a name: cosmology.

The thought of giving a lecture on cosmology to a bunch of disinterested high school students is intimidating to say the least. However, as I worked on the presentation, I began to feel that it's possible to do a coherent account which should be comprehensible to high school students, especially since many of the audience would be Six Formers in science.

Today, with no small amount of trepidation, I arrived at school at around noon to prepare for the talk, which would be given at 12.30pm, during a time when both afternoon and morning sessions can come and listen (in CHS, Forms 1 and 2 study in the afternoons, while the rest are in the morning session...it's the only way everyone can fit into the classrooms; and on Friday, there's a gap between the end of the morning session and the start of the afternoon session to accommodate Friday prayers for Muslims). As the audience started filtering in while I was hooking up my laptop to the projector, it seemed that most of the students were male Six Formers, with a smattering of younger students presumably from SainsMatik (Sci/Math soc for all you non-Malay speakers).

I started my talk with a picture of my graduation class photo, to strike a rapport with the students (i.e. the fact that I was in their shoes), and talked a bit about studying physics in university and also a couple of slides about my summer in STScI (just to establish my pedigree a bit :P). I clarified the difference between astronomy and astrophysics before starting of my talk properly. Although I saw a couple of girls studying near the back while I was talking, in general, I think I managed to catch their attention fairly well, because I used lots of pictures that they probably won't see in text books...for example, in a slide about Galileo I managed to Google a couple of images of his drawings on Saturn's moons and the lunar landscape, which I could sense fascinated them. I did reckon my voice turned a bit monotonous at times, and a few times I tripped over my own words, but I think the only moment when I lost my track a bit was when I was telling them about the measured change in the fine structure constant...I wrote it out in terms of the fundamental constants was surprised that they (the 6th Formers) have not yet encountered Planck's constant and the permittivity of free space, ε0. I was pretty sure that I had encountered it before I entered university, so I floundered a bit when they all gave me blank looks. Sometimes, you lose track of what the layperson knows.

I particularly enjoyed explaining things from Edwin Hubble onwards, which I'm sure a lot of them would never have known, and it was clear they were actually paying attention to what I had to say, because I had to field a few questions, as well as the occasional comment from the loudmouths among them. It did get kind of awkward when they asked questions beyond my level, but I tried answering to the best of my knowledge.

By the time I was 16-17 I had read a lot of popular science books, but I think most of my audience have never read any, so my talk was probably a huge eye-opener for them. It was gratifying to see that they were actually fascinated by the subject, and hopefully at least a few of them will be inspired into reading more on it...even if none of them eventually end up as cosmologists.

If ever another opportunity comes up to give talks to students, I'll more than happy to do it again...

Two more weeks of my summer holiday left, before I have to fly back to the festering sore that is London. I've been doing the usual holiday activities, or rather, the usual holiday non-activities, e.g. lazing about and sleeping. As in last summer, I have a bunch of things that I've planned out to do in summer, but again I'm too darn lazy to do it.

Sooner of later though, I'll HAVE to push myself to do some things. I jokingly asked a friend still studying in Catholic High if she wanted me to give a talk for the Sixth-Formers' Society, and to my surprised (and alarm), she promptly said yes and has already pencilled me in to talk to a bunch of students this coming Friday. I have virtually no idea what to talk about. At this point, I think I'll introduce myself and my studies (physics/astronomy undergrads are rather scarce in Malaysia, let alone those studying abroad), and carry on to try and give a flavour of astronomical research. I'm not sure how to make my experiences in STScI fit in though. I've started creating the Powerpoint presentation a few days ago, but so far I'm still at the 'Hello' stages. Any suggestions and/or ideas are most welcomed.

I also have a couple of articles to write. I promised an article on nuclear fusion for Nexus News back in London, which was originally intended to be due late last month, but now I managed to ask it to be put into the next issue instead, which gives me a couple months' breathing space. Still, it might not be too good to procrastinate to badly on that. It will involve considerable amounts of research to get the thing written up.

Another one is something I want to try and sell to New Straits Times...I managed to get an interview with Stephen Beckwith, the director of STScI, while I was there, there are some very interesting material that I think can be written into an article for the general public. First however, I need to get the interview transcribed out of the very cheap digital voice recorder that I used for the interview...so cheap in fact, that it does not have a fast-forward or skip function, so that every time I want to hear something, I have to play the whole thing from the beginning, which is EXTREMELY annoying. Hence, I haven't really transcribed much of the interview yet. And there's the little matter of trying to sell the article to NST....

And there's the little matter of my recital in October. Still need a lot of practise to get up to scratch, but here I am sitting on my arse. Joy...

I've been reading a lot lately, which is something I haven't done in a very long time. Apart from occasionally going out with friends, I've been putting aside a few things I'm supposed to do (including a talk I'm supposed to give at my old secondary school next Friday, and my guitar practice), partially out of sheer laziness, and been reading like my life depends on it.

I've just finished Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, which is an excellent book. It's a mystery novel/ history of philosophy rolled into one, and while it started out rather slowly, around the middle it starts to get extremely interesting and hard to put down. It basically starts out with a girl living in a small Norwegian town, Sophie, who starts to get mysterious postcards and a correspondence course in philosophy through the mail. She rapidly learns that reality isn't what she thinks it is, and you start to wonder if reality isn't what you think it is either. A lot of the book is like an introductory course in the history of Western philosophy, but as the book is targeted at teenagers and children, it is presented in fairly simple terms, which is a good thing, as I have forgotten most of what I know on the subject (the Heraclituses and Anaxigorases and Anaximeneses started to get rather jumbled up in one's mind). It's a book I'd heartily recommend to anyone.

As a scientist, I'm glad to note that a lot of the questions and answers that have occupied philosophy for millenia have either been resolved or rendered irrelevant. 'Natural philosophy' no longer belongs in the realms of philosophy, but to science. Still, I found that philosophy has a great role to play in aesthetics (not in the usual sense of the word, but study of man's perception of nature as a whole), ethics, logic and lots more.

I'm curious as to how the term 'romantic' became synonymous with love, when it refers to an entire worldview of an artist partaking in the act of creation, and the idealisation of rusticity and country life (presumably in reaction to the Industrial Revolution). Funny how things get twisted over the years. As musician, I am certainly a Romantic. When I'm absorbed in a piece of music, whether as a performer or listener, I cease to exist as a person, instead living in the universe weaved within the notes. Sadly to say, this experience isn't something that occurs very often, which makes it all the more precious.

Speaking of music, it's official....I'm performing in a recital on the 12th of October, in London. If you're interested in going there, let me know as you need to RSVP for tickets in advance. Tickets are £6 for students.

Well, so here I am back home, after a 24 hour epic journey which involved pushing my luggage trolley at full speed through a very crowded Heathrow Terminal 3, where I had to check in for my connecting flight between London and KL. Still, the pertinent point is that I'm back home in one piece, not to mention that my luggage managed to avoid an unwanted round-the-world odyssey that I feared would happen. Physically, I may be in one piece, but considering I have had little more than 3 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours, mentally I'm not quite together.

The past 10 weeks in the States have been, probably, the happiest time in my life. Not because of the US as a nation...staying there has opened my mind, and dispelled a lot of illusions I might have had about the country prior to going there. It's a great country to live in...if you can tolerate the fact that the high quality of living is built on the back of the downtrodden both within the country and (mostly) without. It was also not because of Baltimore as a city...it's a pretty dull city to be honest, and apparently the 2nd most dangerous city in the US. The Hopkins campus is pretty pleasant, but I can't imagine living there all year.

Here's the reasons those 10 weeks will be a long-cherished memory (in no particular order): Rafael, Esteban, Miguel, Gara, Bess, Marie, Raquel, Scott, Bonnie, Cheri, Olaide, Tom and Mel. I will never forget the fun that we've had in that time. It's probably the first time I've met so many people of my age group whom I can both get along with and share a common passion in science.

I also loved the freedom that I got from earning my own money, and having the freedom to lead my own life. When I'm in London, I'm fairly stingy because it's my parents' money I'm spending, so having my own paycheque was liberating. I traveled quite a lot, to DC, NYC, and Philadelphia, and all that opened my eyes immensely and well as being great fun in the company of my friends.

It's been great. Adios STScI SSP 2004.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!