An update

I have a great deal of catching up to do, so I’ll describe some of the key events and leave out the remainder.

On Thursday, I had the opportunity of visiting the Clean Room. That means I turned into a fluffy white bunny again, wearing almost identical garb to the outfits I wore in KamLAND. Because I was untrained and had not passed certification, I mostly stood around and watched (being forbidden to touch anything but one computer). The room had everything, including an air shower and yellow lights so as to not expose the photoresist. I got to see first hand what I had learned almost 2 years before in APh 9, except I think experience was a slightly better teacher.

On Friday, I spent the day attending seminars on research. The morning was devoted to talks by students in my group, and the afternoon was a 3 hour “Soft Matter” (i.e. flexible polymers in biology [i.i.e. DNA]) seminar, given by Dr. Bob Austin from Princeton University, and Chih-Kuan and Shuyu from my lab. It was all very interesting, especially as Bob Austin was one of the pioneering scientists in the field of biophysics. In the Lecture, Bob Austin also mentioned that the full Solar Eclipse will be visible from Hangzhou/Yangtze River area, so I am going to make a trip up north myself to view it. I will likely be alone, as nobody is able to accompany me. But it will certainly be worth it, and I’ll have to learn Mandarin in a hurry.

At some point last week, I also started downloading from a torrent the Pimsleur Language courses in Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish, and Danish (should I decide to study in Denmark). As of this moment, I am at unit 11 in Cantonese and unit 6 in Mandarin. When I finish these entries, I will do unit 11 in Cantonese… On second thought, maybe I should double time Mandarin (Pimsleur recommends only 1 unit a day, but maybe the situation requires that I go a little faster, I have plenty of time to finish Cantonese, but only a few days to get up to snuff in Putonghua).

Also at some point, I bought an amazing book by David Crystal called The Stories of English, which is covering in exquisite detail the English language’s transition from Old English and examples of changes and held words to boot. This will keep me busy for a while.

On Saturday evening, I left work earlyish, and went down to the undergraduate area to talk with students my own age. When I found all the buildings locked, I instead went to the track and ran about a mile. That was almost as fun (*insert sarcasm here*). I am out of shape and need to exercise more often. However, the track was about 20 feet from the ocean, so I had a cool night ocean breeze cooling me as I ran, which was wonderful.

Sunday was fun; the group went out and watched Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen downtown. As expected, the movie was hilarious, especially in the dramatic sequences, when every character seemed to have lines pulled straight out of TVTropes.org, but read with a straight face, and without the incessant tabbing (speaking of which, the XKCD comic from Monday the 14^th is amazingly true). Afterward, we went to a noodle place where I had “Fish Balls,” which were literally spiced, “chicken nugget” shaped fried fish mixture, and was quite delicious. Afterward, I bought a mattress! and alarm clock, so when I returned home, I threw out the old one that I feared was full of bugs. Now, because a cleaning lady came to visit the flat, my room is clean and a good place to sleep in. My ease of mind is far greater now that I not only don’t have to worry about bugs, but don’t have to worry about my body hurting from lying on a wooden board.

Monday was mostly uneventful, except that Among and I finished my first chip design, and submitted it to the technicians to make the masks for the positive and negative photoresists. I really hope this works! Dealing with 100 micron wide channels will not be easy, that’s for sure…

Today, again was uneventful, except for just before I arrived home. I left the 7-Eleven near the apartment, and took a different route, to where the old British man was celebrating a birthday. I stood by and watched and sang, and then talked to a gentleman from India for a while. The Brit (who spent years in France, so he said) is a cranky old goat, but as the Indian said, “his bark is worse than his bite.” He told me, as he was quite inebriated, that he would take care of me should I need any assistance.

Music of the day(s); Non e si vago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ34Ryd2Cuo&feature=related, here actually Connoly in a pants role) and Se in fiorito (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrFY6nhwADU Sholl at his best), both Julius Caesar arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto. I want to sing them, along with Va tacito e nascosto for the concerto competition in the fall. With sleep and plenty of fluids and frequent practice, my countertenor is getting higher and better, although I still have to work insanely hard to not clench my throat constantly. Posture is helping, as is warming up properly, but clenching is certainly a danger that I’ll have to get over if I want the muscles in my neck to stop aching.

I started writing the script for what I hope will be an entertaining One Act play. Given my past success at writing, I think I’ll wait and see what eventually comes out…

wan-an!