On the way to Africa

So I didn't get much of a chance to write anything prior to getting on the plane, in fact the last few days have been super busy getting things organised for CKC, then packing, heading to the airport via a board meeting.

I'm writing this from Sydney airport (free internet is GREAT) - our flight to Johannesburg has been delayed by at least 4 hours.

There are 15 of us in the group, 14 who have sponsored children in Emali and one guy from Childfund NZ who is kind of hosting us. (He also has a sponsored child in a different part of Kenya.)

I probably won't get another chance to update this blog while I'm away but will definitely write all about it when I get back. And post pictures. 2 weeks without internet is probably the longest I've had to suffer in ages.....

Collarbone, Rotorua, and preparing for Kenya

I only get one week back home before heading off to Kenya (!) so I'm staying at my parents' place because I'm still not 100% good with driving. Yes I was driving while in the US, but those cars were automatics and you're sitting on the other side. To drive here would require me to be constantly using my bad arm to change gears. Not a happening thing.

So I went back to the hospital to have another x-ray and fracture clinic appointment, this time I actually got to see the x-ray and it didn't look all that good to me. It's aligned ok in one direction (front-on) but not the other, probably by about 80% or so. I have to go back in another month and no sport in the meantime. But I am gradually getting more and more movement in the arm and shoulder, and have only had to use the sling once since I got back.

I'm trying hard to keep out of the way as far as being an invalid requiring stuff goes, because my dad is home recovering from his bypass op. He asked me the other day if I could turn the TV around for him to watch. I looked at him like, 'that'll cost you' and took my time, with one hand. Bah.

Tomorrow I am going to up Rotorua to give a talk and show the results of some synchrotron experiments to some people there. I've done the presentation, but I need to finish the report I was writing for them.

Yesterday afternoon was spent shopping for the gifts I'm taking to Kenya. We ended up with:
- soccer ball and pump
- coloured pencils
- regular pencils
- pencil sharpeners
- crayons
- sewing kit
- plastic box set
- toy cars
- stickers
along with the hand puppets I made earlier

Some are for the school that we're visiting (pencils and sharpeners), the toy cars are for Tom and his brothers, the stickers I got some sheets of little stickers and cut them into 20's so I can just give them to the kids - there's about 80 sets. I had hoped there would be more but one of the sets I got had various symbols that are not appropriate.

Anyway here's hoping I can fit it all into my bag :)

Going home... and about time too

I'm flying back home today, at last! and I'm more than ready. It's been a long time away, especially with my shoulder the way it is. Do I regret coming? (after all, I did have the choice) - not really. The first experiments, in Chicago, made it all worth while. The New York ones were always going to be a bit 'let's try this and see, but we're not expecting anything fantastic'. The Stanford ones... let's not go there. I'm still fuming a bit.

So I had fun over the weekend. Saturday I caught up with Regina and Kirill and we went into the city, wandered around the farmers market, then along the waterfront at Crissy field. I guess it's one of those things: even though we didn't do anything of note, like go to a museum or whatever, just spending time with people - especially when you thought that last time you saw them was the last time you were going to see them - is great. Like a mastercard ad I guess... gelato, $5; coffee, $6; time with your friends, priceless.

Sunday Mike took me 'hiking'... meh. That wasn't a hike. Come to NZ and I'll show you a real hike. See, back home we make the distinction between a 'stroll', a 'walk', a 'hike', and 'going tramping'. What we did yesterday was a walk (in the park, literally). If you're walking and don't need to carry anything, it's a walk. Especially if while you're there, you meet people walking their dogs - you don't 'hike' your dog.

Using one word to describe things of varying degrees is (in a Bridget-esque completely random way) perhaps akin to these 'social networking' sites where you click on people to add them as a 'friend'. Now I have a (mental?) problem with this. I didn't have many - ok, any - friends in school, so to just click on people who I know and have them labelled as my 'friend' seems really phony. Acquaintance, yes; person-that-I-remember, yes; friend? No. Most of the people at school were either really mean to me or ignored it when other people were really mean for me. The only time they'd show an interest was when they needed help with their physics or calculus homework. Oh, and once in 7th form (i.e. last year of school) when somebody said to me they'd heard a rumour that I wasn't a virgin, was it true? I sighed - that had started when I was 11 or 12. And the person asking wasn't even at the school at the time. Of course the rumour wasn't true. I think that goes without saying. Girls can be really nasty.

So (getting back to the 'hike') I guess I've come to expect that the same word can mean two different things. So 'hike', 'friend'. 'Rubbish'. 'Boot'. 'Solicitor'.

Perhaps I'll try this next time. I will educate my American friends - or at least try to - so they can understand me. And that's not even including idioms, although that would be quite fun:
'Come on, rattle your dags; you're as slow as a wet week...'

I'm so glad I'm going home today!

Help, I've run out of gas!

Somebody didn't tighten the regulator to the top of the gas bottle, so it's been leaking for about 3-4 days. Now we have less than a quarter of it left, which isn't much at all. Maybe a day's worth?

All of our experiments need the gas, so obviously we're not going to get them all done. The question is, can we get the next one (which is semi-critical) done with what we have left?

Ah well, you know, I don't really care if we don't. The lead up to these experiments has been really frustrating - people not listening etc. Then most of the samples didn't work - and they only made one of each. So there's no way to repeat an experiment (i.e. basic science how-to-design-an-experiment 101). Aarrgghh!

ANYWAY, it means we can have the weekend off... mind you I was going hiking with Mike and his family anyway. Looking forward to that!

Two days off! Yay!

Our experiments here were scheduled with a 2-day maintenance break in the middle, which is today and tomorrow. So I'm resisting the urge to do any work at all today, instead doing laundry, Bible study, probably going for a short walk outside later on. Tomorrow my colleague is going into the city (I'm not too fussed), so I'll spend some time preparing things for CKC and then probably do some shopping.

After that we have five more days and three more samples. The last sample took 1 1/2 days, so we should be able to finish in time (if there are no catastrophes). Had some problems with the beam over the last two days so hopefully those will be fixed by the time we get started again.

I rang home just before.
(Long story starts)
One time while doing experiments with Mary in New York, she had been calling home every day, and after hanging up asked if I 'needed' to call anybody. I had been living in the UK for about 6 months at that time and thought, well the last time I phoned my mum was to say happy birthday - no, I didn't 'need' to call.
Perhaps that's the difference between being away for a long or a short time. The longer you are away (or expect to be away), the less frequently you think about calling home.
But then, when I was away I was still in touch via MSN almost daily, so it wasn't as bad.

Thinking back to my first overseas trip without my parents, at the tender age of just-turned-seventeen (this was the physics olympiad competition in Canada), where I received exactly one postcard (after I got back to NZ!) and two emails the entire 3 weeks. And the emails had to be sent to a generic account for the organisation hosting us (there was no hotmail or gmail in those days), where the messages were printed out and pinned on a bulletin board where you were able to pick them up. I still remember one guy in our group received an email that way from his girlfriend to say she was dumping him. No different to a 'Dear John' letter. It was on the last day we were there too, before heading to New York City for a few days' post-competition relaxation. Ouch.

You can tell I'm sleep-deprived again - rambling now so will stop!

The toughest times are yet to come

I arrived at Stanford yesterday (and yes Regina I'm getting around to calling you!) - the weather has been great so far. It's sunny but not hot. Makes a change from NY, where the sun came out and we all stood around saying, 'what's that bright thing in the sky?'

My 'neighbour' at the guest house decided to play his guitar at about 10:30-11:00 last night. With paper-thin walls you can imagine how much that was appreciated. I wanted to take his guitar and beat him with it - after I'd tuned it of course, which was something he obviously hadn't done. Aaargh...

Anyway there has been no guitar-playing at the beamline, and the front desk told me he was only here for four nights so hopefully I won't go too insane in that time.

Our experiment set-up slowly fell into place. It is currently 8:31 pm and we are about an hour away from finishing the first (and easiest) sample. The next one, which will run overnight, should also be fairly straightforward but from then on it all gets a bit tricky. There are several papers already published on similar things, so we have to demonstrate something additional to those - and they're all really good. Eek...
Add to that, there are only two of us and we have 10 days to cover (although there are two days off in the middle). However, again it's a case of working with collaborators who don't seem to care that much about the experiments, so if we don't get super results or don't finish everything, I won't be kicking myself.

Tonight I also requested an upgrade for my trip back to NZ on the 12th, since I recently got a complimentary one for being a frequent flyer. The complimentary upgrade is only valid for a year, and it'll be better for my shoulder to have a bit more room. I used one last year on my flight going back to NZ permanently, and it was great.

A few more hours than expected

This time tomorrow I'll be on a plane to (hopefully) sunny Stanford. Our beam time here in NY is over and we got pretty much everything done that we wanted/needed to. We even got an extra 15 hours of beam - ordinarily it would have been down for 'machine studies' for two day, but they decided they didn't need it last night. I pity Mary for working the night shifts... but she knows what experiments are needed on this project more than I do.

Went to Tanger yesterday, there was hardly anybody else there. Managed to get a few assorted bits and pieces - hope it doesn't put my bag in the overweight category (1.2 kg of chocolate, anybody?)

Have had the sling off for a bit long the last few days, but I managed to twinge it the other night in the shower. Owww... taking it easy at the moment. And watching the rain, come a-tumbl-ing down.

Measuring the periodic table

Today is day 2 since arriving at Brookhaven (NY), things are going pretty cruisy so far. I haven't had to do anything. We swap over later today to do the experiments I'm here for. With 5 people it gets way too crowded (even three makes this particular beamline crowded), and I do have other stuff I can be working on.

So far they have looked at gold, copper, and zinc spectroscopy; today we will change to nickel and possibly to tungsten later. Usually we only do one element, or maybe two (not that it's a big deal to change, but you have to be organised and make sure you've done everything you want to on one element before going to the next). So to do four or five feels like we are almost doing the whole periodic table. (Yes a gross exaggeration because there are over 100 elements in the periodic table.) Ok I should stop trying to explain myself - people will think I'm a geek. Oops - too late.

We're not going into the city on our days off - two of the students are heading there afterwards so there's no point. Don't know what we'll be doing instead but no doubt I will let you know. Somebody said something about going to the beach, but the weather's meant to pack in. We might go to Tanger; you can do that in the rain.

Update on the shoulder: it's coming along. Still sore but I am taking the sling off for a couple of hours each day, and at night too. It's now 3 weeks AB.

Bye bye Chicago; hello New York

Well our experiments here are finished and I am flying out to the next ones in about 6 hours' time. All in all, the time here has been very productive. In fact we've already started writing a Nature paper about some of the results... (well I guess the Introduction and Experimental sections are always easy to write.)

The experiments in New York are using x-ray absorption spectroscopy to look at valence states of particular atoms in potential fuel cell materials. It's not something I've been looking forward to. Our collaborators are very secretive and so they don't give us enough information to work with, which makes writing beam time applications more than a little difficult! Add to that we have had scheduling woes since October last year. So this experiment has basically been in preparation for the last 18 months. And yet I've got to the stage where I basically don't care any more. It's terrible.

For everyone reading and about to post suggestions of great restaurants to check out, I'd better say up front: I've been to Brookhaven, NY, about 5 times now and only made it into the city once. So there's probably only a 20% chance that I'll be anywhere near the city... but you never know. We have two days of 'beam studies' i.e. no beam for us, so depending on what everyone wants to do (did I mention there are 5 of us??) maybe we will go somewhere. Oh, also depending on my shoulder - although that is still improving every day. I'm typing this blog entry two handed (albeit with the keyboard on my lap).

Hmm I guess I should say something about the news back home. I didn't mention in my earliest post, but about 2 days after arriving back in NZ from my post-doc (and sincerely hoping it would be a long time before I saw the inside of a plane again), we got word Dad had had a heart attack while on holiday in Japan with my uncle. Mum and I flew out on the next plane because the info we were getting was sketchy. We were there for a week, he had to stay another month because the insurance company said he had to, he came back home and has been paranoid ever since. He had a stent put in in November. A couple of days ago he went for an angioplasty and now is booked in for a bypass operation on 5 May because it is blocked.
Now I know this is a serious operation etc. but I feel pretty much aloof and impassive to the whole thing. Then I feel guilty for not feeling anything. I am not looking for sympathy, just saying what's going on. There are some things I care about and oddly this is not one of them. Of course I am praying, but...

If I could request prayer for this it would be that God would open my dad's eyes. To Himself, to what his life has become and how he treats people, to what is important and what is just pathetic. And for healing as well, but people prayed for that last time and the other stuff (listed above) hasn't changed.

That's all for now. I feel like (((insert your derogatory word here))) but I know it's just lack of sleep and having just come off a 26-hour stint. I'll feel better once I'm not living out of a suitcase any more. Oh wait - that's not going to be until June... {sigh}

You've gotta love night shifts

This is the first day (night? ah - '24-hour period') of experiments. It hasn't been too bad to adjust to working nights, because it's almost NZ time anyway. Which will be good for keeping in email contact with people back home (once the weekend is over).

Neither of the chairs in my room at the guest house were particularly conducive to sleeping in, so I've bit the bullet and tried sleeping in the bed. Kind of like a regular person, except it resembles a nest when I get out of it. It hasn't been too painful to get out of, although both nights I had weird dreams about something trying to attack me (first night a lizard, second night a cat) and moved quickly to get out of the way - which promptly resulted in pain shooting through my shoulder and making me wake up.

Anyway it's not the first time I've had to work nights, and probably won't be the last. Although, the Argonne guest house is probably one of the better places I've stayed in for having to sleep through the day (the walls are thick enough to block out the noise, and the curtains are thick enough to block out the light). So there aren't as many sacrifices that need to be made, apart from the food choices at 3 am being pretty limited (vending machine contents, or food we bought at the supermarket yesterday).

By the way the pizza place (the original Pizzeria Uno) was ok; maybe if we'd ordered something with more meat and fewer onions and mushrooms I would have been happier. Our waitress was a bit of a dag. Conrad had finished his cranberry juice and she asked if he wanted another, but then realised that it wasn't on the list of free top-up drinks. He said, 'Oh well, could I have a beer then?', to which she replied, 'Sure. Oh, that's not a top-up either.'
She must have been about 60. You don't mind tipping for service like that.


(For all my US readers: tipping is not something we do in NZ. The minimum wage is a lot higher here. So it's a bit of a foreign concept to us that takes a bit of getting used to. 'When in Rome', and all that.)