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I'm 22 now, and other stories
So much has been happening lately, I ought to take a moment to write a little journal entry here! Let's see. My mom is here visiting. She got here on Thursday night and then on Friday morning we were treated to a tremendous snowstorm. We battled the elements to get to physics class in the morning, pushing through the snow with downturned faces, shielded from the sting of high-velocity snow. Looking backwards through the blizzard the scene looked like the Chilkoot trail or something out of Shackleton's voyage, a trail of a few dedicated students battling the elements, pushing their bicycles with labored effort against the wind. Only three of us made it to class that day. No swedes. Since then we've had all kinds of weather: more snow, bright sunny days, and rainy days. Right now it's a crystal clear night with stars and the one-day-past-full moon shining down.
Yesterday was my birthday! We didn't really do anything too special but it ended up being a lot of fun anyway. Mom tipped off my Swedish class so they sang to me (in Swedish of course) and in the evening mom and I went to the Kalmar Nation for dinner. Dinner was some kind of bread-cheese-ham-mushroom dumpling concotion, very filling. After dinner the nation became very crowded with people who'd come to see the jazz band play. And there were so many people I knew, it was amazing! Charles (from Quebec and my physics class), Soveig, Christina, Anna, Peter, the French guy from SSKK/BC1, Alex (German guy from Krischansta nation), Joe (who was actually working there), & others. Very fun. Oh, I also bought some new boots that are actually quite nice... now I don't have to endure soggy feet every time it rains!
Also yesterday I got lots of interesting mail. A transcript from Lunds Universitet, but also a letter from the Charter Karneval section saying that I was accepted to the Charter sektion for the Karneval. That's great, it was my first-choice section! But also I got a letter inviting me to work at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel with Dr. Michael Elbaum on some kind of biophysics project. There are a few problems (the pay is almost nothing; travel to Israel is expensive; my family would object vociferously) but I'm very excited about the opportunity of exploring a bit of the middle east.
Tonight all of us UC students (except Rose!) met for dinner at Keith and Paddy's house here in Lund! I don't know how they did it, but they had so much food for the 23 of us, it was amazing. It was really wonderful, all of us, our little UC-in-Sweden family, gathered together in the loft of Keith's house for a big dinner, civilized with wine and good conversation and everything. The smallness and familiarity of our group (17 students), and our remoteness in the world, was really apparent to me. Where else would you find such togetherness and community at a university, two dozen students gathered for a good meal with a few professors? Then Keith had an announcement to make, and suddenly everyone was completely quiet to hear what he had to say. As a guest we had the director of the University-wide EAP, who gave a little talk on the current direction and outlook of EAP. It's really an amazing enterprise the University of California has undertaken, sending more than 3,000 students to 140 universities in 34 countries now and probably twice that many students in five years. (The Director was in town in Lund because UOEAP is setting up a summer school in ``World Order Studies'' here in Lund.) It always pains me to hear about all these programs, because I only had time to do EAP once!
Somehow I feel like I've met all sorts of new people in the last week. Suddenly I met almost everyone in my physics class, for a couple of reasons: Charles (from Quebec) showed up at the Krischansta Internationell Utskott meeting at Sydskånska's filmcafé, mom came to class, and I gave a lecture. So, that's pretty neat. Also I met a cute French girl who went so far as to ask at what Nations she might be able to find me in the future, and I was silly enough to not give her any contact information. Maybe she'll start searching Delphi for me just as I search futilely for the elusive bright-eyed girl from Östrike? When will I learn?
Particle physics is getting more and more exciting, the more I learn about all these accelerators and colliders that are being built. Today we had a lecture about the TESLA experiment at DESY in Hamburg, Germany, which will be a 32km linear accelerator: like Stanford's, only eight times the length! This requires these snazzy superconducting magnets made out of pure niobium, manufactured in ultra-clean environments (because any impurities will ``quench'' the superconductor current). Makes me wish I'd applied to the DESY summer student program! Oh yeah, I share my initials with the Tesla Test Facility, which is kind of neat. CERN also has lots of exciting stuff going on in preparation for the ATLAS project, and the physics people here said that they might be able to drum up a masters-thesis project (and paid research) at CERN for me too, although at this point I think Israel is sounding pretty good.
Oh yeah, there's all kinds of other stuff going on. I gave a short lecture on supernovae neutrino sources in physics that actually went pretty well. These supernovae are pretty cool: only five naked-eye visible supernovae in the last millenium. In these supernova a star collapses, releasing 99% of its gravitational binding energy in the form of neutrinos. Amazing. Makes me want to build a telescope and start some astronomy! really!
Oj, it's nearly 3am, so I ought to go to bed now.. gotta read some 120 pages for class tomorrow as well. `ses
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I mentioned the eeg thing in a friend's journal and got replies from two interested folks. umm.
I suppose I should post this in the eeg thread. silly me. will go do that, too.
Happy 22!
Oh, say hi to your mom for me!
Sounds like things are good again. Congrats with the girl thing, even though you didn't give her your info. It sounds encouraging though. Sure sounds like you have more than enough job/learning options.
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Arg