Yes, do you believe? He is back to ABCDEF another time, marks them on a four lines copy book. Drawing cautiously “G” Clef on the lines, which is one of his ever favorite music sign! He loves to draw them again…

He joined “Saraswathy” 15 years back in Calicut, to learn guitar, like many other things he discontinued… he then re-join five years back in another class, like last time he stopped. But he still wanna play “Hotel California” on his Spanish Guitar… He still wanna perform like Eric Clapton… so he re-entered in another class from today!

He forget the name of treble notes…he forget how to read the value of the notes…he can’t play 4 crotchet notes any more….he misplaced open string exercises….his fingers cant located on the right frets now….and after two hours of practice on the strings… his fingers starts getting pain…

The week of a maybe not so typical grad student

Ever wonder how the "working week" of a (maybe not so) typical grad student looks like? I'll give you mine as a case study.

MONDAY

Vowed to get up early to do some research. Eventually got to the VUB at noon. Rest of the afternoon spent grading lab reports due the following day. Finished the day lamenting the fact that no research was done.

TUESDAY

Spent most of the day (this being from 8am to 5pm) in the lab TA'ing. Figured the lack of a lunch break would at least help keep calorie intake down. Came home at 8pm exhausted, wondering if this how people with a real job feel everyday. Happy to be a grad after all

WEDNESDAY

Planned on going to two seminars. Got an idea while shaving. Spent most of the day at home working it out. Extatic by the end of the day due to marginal progression of research. Depressed 20 minutes later at the idea of how slowly it is going and how much I still have left to learn before I can say anything meaningful about it. Dinner with friends who convinced me to go to the local bar for a party.

THURSDAY

Came to the conclusion that two hours sleep is not enough, and that women + emotions + lots alcohol = bad combination. Most of the afternoon spent giving and getting a pep talk to/from a good friend, who came to the same conclusion (only substitute men for women in her case). Evening spent playing World of Warcraft

FRIDAY (today as it were)

Got up, thinking what needed to be done for the second year lab I need to teach this afternoon. Got the impression that a blog update was overdue.

At least the weekend will be fun (I hope). A friend of mine has a job as a stewardess for a train company that organises ski trains to Austria. She managed to secure a place for me on this weekend's train, so we'll do a quick citytrip to Innsbruck.

Cheers,

Dimi

Network meeting

No seminars today, because of a meeting of our European Network in Ghent.

I'm up at this ghastly hour but looking at the agenda it will be worth it. A quick view of the topics

Recent results from the CDF experiment, by Gilles De Lentdecker

Search for neutrino point sources, by Amanda by Bruny Baret

Is String Theory predictive?, by Frederik Denef

Dark Matter in galaxies, by Athnassoula

Classification of 2-Higgs models

Getting ready for the LHC : Commissioning the theoretical tools, by Fabio Maltoni

Getting ready for the LHC : racker commissioning and jets in CMS, by Dorian Kcira

Sounds like fun doesn't it?

D.

First lab went well

Hehe...

Tuesday I had my first lab session with the 1st year industrial engineering students. It was quite the education, the way of doing things is very different at a Hogeschool compared to a University. Not better or worse, just different. My partner in crime (i.e. the other TA) Paul is a great guy to work with and has helped me immensely and the students were nice enough. All in all a good experience.

The lab is your average "basic physics lab for engineering freshmen" dealing with things like determining the resonant frequency of a spring, viscosity measurements, specific heat measurements, etc... It had been a while since I'd done these things, but in the end it all came back to be.

In less exiting news, there is a stack of lab reports that await me, in urgent need of grading. Better get on it then.

Tata,

D.

First lab went well

Hehe...

Tuesday I had my first lab session with the 1st year industrial engineering students. It was quite the education, the way of doing things is very different at a Hogeschool compared to a University. Not better or worse, just different. My partner in crime (i.e. the other TA) Paul is a great guy to work with and has helped me immensely and the students were nice enough. All in all a good experience.

The lab is your average "basic physics lab for engineering freshmen" dealing with things like determining the resonant frequency of a spring, viscosity measurements, specific heat measurements, etc... It had been a while since I'd done these things, but in the end it all came back to be.

In less exiting news, there is a stack of lab reports that await me, in urgent need of grading. Better get on it then.

Tata,

D.

Microsoft OS X aka Windows Vista

Windows Vista, Microsoft's long overdue new operating system has hit the stores in Belgian. In the old days a new Windows was a big event for me. I still fondly remember the 3.1 -> Win95 and the Win98 -> XP transitions. But this time it's seems hard to be enthousiastic. After reading or hearing several reviews they all seem to offer the same conclusion : for windows users it will introduce a good operating system, but there's nothing there for a mac user that OS X doesn't already offer. The most hilarious review came from the news program Terzake, where the reviewer was showing us the new functions of Vista. While he had to admit they were handy and nice, he almost always had to add "this is something Mac OS X offers for quite a while".

So will I be getting Vista? I'm running a OS X/XP dual boot on my Macbook Pro but I don't think I'll be getting Vista unless some application absolutely forces me. The main reason for having XP is running games anyway, all serious work is done on the Mac side of things ;-)

Little bump = Higgs?

Sigh. I'm out of the blogosphere for a week or so and what happens? The Tevatron finds an anomalous signal that might be the higgs! Cosmic Variance has an new blogger, John Conway, who works at Fermilab so he's the right person to explain to us what might be going on.

A new blog in town, Resonaances, is being started up by someone at CERN. It's something I'll be keeping a close watch on. CERN is going to be the place to be for particle physics once the LHC starts running...

Speaking of CERN, String School @ CERN took place a week or two ago. You'd think that it would be just the thing for me, right? We'll I'd agree with you, but due to some oversight I had no idea it was coming, so I wasn't able to go. A real shame, because CERN is great place to be. The video lectures have been put online so at least I can see what's been said.

If you're wondering who I work with, last year's edition featured a few lectures by Ben Craps on String Big Bang models. He's a great guy, I TA'd his EM and QM course this semester and he was very nice to work with. Speaking of which, I need to be going. The QM final is today so I need to go and keep an eye on those pesky undergrads taking it ;-)

Tata,

D.

Warped passages

I've just picked up Warped Passages by Lisa Randall. I've always meant to since seeing her at a panel discussion at last year's Solvay Conference, but you know how these things go. Anyway, I've got it now and I will be able to tell you what I think of it after a few bustrips (1h commute to the university...).

The nice thing about it at first glance is that she looks at extra dimensions from a very different perspective. She distinguishes between the string theorists, who are interested in it because their favourite theory demands them, and model builders like herself who just wonder how (any number of) extra dimensions can solve problems in particle physics.

And with that short notice, the weekend begins...