Hello again! It has been rather too long since I last wrote. In the interest of brevity (i.e. in your interest) I will not go into everything I have done in excruciating detail (even though I know you were waiting for a blow by blow account of my Eurostar journey!)
Two major things have happened since I last wrote: 1) I spent a month in France and 2) I have signed for a new house in Oxford.
So I spent a month in France. While this may seem as if it was an excuse to stay in France dressed up as work (and maybe my supervisor did have a hand in sending me on experiment there because he knew I would have somewhere to stay in Paris…) I did actually have some work to do:
- Bordeaux. The first week, after a train to Paris, was to be spent in Bordeaux. Here I was attending the HEDLA 2014 Conference (High Energy Density Laboratory Astrophysics, in case you were wondering) and was going to present for the first time at an International Conference! This actually went fairly well, maybe because my talk was before lunch so people may not have wanted to ask questions and delay food, and we got some useful insight into the results. Next step; write up a paper!
The old stock exchange in front of the miroir d’eau.
Bordeaux is a beautiful, interesting city and I would definitely recommend visiting. I spent the weekend before the conference sightseeing, but also had the chance to explore many bars and restaurants in the conference week. One surprising thing: all the red wine we had was crap! As for the conference itself, it was really interesting, it was good to catch up with people and the food (3 course served meal for lunch) and conference dinner (in the Opera house) were incredible!
- Paris. The next week and a half was spent in Paris or, as I’m sure my Parisian friends will correct me, just outside of Paris for an experiment at Ecole Polytechnique, or ‘l’X’ (not just ‘X’ as I found out, mistakingly saying to a friend: “J’ai une expérience à X” and him replying “You’re having a porn experience!?”. After that I opted for using the safer word ‘manip’ to describe the experiment — as ‘expérience’ can mean experience or experiment — and used the Uni’s full name…)The experiment was a mixed bag: on one hand what we were trying to measure was seemingly beyond the reaction time of our diagnostic, but on the other it seemed to be able to illuminate some information. Regardless, we got some data, I had fun hanging out with the other PhD students and enjoyed staying in Paris!
- Fréjus. The final stint in France was for holiday. I experienced the super-fast TGV down to the South of France and then spent a wonderful 4 or so days with some cool people relaxing, beaching, bbq-ing and exploring. Then it was time to return to England. (On the last I day I connected my French phone to my English to download my boarding pass: bad idea. A flood of emails came in and I found out that at the experiment I had left in Paris they had had a little accident and damaged the diagnostic we were using… Cue me now working to fix this!)
Most of the group at the site of the burst dam
I was also house-hunting for quite a while since the last update, and, while it seemed at first that there would be little with the required number of bedrooms at a reasonable price, I eventually found a cool house in Jericho. So, from mid-July I shall be moving there! Looking forward to it, though sad to be leaving my current housemate behind (though not so sentimental about the house itself!)
Other things have also happened:
- My paper, finally, got worked into a resubmittable state and has now been returned to the journal. We are awaiting the outcome…
- I have begun to work more in the lab, on both diagnostics and laser experiments.
- It was my birthday! I had a fun extended week long celebration with loads of cool friends and family.
The laser is working!
From now on I will attempt to update more frequently, with shorter posts! Also, still mulling over the Physics idea!
Joe @ Oxford 