Inspiration

Four days left of the IAS School; the last days are going to be filled with a lot of smaller talks from different people, in contrast to the first two weeks where we've had short lecture-series from the same lecturer. But it's been a really cool and inspiring experience. And after having, for some time, been leaning towards a future career in theoretical physics I'm starting to consider experimental physics more and more. Especially after having met and listened to some very inspiring experimental physicists, like for example Albert de Roeck who works at CERN and more specifically at the CMS experiment.

From the left: Albert de Roeck, me and Yosef Nir.

And there has been a lot interesting topics like for example the Higgs particle (which there has been a lot of talks about), the nature of dark matter and candidates for dark matter, quark gluon plasmas, string theory and of course accelerators and the experiments connected to them. Just for the sake of name dropping, examples of the latter are RHIC with PHENIX, LHC with ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, SLAC, the old LEP (which LHC replaced) and future colliders like ILC and CLIC.

I must say that accelerators are really cool (that could have been a pretty bad joke here since the LHC operates at 1.9 K), and if they where cool before the IAS school they are now just awesome.

One of the larger proponents of the LHC, especially in theoretical physics, is the man below, John Ellis. He was one of the main attractions of the school since in addition to being a great physicist he is also a great speaker. He has one of the best examples on how to explain what the Higgs particle is and how it works!

But I must say that a lot of the older physicists are really bad with computers and modern technology in general. Feels weird that they treat computers like magic boxes especially considering what they work with.

Anyway, think I've caught a cold, my head feels a bit heavy and that is kind of annoying. Luckily there is no training this week due to the Chinese/Lunar New Year. So a couple of more hours of lectures and then home to do nothing and try to cure myself.

India Part 1

So it has taken a while but here it is: my first post about my trip to India.

Don't know where to begin but I made a map over my trip which maybe was a little overambitious and I think that's as good of a start as any.

My companions for the trip was Per and Hallvard, both NTU exchange students from Swedish universities, although Hallvard is actually Norwegian. Here we are at a train museum in Mysore, from the left: Per, Hallvard and me.

We started out in New Delhi after having arrived by plane, was picked up at the airport and driven our hostel. There we set up in our room and then went down an had chat with the very friendly sikh-receptionist of the hostel, we told him of our initial travel plan and he told us that it was a really bad plan because some of the places were really boring this time of the year and very little of it would show us the "true India". We had also only booked one trip in advance so we needed to get train tickets and so on so we were shown to a travel agency (which was a bit scary since we've heard that there are a lot of bad travel agencies in Delhi). A new plan was made and we booked all our transportation and hotels for the first week through the travel agency, we might have paid a little too much but at least we didn't scammed!

In our new itinerary Delhi was more or less completely excluded, we only stayed in Delhi for the day; seeing the India gate and had dinner. In the new plan we had a driver for the first part of the trip, a nice guy named Sunil, it was he who took us to the restaurant but we told him afterwards that we had planned to eat a bit cheaper during the trip and he started taking us to some more fun and cheap places instead. Nevertheless the dinner was pretty good but it would also turn out that most food in India was this good, nom nom nom!

The day after we jumped in the car and did a 6 hour car ride to Jaipur, "the pink city". Our first day we spent visiting the burial place of the maharajah's family with its quite exquisite tombs and a big fort located just outside Jaipur.

You do get thirsty when walking in the sun all day.

We also stopped by "the sunken temple", for some reason a part of Jaipur was flooded and made a lake unfortunately putting a beautiful temple partially under water.

And before heading back into town we had an included elephant ride! 

In the evening Sunil joined us for dinner and he shared a whiskey bottle with us on the rooftop of the restaurant before we headed down for the actual dinner, which was delicious, as usual.

The day after we headed down to the palace and the palace area, the center of Jaipur. The palace was nice but not that special since the maharajah still lives in the palace and a big part of it is closed off. 

Below is the Hawa Mahal which was the living quarters of all the women in the court, it was built so that the women could look down on the life of city and the market outside.

Superbalance!

Later the same day we once again got into the car and we then drove for another six hours, destination: Ranthambore National Park. The first car ride wasn't that bad, you got a little shocked of the amount of cows around (and on the road) but the road itself was good. This ride went through much less populated areas and after first having two lanes, there was suddenly only and after a while it felt like there was no road at all and that we were driving on a field.

Anyway, eventually we got to Ranthambore and checked in to the hotel and went to bed early since we were going to leave for our safari early in the morning!

A modified truck/open bus was the vehicle of choice for the day.

Ranthambore is famous for its tigers, unfortunately for us the tigers were pretty shy and we didn't get to see any. We did however get to see a lot of other animals.

Boars.

Deer.

Alligator (alternatively a large crocodile). 

Crocodile.

And except a ton of monkeys and peacocks we also saw these weird animals which we believe to be subspecies of Homo sapiens sapiens, maybe more specifically Homo sapiens sapiens ingeniare.

From Ranthambore we did an even longer trip to get to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. We went there in the morning, hoping to see the Taj Mahal in the sunrise but when we got there it looked more like this.

Even though the weather was a disappointment the Taj was really breathtaking with its amazing details at the same time as it's huge and over 300 years old.

A hint that I need to work on my Wushu stances...

All the details in wall are either carved in the stone or made by inlays of semi-precious stones (one reason why it still looks as good as it does). And if you think Per looks a little sick it's probably because he his and was getting worse as the day went along.

And of course you have to do some jumping in front of the Taj!

But Agra does not only have the Taj Mahal, there is also the great Agra fort

In the fort Per started feeling more and more sick so we left him to rest close to the entrance while I and Hallvard explored the fort. I will tell more about Per in the next part about my trip.

On the way to the train station and the train to Varanasi we stopped by the "Baby Taj" which is actually an older mausoleum but because it's smaller and don't have the same details as the real Taj most people call it the "Baby Taj".

Next stop: Varanasi. But for that you will have to wait for my next entry about my trip to India.

Back in Singapore!

Okay, I've been pretty bad at updating the blog during my holiday but that is hopefully going to change soon. The report of my trip to India feels a bit overwhelming... I'm currently attending the IAS-CERN School on Particle physics, Cosmology and Implications for technology which more or less fills my days, and when not listening to interesting and inspiring talks about neutrinos, string theory, quark-gluon plasmas (and a lot of other things) I practice my Wushu. I now have the opportunity to train at least three times a week (and even up to five), so got to start prioritizing. And yeah, need to start applying for summer internships and jobs.

So I'll be back!

Haw Par Villa and Orchard

Last Thursday I and Hallvard decided to take a break from the studies so we decided to go sightseeing here in Singapore. Our first stop in the heat and high humidity was Haw Par Villa, a closed down amusement park that is kept as a park/museum. What makes Haw Par Villa special today is it's numerous statues and the slightly grotesque nature of several of them.

Most of the more unsettling statues we found early in when we walked through the so called "Ten Gates of Hell" where people where judged and punished (if necessary) at the end of their lives, of course the righteous and good did not get punished but the focus was on the sinners who had to pass through the different Gates of Hell depending on their crimes and sins.

The focus was mainly on dismembering or disemboweling the sinners in different ways, below is one example of the punishments.

At the end of their torture they would drink a tea which would make them forget their past lives and let them be reborn in ignorant bliss.

But Stare-goat knows that there are less frightening statues as well!

All photos taken in a professional photographer stance of course!

After Haw Par Villa we went in to Orchard Road, Singapores no. 1 shopping district. Orchard Road is supposed to have a really amazing Christmas lights, unfortunately we where there during the day so we never really got to experience them.

In the evening we went for a Norwegian/Swedish Christmas-smorgasbord that ANSA (Association for Norwegian Students Abroad) in Singapore had arranged. Don't have any pictures from the evening, but it was a really nice evening with both good company and good food!

Live long and prosper!

Garfielding

Singapore is going into Christmas mode now. Jurong Point, the shopping mall that I go through every day, is now filled with Christmas decorations and Christmas music. And they have another theme embedded as well; Garfield although I don't what his connection to Christmas is. But who greets me every morning if not the cat himself!

But I think they forgot Jon when they gathered the Garfield family!

Just nailed my Chinese exam which is my fourth of five exams this semester. When I was sitting writing the last part of the exam, a dialogue with Chinese characters, one of the Chinese-teachers suddenly stops and says "That's really good! You haven't studied Chinese before?". I couldn't stop thinking about how weird and random it was but it felt like the exam went really well. Hen hao!

Last week I went to town and applied for an Indian visa and today I went collected it down in Bugis, so now I can spend six months in India if I want to!

Going there last week I realized how little of downtown Singapore that I've actually seen so now, when I have nine days until my next exam, I'm going into the city tomorrow with Hallvard!

But let's finish off with a food picture!

Stories of Home

Just came back from the cinema and The Adventures of Tintin, a nice movie but it was a bit boring when I in one of the initial scenes suddenly started to recognize the story and then remembered most of the plot. Cool movie anyway and pretty cool animations! But wouldn't it almost be cooler with a Spirou movie animated similarly?

Had kung-fu training this morning and Shifu wished to see some pictures from Sweden so I thought I could make a blogpost for my non-Swedish readers to see what Sweden looks like!

So this might be what some people think Sweden looks like and the last two winters it has looked like this outside. The picture is taken on my way home from the university in Linköping.

But Sweden is not just cold, after winter there is always spring and there is always that one special day when it suddenly gets warm enough for all scents to suddenly appear, coming from the cold and scentless winter you know that spring is here and the world will once again come to life and the ground suddenly bursts out with flowers.

It then slowly keeps getting warmer and sometime in May-June the more optimistic Swedes, like myself, start announcing that summer has arrived (this occurs about the same time as the temperature reaches 20 C). It's time for shorts and short sleeves!

The more hardened also starting bathing in the lakes at the beginning of the summer, it's a bit cold at times but very refreshing and it kind of feels like this:

But in general summer in Sweden is green, lush and very peaceful. Of course we have the occasional rain (or frequent rain as most people probably would call it).

Then in September it starts to get cold again, autumn comes with colorful leaves, rain and wind. Haven't found any good pictures displaying it but then it's probably also my least favorite season. So fast forwarding to November when the first snow often falls and then comes December with Christmas decorations,short, dark days and (hopefully) snow. And then comes the most important day of the year: my birthday! Okay, Christmas, but since my birthday is the 23 December it's rather close to being it.

And if you're lucky it's this white outside on Christmas Eve. Below is my sister posing in front of my parents house, and yes, Scandinavian women are hardcore enough to go in skirt when it's -10 C outside. Must be what's left from the Viking-women genes!

 Thought I could top this off with an old picture I found of me and my family. Miss you guys! But we'll see each other in just over a month!

Live long and prosper!