Over halfway through!

AH MAN! So much has gone on in the past two weeks! I guess I'll try to be quick about it. I just have a bit of time to kill at work right now while some calculations are running (I forgot just how much time these could actually take up). On a side note, I'm just realizing that my last post was before the halfway mark, but this post right here is after it. I only have another 5 and a half weeks left in South America!!! Anyone doing the math for themselves realizes that this would have me home August 7th or so, which is almost true. I don't remember if I mentioned this already but I'm going to be staying with my (biological) Dad and his side of the family for a week, which puts me back in Jersey on the 14th (as originally planned).

Anyway, we were in Recoletta and the street markets there in Plaza Francia, and I came across this little gem:


At just 30-40 pesos less than what I was willing to pay for a top-hat (note: this guy came out to 30USD), I was completely willing to get this mbira (slash thumb-piano slash weird Argentine play on what is apparently an instrument of African origins) instead of the top hat I had my eye on near when I arrived. This is exactly the sort of thing you bring back from a foreign country, you know? Playing it is... well it's weird. At first I COMPLETELY had the note-arrangement down and could jam out on it pretty easily. I lost it after day 1 though, haha! Just gotta build it back up ^_^ The really good thing about it is that it's easy to play quietly or loudly, so it's pretty easy to avoid upsetting anyone when playing it.

The same weekend (same day, I think) we went salsa dancing! It's taken me 16 years or so, but I finally realize why my family wanted me to learn how to dance Spanish music when I was a kid. I regret resisting that as a child as much as I regret resisting learning Spanish at that age. Fortunately some of it stuck - I apparently wasn't doing too badly =) (and my verbal Spanish is coming along quite swimmingly - creo que sí cuando regreso voy a hablar el español buenisimo ^_^d). And of course Chirag and Linnea got picked out for a random contest they had that night. Those two are the most incredible pair of dancers I know!


There they are! In the back, on the stage anyway.

Later that week we went to a really nice Spanish place with lots of tapas. Ryan was nice enough to cover me for dinner there (it was among the most expensive dinners we've had so far, and that's saying a lot here). The food was wonderful, of course. Oh! And we got sangria again - I don't recall if I mentioned this before, but I had my first sangria here in Buenos Aires. Can I just say that I am a fan. A big, huge, enormous, Energy Star approved fan. Anyway we had it again here and it was once again delicious. Again, I may have already talked about this, but I'm definitely learning how to make the perfect sangria when I get back (one of my best friends, Erica, tells me her family has it down to a science already, actually).


Say hi to Ryan and Chirag! (left to right)
They had such a pitifully small bit of wine left by the time we arrived. As you can see.

The next weekend I basically just chilled out (and the previous one). Trying not to spend all of my money, anyway, eh? I did go out one night each of the past two weekends, though. Had some good nights, got a few numbers. Still trying to figure out how one appropriately uses a number one obtains (how long to wait to call, what to actually invite them to, blah blah cliché stuff one really ought to know how to successfully do by this point in life).

Oh! I've been cooking recently =D










I'm having fun with it ^_^ I want to learn how to make a good empenada, next.

Anyway, work has been going pretty bien. I've been doing strictly theory for the past 2 and a half weeks, now. I'm 99% sure that the current version of the program I'm writing is actually doing what it's supposed to do. Wo0t for progress! I need to catch up with Francisco (the Argentine undergrad I'm working on this project with) so we can compare data and figure out what to do. If my calculations are correct (cliché line unintended), I'm only about 3 units away from where we're supposed to be. For reference, we were previously 10 times off of the established value (just looking at simple sodium for the moment - gotta make sure everything's working before we go ahead and apply these things to genuinely new systems). Hopefully I did actually get this right, but we'll see, huh?

On the experimental side, Marcos has been doing a solid amount of data analysis. The last leg of the run we ran lo those 2 and a half weeks ago was kinda funky though =/ Looks like we began seriously running out of solvent then. Anyway, I unfortunately haven't had time to look at how that data actually gets processed. It's real give and take between these two ends of the overall project, you know?

Well just some miscellaneous notes before I leave you for the day. Here's a sign in San Carlos, pretty much my favorite restaurant so far (I find it strikes a perfect balance and spread between price and quality).

"Pizzas and good times" This is a phrase we could all stand to live by!

Also, here's a view of the river from my temporary window seat at work (I'll probably try and use my real camera soon to get actually decent shots of it):





I also found some more pictures of the Bicentenario! Don't know how I forgot to post them before:

Pics pics pics

SO here are the pictures I promised!

Liquid nitrogen: It's serious business folks (no really, this stuff is like -321 degrees F)

So we had to freeze a container with a half milliliter of diethylamine (NH(CH3)2) with... LIQUID NITROGEN! Of course, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy!:

GREEN LIQUID NITROGEN! Laser pens really shine through this stuff, eh?:

Obligatory Star Wars reference:

What lurks beyond the misty gates?:

MARCOS LURKS BEYOND THE MISTY GATES!:

We had to refill the actual tank of N2 at one point, and the hose, it froze:

During one of the blackouts at the apartment, I had a bit too much fun with my camera:

At my cousin Evelyn's apartment - loving my vest to death and rockin' a new hairstyle:

ENERGY TO WIN! Win what, I don't know, but I like winning so I ate it:

Yes, that's braille. On a cereal box. 'Cause they're awesome like that in Argentina:

Somehow ended up by the Obilisko while I was wandering the city after failing to meet up with people at the bar (for the US-UK game):

SO MANY BOATS! View from the room I stayed in (Lucas' - her youngest son) at Evelyn's:

Delicious chocolate dulce de leche awesome birthday cake full of win!:

Alejandro's (my second or third cousin once or twice removed lol) dog. His name is Quark, because Alejandro is a phycisist! (He also has a dog named Wilca):

Greater Buenos Aires (BsAs is technically the province and the city I'm in is technically La Capital Federal):

Family!:

View from Evelyn's apartment at night - quite spectacular:

CARS!:

And here's the daytime view - CLICK IT CLICK IT CLICK IT! Well for an actually decent view of this panorama, anyway:

One day we went by the river to eat. Pretty awesome times:

And a few videos of fun with liquid nitrogen. N2 molecules are such that in liquid form, they'll bounce right off of any water they hit. Check it out. We also froze some acetone in a vial and made some wicked awesome ethanol (yes, ethanol) smoke. Oh, and when ethanol freezes via contact with liquid N2, it looks like ice but feels like a gel. Awesomely weird, lol:

Arrivals, recoveries, code-monkeying, city-wandering, and (of course) more partying!

Almost two whole weeks have passed! Man, the time flies.

So the third and final arrival has, at long last, arrived. Ryan's also working in the computational chem department, under the main-main theoretical chem guy, Dario. So he's basically down the hall from me, lol. Anyway, Chirag and I have been showing him around our location and finding more places for awesome food. We (or at least I) actually hadn't eaten an Argentine steak until Ryan asked us how it was. He was shocked and appalled to find we'd yet to try it (especially with how much everyone was going on about Argentine steak - and wine, of course - before we left the US). So far the best steak we've had was 5 minutes from home, at San Carlo. Literally the best steak I've ever had in my entirely life, it had this incredibly delicious, smooth yet creamy mushroom sauce bathing it. Absolutely magical. I only had a bite of his steak (I ordered some milanesa de pollo - breaded chicken - in an effort to stop spending so damn much). Still, that bite was RAW heaven.

The next night we went out to the bars around Plaza Cerano, up in Palermo. Chirag was hanging out with a friend, so Ryan and I went ourselves. Couldn't find anywhere without tables/with good places to meet people, so we just had a bunch of beer and talked physics for the night. If you know me at all, you realize that this night was nonetheless quite fantastic.

At some point during that weekend we also met up with a bunch of our international friends at a bar whose name I do not know but the lights were all red and the place was packed and I had the most badass Baileys of my life. It took half an hour for them to get it for me, and then 5 people right after me got theirs straight away, but it was ***so*** worth the wait. It was smoothified with crushed ice and some sort of chocolate magic, we all think. Anyway we went clubbing after that, which was definitely good times, too.

The rest of the week was spent trying to figure out the best conditions (laser and pulse-valve timing/helium pressure/way to introduce the sample into the system/etc) for electric field deflection measurements. The system is *quite* finicky, but we think we've finally got it, so we'll be doing the hardcore stuff next week, it seems.

On the computational side of things, I've been learning a LOT. In terms of code, at least. Scientists use a programming language called Fortran. It always gets compared to C, but as far as I can tell tends to be better for handling numbers (whereas C is better for handling graphics... I know there are many more differences than this, all much more fundamental, but this is good enough for me at the moment, lol). Anyway, I haven't seen non-Mathematica code since freshman year (RE: very nearly 3 years ago), and Mathematica has some WEIRD syntax for computer code. I love it to death, but my Mathematica knowledge proved useless aside from being able to compare some results show what I wanted to do in Fortran by showing the end result in Mathematica. Anyway, having taken that intro programming class freshman year, I did know all of the concepts already, so it was just a matter of learning the syntax and how Fortran specifically handles its inputs and outputs and all that loveliness.

The short story here is that I spent a week trying to learn Fortran and then make it reorganize a file with some junk at the beginning and end but mostly just 5 columns of TONS of numbers to being just the numbers and just a single column. That was ROUGH (for me at least), but incredibly fun and excellent as far as learning how Fortran works. That was the easy part, so once I had the files organized the way I wanted them, doing actual science to them was cake. Right now the numbers are off by a factor of a thousand or so, but the code runs and I think I know what's wrong with it (one of the inputs was funky, so that's not the code's fault). Tomorrow I'm supposed to do experiments for the day, but on Tuesday I'm going to try out my program on some other test files that Fransisco sent to me. Here's hoping it works!!!

Thursday onward has been recovery time for me. I've been at my cousin Evelyn's place since then (but tonight is my last night). I misunderstood her and so packed and brought all my stuff with me to UBA on Wednesday (the plan was to arrive here from UBA, which I can see from this apartment), but hey, things happen right lol? I was mostly just glad that I didn't have to pack for Thursday. *Anyway*, it's been absolutely wonderful staying here - her family is incredibly simpatica (friendly, kind, sweet, nice, etc., rolled up into one word). Friday night I apparently missed the most epic party thus far (it was a costume party, at that), but I just wasn't feeling up to going out that night. (CURSE YOU, ILLNESS! MAY YOU NEVER RETURN TO ME!!!!)

Yesterday was the first day Argentina played in La Mundial! The FIFA World Cup, that is. There was supposedly a huge projection-screen setup not too far from our Caballito apartment, but it was raining and I woke up too late to make it there in time. I did at least catch it on TV though =D I of course missed the first 6 minutes, wherein Argentina scored the only goal of the game, but can I tell you how we (ARG) kept making these INCREDIBLE shots that kept getting blocked by the Nigerian goalie? It was *impossibly* frustrating, but an intense/intensely great game as a result.

The plan was to meet up with people at a bar to watch the US game later that day. I Google'd it and it said 8:30PM, so I figured I literally had all day (ARG vs NIG was at 11AM). Then my friend Mike facebook's me about the game happening in half an hour, asking if I was pumped for it. Upon receipt of this information, I instantly re-Googled the times and only *then* noticed the disclaimer "All times are South African", and immediately peaced out on facebook, rushed through a shower, and headed out to find the best bus to get me in the vicinity of this bar. The problem with that was I only know of two buses in the area, the useful one (42) and the one as useless as it was ubiquitous (130). So I'm ambling about town for a solid half hour - by the way, it began raining, lol - poring through my Guia T (the bus booklet) while trying to prevent the rain from soaking it beyond repair, avoiding traffic and asking some passerby's where a certain bus - the 37 - lets on and off. To make a long story short, I must have looked like a pinball to planes in the airport right by here.

Someone actually helped me out and told me that the 130 wasn't a bad idea after all. He said that it dropped off only 4 blocks from the subte (subway - by the way, I found out it's short for "subterrania" and am very glad the name makes sense, now). Turned out to be 8 blocks away (in the continuing rain), but whatchya gonna do, right? He was super-nice, though, and even complimented me on my Spanish. My accent lets people know I'm not from Argentina, but I think they perceive me as just being from northern South America instead, because they always compliment me on my Spanish when I tell them I'm actually from New Jersey. Might just be my ego kicking in and telling me what I want to hear, but regardless it's good to know that my Spanish listening/speaking skills are actually improving even if they've yet to be perfected =D

Anyhow, by the time I actually arrived at the corner the bar was at, the game had ended. I later found out that neither Chirag nor Ryan had made it to either game (but other people made it to the US-Britain game at the bar), so I didn't feel quite as bad about it later at least. Since I had failed at meeting up with people all day thus far, I decided to hang out in the area and walk around texting/calling people until someone was available lol. No one was by their phones though, so I ended up just ambling about the city for 3 hours. Although it rained all three hours and my pants/shoes were absolutely soaked by the end of it, there's something absolutely cathartic about walking around a city aimlessly. I notice that back home walking around lost its purgative properties for me, but I guess having been born in NYC just makes city walking so much better for me, huh?

Anyway once the sun fell I decided to pop into the old apartment and see if anyone was around. I refused to fail *all* day at meeting up with people, haha. They were there after all and so I chilled out there for a few hours and changed into drier clothes. We went out to dinner around 11 to a really great place. I had my first sangria!! Can I even BEGIN to tell you how wonderful sangria is? I'm totally experimenting with different wine/juice/fruit combos when I get back home and have a little more money to play with (I presently have exactly enough to sustain myself if I restrain myself from here on out - money flies when there's rent to pay, ya know?). Anyhow, Chirag didn't meet up with us for a few hours, and the girls we met up with took just as long to find us, but such is life, no? Ryan was giving me pointers with appropriate club attire/behavior (I am indeed, as they say, a no0b at such social affairs). Once everyone else got there and we found each other, we were all dancin' and whatnot and having a grand old time, of course.

Then people started splitting off in the club. And then I left lol. I think I've determined that clubbing is a fantastic time, but I personally only really enjoy it when friends are around. Chalk it off to timidity, chalk it off to me being weaksauce, it's all semantics that I care little about, really ^_^ I'll probably try and work my way up to actually being able to dance on my own though, at least once I can actually dance well to some degree. Still two months left, after all!

Anyway, today was also an epic day. I went with Evelyn and the family to meet even more family! I've determined that I do not have a family tree; I have a family forest! Seriously, I apparently even had family in Venezuela at some point. There was a birthday party for some relatives (seriously, we're into actual third-cousin twice removed territory, so I'm just calling them "relatives" from here lol). Go figure, two of them were physicists! Science just COURSES through these veins, man! Also importantly, they made this EPIC pig feast that was slow-roasted for 5 hours!! Suuuuuuuch good lechón! (pork). There was quite a bit of wine, too, and also the most delicious chocolate-mousse/dulce de leche/chocolate-cookie cake EVER! The latter was accompanied with a symphony of champagne glasses, and excellent champagne it was ^_^d

Well, that's been the past week and a half in a nutshell. A very large nutshell, but a nutshell nonetheless, eh? Pictures with appropriate explanations to come!

Time to catch up!

Ah, where to start, where to start. Well, chronological order has yet to fail me, eh?

Well, the three day work week was quite chill, if I do say so myself. Pretty chill, though. My advisors have been pretty busy but I've been getting good stuff done. I'm a practice fortran file for generating electric dipole moments from density grids away from getting serious stuff done with the computations! If I haven't figured it out by the end of the week, Damian said I should probably just use Fransisco's (another undergraduate, but he actually lives/goes to school here and has been working on this project for the whole year) code for the dipole moments. I figure I'm smart enough to get that out by the end of the week and the internet is a wonderful resource (and I can ask at least 4 different people in lab for help if I really need it). I'm excited! Note: fortran is the programming language most research scientists use.

The weekend was quite fantastic. Had Korean food for the first time ever!!! The side dishes and meal were both really interesting and really good! Well, I'm not a huge fan of the meet and this one weird orange thing, but it was 90% super fantastic =D

Yeah, we were a pretty huge group lol. After we split up, most people heading out to a random party. Chirag already had an invite to a party though, and he invited me along too. We peaced over a couple of streets (ok more than a couple, but we just missed the bus and it was only 10 blocks in the grand scheme of things... in the rain lol).

But once we got there it was great! Made some awesome new friends, had some more awesome Quilmes, and just general good times =D Drinking the one night, making pupus the next (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqjw7kYQyLo&feature=player_embedded) They're little frijoles and cheese and whatever you want filled things of dough. The dough itself could use a little salt in my opinion, but they were super awesome when you have some good sauce lying around ^_^ (and yes, I listened to the song just now since I did bother to post the link here lol)

OH so the next day we had planned on lunch and I got a view from the top of the apartment. Too. Amazing.

I can't imagine what it looks like at sun- rise/set.

Anywho, I'm doing more and more on the experimental side and I'm loving it! We opened up the molecular beam apparatus (almost called it a particle accelerator lol XD) to change up the stock. Not enough diethylamine in our clusters, so we were trying to figure out how we could increase that. I thought I remembered them saying that cresol (something else that's clustering with the diethylamine and water) dissolves in the amine, so I asked if it'd be a good idea to just straight dissolve the cresol in amine before it was even cooking. We were dropping amine into the pipelines before setting up the vacuum and all that previously, so the amines were just picking up the cresol. Hopefully this plan works out!

We didn't get to try it because I got ferociously sick that night. Coughing WAY more than usual. It actually kept me up most of the night =C I called out sick and my advisors - seriously wonderful people - tried to figure out the best way to help me. They ended up calling in a doctor for me. There was some confusion as to whether they were gonna take me to a doctor/public hospital or whether they were going to call one in for me, though. That said, I wasn't sure what to expect and apparently the doctor had been outside buzzing my door for 20 minutes before I noticed... I felt really bad about it, but I did at least get to see him. It was like a 5 minute exam or so. He said to pop some ibuprofen (to reduce the minor swelling in my throat, I presume), use a nebulizer/breathe steam (to clear up my throat, I presume), gargle with baking soda (for its antiseptic properties, I presume), and get a chest xray the next day (the next day being today).

So I got some ibuprofen and had a nice, long, hot shower. Yesterday night I was coughing up maelstroms again though. It was pretty atrocious until I noticed that my close was open. I then remembered how extremely dusty my jackets got when I put them in there (the top closet, not the bottom one) and figured maybe there was just THAT much dust in there that it was killin' me not-so-softly. Well, upon closing all closet doors and taking some Aerotina (Argentine Claritin, basically), it took me about 10 minutes to fall asleep like a baby. I'm now incredibly sure it's just how dusty this place is and that me wearing my dusty jackets hasn't been helping. A cleaning lady will be coming in during or before this weekend, so once that happens I'll see how I feel and judge what to do from there.

On a substantially more random note, Argentine chemicals are much more philosophical than what I'm used to:

I was also incredibly delighted to see the caloric information come in kilojoules on the candy. All you science people are grinning a real big grin right now, aren't you?