Monday my refund check *finally* came in. That news hit me at a pretty good time. More on that in a bit, I'm just really excited to finally have large, steady funds again, lol.
So the actual work day was pretty good. I got a crash course in quantum molecular dynamics from Damian (one of my advisors, the theoretical chemistry one of course) and a fair bit of reading to do to get basically brought up to speed on how the calculations actually work at their most fundamental levels. Lunch time came around and I was invited to eat with the group, as well as most of the physical chem department, actually. Turns out they all go to lunch at noon every day. Once we got back from lunch, I went over to Ernesto's lab to start learning how the experimental side of things work. Got a general overview of how the molecular beam creation, ionization, deflections, and mass spectrometer data collection processes work. On a good side note, he bought cookies and let me have half of them! =D
On another cool side note, I'm slowly realizing just how steam-punk'd out molecular beam setups are. Pics to come soon, but you make EVERYTHING yourself, and it's all out of iron/steel and looks very crude until you realize just how much work went into making it all, and it actually does all work and get some serious science done. You'll see what I mean (the molecular beam apparatus in Italy looked quite similar, for the record).
Oh, so the high vacuums are really cool, by the way - you use a cooling and heating process involving water and, get this, MOLTEN SILICON! Molten silicon rises up, spits out, catches air, hits the water-cooled sides within the vacuum, and the air bubbles out of the bottom through an exhaust, and then the silicon repeats the cycle. This is an intense enough process to bring the pressure to 1/10,000,000 atmospheric pressure when combined with the mechanical pumps (which in and of themselves can drop a chamber to 1/1000 atmospheric pressure). Seriously, it is bamftacular.
Monday night, rolls around. Chirag and I try to get on the same bus, but literally in the time it took me to find a 2 peso bill in my wallet of 10s, the bus he got on left without me. Seriously, the traffic/driving/buses in Buenos Aires are freaking CRAZY. It works because everyone is equally crazy, so it all boils down to normalcy somehow, lol. Anyway, I ended up getting off like 10 stops too early. I got waaaaay lost in the process, admit to myself I was lost after half an hour of walking, and then resorted to turning data back on, on my phone. I'm quite afraid of next months bill, but I was at least able to GPS myself a half-decent path to home. Now, by "home," I mean I walked 2 blocks, realized the rest of the walk was 15 or so, bussed another 5 or 7, then taxi'd my way home. Hey, it worked.
Tuesday rolls around and it's basically a repeat of the previous day, but more in depth and I had gotten some reading done. This time, Chirag and I got on the same bus and everything, lol. We decided that yesterday night (today being Wednesday and all) was a good go-out-to-eat night. We cross-referenced between our handbook guide of BA and some random locals in a pharmacy to figure out where to go for food. Apparently Florida Avenue was a prime place for tourists in general. We found a really legit little Argentine restaurant that served us some riDONKulously flavorful food. Sooooo epicallly good!!! Chirag got this superchicken in a marinara-esque sauce on a bed of fresh-baked potato chips, and I got this I-don't-even-know-what but it had ham and tomato and spices and cheese inside this dough-thing. It was essentially puré of of magic.
Then today! I ended up spending a loooot of time in the theoretical lab, today, which was really cool because I had a really strong foundation from last summer's research adventures. I felt bad though because I ended up being epically late for the experimental lab. I got to turn on the vacuum earlier that day to at least set up for them, and at the end of the day basically just watched them go through stuff. Sifted through some numbers in an excel file of some data we got, which was good. They were also able to use some numbers I'd collected on Tuesday, so I haven't been completely useless.
I don't feel incredibly bad about focusing more on the theoretical for the moment, because Damian is gonna be out for a few weeks soon. Once he's out I'll likely end up focusing a lot more on the experimental side of things.
So then there was tonight, lol. Guess who got lost again? But also guess who didn't pay for a taxi, again! I got off at the right stop, but here's the thing: so to get to work, you turn the corner and then cross a street to get to the bus stop. I just walked down the same street the bus stop is on instead of walking one street ahead. Went down that road for abotu 10 minutes before I realized it was wrong, then headed back up a parallel road and got some ice cream. Pineapple ice cream and banana split ice cream are good, but the mix should just never happen, just so you know. Oh, and when I was walking back up with my ice cream, I kinda danced around a bit of it that was falling off my spoon and some chick 30 or so meters up the way was imitate-mocking me. Kinda funny but kinda mean. I guess all in good fun at the end of the day, right?
Anyway, I then went to find the street I was supposed to turn down, but couldn't for the life of me find it. I then realized that I never saw a street sign at the corner I'm supposed to turn, so just headed down some familiar looking road. Wrong again. Then I somehow ended up at the intersection with the subte. I literally went down all 4 paths before I realized I had the right street but the wrong direction. I took that same road back and walked for infinity until I got back....ish. Actually I skipped more than a few got-lost-directions, but you get the idea by now.
I hit up the empenada place once I was on the right street, and there are two things you need to know: humitas is the BEST filling an empenada can have, and THERE IS THE CUTEST (stray?) KITTY THAT CHILLS OUT THERE AND IT IS MY NEW AMIGATO!!!! Get it? Amigito + gato? I thought it was clever, lol. So here's what my amigato looks like.
Needless to say, I washed my hands *very* soon after getting home. That call was alllll up in mah grill. Seriously, friendliest cat (stray or otherwise) ever!!! So cute lol... his eyes were pretty scary but they were so big that you can't help but disregard that and just go Awwwwwwwwwwwwwe!! I seriously can't get over what a cuddlebug my little amigato is ^_^
But man, I'm soooo excited about both projects and being in Buenos Aires, Argentina on top of all that!!! Also, my illness is steadily dropping. Wo0t!!! Honestly this happened at the beginning of last school year (the one that just passed), and it took a week to clear out of my system, too. Guess this is just getting to be a regular thing in the Fall (wherever Fall may fall where I am, lol). Ça va, no?
(I'm also extremely glad that I was able to catch up on my adventures thus far, blog-wise lol)
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