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!
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