Sinterklaus

Sinterklaus is a man dressed in red with a pope hat on. Resembles Santa Claus. He is accompanied by elven compatriots with black faces. He arrives on a ship from Spain with a list of who has been naughty and the elven friends pelt those people with gingerbread.

It rained heavily today.

A Turkey Dinner Party

We can expect Mason to fail his courses;
the amount of work he put into this meal.

There are so many holidays throughout the year, many of them specific to one country or another, and it always seems like one is creeping up on you. There are usually annoying preemptive commercials, radio tunes, decorations, seasonal foods, and festivities announcing it's trite arrival. Nevertheless, some never lose their sense of anticipation. Here in Leiden Thanksgiving came and went without much ado. In response to this, one Mason Carney revived our North American spirits with a turkey dinner party, and a Yankee gift swap (explained below).

Andrej really is quite tall.

The classy folk arrived from a concert!

A turkey is no small feat to prepare, let alone doing it well. Mason outdid himself in this respect, and our taste buds and bellies thank him. Starting a little later than usual, around 18:00, we watched him put the final touches on everything. As more and more people arrived it became ever more difficult to find a camera angle to fit everyone into the picture. I think this is a good sign of a dinner party, for it meant people had to get cozy. And how could we not, it's a Thanksgiving party which is all about spending time with good people. Having said that, I was reminded how I miss someone, who could not make it.

To Mandela!

At last the cranberries came to simmer, and I removed the tin. The guests were met, the feast was set, mayst heard you the merry din? I think that another good sign of a good party is when there is a lack of music and no one notices. Such was the case here.

There were two rounds of the main course: turkey, sweet potato pie, green bean cassarole, stuffing, mashed potatos and gravy, and homemade cranberries. We toasted the life of Mandela, who passed away at a remarkable age of 95! Then came the Yankee gift swap.

	Top Left: I love their expressions! "We get to eat that". Top Right: Mason de-stuffing the turkey's ass. Bottom Left: People standing in line for turkey. "Which part d'ya want?".

Not so happy with dino eggs.

Steals Julias Manatea!

The Yankee gift swap is a fun little thing. People bring mysterious, wrapped gifts and put them in a pile. Everyone draws a number from a hat, and the first person chooses a gift. Everyone oos and ahhs. Then the second person chooses a gift, to which more oos and ahhs, and decides if she would like to swap her gift with number one. The other numbers go and can decide to swap their gift with someone else. This can get aggressive I imagine, but things remained calm with only two people meekly deciding to swap their gifts. The ManaTEA was a hit!

More pictures.

After this came the rounds of desserts! I put out my chocolates, and sherry, Julia put out her Austrian "Kaiserschmann" (spelling?), Kirsten put out her Cool Whip(tm), and Mason -- being the awesome guy he is -- put out pumpkin pie! The latter was new to the non-North Americans who were dubious of it's taste -- until the first bite!

After dessert, you can see us settling into
food coma. Charlie Brown special comes on.

To wrap up the night we watched, with laughter, the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. Going home was a challenge, and I fell into a lovely food coma soon after lying down. Thanks to Mason and everyone else for the good times! To those who could not make it, our good times are a'comin'.

Dinner Party, and Graduation Party

Well, as I'm won't to do, I find ways to neglect my studies. Today, a guy from my office was celebrating his graduation. He invited everyone from our office, all five of us, to his shindig which was held at his fraternity's club house. This was my first "frat-party" in the Netherlands. Incidentally, this was the first person in astronomy or physics whom I have met and was in a fraternity.

Before hand, those of us who weren't graduating from that office had a little dinner party. Arthur cooked up some Indonesian food, I think it was called Bah Mi, which is quite popular in the Netherlands. They even have hor d'oeuvres flavored like Bah Mi at Borrel parties.

I didn't get to really help prepare food, but got to test out my new tripod.	What you're seeing here is the dwarfing effect.
Dinner time with friends!	And then much fun and song. It started with dust in the wind and never ended.

We dimmed the light, played some guitar, and sang some tunes, sipping on our drinks with delight. We discussed our travels around the world, and about those who hold our heart most dear. Actually, we didn't want to leave for the graduation party.

Alas, we left Arthur's place and went to the Quintus Societeit fraternity clubhouse, and had a merry time presenting the graduate with our gift (a t-shirt with a string-theory innuendo writing upon it). We ended up spending our time there happily together in our own little group - For everyone else was from a different walk of the graduate's life, and we were but his office mates.

Congratulations to Joeren!	There were plenty of speeches given, it felt very wedding-ish.
Oh and it was an open bar! Fraternities are good for something right?	Me, Steven, Leandra, Arthur, Jorris.

Thanks for the great time guys! Happy graduation to you Joeren! Everyone be happy, think about that special someone and smile!

The Cram Is Begun

Having just handed in my last assignment for the semester, I'm officially dropping down to my lowest gear. Need to grind my way through the sludge of previous assignments, reading material, and exams. The lovely thing about my classes is that 100% of the grade comes from the exam -- a change up from Toronto.

If you can explain it to someone, then you know it. If anyone wants to talk nerdy about radio astronomy, origins and evolution of the universe, or general relativity please come my way.

My scrap paper pile is over one beer bottle diameter high for this semester; double sided, A4. This could double in a typical cram. Sorry trees.

Winter isn't coming

... or it's already here and it's shy. It tends to be rainy a lot, so there is potential for snow its just never gets cold enough. On the other hand, it's great motivation for staying in to study. There are so many unanswered questions, not for lack of answering them. The way it goes is you unlock one puzzle and find another several.

I'm beginning to think that if there is a creator, even they don't know how everything works. They just fiddle with knobs and see what happens.

Field excursion to WSRT, LOFAR, and ASTRON

We started out the day with a rainbow at 09:00.

Can you imagine this in your backyard?

Yesterday our radio astronomy class had a field trip to the northern parts of the Netherlands. There reside several important astronomical, and research and development facilities: the Westerbork Radio Synthesis Telescope (WRST), the LOw Frequency Array for Radio astronomy (LOFAR), and ASTROnomy institute Netherlands for radio astronomy (ASTRON).

WRST is an array of 14 of these massive dishes. Tried to capture that here.

The telescopes that radio astronomers use are different than you might imagine, in that they do not use mirrors and lenses to view visible light, but rather radio dishes to capture light at wavelengths far greater that the eye can see. We use the voltages induced in metal antennas, and math to reconstruct the sky image in the radio spectrum.

We started out by driving 2 hours north of Leiden to visit WRST. A sad story: Westerbork was the site of a Nazi concentration camp. 102,000 Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals passed through that camp on transit to Germany to be executed. The area now houses one of the worlds finest radio astronomy instruments, and a memorial ground for the lost souls. Dutch author Harry Mulisch wrote a novel about this odd arrangement of science and wretched past. It is a reportedly amazing story, and a movie was made about it "The Discovery of Heaven" (2001), with the amazing Stephen Fry as main character. I want to see it.

A radio dish, part of WRST.

Top secret EMBRACE phased-array proto-type for the Square-Kilometer Array (SKA).

After visiting WRST we drove a further 45 minutes north to the core site of LOFAR. LOFAR is a huge radio array built by ASTRON, with international components scattered around the globe, but the core site is the main and biggest part of the array. The whole international array produces about 8GB of data per second. One observation lasts ~12-hours, and thus takes up about 330TB. How do they transmit so much data around the world you may ask? 

Well first of all, an optical fibre is a cable with glass wires which transmit data at the speed of light, and these cables now connect internet users all over the globe. How else would you download all your HD movies so quickly? If each of these cables consist of about 24 glass wires, LOFAR rents about 18 of these from your internet provider and uses them to transmit their (more important) radio data. Actually, when we observe the data rates for internet users in South African plummet. Sorry!

	Top left: A small part of core array of LOFAR. This part of the Netherlands is supposedly being returned to nature, except for our invisible hand. Bottom left: Arthur is looking at technology similar to EMBRACE, housed in Styrofoam protective casings.  Top right: In the middle of nowhere are  these boxes with the fastest connections in existence funnelling data to other parts of the world.

After WRST, and LOFAR, we made our way to the main research and development centre where ASTRON conducts some of the most advanced fabrication of astronomical components. The technological reach of astronomy is vast. Most of the results of astronomy's R&D lead to advancment in publicly available technology. We drive the need for faster data transfer, better communication, and obviously the exploration of space. Hello, asteroid mining anyone?

A super-awesome borrel at ASTRON before
the 2 hour ride home. Mind you we took
the extra wine bottles with us, so...

At the end of our tour of ASTRON we celebrated profusely, yes profusely, as in we sweated out all our pent up fatigue with drinks and tasty Hors d'oeuvres, and I got to see the sun set over the returned-to-nature-Netherlands.

We arrived back home around 21:30, and one thing I must say is, don't drink a lot of alcohol before/during a long ride when there are no toilets on the bus.

The picture at the bottom is taken from a platform on top of an old radio dish which was repurposed into a pretty cool amateur astronomer instrument. Actually, the amateur astronomers use it now sometimes to communicate with other amateurs by bouncing and receiving signals off the moon! Pretty cool!

The sun setting beautifully over the Dutch Heide (moorland) from the top of one of those big dishes.

Bad Luck

I had a tight deadline to meet. Mainly, I had to pick up my residence permit before I became an illegal resident. Since I missed the normal pickup date I had to travel to Rijswijk, which is a small town (all places in the Netherlands are small) near the Hague. I had been planning the trip -- a desertion of my studies for the day -- for some time. It was only 9am when I woke up, since the governments work on some unknown schedule.

I travelled through time and space to the station, where I bought my ticket. I sat in my seat on the train like a half eaten potato and waited for it to arrive. I waited longer at the Immigration office with my numbered ticket in hand. Some little kids, from someone who had also just immigrated, were providing comical relief.

When that ordeal was done and I got back to Leiden, I had the unpleasant surprise that my bike was stolen. Actually, that comes later. First, I went to the bank, where my yet remaining patience was entirely drained, to present my newly obtained residence permit to them so that my account would stay active. I then went to the grocery store, because I had no food at home. Never shop hungry. But, since I hadn't eaten much yet that day I chose to overload myself with heavy food items.

It was then as I came out of the food library that I noticed my bike was missing. Me and some random woman were both missing our bikes. Thus, I walked home in a light drizzle. I didn't study much that day.

I found through much searching that the town had confiscated my bike because it's tire was sticking over the white line where bikes are allowed to park. As outrageous as this crime is, when I found my bike missing there was a bike parked exactly where my bike used to be. The town steals bikes, and sells them back to owners for nearly 1/3 the bike's value!

The next morning I arranged a ride downtown on back of a friend's bike. Well that didn't work, because their tire popped, and I had to walk the rest of the 6km in a down pour.

Well I have Adventure Lady back, my friend's tire is flat, and I missed nearly two days of research. Good score Karma!

Parents Visited

They liked it I think.

It was a treat to have them visit. I got to show them the town I study the universe from. They had time to do their own exploring, and they went on a canal cruise, and saw stuff that I still have to see.

There wasn't enough time to do all the thing I wanted to do with them, but I don't mind. The doing of things isn't important. I was just happy to see them.

We did get to visit some bars, the market, some restaurants, parts of the city, and they bought me groceries.

Good times.

A bar where me and my dad tasted some good peaty, smokey scotch.

Weather

Birds like it.

A small lake has opened up behind my house. It rains here often. The wind can also be horrendous. They would be classified as a hurricane sometimes if the storms originated in tropical waters, but by meteorological definition they originate in the north Atlantic. There was a flash hail the other day. I was about to go for a walk because it was beautiful out, but then it started raining ice bullets.

Leiden Relief

Ya I forgot to update this is a while! Leiden Relief was Oct 3 and it is now Nov 11. As you can see it was a merry time in the town.

It is the only day that people are allowed to drink in the streets in Leiden. In fact, Leiden is the only place in the Netherlands where normally, one is not allowed to drink in the streets. They have to make an exception for this party!

 The story goes that way back when the Spanish controlled Leiden and  finally there was a liberation. This day celebrates that. The streets are shut down all day but the real party happens at night. There are concerts ALL over the place; drinks a' flowin'.

The dutch love to party. There are so many rowdy people all over the place that they have to kettle people. That's a term from the hippy days when police on horses would funnel hippies into small areas to control them. The people roil like popcorn in a kettle.

It's impossible to coordinate anything when you leave your home. Once in the streets you just go with the flow.

Everyone is pretty docile though and there was no violence that I saw. I did see a lot of mischievous behaviour though.

I'm curious how they clean up so quick. One night there is three feet of plastic cups in the streets and the next morning it's gone as if no one was there. Likely lot's of volunteers.

Fireworks were a nice touch in the end.

The canals also receive a lot of litter, which I didn't like.

Dinner With My Research Group

We went out to an Indonesian restaurant where I'm sure we ordered more food than the average Indonesian village eats. We couldn't finish it all although it was the tastiest thing I've eaten in a long time!

Ju Jitsu

Designed by the samurai to combat an armed opponent. It uses the opponents own energy against them essentially letting them maim themselves.

How to Keep Fruit

Check out how the fruit is
scattered around. It really
works to keep the fungi from
setting in.

It's been a busy few weeks. I have at every given moment too many papers to read concerning my research. Some papers are about the history of a problem, and others are about past attempts at solutions to a problem. Some papers are over 700 pages long and detail specific methods for tackling a problem. In the same bin we have course work. In fact, the most appealing thing about my course work is that it actually relates to my research!

Finally, after five years of undergraduate I find a use for all that knowledge. It all finds a use, from making my understanding of a problem more solid, to good party chatter. Let me detail for you the usual going-ons in my day to day life.

I keep a small array of chow at home consisting mainly of rice, vegetables, cheap meat, herbs, and cheese. Occasionally, I find fruit and run the risk of mold forming.

I wake up at 7:40 and check my schedule for the day. If I can afford it, I sleep for a bit more. I finally make the short bike ride to the astronomy building, where I drop my bag off in my office and head up to the Kaiser Lounge for free coffee. It's a God send. Depending on the day I either tackle the reading that needs to be done, meetings to be attended, or lectures to sit.

There are always colloquiums, talks, symposiums, faculty parties, coffee breaks, birthday cakes, and other chances to postpone things that need doing. Beyond all that there is the need to socialize with non -astronomers, -physicists, or -mathematicians.

Fridays, after the weekly faculty party fraught with beer, snacks, and good conversation, I head to Music Club. It's a jam session with other Leiden musicians of all walks of style. It is usually too loud to hear yourself play and I'm slowly loosing passion in that weekly event. Apparently, acoustic jams are unheard of. Tuesday, Thursdays, and Sundays is Ju-Jitsu. It's woefully fun.

Leiden Market

It seems about time that I post some of the things seen at the fresh market found in the heart of Leiden on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Some of them are the normal expected things such as over priced nick-nacks and very smelly cheese. Other things like Anonymous showing up, wearing their infamously-adopted masks, are special events.

Markets are a hallmark of civilization, where
people come to share their goods and meet friends.

As the weather get colder and colder I wonder how the market turn out with hold up. The real reason people go to these is not for the wonderful prices, which aren't so wonderful at all, but for the warm and cozy feeling they get from seeing old faces of friends. It is a pell-mell of scampering children, strolling paramours, the curious, and foreign tourists. There is a constant mumble of voices in the air as everyone is avidly chatting about something they see and want, or did over the past week.

Anonymous makes an appearance. I note that one
or two are missing masks so I try to avoid revealing
their identities.

The cafes are bustling centres of all sorts of folk. The vibrations reach a creacendo mid-afternoon as the sun starts it's descent and people start scrambling for the best deals as vendors try to get rid of their last items. By 17:00 the city verges on desserted once again and things return to normal.