Solitude

In one of the several building (or demolishing) zones near ASMAB in the Taida campus.

Contract

A few days later than it ought to be, but still on time. Last Wednesday, I signed the renewal of my post-doctoral contract. For another year. So, I am assured to have that time to be here. And probably, more afterwards, but it will all depend on how many things I can do during this year. Right now, there are many and who knows if I will be able to stick to the plans.

Just keep on going.

Kenting

It is almost three months ago that I went to Kenting, for the annual meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Republic of China. I had a few exhausting days before going, sleeping not too much finishing things, but also there, with the trip and the stay, still not much sleep joined by some toothache. Maybe that is the reason why I never put up any pictures when I came back.

We did not really had much time to do any sightseeing, during the day, apart from visiting the National Museum of Marine Biology, which was in the same building where we had the meeting in Pingtung. Amazing, with rays, sharks, all kinds of jellyfish, a whale shark, all kinds of little (or not so little) fish, marine animals and plants






and some penguins too.

Kenting, which I saw more at night than during the day, is located at the southern tip of Taiwan and it resembles so many touristical coastal locations, with lots of half-naked people walking in the streets, full of shops and stalls decorated with shiny lights and deafening music. One night, though, I could see parts of the southern night sky that I had never seen before. A foreboding night maybe. Now, after all that has happened, I cannot escape an ambivalent feeling when I recall those days.

New Office

Yesterday, I spent my first full day in my new office in Shida. It is in the same building, but in the sixth floor. Why the change?. I was told that new people were coming and they ran out of space and had to reshuffle the office distribution. So, I had to go to an office where I will be able to stay for at least one year, and they can put two more girls in the office I was before. Why do it this way and not the other way around?. I did not want to ask, I was not in the mood. And maybe you wonder, what about in a year?. I do not know, they could not tell me, but I am not worrying about that. First, it remains to be seen if I will be here next year.

My first impressions of the office are not particularly positive, even if it has a similar disposition and it is placed in a similar place. But the view from the window is not so nice and I find it empty and cold. Of course, I have many good memories from the other office and it makes me sad to say goodbye —as I closed the door last Thursday, when I moved my stuff to the new office, I felt as if I was leaving behind a part of my life... I overdo it sometimes.

Mixed emotions in difficult days. Nothing new.

Frustration

That is the feeling that fills me now, at the end of this first week back in Taiwan. Not because bad things have happened, and there were even some good things, as small as they might be. But between the difficulties processing some personal matters and that almost nothing I tried to do at work worked out, I end up feeling a little too much powerless. Not to worry, these things happen, and I must watch out when I am far from my safe environment. They are not so important, but I feel a little bit angry.

At least, we had several sunny days, with warm blue skies, thanks to the typhoon that is going west between Taiwan and the Philippines, which is something that helps to keep the spirits up.

Tourists

Most of the visitors that we had around here since more than a week ago have left today. Due to an international conference that took place in Taipei, organized by the ASIAA, a lot of people from Barcelona landed in Taiwan two weekends ago. I do not know why so many came, but I took them around the city a few days, because as a local I know more how this is.


But then, between doing a little sightseeing on the weekend, attending the talks in the morning and the afternoon during all week, meeting people to go for dinner and, maybe, having a beer afterwards, my life has been too chaotic for several days. So much that I forgot to update this blog or I was too tired to write anything late at night (or in the middle of a talk).

As I was saying, all have left today, except a student with whom I will try to do some work during these three days that we have left. Maybe I can still go back to the good old times. But I am not complaining. I got something from the talks and the following discussions; and the long conversations with some of my collaborators have given us some new ideas to try and a more accurate planning on the (lots of) work that we must do in the next two or three months.

Back to the right track, then.

Plants

We have new lifeforms in my office since yesterday. It is one of those things that it could be said are a consequence of the so-called feminine touch: three plants to improve the decoration and to cheer up the place.




Yesterday afternoon, we made a short visit to the plant and flower market that is placed midway between my apartment and work. The choice was quite fast, even with all the variety of interior or exterior plants, and many flowers; some very beautiful. It was funny to see some plants or flowers that are almost an institution in my family. Well, I am not sure if some were exactly the same, but they sure looked like it.

Rescheduling

Maybe it is because I am living alone; maybe I am not able to follow a strict discipline; maybe I have been doing this for years. For whatever reason, I am breaking again today the normal (recommended?) sleep rhythm. I have observations with the SMT again tonight, until 3am more or less. So, tomorrow will begin for me around midday. Fortunately, the start of the observations has been as smooth as possible today and I guess I will be able to do most of what I wanted to do.

These sudden changes in my schedule are not too problematic to me, and I usually can sleep fairly well the following night. I think that my body is used to it, except for the feeling of disorder that chases me whenever I wake up late on a working day, but it is also true that since I landed in Taiwan, my usual daily life is very different from the one I led in Barcelona, to a point that I wonder how was that. It seems very ironic to me to compare the life of a nightclub musician and that of some astronomers. A bad life.

Herbal tea

Lately, Tuesdays are becoming a difficult, and not very productive, day, maybe because I spend most ot the time at the ASIAA and I go from meeting to meeting. When I am back in my Shida office, in the evening, I have a hard time trying to go back to where I was. Fortunately, yesterday, a little of a herbal tea I was very kindly offered helped me a little bit

Chrysanthemum's tea (jú huā, in mandarin). Curious taste, but it was good.

Relax

I finished the three nights of observations that I had scheduled for this weekend on the early morning today. Luckily, I could finally do more than I imagined in a moment of almost despair during the first night. When I check the data more thoroughly, I will see if there is anything particularly interesting there.

Right now, I must go back to a normal schedule. I only slept a few hours again today, because I wanted to attend a talk at noon. So, I will be sleepy for a little bit longer. In any case, I realized, when I was going back home this morning, that the word of the day is relax, even if I have to do some work, of course.

Why?, well, as I was walking back home this morning, as on Friday morning, it was almost five and the sky was getting light. It was that very quiet moment, in the twilight, just before it is too bright. There were people already exercising around campus. The funniest ones, three old men that were doing something that resembled gymnastics, accompanied by choral music (buddhist?, religious?), very calm, which at that time seemed to engulf everything in it. In fact, it was that way on Friday, because yesterday they were chatting before starting, I guess. Very relaxed already.

No IYA

This year is, as I guess you have seen advertised in many places, the International Year of Astronomy. For that reason, professors and students of Shida held several activities to promote Astronomy in Taichung this weekend: some talks, observations with telescopes, etc. They have been working at it during months and they asked me if I wanted to give a talk to high-school teachers, similar to the one I gave here last year. Yes, of course, I said.

The problem was that, first, my observations were scheduled for this weekend and, later, my talk in Tsing Hua was also delayed to last Friday. Everything at the same time!. At first, recklessly, I thought that I could manage to do it all, provided that I could get some sleep in the buses; but they convinced me not to do it, because I would end up very tired, and the audience was changed to primary school teachers, for whom English can be an additional major problem. In short, I stayed in Taipei, maybe well rested, but I feel bad for them. I hope that they had better weather down there than we had here, because it has been cloudy and/or raining the whole weekend.

Talk at NTHU

Last Friday was a very tiring day. I spent the early morning hours, until five in the morning, doing some remote observations —not the ones that I had planned to do; a little disaster in fact, because I did not check a basic thing, but once the dates were set there was not any other solution—; sleep four hours and get up to take the bus to go to Hsinchu, to Tsing Hua University to give a talk in the afternoon. After that, go back to Taipei, because I had another night of observations. I slept a lot yesterday.

But I am not complaining. The talk was fine, even if I have done better ones. I had a very nice coffe after the talk with some of the people there, the day was beautiful, and I could see a little bit of nature out of the cities. Very impressive, the white flowers in some of the trees of the forests I saw from the bus, which, from the distance, seemed to alternate between dark green and whitish green colors; it looked as if there was snow on the hills. Thanks to that, because the buildings along the way are not really pretty.

The best of all is that I have almost done all the urgent things I had. Now, I will be able to go back to a normal life again.

Post-docs

There is a new activity since last week to increase the interaction between post-docs at the ASIAA: postdoc tea every Wednesday. To drink something, eat some cookies and talk about something. I went there last week; not this one, it was raining and I was busy. And, after all, seeing what I have to do there, maybe it is best to save it for another moment.

All this post-doc stuff is very curious. I am not really used to it, because in my stay in the US, I only interacted inside our group, where we ended up being quite a number of people, but it was something different. Here, there are many post-docs in the institute. Most of them are either Taiwanese or Japanese, and then there are some exotic specimens like me: two or three indians, a canadian girl, and that's it.

Understandably, foreigners are prone to do more things together, because it is normal that Taiwanese post-docs have their own life here and/or other personal goals: they are the ones who will stay in the long run. The way in which everybody reacts to other internal or external issues is also different. People come and go, it is difficult to establish deeper friendships, often relationships are very superficial. I do not generally worry too much about it, but sometimes I can feel tired and disappointed: too much effort for apparently so little. That is the way life is, I guess, and it is ok. Besides, I am also used to look outside these circles for other people, something that my Barcelona experience imprinted in me.

Anyway, you can see why I did not go there today.

Desk

I used, for the first time today, the desk that I have been assigned at the IAA to be able to spend some more time here every week.

It was a request/requirement from the director —you should spend at least one day a week here—, and what can you say?. That meeting with the director was a couple of months ago, but due to the dire space problems they have, before they can move to the new building, they did not find a desk for me until last week. My idea is to come here on Tuesdays, which is also the day that we have, usually every other week, the Star Formation group meeting. Today, I also had a meeting with a french visitor about modelling of the chemistry and it was very convenient to have a desk where I could leave my laptop and my bag. That's one advantage.

My desk's office is full of PhD students, but I am next to the window, in direct view to the Taipei 101. It is another step in my process of integration in the institute's affairs. In any case, it remains to be seen if I will come every week or not, because I feel very comfortable in my other office... and one must fight for his independence.

Renewals

A consequence of approaching the first year since I arrived to Taiwan is that I must renew the Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) before the end of this month. Yes, I have been in this island for more than eleven months already.

So, since I got the required documentation to do the paperwork from the front office, I went to the immigration office on Friday morning, early and ready for any queue, but it was almost empty. I think I waited more for the MRT than for my turn at the desk. In 5 or 10 minutes, and after paying NT1000, all was done. Now, I must wait for a week to get the new card. From what I have seen of it, because they had to explain to me that the re-entry permit is now in the card, it is very modern-looking. Another one.

Observing (SMT)

It is a little over 3am in Taipei right now. I am about to begin the first of two nights (or mornings) of observations I have with the Sub-Millimeter Radio Telescope (SMT) in Arizona. I will observe a source in the collaboration I have with people of the group in Madrid where I was two years ago. It is a follow-up of the observations I did in early December.

Maybe the day the paper we submitted is accepted —if all goes well—, I will tell you more about it. Now, it would be a little bit too early. If we are lucky with the weather, we will observe lines of CO, ¹³CO and C¹⁸O. Nine hours today and nine tomorrow. I will spend this weekend either working or sleeping. That's Astronomy.

Clash

Different cultures, such as Taiwanese or Japanese, deal with things in different ways. Then, it must also be taken into account that each person inside a culture is probably like a very different island from the next one. The result?. Sometimes there are very strange encounters, almost collisions.

I witnessed a colossal one yesterday. In the end, we did not know what to do, whether to laugh or to get annoyed at the surrealism surrouding it, when we realized that we had wasted two hours in a meeting that had turned irrelevant at the last possible moment. I will not go into details, but the more I think about, the funnier it is. Some people are truly special.

By the way, anybody interested in doing a postdoc in Astrophysics in Taiwan?

Lessons

Another not so ordinary week. Several days waking up very early, be it for pleasure, to go jogging, or to go to talks, and several car trips. Maybe that is the reason I have not updated the blog too much; or maybe not.

The TIARA Winter School on Star Formation in Hsinchu started on Thursday. I went there on Thursday —comfortably, because I got a ride from the NTNU students—, with the intention to greet some people I know, specially a student from Barcelona who will stay in Taiwan for six weeks more, and to see how the talks were. You know how that is, general topics I have read many papers about or I have heard about in many talks, and I was not expecting too much.

I was so wrong!. In fact, I went back again on Friday. The talks may not provide me with many new things, but they were very educational, enjoyable even in subjects traditionally difficult, were always good to remember things I am beginning to forget or to learn something new, and particularly to get a new point of view on matters you might think you know about. I even got a couple of ideas to try in my present work. Not bad at all, then.

Coming back from the PSROC meeting

On Wednesday evening, late, I came back from spending three days away from Taipei. From Monday to Wednesday, I attended the annual meeting of the Physics Society of the Republic of China that took place in Changhua, near Taichung. It was one of those massive meetings, where the Astrophysics part is rather reduced, lost among many talks on all branches of Physics, with an attendance, I was told, of over a thousand people.

For once, I approached it, or I was made to, as a few days out, rather than a very interesting meeting. As usual, I could taste some local dishes and enjoy once again taiwanese cooking. I could also visit some of the temples around, but I will leave that for later.

On the scientific side, the NTNU students managed to complete their posters and print them. They were not too bad at the end, specially compared to the initial versions; and I was very happy, for them, that they could finish them all. Some did it almost at the very last minute. I hope they understand now that you cannot leave some things for the last day; but I am not very confident on it.

Encore

I had another celebration today. This time it was a Year's End lunch. That is the good thing of somehow belonging to two institutions. This time it was the NTNU Department of Earth Sciences' lunch. Quieter in a way than the one last Saturday —there was no KTV—, but with a similar structure. This time, I really stuffed myself. It was a less fancy restaurant than the one in the hotel where we were on Saturday, but the food tasted better and was much more generous. Too much, probably. They (my supervisor) bought some bottles of chilean and australian wine and, as you can imagine, we finished each one of them.

There was another lottery too. I was told that it is a chinese tradition of this time of the year. This time I got a 2GB USB stick. It looks like I am collecting them.

The most interesting part for me was the completely taiwanese environment: the typical chinese round tables, food and more food, happy conversation —I even spoke some French with some guy—, jokes, smiles, and many very curious toasts, face to tace, more elaborated than I imagined.

I almost fell asleep in the car on the way back, feeling warm and with a full stomach. But life is hard and I have six students that are supposed to come to my office between today and tomorrow to review the poster they should be presenting in next week's conference. So, no rest for the wicked. Most of them are late and with problems. As someone said (free translation) you can almost chew the tragedy.