Football

Almost every student from my high school (it is an all-male high school and hence Shao Lin temple) has played football before. I am not sure if it is a good thing or what, it is the only sports activity that we have for "Pendidikan Jasmani" (Physical Education) throughout five years of secondary school.

It sounds like we are well equipped with all the attires and accessories. Actually the opposite! There are many restrictions on our attire during the match; only school shoes (white!) and house T-shirt ( R,G,B and Y colors). Some even wear that duck-shit-green school short, orz. However, the football is even worst; it does not look like football, but like a volleyball. When you kick it, it feels like a balloon. Until now, I have no idea it was actually what ball. The sad case is when the field is muddy, our parents had hard times washing our shoes.
(To be continued......)

QED International School 2012 @ Corsica

Time elapsed really fast as I have now headed in to the second year of my Ph. D. studies. Life is of course, as interesting as usual. From mid to end of April, I had the chance to participate in an international school and workshop on quantum electrodynamics (QED 2012) at Corsica, France. It is a beautiful island situated in the Mediterranean sea and also the place where Napoleon was born. The school took place at Cargese, a small village near the seaside with mesmerizing views.

I have booked the flight two months in advance from Zurich to Paris CDG and then from Paris Orly to Ajaccio airport. However, no matter how well you have prepared, there are dozens of ways to screw up your plan. I woke up earlier in the morning (5:30 I guess) and arrived more than one hour before my flight. Everything went well and I was on board punctually waiting for it to take off. Only then I was told that the flight has some technical problems and it could not be operated. After a while they announced that the computer system hanged and they need to start it and redo all the necessary procedures. By the time the problem was solved almost two hours has passed and I told myself I am gonna miss the next flight.


Arrived at the Paris CDG airport, quickly I rushed to the counter to ask for the direction to the Orly airport. Since I have checked the bus option beforehand, so I took it but found myself stuck in the hectic Paris traffic. OMG ....... As expected, I arrived at the Orly airport one minute before departure. Needless to say, I missed my flight and the person at the counter even laughed and said "oh! you flight has just taken off ~". Experienced this for the first time in my life, I had no idea what to do, other than to think that I need to buy another air ticket to fly myself to the destination. Luckily the airport staff suggested me to go to the Air France customer service counter to seek for assistance. I made myself look very sad and explained everything to the "big boss" in the office and after calling several phones he decided to issue me with a boarding pass at the night to Corsica! Phew!!! I was lucky but then needed to wait for eight hours at the airport (after rushing here and there I had no more energy to walk around Paris anymore of course). Even worse, it was just a small airport and within 20 minutes I have went through every corner of it. Finally I sat down at a place where there is a clear view of all the airplanes taking off and even fell asleep a couple of times before this damn long 480 minutes has passed.


(to be continued ......)

My first ever publication!

My first paper in Physical Review Letters (PRL)

After working in Physics for so many years, finally my name appears in one of the most prestigious journals in Physics, Physical Review Letters (PRL) and its title is "Muonium Emission into Vacuum from Mesoporous Thin Films at Cryogenic Temperatures".

This research topic was actually not mentioned when I applied for the PhD, but I started to work on it since February last year for about half a year. Then most of the time was spent improving the data analysis and polishing up the paper. Everything is explained in the paper but for non-Physicist, I would explain it as below;

The main idea of this work is to test a material which could be used for next generation precision experiments that allow Physicists to extract even more precise values of particle masses, and to test the charge ratio between particles.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me. :)

One year after the decision

As usual, time flies at the speed of light and one year has passed since I have made the decision to come here for PhD. Compared to what I had anticipated if I followed the previous path, I would say that I have made the correct decision.

Working at ETH with the current group, I have the chance to improve what I was experienced at, such as data analysis and DAQ electronics and also to develop some new skills such as working on plastic scintillating fibers, DRS4 waveform analysis, Inventor Mechanical Design and Comsol Physics simulator. And of course the most challenging one is perhaps German language that takes infinite time to master. It is fun to learn it though. Spending some time attending lectures of advanced scientific programming and quantum information theory also proves beneficial, as I could learn more arts in programming and use more advanced tool and also have more new ideas to aid my research works.

I have my trip to PSI increased recently due to the beam time for Muon related experiments.

It is great to work there with many interesting stuffs but it could be painful to work on those hardware and to do strength demanding works such as moving Lead blocks (~10kg per block!!).

You have to be careful as well as the surrounding is always full of notices of HIGH VOLTAGE, HIGH CURRENT, HIGH MAGNETIC FIELD, etc...... and sometimes you have a huge bottle of liquid helium travelling across your head... that's how it is to work in a particle physics research center...LOL

My freetime is of course as fantastic as my working life. (^-^)p

I have participated in two badminton tournaments, one was organized by Malaysian Swiss Association and another one Zurich Academic Sports Association. I was lucky enough to have won in both occasions, earning myself a MIGROS cash card and an invitation ticket to Swiss Badminton Open at Basel next year for the whole week. But still I feel that myself is still very inconsistent in terms of basics so I have decided to join a club in Zurich. I am still visiting at the moment and perhaps will join soon.

Start of Fall Semester 2011

It has been a long time since I last had the feeling of the beginning of a semester. And I am feeling good with it, definitely a good sign!

As the seniority goes up, instead of only learning, I have to do some teaching as well, for the student labs, teaching students how to perform proper scientific researches and guiding master students until they finish their master theses.

My current main research is finally coming to an end, where me and collaborators are preparing a paper for a journal. Finishing this will actually open up a lot of free time for myself, to conduct other things that I was hoping to do: design and construct detectors, design data acquisition system, and attend some out-of-my-field lectures.
But of course I am not forgetting the most important one: German language! Yes, finally I have taken the German language course. Hopefully I will be able to catch up the conversations of all my German colleagues soon......

Luzern

Luzern has been in my mind for half a year since I started to work at PSI and ETHZ. Finally I made a trip to it last weekend, and it was really a nice place with mesmerizing scenes.

to be continued.....

Tokyo trip

It was sooner than my expectation to be back at Tokyo again, thanks to my friend's invitation for becoming a panelist for an overseas studies seminar.

to be continued.....

Strasbourg

I was in France for about 2 weeks to attend a summer campus organized by the University of Strasbourg.

to be continued...