The very long delay since I last wrote about my travels has been due to being quite busy with my research. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to write about the travels that I made in April with Jess in New Zealand, let alone random happenings in Christchurch. The obscene number of hours that I was spending in the lab or in the library with my laptop (I found that the law school library is a great place to hide so no one can find me) were triggered by preparations for Inter-Noise, the international noise and vibration conference that I have been attending for the past few years.
Unlike past years, this year I would be submitting a paper to be delivered at the conference. However, a delay in obtaining the equipment and parts that I needed for my research left me with few choices for what to write. The paper was due on June 1 and although I did scratch up enough information to submit a paper, I was not happy with it and so wanted to be able to really do something in time for the presentation of my work in August. The presentation does not have to be exactly like the paper and so I wanted to be able to present some new work, especially since the top people in the world from my field would be at the conference. I was trying to prove a new idea and I needed a lot of experimental data to back up my claim. Most of the measurements had to be made at night or over the weekend when the building in which I work is quiet. I was trying to measure small variations in vibration and so even little things like someone walking up the nearby flight of stairs or turning on a machine would force me to repeat measurements. However, despite my precautions, all of the data that I accumulated turned out to be riddled with measurement uncertainty. The brand new measurement equipment that the department had purchased from one of the best acoustics companies turned out to be bad.
I painstakingly detailed the problems and after a lot of correspondence with the company that made the equipment, they finally agreed that there had been problems during production and has since refunded the cost of the equipment. I feel good that I got blood from a stone, but that does little to make up for all the data which was lost. So, for the presentation that was to be delivered, I had to spend a lot of time in the lab to redo enough of the experiments to back up what I would be saying. Fortunately, the week before I was due to leave, things began to work and I pulled together a presentation to deliver. Whew.
On 25 August, I left Christchurch on what would literally be a trip around the world. The conference itself was to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The travel from Christchurch would require a long stopover in Hong Kong which I planned to take advantage of by exploring the city for a day. After the conclusion of the conference, I would stay in Istanbul for an extra day to attend a wedding to which I had been invited. Then off to Western Europe to visit friends and colleagues in six countries before beginning my trip west, including stops in the US and Canada. In all, the journey that I am about to describe covered eleven countries on four continents over a period of five weeks. There would be sixteen flights including three over 11 hours long and dozens of hours on trains including a night train. I am extremely lucky to be able to have made the trip, to have the time, to have an adviser who was keen to have me take a holiday and to have funding available to cover the transportation expenses.
What I noticed during the trip was that going to a new country no longer phases me like it used to do. While waiting for a train in France, I realized that I was excited to visit friends and to go out exploring, I wasn’t nervous or excited to be travelling in yet another country. I still love the exploring and the adventure in the travel, but the highs and lows which can be very high and very low when you are in a foreign place are smoothing out. I still have really good and really bad experiences, but I take them more in stride. In a way, that in itself is cool because it means that I have become so seasoned that I can go to Hong Kong, Istanbul or Frankfurt and make my way without problem. But, on the other hand, the adrenaline and nervousness during my early days of travel which could be annoying when they interfered with my ability to function or to adapt will also be missed.
I also found that the hop across the Atlantic from Europe to the US which used to feel like a long flight is just a few hours in a plane. After making the hop from LA to New Zealand or New Zealand to Shanghai, Europe seems very close geographically to the US.
This was also the first time that I had travelled so heavy. I was carrying my laptop and SLR on my back in addition to my suit and nice clothes for the conference and then more comfortable clothes for the rest of the trip. Never do I want to travel that much with that much stuff again!
Unlike past years, this year I would be submitting a paper to be delivered at the conference. However, a delay in obtaining the equipment and parts that I needed for my research left me with few choices for what to write. The paper was due on June 1 and although I did scratch up enough information to submit a paper, I was not happy with it and so wanted to be able to really do something in time for the presentation of my work in August. The presentation does not have to be exactly like the paper and so I wanted to be able to present some new work, especially since the top people in the world from my field would be at the conference. I was trying to prove a new idea and I needed a lot of experimental data to back up my claim. Most of the measurements had to be made at night or over the weekend when the building in which I work is quiet. I was trying to measure small variations in vibration and so even little things like someone walking up the nearby flight of stairs or turning on a machine would force me to repeat measurements. However, despite my precautions, all of the data that I accumulated turned out to be riddled with measurement uncertainty. The brand new measurement equipment that the department had purchased from one of the best acoustics companies turned out to be bad.
I painstakingly detailed the problems and after a lot of correspondence with the company that made the equipment, they finally agreed that there had been problems during production and has since refunded the cost of the equipment. I feel good that I got blood from a stone, but that does little to make up for all the data which was lost. So, for the presentation that was to be delivered, I had to spend a lot of time in the lab to redo enough of the experiments to back up what I would be saying. Fortunately, the week before I was due to leave, things began to work and I pulled together a presentation to deliver. Whew.
On 25 August, I left Christchurch on what would literally be a trip around the world. The conference itself was to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The travel from Christchurch would require a long stopover in Hong Kong which I planned to take advantage of by exploring the city for a day. After the conclusion of the conference, I would stay in Istanbul for an extra day to attend a wedding to which I had been invited. Then off to Western Europe to visit friends and colleagues in six countries before beginning my trip west, including stops in the US and Canada. In all, the journey that I am about to describe covered eleven countries on four continents over a period of five weeks. There would be sixteen flights including three over 11 hours long and dozens of hours on trains including a night train. I am extremely lucky to be able to have made the trip, to have the time, to have an adviser who was keen to have me take a holiday and to have funding available to cover the transportation expenses.
What I noticed during the trip was that going to a new country no longer phases me like it used to do. While waiting for a train in France, I realized that I was excited to visit friends and to go out exploring, I wasn’t nervous or excited to be travelling in yet another country. I still love the exploring and the adventure in the travel, but the highs and lows which can be very high and very low when you are in a foreign place are smoothing out. I still have really good and really bad experiences, but I take them more in stride. In a way, that in itself is cool because it means that I have become so seasoned that I can go to Hong Kong, Istanbul or Frankfurt and make my way without problem. But, on the other hand, the adrenaline and nervousness during my early days of travel which could be annoying when they interfered with my ability to function or to adapt will also be missed.
I also found that the hop across the Atlantic from Europe to the US which used to feel like a long flight is just a few hours in a plane. After making the hop from LA to New Zealand or New Zealand to Shanghai, Europe seems very close geographically to the US.
This was also the first time that I had travelled so heavy. I was carrying my laptop and SLR on my back in addition to my suit and nice clothes for the conference and then more comfortable clothes for the rest of the trip. Never do I want to travel that much with that much stuff again!
1 comment:
oh great......i loved the way you see the world
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