We have liftoff

Excitement in the lab. We saw strong calcium-induced fluorescence signals from heart cells in the microscope today. Dr. Bodenschatz was happy. (That's my advisor by the way.) Kudos to Claudia for preparing the cells and staining them. It's days like today that make it all worthwhile in the end. Hooray for little glowing critters!

We strong like bull

Gabriel, my flatmate, and I went to the fitness room today. We're both a little sore but it's the good kind of sore. A hot/cold/hot shower took some of the muscle tension away. Having thus exercised the body, a half-hour of meditation s'imposait to exercise the mind and spirit. Planned to go walk about town this afternoon, but the regnet (rain) has to let up first. Any suggestions about how to spend a Sunday afternoon?

Pictures!!

I have finally uploaded a bunch of pictures to my Flickr account. There are photos of my apartment, my office, the lab, and ... of coffee!

A caffeinated Saturday afternoon

After a long and tiring week, I spent a lovely Saturday afternoon holed up in my new favorite café: Cello Espresso Bar. The atmosphere says sophisticated intellectual and the décor refined aesthetics. And most importantly, they make a heavenly cappuccino. When I get my camera, which I'm holding out for until my next visit back to the U.S. (prices and availability prevailing), I'll post pictures of the place. Although I might invite Gabriel, my flatmate, to join me one day and use his camera. ;) Incidentally, my cappuccinos are nothing to sneer at either, witness my café renversé which I made at work using an automatic Rapid Cappuccino maker.
Wrote in my journal. Read the first chapter of "Towards World Order" by A. Nakhjavani. Read bits of "Introduction to Solid-State Physics" by Kittel, where I finally understood on an intuitive level the effect of temperature and chemical potential on entropy change. You may laugh, but I now understand and appreciate why particles flow from regions of high concentration to low concentration.

Productivification

I've been reading up on GTD (Getting Things Done) and the various ways and means people use to organize themselves and (you guessed it) Get Things Done. The key to all such efforts is to choose a programme and remain faithful to it. One guy came up with the Slacker's GTD which sounds too intensely procrastinator-ish. Plus I don't see how managing projects would work in a system like that. But kudos to him if he can make it work. More conventional productivity tools include GTDGmail (which I've started using) and Basecamp, which a lot of people seem to talk about. The Hipster PDA sounds like a really cool idea and I can't wait to get started with it. That and I already have a Moleskin notebook I can use with it. Off I go to productivify myself. *grin*

Day 16

This week's resolution to be productive and aware of every moment of my day has met with a setback today, but it's nothing I can't overcome. Stefan is in town. I hadn't seen him in... oh... about 7 weeks? Having said that I felt less-than-optimally productive, I did read an _excellent_ paper this evening sitting in a Starbucks wannabe. It has the same look and feel (and three sizes of everything!) except they called it "World Coffee," which I'm guessing is because Starbucks gets bad press in Europe for being a big multinational. But what do I know? I'm only a physicist.

Dance/techno music moves me and gives me a headache. I have to watch for that threshold beyond which the rate of return on listening to more music doesn't make up for the pain it causes. There must be an economics term for that. Gabe, where are you when I need you?

I've also realized that I can bring joy to people. It's really not that hard. Here, you try it. First, smile. (And no, I cannot emphasize this enough.) Bigger. Now open your lips. That's it. Don't be afraid to show some teeth. You see, a smile is contagious. Why just this morning, I walked into the office smiling, at no one in particular really, and one of the techs exclaimed "Oh! You're smiling!" Then guess what... she smiled too!

Okay, lesson number two. Wait... you should practice lesson number one and we'll come back to lesson number two at a later date. Let me know how you make it out with it. It's like Zen meditation where you keep banging your head against a seeming paradox until you see through it. The master knows whether you've solved the riddle or not without your having to say or explain anything. (Incidentally, I've taken up meditation on a semi-regular basis, with rather pleasing results I might add.) I'm really stealing the words from Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics," a book I've picked up recently. My other reading currently includes "The Advent of Divine Justice" by Shoghi Effendi, "The Summons of the Lord of Hosts," selected letters of Baha'u'llah, and "Can We Dance?", a relationship education handbook.

Last night, after watching "The Hunt for Red October" for yet another time, I decided that it's finally okay to read the book. If anyone is looking to buy me a birthday gift I'd much appreciate a healthy copy of the novel that made Tom Clancy a household name in the U.S.A.

Finally, this morning's chocolate croissant was dedicated to Ashley. We wish her all the very best as she launches into the grand adventure which is "the Ph.D." If you would like to be featured in a future edition of Amgad's Morning Schokocroissant just give me a shout.

Hmm... perhaps this would be a good place to refer you to the epicentre of all things graduate: www.phdcomics.com.

Greetings

Welcome to my new home away from home. A place to record first impressions, ongoing observations, meditative insights and funny pictures. All this and more brought to you by the fine folks at Squires & Co.
(Although who the "Co." is, exactly, we may never know.)