One episode of life at CERN, random scribbles

Day 1

I'm at the CERN main site. Never been to the Prevessin site before. Looking at the map, it appears to be not far away. Let's walk. 30 Minutes later, I'm still not there. Did I walk in the wrong direction? Let me return to the main site and look at the map one more time.


Day 2

Tatiana is drilling holes to make the structure to hold the motherboards. Halil and I are working on the power cable. It seems that the cable is too short, so we have to make longer ones. Tom and Paul are testing the motherboard. Some key functions of the motherboard do not work. They are trying to fix the problem. Not too much luck. It's late already. Let's go home and resume tomorrow.


Day 5

Luckily the problem is fixed. There are more problems, but we don't have time. We do some quick tests until midnight. Now let's move to the experiment site and install the system.

It's four in the morning and the installation almost finished. Time to go home.


Day 7

We've taken some data the previous day. For some reason the data plots don't look quite right. Let's look at the data more closely.....and.....oh no. We've got a problem. There is a serious bug in the data unpacking code. Fixed it. Resume data taking.


Day 8

Our names are on the shift table for some reason. Who signed us up? Well, it's us who will be taking data, so I guess it's fair. The only problem is that the shift is from midnight to 8 in the morning. Hmm. No sleep tonight then.


Day 8 midnight

The new settings of the electronics worked miraculously. We don't know exactly why it worked suddenly, but since it works right now, let's don't take risk to reinitialize the system again. I have to stay awake. Guu! More coffee. At around 4am, Chris kindly let us two go back to sleep, and he'll try to grab the other two students for the next several hours. Zzz....


Day 9

There isn't really much to do today. Data taking is done. All we have to do is to disconnect part of the system. In the evening there's the Hardronic festival. It's so geeky. One have to buy baryons (tickets) to get food. Played some frisbee. Had some beer. Had a way-too-spicy sandwich. It's not good at all. I'm very sleepy for some reason. Let's sleep all day tomorrow.

CERN Saint-genis hostel

It's a nice place, by first sight. After a few days, I started to notice a lot of inconveniences.

Severity	Item
Light	No vending machines around the building
Light	Bugs at night.
Light	30-minute walk to CERN
Light	Can't eat or store food in room, only in kitchen
Medium	No elevator. Moving in/out is a pain.
Medium	No cable internet, wireless connection extremely unstable
Medium	Hot, no air conditioning
Medium	No noise after 10 pm, ie. no shower, no laundry, etc.
Medium	No lid on toilet. No seat either.
Medium	Reception opening hours is short.
Severe	No trash can anywhere in public area in the building. This includes kitchen, toilet, etc. (ps. One has to take the trash out of the building immediately after cooking.) (ps2. I live in 4-th floor)
Severe	Washing machine is expensive!
Lethal	Single washing machine (and dryer) shared by 80 people. (This, combined with the 10pm thing.....)

C'est la vie.


(ps. the internet connection almost make me lose this article. Good thing that I copied the text to gedit as I type)

First couple of days in Geneva~

So, this second time I got on the flight without too much trouble...but there are still some. First in the line comes the flight to Zürich. It was an 11 to 12 hour flight. I couldn't possibly sleep for that long, so entertainment is important. Luckily, every seat in the plane is equipped with a small screen where we can watch movie, play video games, et cetera. The good thing about it is that the starting time of the movie is not fixed; it's not broadcasted from some place, so we can enjoy the movies any time we want. The unlucky side of it is that shortly after I sit down, the screen fell out from the back of the seat. I believe that it's not supposed to happen. Then it got a quick fix:


after a while, the fix got upgraded so that I can watch a movie:


The upgraded version was not tight enough, and it fell out again later:


as a result I only managed to watch the first half of a French movie (called "the other one")....

The second flight got delayed for some non-obvious reasons, and it was more than half an hour late. And so I missed the opening time of the reception of the hostel I'm going to live in. By two minutes. Oops. "They're closing 5 minutes earlier anyways," I was told by Chris from the same group, who kindly came to the airport and picked me up, "it's France." As a temporary solution, I was placed in the USCMS house, where they have an empty sofa and some empty-looking rooms. "Wait until the evening and see if anyone is using the rooms." If not, I can sneak in and sleep on one of the beds. I don't like to be surprised at midnight so I slept on the sofa in the end.

The next day, I got an email from my advisor. "You cannot do that." The waiting list is huge and if I didn't show up on time (the day before), chances are that my room will be given to somebody else. Meow! After a while (walking back and forth), I finally checked in with the guard at CERN, and got the room key. It's a pretty nice room:


though it would be better if they have cable internet access.... There are more to come in a later post about the hostel. Settled with housing stuff, now it's time to do some (boring) paperwork and to take some radiation safety courses~ And hopefully I can start doing research early next week.

(written on Sunday with no network connection)

And so the dust settles....

I am traveling to Geneva in the summer. Here are a list of FAQ for reference.

Q: Why are you cleaning the room?
A: I'll be in Geneva for more than two months, and I don't want to pay rent here.

Q: It's not a big deal.
A: Yes it is. It is a big project and very time-consuming. I have way too many things accumulated over the course of 5 years in the USA. If I pack everything into 18'' cube boxes, it can be well over 25 boxes. I can't just put everything in the boxes since that is essentially just postponing the packing to a later date. I have to deal with it sooner or later.

Q: Oh no.
A: Luckily I finished my second qualification exam last year, so I had some free time to take care of them. Human-powered sorting is hard. I really hoped that I had a robot to take care of everything. The room is small, so I spent a lot of time playing Freecell Solitaire to help learning how to pile things up while sorting through my stuff.

Q: Is that why it took this long?
A: Let's move to the next question.

Q: Why are you still on campus? Aren't you supposed to be gone by Monday?
A: I was supposed to go from here to Montreal, and then from there to Geneva. Unfortunately I didn't realize that I needed a transit visa, even though I just stayed in the airport for a few hours. They say that it depends on the airport. Some airport (like the one in Toronto if I'm not mistaken) allows traveler to move on without needing a transit visa. This is my first time to apply for a transit visa, and it just didn't dawn on me that I would need one. I certainly didn't apply for a visa in Japan numerous times in the past.

Q: So you can't board the plane. What happened afterward?
A: I went back to campus from the airport, and did a lot of things all in one day. The flight was early in the morning, so I didn't sleep the night before. I really don't know how I can stay awake the whole time. Let me provide the list of things I did.

1. Went to housing office to move check-out time to a later date. If I failed to do this early enough in the morning, my room will be cleaned and locked since officially I have checked out already.
2. Check the website for estimated processing time for the visa if I'm going to get one. 1 to 28 days. What.....
3. Went on to notify people in the lab. Explained what happened and searched for alternative plane ticket. It's expensive!
4. Another person came, so I explained again. She tried to see if I can still get on the same flight in another date, and it looked possible. The only problem is that I need to get the visa. Through phone call we can't really get any information, so I have to go to the consulate in person. She provided me a plead-for-help letter.
   
5. I went to the consulate. It's not as far as the Swiss consulate, but it's still around downtown area, and therefore took more than one hour just to get there. The visa section was closed, but the gentleman over there said that I can get the visa the same day I submitted it. Woo-hoo~ I also got a checklist for visa application.
   
6. Now I just need the plane ticket so I hurried back to campus.
7. It's almost 5pm, nobody will be around after that time. From the checklist I need to go to the international students office to get a signature. Done.
8. It's closer to 5pm than before! I hurried to the lab and found out that the lady in charge of booking plane tickets has left already. Oops. I'd have to wait until Tuesday.

That was the day before dinner. It was crazy.

Q: So you went to sleep early in the evening?
A: Not really. After dinner with friends, I'm studying with a friend for her qualification exam on Tuesday until late in the evening. Afterwards I was preparing the visa application forms.

Q: Do you get a visa today (Tuesday)?
A: I was going to apply for it, so I went to the lab and tried to book the ticket with the lady. Unfortunately I can't postpone the original flight, so we have to find another flight. And as a result I don't need the transit visa anymore. I should've slept more the night before.

Q: That would cost a lot of money.
A: Thanks to Betty, who told the airline company some kind of sob story and we got most of our money back. Incredible. If it was me who was negotiating, I probably would end up losing the money. Well, it's a flight ticket where you didn't board. I wasn't expecting that we can get back anything at all.

Q: What's next?
A: So the new flight is on Thursday, before when I have to somehow decrease the weight of my luggage. It's currently overweight by 5 kg or so. But, finally, I can sit back and take a rest....