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)