|
I'm a (jolly good) fellow
-
1 April 2005
Yesterday, while cooking my noodles in the hostel kitchen, I met a medical physicist from Canada who lives in Christchurch, New Zealand! She didn't recognise my accent, because she's been in NZ long enough to realise that NZers don't have accents, it's the other people that do. I recognised her accent, though I wasn't brave enough to say so in case she turned out to be American.
Anyway, today was my first day as a Marie Curie EST Fellow at CERN. I went to the reception at building 33, as I was supposed to, and waited with a group of other newbies. There were about three CERN staff there each taking one of us at a time through all the administrative stuff we had to do. While I was waiting, one came up to me and asked if I was the Marie Curie fellow... I suppose she guessed it was me because I was the only female. It turned out to be the person who had originally emailed me saying I had been accepted for the fellowship, and who had sent me my contract etc. After I'd filled out countless forms and she'd explained more things than I can remember and given me piles of paperwork, she sent me on my way to visit various other people to get things sorted. First the death and disability insurance, then the French card (which I can't get until I have a permanent address anyway) then the bank, then the health insurance, the office where I got my access card, then the secretariat which got me to fill out some forms and then sent me to see the CMS secretariat, which got me to fill out some forms and then sent me to see my supervisor. By that time it was about 12:30.
My supervisor has an Apple monitor which is no longer connected to an Apple machine. He did mention there are several Macintosh enthusiasts like myself (how did he know?) working on CMS, but we have to use Linux. Anyway, he explained what I would be working on, and that there's a course to teach people the basics of the framework they use but the next one isn't until July so I'll have to learn it myself, with the help of some guy named Bobby. We had lunch together, and then he took me to CERN's Cessy site, almost exactly opposite the main Meyrin site on the LHC ring. That's where CMS, the detector I will be working on software to control, is currently being assembled, and will eventually be installed in a cavern 100m below the ground. That was pretty cool, actually seeing the thing. It's huge, and approximately the same colours as in the diagrams. It will actually begin running while it's still above ground, detecting muons from cosmic rays rather than from collisions in the LHC.
After that, we went to see somebody about getting my CERN computing account set up. I filled in the forms but the account won't be working until Monday, or possibly Tuesday. So, another weekend without internet. I was shown to my office, which I share with one other person. There's a G3 tower under the desk but it's not mine... for some reason they were installing Windows XP on the machine on my desk. Even if it had been installed, I wouldn't have been able to use it without a computing account, so I sat around reading for a while while my supervisor looked for Bobby. Bobby found me first, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was that he was supposed to tell me about, so he went away and was soon brought back by my supervisor, who introduced us. I was then told to go tour Geneva or something, because there was nothing I could do without a computing account.
I went back to my room and read through some of the documentation I'd been given, then had some dinner, and started writing up this log entry. Essentials
-
29 March 2005
After using the internet and drinking upside down coffee (at least, that's the literal translation of their word for a latte) I happened across a supermarket. Just what I wanted... a place where the prices aren't inflated for tourists. It was a place of dreams -- Frey chocolate with an extra 33% free *and* a price drop, which made it CHF3,30 for 400g of Swiss chocolate. I know where I'll be doing my Christmas shopping.
I also bought some other essentials. I got a few other things too, including the Swiss cheese you don't hear about, but they don't make for as humorous a picture.
On the way home I remembered to tell you about the great forests of apartment buildings. Geneva has one and a half times as many people as the whole of NZ, and now I know where they are. Really, there are clusters of dozens of huge apartment buildings. One is right next to a Mac shop... I know where I want to live. On the subject of Mac shops, there are rumours that Mac OS X Tiger will be out very soon, probably before I've had a chance to upload this. Go get it... I've played with the developer seeds and it rocks. Rocks as in rock-steady, rock 'n' roll, diamonds, etc, not rocking on the tree top.
Back at CERN I opened my Swiss bank account. I don't know why this person had a problem with the withdrawal limit, because with my UBS account I can take out up to CHF100000 per calendar month. If I have it. We have internet!
-
29 March 2005
Cafe l'Adresse is open! And the people here speak English, and recognised quite quickly from my terrible French that I do too.
In other news, I got my passport photos taken without speaking a word of English. Meanwhile some tourists came in and asked in English if they could have their photos put on CD. Looking back, I realise they didn't have accents, and they had Kathmandu bags, with I think are only available in NZ and the UK. I think they were kiwis. Darned tourists, locals like me at least make an effort to speak the local language. :) Monday
-
28 March 2005
There seems to be a few more people here today, or at least I'm in the right places at the right times. This was the first day I got to restaurant 2 while they were serving hot lunches, and about a dozen other people were there too. They were mostly speaking French except for a few speaking Chinese or similar.
I guess I was thinking it would be nice to hear a conversation in English for a change. Be careful what you wish for... I arrived for dinner soon after a group of English people speaking English with English accents about places in England, and wearing jerseys saying 'ENGLAND' on them. They were debating whether the chicken was actually cheese and potato, how much their pounds were worth, and various misconceptions about Swiss bank accounts.
Tomorrow will be interesting... I think everyone will be back at work, which means I can go to restaurant 1 just across from the hostel. Restaurant 2 isn't really very far away, but it's far enough that while I was on my way back today somebody passing in a car offered me a lift the rest of the way. I must have looked spastic or something. Tomorrow I intend to open a bank account, then go into town to get passport photos taken.
I could register as a guest to connect my Mac to the CERN network, but they'd need to check it with my contact person, call my cellphone, and send me an email I wouldn't be able to read... I suspect that by the time it's all sorted I'll be officially a fellow, and I'll have to go through the similar process for CERN personnel. So here I am with one of the best laptops on the planet, at a place with more bandwidth than anywhere else I know of (or, to put it another way, more bandwidth than you can shake a Southern Cross Cable at), and I can't connect to the internet. I guess when you have that much bandwidth you have to be protective of it. But at least I can tell you that hidden on one of the web pages in the registration process is the text, 'This should not be seen ;)' Easter
-
27 March 2005
I went into town yesterday, and found that due to Easter, Cafe L'Adresse is closed until April 4. Actually, I think it is open for certain hours until then but I didn't translate the whole sign. I wish I had. I know that it will return to normal opening hours on April 4.
Nonetheless, I got a few things done. I bought shampoo and other boring bits and pieces from a pharmacy, and found a multilingual bookshop where I bought a proper map of Geneva, in a spiral-bound book, rather than the folded paper tourist map I already have. I'd found that some of the streets mentioned on the CERN housing service pages are not on either my tourist map or my map of bus routes.
Most importantly though, I went to Chocolaterie Mont-Blanc and bought myself an easter egg. It was an expensive easter egg at CHF7.10, and not particularly big, but this was no run-of-the-mill mass-produced Warehouse egg. This was a hollow egg with floral decorations, containing two smaller eggs, each of which had a delicious filling. And all made with Swiss chocolate, of course. Actually, much of the price could have been due to the shop's main clientele being tourists... I'm pretty sure it's the very shop where I bought my Geneva keyring last year, and while I was in there a family from New York spent about 180 CHF (that's about NZ$210) on chocolate. I also happen to know that the Geneva City Hostel, where I stayed last year, sells blocks of Lindt chocolate much more cheaply than Chocolaterie Mont-Blanc does. Nonetheless, it was my first Swiss easter egg and it lived up to reputation.
This morning on my way to restaurant 2 for breakfast, a dozen people on horseback passed me on the other side of the fence, where the strange saplings grow. On the way back, a few more people passed with dogs. There is of course a mountain view in that direction too, so basically the edge of CERN provides a moving postcard of Swiss country life. That, and funny looking saplings. I'm sure they'll grow into something perfectly normal, but for now they look like deformed black roots.
I figure there won't be anything open in town today, so I just wandered around the CERN site. There's hardly anybody else here, so it's kind of weird wandering around inside the buildings... like I broke in or something. There's one of those passport photo booths in the CERN users centre so I took some pictures of myself there. I remembered that I need seven identical passport-sized photos for my first day on Friday, but unfortunately the machine only gives four photos. I'll go into town on Tuesday and get some done at a photo place -- I happen to know the French for 'I need some passport photos.'
Mid-afternoon I sat in the garden of Microcosm where some of the old LEP apparatus are on display, and ate my easter egg. It rained most of last night, and there have been occasional showers today, but most of the time it's just pleasantly cool. And it feels like spring... the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming, etc. As far as I can recall, birds are always singing in NZ, and flowers are always blooming, and there's not a whole lot of difference between the seasons (though perhaps I just think that because I haven't had a whole winter since 2003.) Nevertheless, even though I've had all those summers and it's actually colder here than it was in Auckland, somehow it feels like spring, and all the new life symbolism of Easter actually makes sense. I will be going back to NZ for Christmas itself, but I guess the lead-up to it will be interesting as all those supposed Christmas carols about sleighs and winter are sung in season.
On returning to my room I found I'd been given two new plastic cups and bars of soap, when I only had one of each when I first got here. I think that they noticed my two toothbrushes (the one I brought with me, and the one I got on my Qantas flight) and assumed there are two of me.
I've just noticed that my Mac has the time an hour later than my watch, though I know they agreed the other day. I think Daylight Saving Time must have come into effect, or gone out of effect, whichever means that it's an hour later. Somebody asked me for the time while I was in town the other day, I wonder if I gave him the correct time. He was obviously a local... a tourist would have bought a Swiss watch by now. Next Page |
