Geoverse

Hello dear readers, this is my third and last weekend in Minneapolis but it was a great one! Not heaps to say. I had some failures in the lab but at the end my efforts paid off and I successfully deformed one of my long rock specimens. It’s a beauty! See the photo below. You cannot see the rock directly because it is enclosed in the metal but the metal (and hence the rock) is nicely twisted in the middle. The experiment occurred at 1250C and took most of the day until 8pm.

This weekend an old friend of mine from ACAT, the international school of Turin, Italy came to visit me here in Minneapolis. He and his pal Nick came driving all the way from Kansas City, Missouri which is about 7 hours from here. They drove through the night and arrived here early Saturday morning. After a short powernap, we strolled into the city and had a look around at the famous Guthrie Theater. We then went back to Dinky Town, had lunch and I showed them around the university campus and the lab i work in. We then took the train to America’s (and possibly the world’s) largest shopping centre, the Mall of America. Is was… huuuge. There is a whole theme park inside it with rollercoasters and everything. Legoland was the highlight of the mall for sure. We also went to see a truly great movie called District 9 directed by Peter Jackson. You must see it.

Today we had brunch at an Irish pub in Dinky Town and then Adam and Nick said farewell and left. We had heaps of fun. Until next time.

This week I will carry out one more experiment and on Tuesday I will give a seminar of my research in front of the group. My days of tourism are over here. I will catch a flight on Saturday morning back to NYC and on Sunday a train to Boston to briefly catch up with one of my advisors. Busy schedule ahead so I will be a while until I can post another update.

Photos:
– Picasa
– Photobucket

On Saturday I decided to finally see some of the downtown area of Minneapolis. So I headed out in the late morning by foot. It’s not a long walk, maybe 30 minutes to get to the city centre from here. As I got closer and closer I didn’t really get the feeling I was in the heart of Minneapolis despite the towering skyscrapers. I guess the feeling was accentuated by the wide straight streets and generally not seeing a whole bunch of people.

I walked past the cinema and decided to have a look what’s on. Once inside it then occurred to me that all the skyscrapers are connected by walkway bridges. It’s basically one giant interconnected shopping centre! But there was hardly anybody around so I figured that they must have build this for the cold winter days when it gets down to -30C here.

I headed back outside and got to the city square where there was a gathering of Asian people. Finally something to see! 😀 I put myself down and watched the performances that were put on. Judging from the flags I guess most of them were South Vietnamese. There was singing, the children were dancing and a bit later on there was a fashion show behind the stage. You can all see it in the photos in the links below.

I checked my watch and realised it was already 15:30 and I still wanted to go to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) so I walked for about 15 minutes south until I saw this massive building with two Chinese dragon statues. No mistake, that was it. Admission was free but i had to leave my bag. Luckily they let me keep my camera so I cautiously took some photos of the interesting Chinese art on display. Lynn, you help me with the Chinese characters on the stone doorway. I forgot why it was so important hehe

I spend most of the time looking at the Jade sculptures, one is a giant block carved with the gathering of poets. Another is two layered jade, white and red carved beautifully into a vase. Then there was of course the porcelain or otherwise known as china. The Dutch and English were once the most prominent traders in the East Indies and much porcelain was shipped from China to the Netherlands. To my knowledge, the Dutch then copied the blue designs on the porcelain to make it our own and we call it Delfts Blauw (or Delfts blue – Delft is a town in the Netherlands).

The third floor had a bunch of paintings. Two whole rooms contained paintings by Dutch artists I’ve already forgotten. Nonetheless, I decided I liked them a lot more than the Italian art always showing God, angels and other religious rubbish. And, somebody tell me what is the deal with naked boys in these paintings? No wonder the Vatican church has a problem with pedophilia….

The museum closed and I decided to head back to the cinema. There was a really good movie showing called “Moon”. It’s a classic sci-fi that reminds you of 2001: A space Odyssey. I will not reveal what it’s about. You have to trust me it’s really good and go see it yourself 😀

I came home all wet because it started raining like crazy and just as i was about to enter the guest house lightning struck real close! After the initial shock I ran inside and took a shower. It was a really good day nonetheless but decided to make Sunday a boring and quiet one at the guest house he he. I’m starting a new experiment on Monday. I hope this one will work! I didn’t have much luck last week.

Cheers to everybody!

Photos
Picasa

Photobucket (for Lynn):
Minneapolis
Vietnamese music
Art museum

I had to post this here. My mum’s photo. So funny. It’s Max, my family’s dog in the Netherlands.

I’ve had a pretty eventful long weekend. Saturday was Australia day and i’ve been at a party socializing, drinking beer and playing some backyard cricket.

This Sunday and Monday I’ve been at the coast (near Batemans bay) with a friend and colleague, Steve from my group (rock physics). He suggested meeting a good friend of his at the coast, Norman, who is currently spending some holidays there in their coastal house. They have an old caravan in the yard where Steve and I could spend the night. It’s about 2.5 hour drive from Canberra to Batemans bay. There we had some good ol fish and chips for lunch before we drove to the house. Once we arrived and I introduced myself to the family we headed for a beach where there is some really good snorkelling. They have two children, one boy of 7 years old and a girl of 2 years old. They were incredibly energetic but very well behaved and entertaining. After scouting the area at the beach (there were some interesting igneous rocks ;-)) I did some snorkelling with Norman and he pointed me towards some really cool fish and even a brown shark hiding under the rocks. Being a fisherman, he knew a lot of interesting stuff. We also spotted a peculiar spiral shaped shark’s egg underwater. That evening we had a lovely meal with shrimps and fish and salad. I was mildy enthused that both Norman and his wife had been following the Australian Open tennis so we watched the finals between Tsonga and Djokovic. It was just spectacular. Djokovic was my favourite and I was pretty pleased he won that battle.

The next morning we got up really early (~5am) to go fishing. Norman brought us to a secluded spot and we caught the most incredible fish. I’ve never done any fishing before but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The best fish I caught was the eastern blue groper (female). We also caught a red rockcod and the silver drummer amongst a few others. At around 10 am we headed back and decided for a last dive into the ocean. We had a couple bodyboards. I had never used one so I gave it a spin. Basically it’s all about timing. If you get off just before the wave hits, you end up riding the wave to the beach. I absolutely loved it. After that we prepared the fish we caught on the BBQ. They were really good. The different between fish from the market and freshly caught fish was really noticeable. The scraps we brought down to the beach and fed them to a couple of stingray that seemingly live in that bay. They are gorgeous creatures. One was almost a big as a car bonnet! By this time it was 2 pm and Steve and I had to leave back to Canberra. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera so no photos.

On a totally unrelated note, I will be off to Wagga Wagga for a 3 day conference from Tuesday on. The conference title is “Condensed materials and matter”. I will be one of the first to give an oral presentation which is just as well because I want to get it out of the way asap. I’m not a great speaker and in front of ~100 scientists it kinda makes me pretty nervous. First time as well! That’s it for now. 🙂