5PM I had been looking forward to ultimate frisbee at 5pm, but I had
to finish off the measurement and take down the setup. I felt really bad
especially because I had expressed my excitement about it to Nathan and
had also invited Carla for her first time. I was quite bummed :( At
least I was happy to later find out that Carla made it and had a lot of
fun, and that Nathan even went to the gym to look for me, which was very
nice of him but also made me feel guilty.
7PM On the way back, saw a Basler aircraft take off, I think to pick
up people from the Norwegian - United States Traverse that didn't quite
make it here due to some malfunction. After the take off, the skiway
crossing beacon stayed on, so I figured a plane was landing or something
and just waited, but it stayed on for 25 minutes and suddenly turned off.
I didn't feel too happy about missing dinner because of the long wait. As
I was searching for leftovers, I saw Tracy in the communications
department and mentioned to her about the beacon -- she said she had to
follow up with some flights and had totally forgotten about turning off
the beacon... for the first time in 6 years. She's a very nice person,
but probably didn't realize I was missing dinner because of it. I'm
almost never bothered by such a little thing, but I must be tired today...
(I doubt Tracy will ever read this, but it really was not a big deal!!)
At 8pm was a lecture about this Traverse, which sounded interesting
and fun because people were laughing, but i was dozing off with my eyes
half open -- hope i wasn't disturbing Kiwon too much, who was sitting
right across from me trying to concentrate on a screen toward my
direction... Somehow I was exhausted, maybe because of the outdoor work
the last few days and lack of sleep. I was also starting to feel a little
unhappy for some reason, probably triggered by missing ultimate frisbee
(and waiting at the skiway for no reason), but maybe just because of the
fatigue. Evan said we'll shoot for the spectroscopy preparation after an
early lunch tomorrow -- we were somewhat pleasantly surprised that we
weren't going to have to start early (Evan usually wakes up very early).
[1/21(Mo) feeling a little down, but greenhouse work made my day]
9AM I don't know exactly why but somehow I'm not feeling too happy
since last night, although not too bad because I'm aware that I'm just
making this up to try to feel sorry for myself or something, and there's
no good reason to not be happy. Even little things like not being able to
ski so well made me a little unhappy, but on the way to the lab, Elissa
yelled from a pisten bully with her usual cheerful voice, which helped a
little :) I got to the lab and Evan was there, but I wasn't too motivated
to do anything except to catch up on email or something while the internet
was available.
11:30AM Went back for an early lunch, as Evan suggsted, and joined
Cynthia and Kiwon for lunch, but I was somewhat withdrawn and not involved
in the conversation. When I think about it more, maybe one of the causes
is that some of my lab mates in the 10-meter telescope always tease me
about all the extra activities I do (or at least used to do) and probably
think I work even less than I actually do. I know they work harder than I
do now, but I also think i spend much less time than they do sitting
around at meals; instead I usually spend little time eating and use the
extra time for physical activities like volleyball (1~2 times a week),
pilates (about 5 times during December only), and yoga (about 5 times
total so far). I don't blame the 10-meter buddies at all -- they
definitely work really hard on a stressful schedule, and maybe they wished
they had the kind of relative flexibility I had on my own during December.
I also respect the different ways that different people choose to
decompress. I just hope that my adviser Bill didn't get from them an
exaggerated impression about how much I've been doing outside of work :)
Actually, I think Bill just cares about what you produce and also values
physical exercise for maximum productivity. Anyhow, maybe my feeling a
little down has some to do with my impression that other people think I'm
doing less work than I am... but most likely I've just gotten used to
getting more credit than I deserve :)
12:30 When I left for the lab, I saw a Basler parked on the deck, so
decided to give myself a little break and check it out. The fuelie Cathy
was there refueling the aircraft; she said I'm welcome to go closer and
radioed the people there that I'm coming. I've always thought the slanted
body must not be the most convenient when it's parked, so asked the pilot
why. He said something to the effect of they used to like to try
challenging designs back then. Tom Pi was there to film the take off, so
he took a picture for me.
| 
Then met with Kiwon and Cynthia and crossed the skiway to the lab.
|
 Some Raytheon people were visiting, so I decided to be
cautious and wore a harness to crane down the big liquid helium container,
and Cynthia always likes to take "super hero" shots.
|
1PM For spectroscopy, we had to mount a big mirror on top of the
telescope to direct the spectrometer radiation into it. At one point
during the preparation, I made some little silly mistake, and said with a
laugh, "Oh my brain's not working again today... Actually, I'm feeling not
so happy today for some reason". That made me feel silly about feeling
bad for no good reason, and that by itself made me feel a little more
light hearted. Kiwon and others were sympathetic and told me I should
take a break after mounting the mirror. I rarely express my
dissatisfaction out loud, but saying it in a light-hearted manner made the
issue feel much more trivial and made me feel better :)
The mirror mounting went more smoothly than I had expected, although those
mechanix gloves were too big I had to take them off. My fingers felt like
partially thawed bananas -- I could not feel the screws with my skin at
all, but only through mechanical pressure against the bones inside my
fingers.
6PM I felt ok enough I kept working till dinner time. Here's a view of
our telescope out the sun roof of the outhouse =>
8PM After dinner, I was still not feeling the best, so I decided to
treat myself to a shower. Even then, I still felt like I could use some
more cheering up, so decided this would be a good time to work on the
greenhouse since I've been too busy to look after it lately. Back in my
room, I noticed that Carla had called, so called back. Turns out she
called yesterday about ultimate frisbee, but she asked me what I was up to
and decided to help with the greenhouse.
9PM I was stunned how fast the cucumbers and other things had grown! I
was a little overwhelmed by the chaos compared to the last time I had
visited, but it still felt really good to be with the greens. I started
tidying up the cucumbers, then Carla arrived so I had her harvest all the
grown up cucumbers since that's always fun. Behind the big leaves, there
were amazing number of huge cucumbers! Then I passed on to Carla
everything I had learned from the McMurdo greenhouse technician Karen. It
was very therapeautic and refreshing to work with the plants. Carla said
she was in a poor mood today so this was perfect -- that was a pleasant
coincidence. I'm glad she joined, also because it's much nicer to have a
company than working by yourself. She has a job interview at 4am, so
hopefully she wake up! We weighed our havest (25 lb!) and took them up to
the kitchen. That one hour made my day and all the unhappiness
disappeared :)
[1/22(Tu) Been busy!]
Today was another crisp clear day -- the clouds went away as soon as
we stopped the regular sky observations 2 days ago...
During lunch I was very surprised to see the McMurdo Greenhouse technician Karen at the
other end of the dining hall. I had no idea she was coming again. I wanted to say hi but
felt bad about how I've been too busy to take care of the greenhouse as much I wanted to.
At least I was very lucky that I had decided to do some work on it last night!! :) Karen
flew back to McMurdo on the same day. Later in the evening, I checked the greenhouse and
all the cucumber plants were very neatly arranged and all the tomatoes and zucchinis had
been removed because they were not doing well from the beginning, maybe
due to the nutrient concentration problem in their water. At least Carla
got to learn a little about the manual pollination before they had to be
removed. Also, Karen had removed the weaker of each pair of the new
little tomato plants from each spot (we planted 2 seeds in each spot for
redundancy). We didn't do this yesterday because I thought to wait a
little longer to see which are the stronger ones. Anyhow, I hope I didn't
disappoint her too much. I wrote her the next day and turns out even she
didn't know she was coming until the day before.
Evan offered to help with the liquid helium fill, so I taught him how
to do it. For some reason, we achieved a very high fill efficiency. In
the afternoon, I wrote a comprehensive weekly report, which Denis kindly commented as
"awesome"... Thanks :)
7PM I realized today that Kiwon is already leaving us tomorrow! He was here for 2.5
weeks, but it felt very quick. Played Kiwon's last volleyball. Afterwards, he said he'll
be going around the station photographing everything.
[1/23(We) Kiwon leaves already :( ]
7AM Kiwon must have stayed up late since he didn't come to the teleconference. Saw him
after the meeting, but he was still going around taking photos.
11AM Cynthia and I went to see off Kiwon at the deck. It was very cold, so we waited
inside the shack, where we found the big foam hands that are used to signal the pilots as
they park at the deck =>
Evan asked me if I could design a big mirror mount for his spectroscopy measurement.
Although I wanted to make progress with my calibration analysis, I thought I'd help
especially because I could use any practice in designing things.
The older type of monitors were not displaying the control computer's operating system,
but Tom helped me by showing me how to set the display depth down so that the older monitors
can handle it. Thanks Tom!
[1/24(Th) Snow fun & first sauna!]
8AM Finally had a chance to book the flight from Sydney to Sunshine Coast, which is the
closest major airport to Rainbow Beach where I'll learn paragliding. I
found a flight for AU$60 -- not bad.
9AM When I saw Evan at the lab, he was very appreciative of the mirror mount that I had
made. Since the cryogenics technician Chris went to McMurdo Station and Christchurch for
vacation before his winter and to pick up the winter supply of liquid helium for us, the
science coordinator Al got the liquid nitrogen for us. I helped him carry the liquid
nitrogen containers to the other building where he refilled them -- we talked and when I
mentioned that I've never seen penguins in Antarctica yet and it's too bad that my
scheduled flight back is a straight through to Christchurch without an overnight at McMurdo,
he said he could ask someone about the possibility of me stopping by McMurdo on my way back.
That was a surprise, and very nice of him.
At the lab, we were trying to think of a way to position a lense
in front of the spectroscopy setup to increase the signal. I thought maybe
we could suspend it using a string, and brought out the fishing rod that
we used last year to fly a calibration blimp. I was pretending fishing
with it and the silly Erik decided to be a fish... He's been working too
hard the past several months :)
8PM After dinner, the cosmologists (from left, Tom, Keith, Brad, Erik, me, Cynthia) and
Cynthia's friend Joe visiting from McMurdo decided to explore the old Dome.
|
Inside the old Dome was pretty empty except the junks and stored food and supplies.
|
Along the way, we found a snow slope, so I climbed it up and at first it looked steep and
some people didn't think it was safe, but i sled down it, which turned out to be not bad at
all, so others joined the fun.
|
We also tried climbing up the snow wall. It was so fun being covered in
the snow and playing like children even after running out of breath. |
10PM Then, Brad and Tom were going to the sauna, so I decided to join, for my 1st time
in the sauna here. It was dry, and actually very nice! I felt like I had been missing out
all this time that I had been at the Pole. We waited talking until the temperature got
close to 200°F (93°C) and went out the station's refrigerator door to outside. Most
of the sweat dried off even before we got outside, and it didn't feel very cold even though
it was -30°C... just absolutely refreshing! It was a revelation for me. I couldn't
believe I hadn't tried the sauna here before! We were in the shade, so I ventured out to
the sunlight, which felt very nice and warm. It felt really silly to be outside naked in
this environment, but I think only one person saw us. Our hairs were turning white from
frost, including hairs on our skin -- Brad's long hair was especially interesting, with
several individual strands completely white like thin noodles. After a few minutes we went
back into the sauna, which again felt very nice. We weren't originally planning to go to
the Pole, but I thought the sun-lit Pole side would feel even better, especially with
today's low wind. When we reached 200°F again after half to one hour, we ran out to the
Pole. The Sun was very nice and it was exilirating :) I felt warm enough to even lie down
on the snow -- not bad! It was an eye opening experience.
[1/25(Fr) The 1st Japanese woman to ski across Antarctica to the Pole!]
When I got to the lab, I had missed a call from Al. When I called him back, he told me
to give a reason I should stop by McMurdo on my way back. I was very surprised that he was
serious about it! So I wrote him saying how I've been volunteering many hours in the
greenhouse for the station and would like to catch up with the greenhouse technician at
McMurdo who trained me and also check out their system. Usually people get paid to work in
the greenhouse, so I thought this could be my reward :) I don't even use linens in McMurdo
(i just sleep on my big red parka), so the burden should be minimal.
The telescope control computer crashed again for the first time since January 6. I
wrote up a procedure for replacing it to make sure we don't mess up our only spare.
10PM Jon had emailed me a link
to an article yesterday, but the link was broken and I did not have a chance to check
until this evening what it was about. Turns out a Japanese woman had skied ~1100 km across
Antarctica to the South Pole and just arrived yesterday! She was also the 3rd Japanese
female to summit Mount Everest, when she was 30 years old! I really hoped that I didn't
miss meeting her! Tourists usually have to leave the site after one night as soon as their
plane ride is available. Actually, I remeber seeing an Asian woman at the far end of the
galley during dinner last night. I think she saw me, but I have a tendancy to try not to
pay special attention to someone just because of their race... She also looked a little
familiar for some reason, and I figured then that she must have been visiting from McMurdo
Station or something. Now that I saw the article, maybe she was the skier! In that case, I
felt very silly to not have gone up to talk to her. I often find Asian or Japanese
strangers stare at me especially in an environment where we are the minority, and I've
somehow developed a tendancy to avoid such eye contact based on race, probably because I'd
like to ideally see everyone equally regardless of race. But maybe there's nothing wrong
with pursuing extra relationships/interactions based on common racial background...
especially if such common ground gives us more chances/reasons to meet more people.
Anyhow, I immediately went to the galley and looked out the window toward the Pole to
see if there are any tourist tents. I saw one, and asked around people if they knew who the
current tourists are, but nobody was sure. In previous years, the station would often
inform us of interesting tourists, but not this year. I saw Dwight who works in the
Communications Department; he said he can check as soon as he goes to the office. I went to
the Communications office and asked Liza -- she thought the tent is the 3 skiers including a
British optometrist and a Japanese woman and showed me some news clippings about the
optometrist doing this for fund raising. I was happy and excited to hear they're still
around! :)
10:30PM I decided to go visit their tent to see if they're awake. But before that, I
called my parents to see if they had heard anything about the skier in Japan, and also
partly to help put myself in a Japanese communication mode. My father had seen it on the
news, but my mother had not. I asked them if they wanted me to send any message to her;
they said "yoroshiku"...
11PM I walked up to their tent quietly so as to not wake them in case they're asleep. I
didn't notice their tent last night when we were out at the Pole naked... I wondered if they
saw us... There were their 3 sleds and the tent looked pretty small for 3 persons. I
didn't hear any noise, so figured they must be asleep, and sat on the snow to write a little
note in Japanese. I thought to leave my phone number and email so that they could contact
me when they're awake. Without a computer, I could not remember how to write many kanji
(Chinese characters) and there were many expressions that I wasn't sure about. Instead of
risking making too many stupid mistakes, I decided to use simpler language and lots of
hiragana (the basic Japanese alphabet). I hoped the extreme cold was a good enough excuse
for using simpler characters and embarrassing penmaship! I took a picture of my note for
record (it'll hopefully inspire me to study Japanese more seriously), but there's no way I'm
making it public! I was hoping they'd wake up before I had to use this note, but anyways I
placed the note by a box they had outside, hoping that a gust doesn't blow it away.
[12/26(Sa) finally met the 1st Japanese woman to ski to the Pole!]
| | 
11AM
Cynthia arrived today so that all 4 graduate students of our BICEP
telescope project (including Kiwon and Evan) are here now. She seemed
very happy to be "back home" to the South Pole. On her flight was also
Clarence, a postdoc from University of Chicago for the 10-meter telescope.
Cynthia monitored the signals from inside, while Kiwon had his camera this
time to photo document the process. Today I wore the mechanix gloves so
that my hands don't freeze as much.
In the end, nothing is quite as good as our bare hands. Me with slippery
ski boots.
12:30 When I left for the lab, I saw a Basler parked on the deck, so
decided to give myself a little break and check it out. The fuelie Cathy
was there refueling the aircraft; she said I'm welcome to go closer and
radioed the people there that I'm coming. I've always thought the slanted
body must not be the most convenient when it's parked, so asked the pilot
why. He said something to the effect of they used to like to try
challenging designs back then. Tom Pi was there to film the take off, so
he took a picture for me.
Then met with Kiwon and Cynthia and crossed the skiway to the lab.
Some Raytheon people were visiting, so I decided to be
cautious and wore a harness to crane down the big liquid helium container,
and Cynthia always likes to take "super hero" shots.
The mirror mounting went more smoothly than I had expected, although those
mechanix gloves were too big I had to take them off. My fingers felt like
partially thawed bananas -- I could not feel the screws with my skin at
all, but only through mechanical pressure against the bones inside my
fingers.
6PM I felt ok enough I kept working till dinner time. Here's a view of
our telescope out the sun roof of the outhouse =>
9PM I was stunned how fast the cucumbers and other things had grown! I
was a little overwhelmed by the chaos compared to the last time I had
visited, but it still felt really good to be with the greens. I started
tidying up the cucumbers, then Carla arrived so I had her harvest all the
grown up cucumbers since that's always fun. Behind the big leaves, there
were amazing number of huge cucumbers! Then I passed on to Carla
everything I had learned from the McMurdo greenhouse technician Karen. It
was very therapeautic and refreshing to work with the plants. Carla said
she was in a poor mood today so this was perfect -- that was a pleasant
coincidence. I'm glad she joined, also because it's much nicer to have a
company than working by yourself. She has a job interview at 4am, so
hopefully she wake up! We weighed our havest (25 lb!) and took them up to
the kitchen. That one hour made my day and all the unhappiness
disappeared :)
8PM After dinner, the cosmologists (from left, Tom, Keith, Brad, Erik, me, Cynthia) and
Cynthia's friend Joe visiting from McMurdo decided to explore the old Dome.
Inside the old Dome was pretty empty except the junks and stored food and supplies.
Along the way, we found a snow slope, so I climbed it up and at first it looked steep and
some people didn't think it was safe, but i sled down it, which turned out to be not bad at
all, so others joined the fun.
We also tried climbing up the snow wall. It was so fun being covered in
the snow and playing like children even after running out of breath.