Yuki @ South Pole

[11/24(Sa) Thanksgiving]

8AM I had forgotten that my alarm was set for only Monday-Friday, so overslept and rushed out for the breakfast meeting, although only John and Denis were there and they weren't really expecting a real meeting. They told me I can go back to sleep, but i had some of John's coffee again and headed out.

9AM For the 1st time since I've been here, the weather was not completely clear today.

That made for these neat halos around the Sun.

The frostbitten skin on my nose was starting to peel out.

I did various miscellaneous tasks this morning while John and Denis were working on preparing a calibration object. I was curious about this hardware, but felt like I had to catch up on my own work... After much work, the calibration source was ready, but disappointingly the signal was too strong, so we had to take it apart and readjust it again :( Denis and John seemed disappointed and tired on this holiday after a busy week. I was also tired from insufficint sleep and felt kind of bad not contributing much to their work. I went to try to help them, but my brain wasn't thinking and almost did something very silly. I should always think more carefully before executing something that might have consequences.

Anyhow, back at the station, I saw that Tomo had emailed us about the possibility of testing something back at the lab with John's assistance. I knew John would prefer not to go back to the lab after his hard work, and also there was not much time before the Thanksgiving dinner, so I tried to quickly reply offering to go instead, without thinking through carefully enough what the test requires. After sending off the email reply, I felt foolish again about rushing without using my brain enough.

5:30PM Time for Thanksgiving dinner, starting with good appetizers and live music (including Tomo and the other John) on the hall way. I joined a small table with John and Amy. After getting our food, I still didn't see Denis, so called his room -- he was asleep as suspected, thinking that the dinner's not till 6:30. He got a huge turkey leg, its size probably due to unnatural hormone, as Amy (also a meat industry protester) and I agreed. We didn't go into details on the dinner table, as I never do. I'm usually not too fond of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner menu, but it was actually very good, maybe because we worked all day skipping lunch. In the photo, I'm probably talking about "Abraham, the Secret behind the Secret" to a rightly-skeptical John. Juan gave me a pumpkin pie gift on Facebook, and I actually had a piece of pumpkin pie :) Unlike last year when I got peer pressured into putting whipped cream on my pie, I enjoyed it plain. The apple pie looked good, but was already full.

After dinner, people usually party, but I felt like catching up on sleep. I later found out John went back to work on the telescope :)

Sometime in the middle of the night, "Beep Beep Beep... Fire has been reported in the Summer Camp" -- the dormitories in the other building. I'm on the Trauma Team so should respond, but my body was very sleepy and heavy and didn't want to get up, put on all my clothes, and walk over in the cold for what's most likely a false alarm. Then I remembered that we signed up for on-call weekends when we're supposed to be sober, and I signed up for all the weekends except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year -- since I had a glass of wine, I'm not supposed to respond. So I just waited for "Disregard the fire alarm" announcement, which was made after a few more loud alarm sounds that probably woke everyone up. I later learned that some partying person accidentally hit the alarm... not surprising...

[11/25(Su) All nighter...]

Woke up and headed to the lab. After brunch, I sent off a postcard and went to fill liquid nitrogen into the telescope all on my own for the 1st time -- it's simple, but I still wasn't sure about this "sound" the tank is supposed to make when it's full. Since we didn't fill it all the way the last time, what's supposed to take ~40 minutes took much longer -- I was standing by the telescope directing my ears up toward the top and carefully listening for the sound for over half an hour... Usually it takes ~50 lb of liquid nitrogen, but I was already filling almost 80 lb! I was becoming worried that maybe i was doing something wrong, and even had an image of freezing the infamous O-ring and breaking the vacuum of the telescope, which would be a disaster! I checked the top and was relieved that it wasn't called, but saw some liquid dripping down the vent line, so stopped filling even though I never heard this "sound" (maybe my ears had gone bad after listening to the same tone for over an hour). Anyhow, it turned out to be a successful fill, even though it took forever.

6PM Went back to the station for the post-Thanksgiving sale at the store (it was in the gym to fit the rush of cutomers). I found out that I have only US$13 in cash and they don't accept credit card, so had Denis buy some shirts for me for now. Please send me a note if you want a South Pole shirt or anything!

8PM After dinner was the Science Sunday lecture by our own John about cosmology with telescopes like ours. His presentation style was excellent and his content gave me a lot of insights.

9:30PM Denis and I went to check out skis to go to the lab. On the way, we climbed up a snow hill and sled down on our backs.

It was warm with no wind (the smoke stack rising straight up, which is rare), and really felt like summer.

Ski boots were frozen cold, but it was fun skiing to our lab, probably no faster than we walk but using much more energy. We filmed ourselves with commentaries in French and poor Russian to send to Denis's girlfriend Irina.

We updated our observation log and then Denis talked to me more about paragliding. I felt, as I have many times, that he really knows how to enjoy life.

Denis went back, but I stayed since it was Tomo's final night and he's planning to accomplish a lot tonight. Even though the outside stayed bright all night, I was eventually falling asleep.

[11/26(Mo) Bye Tomo and Amy!]

4:30AM Tomo and I were both tired and hungry, so we went back to the station. Tomo managed to finish designing and drawing up the parts which I will probably be putting together. I was impressed by his dedication.

I was planning to stay up for the 7:30 breakfast meeting, but just in case I fall asleep, I set my alarm for 7:00.

8:30 An announcement about a flight woke me up, and I was panicked to see that my clock said 11:00 -- the announcement must have been about Tomo & Amy's flight departing!! I thought i missed seeing them off. In case they're still around, I rushed to the dining hall to see if they're at lunch -- it was empty and I noticed that the dining hall clock said 8:30. I was confused; felt like i went back 3 hours in a time machine. But then I figured that I must've looked at my computer clock, which is still set to California time (3 hours ahead). As I blabber about this on this journal (probably boring, sorry...), i realize that what really happened was that i was so tired that i accidentally set my clock (not my alarm) to 7:00, explaining why the alarm didn't go off and why the clock was ~2.5 hours ahead.

Rushed to the lab for a final catch up with Tomo and Amy, and then went to the flight deck to see them off. It was a little pity that I didn't get to work much with Amy, but it was cool that she came. Tomo worked hard and didn't seem to have much time to explore everything around the station, but he'll probably come back next year. In the photo, from left: Amy, Denis, John, Tomo, me.

I was pretty sleepy the rest of the day, but walking back at the end of the day, the clouds were very pretty, colored by the Sun.

[11/27(Tu) missing signal! ]:

Woke up but felt like I needed more sleep. Anyways, since things are going well with the telescope measurements, Denis is likely leaving this Thursday instead of the scheduled Monday. So today is the 3rd and the final liquid helium fill training with him. It went well.

In the afternoon, John and I switched the radiation source on the mast. Then I discovered in my data analysis that a reference signal that tells us when our test radiation source is on/off is missing! I found out that it's been missing for the past 2 days, making our measurements almost useless all this time! :( We were very disappointed, but found out that the connection to the power supply for receviing the fiber optics signal had been disconnected. John took the blame for the flaky connection, which is unusual and respectable because he rarely makes mistakes. On a bright side, we were glad we found this problem now instead of keeping going unnoticed. Now we have to redo the measurements, which means that I won't have time to try out the regular observing schedule for December before John leaves -- I was hoping to try it beforehand in case something goes wrong, but now I just have to really make sure my planned schedule is flawless. With Denis's suggestion, I revised the schedule so that it's more similar to the traditional one.

There was an emergency drill this afternoon, and Denis responded as a fire fighter, but I had to stay with the telescope to get our measurement started as soon as possible in light of the delay. Also, I haven't had enough training this year and can't remember exactly how to respond, so i really need to review that!

[11/28(We) 5 more cosmologists arrive!]

9AM After the 7AM teleconference, I fell asleep on the desk -- I guess i'm having to make up for staying up all night the other night. Woke up with an announcement about a flight arrival -- Brad and Joaquin must be arriving today from Berkeley. On the way to lunch, I saw Brad -- he had grown his beard and looked big especially with the big carhart overall and maybe the boots. Last year, we only crossed paths on my way back in Christchurch, so hope to be able to hang out with him and others coming later from Berkeley this year. In the dining hall, I also saw Joaquin, who was looking sharp with his hair cut :) The dining hall had a long line -- the plane must've had a lot of passengers, including 6 "Distinguished Visitors" from the National Science Board, including Kathryn Sullivan who was the 1st American woman astronaut to work outside the spacecraft.

This afternoon, John and I switched the radiation source on the mast again. The mast is 40 ft (12 m) tall and very heavy, so yesterday I was very cautious in lowering it. Today was the same procedure, but I found myself being less careful -- I need to learn to ALWAYS be careful for risky procedures!

When we finished, we found a professional surveyor on the roof, so asked him the distance between the mast and our telescope. Based on our angle measurements using the sextant we had guessed 637 ft (194 m) and the actual distance was 633 ft (193 m) -- pretty close!

On my way back to the station, the sky had very pretty clouds.

7PM At dinner, I saw 3 more cosmologists, Angiola, Ben, and Ed, who just arrived today to take down their telescope that's been operating since 2004. Now that most of our team is leaving, seems like everyone else in cosmology is coming.

9PM Denis showed us a documentary "7 Summits" about a newly married French couple who climbed and paraglided down from each of the 7 summits. They made mountaineering seem easier than it probably is, but their cheerful attitude was impressive.

9:30PM During the film, a fire alarm sounded, from the other side of this building. Denis rushed out and ran down the hallway to respond as part of the firefighting team. I just had sandles and the fire doors were being closed, so didn't feel safe to go down the hallway toward the direction of the fire if it was real, so decided to just gather in the gym like everyone else. I wasn't positive if this was the best thing to do as part of the trauma team, but just kept my attention on others' radios as a standby in case more help is needed. I felt kind of useless, but anyways it turned out to be a false alarm.

10:30PM After the film, John and Denis were very inspired, but I was too sleepy at that point to join in on their inspiration; maybe this film didn't resonate with me quite as much...

[11/29(Th) Denis quitte le pole.]

Denis's postdoctoral fellow term at Caltech is until September, and he said he wants to go back to France, though not sure what he wants to do there. Last year after his winter over here, he was talking about becoming a mountain guide, and I remember thinking we'll miss an important team member for our project. I was glad that he ended up staying and we were able to continue work together and hang out this past year. If he decides to do something completely different from September (like teaching paragliding in France), I thought today could possibly (though unlikely) be his last day ever at the South Pole.

Denis was asking me "Are you confident about running the telescope by yourself?" -- I felt like I still want to sort out a few things, but I knew I will be confident and ready by the time John leaves.

Today, a crashed UFO had to be lifted off. (actually a neighbor telescope being decomissioned.)

10PM Denis passed down the torch (actually a nice red pen for marking our measurements in our notebook) to me. I love Denis's expression.

Now it's just John and me for the next few days. He asked me, "How do you feel about your 'summer over'?" I said, "I'm looking forward to it. I want to train myself to be super careful about everything."

[11/30(Fr) Another astronaut at the South Pole.]

The weather at McMurdo Station is bad and all the flights were canceled -- poor Denis, he might get stuck there even though he left us early to catch today's flight back to New Zealand :(

Worked mostly on analyzing the recent calibration measurements to make sure they're good, incase we need to change our strategy the next few days.

2PM I met up with our cryogenics technician Chris to help him crane up liquid nitrogen into our lab. Ethan, another winter-over researcher, was with him -- he turned out to be very into space exploration, too, and is applying to be an astronaut this summer.

During dinner, I had to decide on the measurement plans for the next ~60 hours before John leaves.

[12/1(Sa) On my own]