Yuki @ South Pole

[1/5(Sa) Kiwon & Evan arrives!]

10AM Met with Karen to learn about planting seeds in the nursery. The current tomatoes are not looking good, so we planted 2 different kinds of cherry tomato seeds, 2 seeds in each of 36 rockwool chunks. She also told me about planting sunflower/cucumber seeds, with the pointy sides down. We labeled and dated the 2 containers and set them in the green house. It's supposed to take ~2 weeks for them to spout, and if both seeds sprout out of each spot I'll pick out the less healthy one.

11:30 Two of my teammates, Kiwon and Evan, was arriving today to join me. I went out to flight deck to greet them. They were on the plane with a few distinguished visitors. I spotted Kiwon with his distinctive camera, but totally missed Evan, maybe because his parka was also as new and bright as the distinguished visitors'. I had not seen Kiwon since he had become a "Dr" and moved to Colorado for a post-doctoral job. Evan was very curious about his 2 crates that were sent here for his spectroscopy measurement, which will be one of our main goals for the rest of the season.

1PM After lunch, I went to the lab and opened up Evan's crate. He and Kiwon arrived and we unpacked the crate full of calibration equipment.

7PM After dinner, we played ping pong which we used to play quite a bit in previous years at the Pole. This year, I've played it only once, with Denis. We ended up playing for ~2 hours and it was very hot since I was still in my long sleeves and the carhartt overalls. It must've been more ping pong than I played in all of 2007.

9PM Since the station put up a big screen in the gym (3x3 bed sheets patched together) for next week's station dedication event, there was a "drive-in movie night", showing Indiana Jones and Star Wars back to back, with popocorn. I wasn't interested in either of these movies, so just took a peek and went to bed.

[1/6(Su) a full Sunday of telescope work]

8AM Maybe because of last night's ping pong, I could not get up for many snoozes. Had brunch in ~20 minutes and headed to the telescope to do a star pointing calibration and fill cryogens. When I was about to fill liquid helium, with only ~40 minutes to go before I had to start observing, I discovered that the helium gas cylinder was empty! I didn't remember if I had ever replaced a gas cylinder before, and there was not much time, so i considered just filling liquid helium as much as possible without any gas pressurization. But I decided I need to replace the cylinder anyways, so went to get a new cyclinder from outside. Fortunately, Dana was in the other room and he helped me transport the heavy cylinder to our lab. Replacing the respirator was more straightforward than I had anticipated, and I was able to complete the fill just barely on time. Maybe because I kept the pressurization toward the high end to speed up the fill, i had the highest transfer effiency ever of 76%.

3PM My last year's House Mouse (bathroom cleaning) partner David came by to see our telescope, so I gave him a quick tour and also visited the 10-meter telescope. When we went outside, many tiny ice crystals falling in the air were looking magical, sparkling against the sun light. It was hard to capture on camera, but I wished I could...

3:30PM Just as I was about to head back to the station to see if anyone's up for volleyball, the control computer crashed again! I took this opportunity to replace its original hard drive with a spare in case the hard drive was somehow causing these crashes. Then i was able to resume the observation in a half hour.

5PM When I returned to the station, I heard people are playing ultimate frisbee again, so I joined them. I joined Jed and Andy against 4, but we played unbelievably well -- Jed and Andy must be really good because things usually don't go this well when I play! It was again exhausting, but it's really refreshing to play outside.

6PM The Site Manager Katie is still looking to fill 7 positions for this coming winter, so I announced this opportunity to the mailing lists for the Space Generation and the International Space University, suggesting many analogs between the South Pole and the outer space / Moon.

7PM Went to dinner but didn't see Kiwon or Evan -- i wonder what they're up to. I asked a few questions about our computer's control system to our computer expert Erik, and he got back to me later that night. I updated John on our computer status and went to bed exhausted around 10pm.

[1/7(Mo) a lone bird flew over!!!]

6AM Headed to the lab and unpacked Evan's big crate that was craned to the roof last night. John replied to my computer status update email in a tone that might have been criticizing an ambiguity in my email on a point that I didn't feel needed more elaborating (i don't think in a mean way or anything; he was probably responding quickly since he must've had 100s of emails to catch up after his travel). I had a choice of replying either in a cold tone to discredit that possible criticism, or in a more light hearted tone. There was really nothing positive to gain from the former, so chose the latter.

11AM I got a reply about the winterover position from a very enthusiastic person in Australia. It was refreshing to see such an enthusiasm. I realize that there are many opportunities for US citizens (especially in areas of hands-on scientific activities) that we take for granted, that are almost like dreams for people in other countries. Loretta also wrote me with excitement.

1PM After lunch, Evan and I discussed the best setup for the spectroscopy measurement; we ended up discussing till ~2:30pm in the galley, so I worked from my room the rest of the day.

7PM During dinner, Tex told me that I got a mail; it was a Christmas/NewYear/Birthday present from Jon! At first I guessed that maybe it's a CD of his photography that he's been working on. It turned out to be a CD of Rufus Wainwright sings Judy Garland -- a concert we went to at Hollywood Bowl a few months ago. The live recording for the CD was in New York, but he had many of the same jokes and similar audience response, which was nice. I didn't think about it much before, but you do get more out of an expensive concert/play if you get its recording so that you can keep enjoying the event.

When I returned to the galley, people were looking out the window. I saw one of the most amazing things I've seen here -- out the window very far away, a bird was flying! I could barely spot it thanks to Pete who constantly updated me on where it was. It seemed to have flown behind our telescope building and we couldn't spot it anymore. It was the first non-human living animal I've seen here (except some worms that came with fresh lettuce last year). The nearest water (and food) must be ~1000 km away, so I could not believe the bird flew all the way here! That bird must be either very lost or a great adventurer. People were saying that come all the way here just die of starvation without making it back. I wanted to save that (heroic) bird, most likely a skua, so I took the nice and smelly halibut from dinner in my bowl and tried to look for it with binoculars. Dwight in the Communications department pointed out that the traverse expedition has arrived from McMurdo, and i could see the tractors a few km away -- i could also see the dramatic straight path they made behind them. Peter said he might look for it on a snow mobile, so i asked him if i can join. We went toward my telescope where the bird was last seen, but could not find it :( I felt pretty silly taking the loud and smelly snow mobile for this instead of just walking, but i also had to make this quick because i was supposed to go to Chris's 30th birthday party at 7:00. We gave up and I went to the party with my bowl of now frozen halibut -- people thought I brought some ice cream :) Later I put the fish outside in case the bird can find it.

[1/8(Tu) a crazy dream]

The top of my left leg was hurting, so I consulted a physical therapist, who said I should get a full body CAT scan. I really didn't think i needed it, but thought it might be a good opportunity to check my entire body. We went to a large room where many operations were taking place almost in public, and the doctor told me he should remove the crown on one of my teeth before doing the CAT scan. I didn't want to remove it because it took my dentist several tries to fit it just right so that i could floss fine. Anyways, i had to remove it. Then the doctor said he should also remove my skull. So it was removed and I just held my skull in my hand, but my head with only the skin was not holding up very well and the saliva was accumulating in my mouth but it was hard to keep it contained without a jaw. So I temporarily put my skull back in my head as we walked over to the CAT scan facility. I almost never use the word bizarre, but that's what this dream was...

This morning, Kiwon was taking photos of us working in the lab. I've encouraged Kiwon to try skiing and he decided to check out the skis after lunch. Cynthia made a "flexagon" with data from our BICEP telescope, calling it "flexabicep. Evan, Kiwon, and I agreed that she's so much cooler than any of us. Here I'm trying to put it together during lunch =>

7PM I went to the gym for volleyball, but the it was dirty and messy, so Carolyn, Kiwon, and I cleaned it, and Dave joined for 2-on-2, which was challenging and very fun.

I noticed that the weekly report that I sent out had gone missing again and it was not delivered :( I've learned from the last time and kept a copy, so I resent it, but still not going through. Meanwhile, I prepared a summary of recent data analysis results for tomorrow's teleconference. When the satellite became available around 11pm, I again sent the report, this time directly on the internet.

[1/9(We) don't remember much what happened this day...]

7AM The internet was down, so we had to call in to the teleconference through the Iridium system, which has a poorer quality especially on a speaker phone. We had to try to talk in a continuous monotone voice to stay connected, and the people over the phone said I sounded like Stephen Hawking.

At the lab, we cut up foam for thermal insulation of some calibration device to use outside. The dust from the foam was very sticky to clothes and Kiwon and i was nervous about the possible bad effects of inhaling it... I better look up its material safety information sheet!

6PM I had to finish something off at the lab and skied in a hurry to barely make the yoga class. I didn't want to be late, so instead of changing i did yoga in my carhartt bibs and long sleeves. I hoped the instructor Michele wouldn't be offended by that. Fortunately, today's work out was not too rigorous so I didn't get too hot.

[1/10(Th) soccer]

You may notice that some of the photos are of a different quality than ones I take. Kiwon is into photography, and most of the DSC photos are his. Thanks Kiwon!

6:30PM Kiwon, who loves soccer, encouraged me to play, so I skied back from the lab and joined them, though half an hour late. I planned to play just for a half hour before dinner. I hadn't played because i've never been too good at soccer, and i wasn't sure how much fun it'll be to play indoors in a relatively small gym -- i was afraid someone could kick a ball into my face and break my glasses or something. I was surprised to see ~15 people playing, many of them I didn't even know. They welcomed me in and I joined the light-colored shirt team with no idea of what to expect. Turned out to be very fun, especially since they encouraged everyone to keep the ball low. Some people were clearly really into the game and were very good, but i also played better than expected. There were a few girls and one of them got knocked down on the floor a few times by the more aggressive (but nice) male players. Later at dinner Michele asked me if there were any girls playing; i could imagine especially girls would be intimidated to play such a contact sport.

8PM There was an information presentation about the Traverse expdition that just arrived a few days ago. It was pretty interesting, talking about how they took the same route as last year's and how they filled crevasses and packed the snow for future traverses.

[1/11(Fr) South Pole Telescope "Ladies Night"]

During this past week, Joaquin, a graduate student from University of Chicago in the 10-meter South Pole Telescope project, kept talking about this openhouse/party they called the "SPT Ladies Night". Joaquin is a funny guy; I've learned to not believe in most things he says. So I didn't believe he was really planning this party. But they made a poster for it and apparently only posted them in women's bathroom... I saw it for the first time today when cleaning the bathrooms. They also printed personal invitations and handed them out mostly to girls, but they also gave me one. I thought it was discriminating, but actually anyone was invited to come. They were even arranging a shuttle service to transport people to the lab and back. The 10-meter SPT people seemed very excited about it.

4PM I left the lab for my bathroom cleaning shift and Kiwon ran out to take shots of me skiing out. The white thing is the mirror of the 10-meter telescope, where tonight's party will be at.

I'm skiing back to the station about 1km away.

After the bathroom cleaning, I had a feeling I was forgetting some activity, but couldn't think of what it was. Later I realized that Webster's knot class was at 6pm tonight :(

8PM After dinner, skied to the 10-meter telescope for their party.

On the way out, i saw a bulldozer shoveling down a big (a few meter high) step of snow that has accumulated in front of the entire length of the station over the years -- must be for tomorrow's Station Dedication event.

I also crossed the shuttle driven by Joaquin and Brad on the passenger seat, heading to the station to pick up the party attendants. A while later, they brought back several people, along with kegs (for water), many bottles of wine, and plates of cheese, crackers, and chocolate.

This is the Site Manager Katie and a good carpenter friend Kevin. Katie was nice enough to drive the shuttle for us the rest of the night.

Underneath the big telescope, there were proper scientific tours. I liked Meg's attire with the big blue snow boots :)

We took a group photo of all the "ladies" and the cosmologists. I was counted as a cosmologist for that night (since all the cosmology projects are pretty much the same to most people on the station), even though the carhartt bibs and the ski boots were not as spiffy as what the others were wearing. From left: the winter-over Dana, fellow graduate student Martin, software guy Erik, postdoc in my lab Brad, and me. From left: fuelie leader Cathy, trauma leader Ryan's girlfriend Meg, soccer/dishwasher Liz, atmospheric Teresa, funky hair Eustacia, IT Carla, IT Cate, dining attendant Colleen, yoga Michele, granola Laura (w/ 2 pointy hair), pilates Hilary, IT Jeri, Lisa, Mandi who got pretty drunk and funny, floor mopper Tracy, physician assistant Leslie (she says she's a grandma but is very energetic:), and teacher Elke. (I list because most of them show up in my journal at some point.)

I invited Kiwon but he hadn't shown up, so I called him and caught him doing crossword puzzle and about to go to bed. He came "to take pictures", he said. It was a good chance to introduce him to everyone.

Kevin and Michele.

The main party organizer Joaquin, and Kevin again.

One of the pitches for the party was "slow dance with a cosmologist", so i jokingly slow danced with Brad, but i was afraid he would try to play homo chiken on me :)

Katie, shortly before we were ging to head out (that's why i have gloves on...).

Carla wanted the promised breakdancing lesson from not-even-close-to-a-breakdancer me, so i showed her some of the basics from memory: 6 steps, 3 steps, and a few other things. Here, Michele joined us, too.

And so did Kiwon, trying breakdancing while a slow dance music was playing... It was a little hard with the slippery ski boots. Carla was really into it, so we decided to have another session some day.

It turned out to be the funnest party all season. I guess the cosmologists know how to party...

At one point, I dropped my camera and didn't think it was a big deal, but the subsequent pictures came out very out of focus and the lense was not moving in and out properly :( It then hit me that I might have lost my camera for the rest of the season, which would be very unfortunate. I should have taken a better care of the camera! Fortunately, after turning it on and off several times, it was able to focus again.

[1/12(Sa) Station Dedication]