Where I am? There I am!
I'm sorry for the delayed response, but thank you all! I've been away for quite a while on holidays, and I didn't want to go on GTP for fear of clogging my mail with notifications.
I was in Berlin for a month, visiting my old friends and re-exploring the city I consider my second home. So much fun, revisiting it every other year, watching it change as my perspective changes. Got to live in three different "kiezes" - the city is split into these - each with it's own characteristics and population.. It was great.
But even greater were the two following weeks in London. I got there to participate at the LIYSF - London International Youth Science Forum - as a member of the Israeli delegation. My stay (at Imperial College!
) was paid for by the Weizmann Institute, so I only had to pay for the plane-tickets and the extra stuff. It was, in one word,
****ingawesome. ~
260 students my age (from 12th grade to 1st uni-year, mostly) from
40 different countries... It was incredible. I got to sit around Londoners and the Irish, Welsh and Channel Islanders - but also Australians, Jamaicans, Americans, South Africans, Kuwaitis, Bahraini, Cypriots, Spaniards and Portuguese: The experience was truly mind-boggling. I have definitely met a few friends that will remain..
So many interesting lectures, too: On Fusion by the head of JET, on the LHC by one of the LHC's chefs, on Antigens and Cancer, on colours and bubbles (not kidding! an entire lecture on bubbles!), etc. We also got to see some of the world's most cutting-edge laboratories: Visits to the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, host of ISIS and Diamond (particle-accelerators; ISIS is the world's biggest producer of muons for research) as well as the Astra and Gemini Astra lasers and VULCAN - the world's most powerful laser (as powerful as the entire sun on the Sahara squeezed into one square cm). We also visited JET, currently the world's largest fusion-research centre (60% power return - it's a simulation and preparation for ITER, which will have superconductive magnets and is predicted to actually return a positive power-balance), and Imperial College's Dept. of Materials - nanofibres!
On the social side, we just had so much fun, that I can't describe it. From going through the city with the friends I made there to the late-night conversations... Nightly drinking at Hyde Park (might've not been that legal), and eventually streaking through it (we wore nothing but our name-tags!
). It was just insane.
So now, I'm back home, post-birthday. Everyone's off in the army already, I managed to catch a flu (non-pork) on the day before my birthday, too - so no big celebrations. Got a very sweet bike (my very own piece of carbon fiber!) which is too expensive to actually use on a daily basis (hmph!), a few books, and a seedbox (10MB/s torrenting!). I'm leaving home for the start of Civil Service on Sunday - gonna be a fresh start with new people and new places.. I'll have wireless access there (but no laptop - so access will depend on other's kindness), though.
