It's Always Been My Dream

I've recently had another Sydney visitor come through: Elham! Elham lives with Yael & Andy in my old house in Sydney, so every time I go back to Sydney, I stay with her. Now I get to return the favour and have her stay with me.

Elham was supposed to come to the US for a conference. Unfortunately, she was awarded her visa the day after the conference started, and so missed it. She asked the embassy if she could just go anyways, though, as a tourist. As an Iranian, I guess it's difficult to get a visa to the US. They told her she could try, it was legal with the visa she had, but she risked getting turned away at the border if the US border services guard was having a bad day.

Since it's a big deal to get a US visa for her, she decided to give it a shot anyways. When she landed in LA, the border guard asked what her purpose of travel to the US was. She explained about missing her conference, but then went on to say: "But I came anyways. It's always been my dream to travel to America!" Boom, passport stamped! Have a great time in America!

We had a lovely time in the Bay Area together - hiking at Point Reyes, Yosemite, checked out Pier 39, she did Alcatraz and the double-decker bus tour of the city. Then she flew out to NYC just in time for Hurricane Sandy. She had a couple days of loveliness in NY and fell in love with the City, then was holed up in her hostel for a few days, and got to experience all the craziness that ensued with the storm (she was in Queens too...). Yesterday she successfully flew on to Washington D.C., where she can immerse herself in the American election insanity for a few days. Holy crazy trip batman! She's getting all the essence that is America distilled into about 3 weeks.

An Almost Perfect Game

For Alex, as you can see. Man, I had such a good starting position! This is ridiculous.

Best Idea Ever

At my cousin Jenn's wedding. Dance dance dance dance dance!

Well Traveled Art

Finally! Mary, I can post a photo of the lovely painting you gave me, now hanging up on the wall of my room here in California:

So why do I say finally? Well, in addition to this being a lovely forest painting, in now has a bit of a story behind it....

So Mary left this painting for me in Edmonton, when she had to make a move from there to Winnipeg. Phil hung on to the painting for me, then brought it over to Sue & Brock's place when we had dinner together there one night. I wrapped it up in plastic, and took it with me on the plane back to California the next day.

I got on my first flight, the Edmonton-Vancouver leg of the journey, and placed the painting at the front of the plane, where you keep suits and guitars and things, for safe keeping. When I got off the second leg of the flight in San Francisco, I felt "hmmmm, I should be carrying something else.... OH NO!!!!" The painting was on the plane in Vancouver still!

Turns out there's no phone # to call to report lost items with Air Canada, there's just this web form. So I filled it out, and thought that I'd never hear anything about the painting ever again, and I'd never be able to speak of this to Mary. Eternal shame! This was the first week in June.

BUT THEN! I got a call from an Air Canada representative in Montreal at the end of July, and he informed me that they'd found the painting, it was safe in Montreal, and they'd send it on a flight out to San Fran for me! Hooray! And then a week later, the painting arrived. I was busy hosting Aussies and then going camping, so I said I'd pick it up the day I arrived back from Cascades. After some misunderstandings on that day and another trip out to SFO, I am now the proud owner of a well-traveled Hocaliuk Original.

Thanks Mary!

Edmonton bathroom graffiti

Phil also had a graffiti post on his blog recently. Edmonton has some high quality graffiti man.

Wedding venues

Part of my trip back to Ontario in June was to check out wedding venues with Sue, and they only thing important enough to take a photo of on my phone was the geese at Waterloo Park. Where the photos may be done, so there was a reason!

"Mini"

I made a couple trips back to Canada back in June, as I thought I had a job and could afford it, and also didn't know what I was doing with my life. Gah. Anyways, I had an awesome visit with Rob and Tara when I was there.

Start of the story: Sue and I both went home for Lucy's grad, and I stayed for about a week. When my friend Johnson heard I was around, he said "oh! I'm getting married in Toronto on Monday! would you like to come?" So I did! It was most excellent. And then I crashed with Rob and Tara that night.

We had a great catch-up. I got to meet the newest addition to the Markides-Deighan family, little Katie. We all went out for dinner, then had margaritas and watched Win Win on a Monday night. Great start to the week. Tara and I took Maggie and Katie to the park the next day and had a lovely time before I had to catch the bus back to Waterloo.

Rob & Tara also have a couple of dachshounds, one of which is name Finnigan, or "Mini" as Maggie calls him. Maggie really really loves Mini. I had to stop her from poking him in the eye once. Here is a pic of her lavishing her affection on poor Mini:

Poor Mini!

Trophies

Super old, but this is Rishi's birthday present from Matthew, in all its glory back at our old house:

Towel Art!

If you ever open a B&B or hotel, this is the proper way to arrange the bath towels, just so's you know:

Visitors!

My former students Kalai & Leroy were out here for a visit. This is us, on the bike car of the last CalTrain home after a night in the City. Good times.

Hidden secret places

My friend Mary organized a day of hiking and board games on Labour Day Monday, and it was a low key fun way to spend a day. We went hiking in the Los Trancos Open Space Preserve, which follows a section of the San Andreas fault. We climbed some huge old oak trees, and found a secret Buddha temple thing in a cleft in some rocks that we climbed up:

Hurray for exploring!

Leroy bought Rishi and I the "Game of Thrones" board game as a thank-you to us for letting him crash on our couch for over 3 weeks when he moved out here. We played it at the pub, along with Settlers, Scrabble, and Ticket to Ride. A great day.

Back to default work

Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been an interesting time out here in California. Regular roller coaster of stuff with job hunting, house hunting, journal paper publishing, and the like. So for starts, this is what I'm doing while waiting to start my next engineering job: babysitting! I'm actually really excited about this. Myca is the 10 week old daughter of some post-doc friends of mine who'd like to get back in the lab. And as I'm unemployed for 2 more weeks, I'm helping to make that happen.

Here's Myca!

What I do when I have nothing else to do

Hey all,

Once again, it's been a while. I'm back from Australia, and am just going to chuck up a bunch of photos of what I've been up to a la Phil's Life in Pictures:

Mary's Royal Birthday Bash:

Yes, that was Mary as Queen Elizabeth enjoying some crisps after winning a Nobel Prize from the King & Queen of Sweden.

What else? I shaved my head for charity in celebration of finishing the ol' PhD!

I then ran in Bay2Breakers, and then checked out a solar eclipse:

This past week I've knitted some slippers, read some books, done some running, and that's about it. No job yet. Still at risk of losing our house due to increasing rent. Hung out for a couple hours in the hammock this afternoon, reading "Word Nerd" and soaking up the Cali sun.

Tomorrow I'm off to Edmonton for a week to hang out with the peeps up there. Stay posted for more then!

PV Wedding

My friends Chris & Shahla had their wedding while I was back. I wasn't part of the wedding party, but I did get to play a role in it: Elham and I were given the responsibility of setting up the Sofreh Aghd. Here we are after setting up the Sofre Aghd:

The wedding ceremony took place at Balmoral Beach, and it was GORGEOUS! It was a bit worrisome earlier in the week, when it rained ridiculously heavily for over 2 days straight (stat: some regions of Sydney got their entire monthly rainfall in 17 min). But by Thursday afternoon the clouds parted, the sun came out, and we had a wonderful day for a wedding.

Academic Excitement

So many exciting academic-y things happened on this trip. A bunch of my undergrads graduated. This is me & Minion #2:

Also, Pako, Yong, Binesh, Jianliang, and Stanley all got their PhDs officially! Can't wait until I also get a funny hat:

And Yael also submitter her PhD! Here it is, fresh off the press:

And being submitted!!! Sooooo good!

To Do...

This was my To Do list when I arrived in Australia...

And this was it 4 weeks later! And now, really. Life is good.

 

 

Submitted!

I officially gave birth to my 200+ page baby yesterday! Because not all of you will have access to the UNSW library, I thought I'd post the acknowledgements here. Thanks for all your support over the past 6 years!

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Stuart Wenham, for all the help and support he has provided me with during my time here at UNSW, and for always approaching my work with insight and optimism. With my background in mechanical engineering, he took a chance on me, and through his support he helped me realize my goal of obtaining a PhD while working towards making this world a bit greener. Thanks also to Suntech Power Co. for financial assistance in the form of a scholarship during the early years of my PhD.

I would also like to thank my co-supervisors, Dr. Anita Ho-Baillie and Dr. Alison Lennon. You are both truly great researchers, and helped me to become better at research myself. You always asked the hard questions, gave me ideas for where to find solutions, and inspired me to work harder.

To Budi Tjahjono, Roland Utama, Kate Fisher, and Anahita Karpour, for training me on all the laboratory processes. To Nino Borojevic and Nicole Kuepper, my fellow inkjet buddies, and Stanley Wang, Phill Hamer, Bernhard Vogl, Shahla Javid, and all the others in G12C. To Kian Fong Chin, Nick Shaw, Bernhard Vogl, Tom Puzzer, and Mark Griffin for your help in tackling all the equipment maintenance issues and holding our labs together. To Bernhard in particular for all his help with the Beast that is Varian 2.

To all my students, particularly John Durrant, Kalai Valliappan, James Howard, Doris Lu, Fabian Jentschke, Andrew Sung and Alex Han, THANK YOU for all your help in the labs! The many hours processing, peering through microscopes, measuring test structures, and commissioning lab equipment - truly, I could not have done all this work without you. Thanks also to Yu Yao, Jason Cui, Doris Lu, Stanley Xu, Alex Han and John Durrant for all your help with processing my final cells, particularly while I was working in California.

A big thank-you to Danny Chen and Dr. Alistair Sproul for knowing all the enrollment loopholes and helping me to jump through them. Thank you to Julie Kwan and Jill Lewis for all the administrative assistance needed to get things done in the Centre, and Richard for his help down in the EE machine shop.

Thank you to Dr. Richard Corkish, for giving me the opportunity to be a Lecturer, and all the other SPREE teaching staff for your wisdom and help over my year as an Academic. It was an incredibly challenging and rewarding experience. I felt like I gave a PhD defense every week, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

To my colleagues at REC Technology US Inc., and in particular Dr. Paul Basore, Kirsten Cabanas-Holmen, and Dr. Scott McHugo. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and all the time off work, while I was employed at REC and continuing to write up my PhD.

To all my amazing editors - Oliver Kunz, Kate Fisher, Yael Augarten, Anna Cain, Mary Cavanaugh, Mai Le and Hanne-Marthe. You saw this PhD when it was incredibly rough and embarrassing. Thanks for all the constructive criticism, and for never being judgemental.

To the City2Surfers, triathletes, paintballers, karaoke-ers, travel buddies, lunch buddies, SCUBA divers, SunSwift members - thanks for making UNSW so much fun!

To the ladies of the UNSW soccer team - for keeping me fit and sane over the past six years, and for giving me the chance to play the best soccer of my life. Thank you for my unforgettable UniGames and Superleague experiences, getting me hooked on Vegemite, and for your friendship.

A big thank you to my sister Susan for being the reason I came to Australia in the first place. Best idea ever.

Thank you to my Australian family - Yael, Craig, Andy and Sarah. For all the good times at Mooramie house. For your enthusiastic response to any and all crazy ideas - everything from keeping chickens in the backyard to all-night Lord of the Rings marathons, indulging my board game needs, puzzles and pianos and knitting and Pride and Prejudice, days at the beach and in the mountains, for being there for me when I was down about my PhD. And for always giving me somewhere to come home to on my visits back to Australia.

And last but not least, to all my family and friends back in Canada. Your patience and support has meant everything to me.

8-bit Home

I don't have any good pranks for you this year, but here's one from Google:

LA Trip #2: Road Trip to Mexico!

So after I was laid off, I had to leave the USofA within 10 days of losing my job. Originally I was going to fly up to Vancouver for a weekend or something, but then Rishi said "Let's do a road trip!" and I said "Sure!". So Plan B was road trip up to Canada on the President's Day long weekend. It's a 16 hour trip one way, on the fast highway, and would have required a stop-over at Mr. Dilts' house in Portland with an approximate arrival time of 3 a.m. Saturday morning (luckily Andrew was going to be there that weekend, so not totally crazy). But then one of Rishi's friends pointed out we could just go to Mexico if all I had to do was leave the country and re-enter. And so Plan C was born: Road Trip to Mexico!

Our friend Mary came along as well, so 'twas a grand time. Rishi & Mary drove, since I can't drive stick. We stopped in Pasadena on the way south, to have lunch with Mary's friend Lawrence, who took us to an amazing Vietnamese restaurant. Next stop: Mexico!

We drove down, parked on the US side of the border, then walked across into Tijuana. First thing to note: no one checks your passport going into Mexico. Note to all you crime fiction writers out there. Once in Mexico, we bought some tequila, as you do, then wandered around looking for a likely bar to have a drink in. There were a lot of people trying to drag tourists into various sorts of establishments, which we resisted just because they seemed to pushy, but finally decided to go into one when the guy gave us his card and his name was Robert de Niro. So yes, we had drinks with Robert de Niro in Tijuana.

Walking back across the border to the US meant we also got to skip this insanity:



We spent the night at a hostel just outside San Diego, on the beach. We ate heaps of Mexican food, Rishi & I stayed out to watch some local punk bands at one of the bars, and we did some hang outs at the beach. Next stop was Santa Monica. There was beach, Korean food, karaoke, more karaoke, and some random tar pits in the middle of the city where the bones of things like mammoths and dire wolves bubble up to the surface from time to time, and more beaches and sunsets. We also saw a hipster trap. We ate at the restaurant across the street, where I had a beer called "The Philosophers", then we went across to the hipster trap and had brown bread ice cream for dessert.

I didn't get to go back to the Star Trek park :( BUT I learned that Minion #2 will be coming to visit me next December, so maybe I'll get a chance to do that then, when being a tourist again.

LA Trip #1

So just before I was laid off, Adeline came to visit me out here in California. Her #1 thing that she wanted to do was go to Disneyland, and since I'm an awesome friend and tour guide extrodinaire, we did. Here is the highlight of Adeline's trip to California:



And since we were in LA, and I was driving, I got to pull driver's privilege on the last day and unilaterally take us on a side-trip to Vasquez Rocks. Yes, this is where Captain Kirk battled the Gorn, and where the evil Bill & Ted robots from the future killed Bill & Ted in "Bogus Journey". Fantastic!



We didn't really have time to hike around unfortunately, but next time!

News!

Hola amigos!

News of the week: I was laid off on Wednesday. So was my boss, Scott. I got a nice severance package, so I'm going to coast for a couple of months, finish writing my thesis, and figure out what I want to do with my life. Next weekend we're doing a road trip to Canada, because I think I need to leave ASAP and come back in on a visitor's visa. 'Cause, you know, all my stuff is here. And I've paid rent for the month. And it's warm and sunny.

So that is the news. I shall keep you posted on future developments, and also will put up some updates on what I've been doing for the past few weeks. Turns out a lot. For example, I went to Australia! And was co-authored on another journal paper! And went to Disneyland! But more later. Just wanted to whet your appetites.

Day 26 - A book you honestly read in one sitting
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn