Astronomy in Belgium

2.5 years of study with relatively little to say. Covid dominated the first year or so, I made some good friends, but fewer than I would have guessed. I think the Belgian culture is one of, if not the most traditional cultures I have ever encountered. Certainly so among the highly-developed, rich, modern industrial countries I have visited. The Belgian climate is also the coldest, wettest, and least enjoyable of my tastes. 

There are lines of thought I would like to dig deeper into this year. For example, how are cultures that have slow, gradual evolutions different from those that arise from rapid mixing (of 2+ predecessor cultures); how does the size of regions where one's native language (and dialect/accent) are spoken influence one's perception of (mobility in) the world, and does it make a difference if a popular language (i.e. English) is taught universally to the youth of such regions; and what makes a time the default time for later times to idealize, that is, why does a culture (Belgian) continue to believe that a time (1950-60s or even 1850-60s, but slightly more environmental) was the best time, and our lifestyle and maybe values (though not technology) ought to go back to or remain as it was in those days.  

A surprising highlight was teaching DZR Jujutsu. I discovered the university had an entire room with mats primarily dedicated to martial arts, the Judozaal (pron. Yu-do-zal), and I asked if I could reserve, rent, or borrow the room for an hour or two a week at any time, hoping I would be able to practice falling alone or possibly bring one or two good friends to learn together. Marten, the athletics administrator, asked if I was able to teach classes. Faking confidence, I said, "yes, I can." He gave me 2.5 hours per week to teach, and a nominal wage to go with it! The classes become quite popular, at one point 21 or 22 people on the mat, and even a small weekend class (we even started practicing the seifukujutsu portion of the system). The nearby Sensei Eric Atienza was kind enough to make two visits in 2022 and share his knowledge too. 

The future is very unknown, but promising. I'll probably get into a PhD program somewhere, and start later this year. Japan was a large contender until recently, so now it seems like Australia, Portugal, or Spain are the best in the running. Many dreams for the time between now and starting something later, big trips to Africa or South America, perhaps. 😀 

A rare pretty day in at a park outside of Leuven:

Astronomy, the end of the beginning

 After much thought, largely done in the Australian outback; and much more paperwork, largely done without a computer in a sweltering Taipei summer, I have come to Leuven, Belgium to study astronomy. I will be skipping many parts of the story to get here, but I like the idea of picking this blog back up with what I'm doing now. So, I landed in Brussel's International Airport three weeks ago, and got on a bus out to Leuven. I was tired, and had 100 eur from the ATM by the arrivals gate. The bus had a plastic screen blocking the driver's area from the passengers, Belgium had been hit hard last spring by Covid-19. There was no cash option on the machine by the door, and the bus driver didn't speak English. I was hoping some ticket attendant was going to step on before departing the airport, but the door closed and I already felt like a lowly bus-fare thief. I got out to the residence at 4:
00pm, which was perfect for a Friday afternoon, because I would not have been able to get my key had I come after 5:00pm. A sleepy jetlagged weekend ensued with an odd venture out into a nice evening to find a bottle of water; first, to find that everything closes quite early in Belgium (or at least Leuven), and then for a much later second, the tap water here is perfectly safe to drink. It wasn't until the Monday or Tuesday after the weekend that I got internet and reconnected with the digital world--I will always remember the complete isolation I felt in the small forests near my home that weekend, no classes, no friends, no phone. Fast forward three weeks and I can say that it's this 10-years graduated chemist collaborating with just graduated physicists on tensor mathematics, quantum mechanics, and statistical thermodynamics. I have been treading water, but last week it was a little easier. Goodnight!

Futures abound

While living in Australia, and working a normal job, my mind started to wander. I have so much, time, energy, and resources, what do I want to do? And after some soul-searching and other hippie contrivances I have begun to think that I would be quite happy dedicating my efforts to reaching the stars. The big players in this game seem to be NASA, ESA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and maybe Virgin Galactic, along with several dozen universities and observatories around the world. Seeing that most of their people are top-notch physicists, I've applied to grad school and hope to polish the rust off my general science knowledge and gain some applicable astrophysics knowledge. At the end of the week, I should hear back from Lund University about admittance into their masters (which can turn into a doctorate) program. If not this year, I think more scuba diving will be in my immediate future. Wish me luck!

I will be passing into China from Vietnam shortly, and acceptance or not, will be attending another vipassana course in Hong Kong on the 10th of April. Much to think about, and my plan of action for after the course rests almost entirely on my application before the course. I should write another post (and buy plane tickets to somewhere!) between April 5th and 10th. Until then!

Restarting: Australia to Vietnam

It has been the greater part of a year since I've written here. Far too many and far too heavy things have happened to connect the last post to this one, so I will start in the middle and bring that up to today. My 1-year working-holiday visa in Australia expired on 2 March 2019, so a few weeks before that I handed in my 2+ weeks notice to The Coffee Club on Cairns' Esplanade and started saying goodbye to all the friends I had made since moving there five months earlier. The day before it expired I left the country with a very good friend of mine, Masaru, a Japanese college student who opted for a Australian working break in the middle of his studies. We came to Vietnam and traveled together for a week before him turning back to Australia and then Japan, while I carried on going north in Vietnam. Now, here in Hoi An, I enjoy the familiar habits of traveling new places and seeing amazing things. Another post is in order soon with the vast possibilities for the future to be layed out--but until then, tam biet!

Mining in the outback

I got a job as a field/geological technician at a mine site in the mid-west of Western Australia. There is a common type of job out here called FIFO ("fai-fou"), which means fly-in-fly-out where you work 12 hours a day for 9 or 14 days in the middle of nowhere and then return home for 5, 7, or 14 days of rest and recreation. This gets repeated every 2, 3, or 4 weeks. I got added on to the Core Yard's staff with one other guy (an 18 year old from Darwin) because they were very backed-up with work from the surplus of drillers. The other guy and I are on the 14/14 on/off schedule so one of us is always there (and now since training is over) but never more than one of us. It's dull monotonous work, but it pays well and it is temporary in nature--the job will end in September. Though I've heard it's quite common for other new jobs to open up so that they can keep you around if they like your work. A short post, but other than record rains in WA there isn't much for me to report.