Public holidays

Canberra is bordered by some beautiful mountains called the Brindabillas, running 20 km's in the pouring rain is bound to make a group a bit giddy, and the original Starry Night is amazingly rich and textured. In other words, it was a three day weekend in the ACT (hoorah for Canberra Day), and I split the time off between bushwalking in Tidbinbilla Nature Preserve, getting caught on what felt like a pretty epic IB training run, and waiting out the 50 minute queue to get into the Masterpieces from Paris exhibit at the National Gallery of Australia (...and doing course work, too, of course).

The exhibit was worth the wait. There were six rooms of Post Impressionist paintings ordinarily in the Musée d’Orsay. I thought some of the most interesting aspects were how the order of pieces really showed transitions between styles and choices of subjects through the different phases of Post Impressionism and how pointillist pieces change appearance with distance. It's practically what computers and printers do today, just with more creativity and I'm sure many more hours of labor! As mentioned above, though, despite the huge range of artists and styles, the Van Gogh wall really stole the show. Man, that guy knew how to do blue.

Transitioning back into the school week has been pretty fast-paced; lectures are charging ahead pretty quickly, and I had a first substansive meeting with my research advisor today. It was pretty enjoyable. My head is still swimming a bit with substrate/MOCVD quantum dot growth and things like semiconductor strain, but I don't need to figure those out any time soon; today was about learning to set up and run the Atomic Force Macroscopy machine without damaging the tiny tip and then differentiate between the funny dots that mean you damaged your tip and are getting fake results and the funny dots that are actual quantum dots. Next week: photoluminesence.

Mountain biking report: Mt. Majura is pretty fun. I will not be doing any full gap jumps, but the gullies keep you on your toes (...or pedals? Other parts if they don't go too well.) It's mostly pine forest that reminds me of Tahoe, except with kangaroos.