zhong qiu

there are now five of us in the lab most days: RA #1 and dr. fnir and i, and brice and a more senior person who is very nice but does't seem to figure in our research in any way. i've actually yet to sort out exactly what his role in the team is, but 2 months in it seems a rather odd question to ask. the boss is still absent most days, which gives us lots of time to toss ideas around and figure out how we can have a research program instead of a bunch of random studies, and bitch about engineers.

today, however, was tea and mooncakes upstairs with strange people from other floors who do things with turbines, which was actually a nice pause, because real work is going to start pretty soon. i'm hoping to get study approval by next week, following which it will be time to step hard on the throttle and get pilot data collected post haste. also, the optical equipment has come in, which means that one room in our lab actually looks like it can be used for science, and i want to get my finger in that pie and see if i can't learn the basics of how to run something using infra-red. i love the interval right before data collection. it's so full of promise and devoid of problems, and it totally doesn't matter that once the data start coming in they'll look horrible and i'll spend sleepless nights wishing i'd never seen them.

meanwhile, we've been spending a bunch of time trying to disabuse RA #1 of the notion that grad school is "fun", a service which was happily provided to me by seniors all over the place when i was considering applying. i strongly believe this is something that has to be paid forward -- no one should start a phd with the idea that anything other than tears and alcoholism are involved. going in with that notion is half the battle won.