Snowboarding!

Friday 1st February

The Burton-Conner Ski Trip at Sunday River ski resort in Maine. The snow was very deep and powdery which for us novice snowboarders meant edging was harder, but falling was easier.
10am Introduced to our snowboards. Fall over trying to stand still.
2pm I brave the chairlift and do my first of many green runs.
4pm I'm very tired, very sore, and addicted to snowboarding.

A great day.

Successful (but boring) Snowboarding 3.9Mb
Amusing Snowboarding 1.7Mb
More ski-trip photos

Recovery

Saturday 2nd February

Did very little today apart from sleep, ache, print some photos, and go to Bertucci's Brick Oven Pizzeria with Becky, Dan, Doig, Gilli and Tim.

Aaaargh!

Sunday 3rd February

I have to have a lab written in the next couple of days. I spent a long time today improving the equipment and control, and trying to work out how best to do the experiment. Now I have to make up the instructions... Unfortunately, at around 10pm the hot water level started to drop so the machine shut off. Just before leaving I found a leak from the hot water in the tubes into the cold water in the jacket. This is bad news.

Ahhhhh...

Monday 4th February

The British section of the "Foods of the World" special imports aisle at the local supermarket has noticeably grown since us CMI exchange students moved into town. When else have you seen Llyle's Black Treacle, PG Tips teabags, Branston Pickle, Heinz baked beans, Bird's custard, and Mars Bars all on the same shelf in a supermarket?

p.s. I fixed the leak, bought my groceries, sold a yearbook, registered for classes, had a meeting about water filters, baked an apple crumble, and took it to a pot luck dinner at Marjory and Mina's.

First Day of Classes

Tuesday 5th February

This is the new sports centre and swimming pool thing they're building in between the old one and the student centre. The walls (which they are replacing some panels of in the photo) are translucent, almost like windows, so the whole building glows at night. Spooky! (Shame I won't be around to use the huge great swimming pool when it finally opens though.)

Nuclear meltdown

Wednesday 6th February

Buried in the centre of MIT campus, en-route to the nearest shop and just over the river from Boston, is the MIT Nuclear Reactor. It has been staffed with a 24 hour armed guard since shortly after 11th September, but that doesn't stop the worryingly frequent habit of engulfing the entire street with massive clouds of steam.

MITSO

Thursday 7th February

Tuesday and Thursday evenings are largely devoted to MIT Symphony Orchestra rehearsals. Today saw the first Violin Section Meal of the year, strangely coinciding with one of Cambridge's CUMS 2nd Violin Formal Halls. I'm sure the Cambridge MIT Institute will be pleased to know it was in fact this Cambridge tradition that inspired the MITSO Violin's meal out at Bertucci's. We still have a long way to go though: only 5 of us turned up!

Need a title?

Friday the 8th and Saturday 9th of February

Well, I spent over 22 hours doing my UROP. UROP stands for Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programme. Actually, it's probably Program, as it's an American invention. If graduate research involves quite such intense last minute writing of instructions, assignments, web-sites, and typing, as preparing this undergraduate lab has, then I'm not sure I really want to do a PhD. Not for more than 2 days at a time, anyway. And not at the weekend, when you should be out. Still, you have to do it once to know better next time. You've had enough photos of the heat exchanger, so here are MIT's famous columns.

Echoeoeoeoeooh

Sunday 10th February

I was listening to my The Best of the Rat Pack minidisc (thanks Martin for the X-mas prezzies) as I was walking back through the infinite corridor at three this morning, and couldn't help but sing along to good old Frank. It feels strange to have such a huge and normally busy building entirely to yourself. When I got to the newly re-domed, renovated, cleaned and polished lobby 7 (just inside the doors of the picture above) I was suddenly surprised by the echo. It was so nice I just had to stand in the centre and belt out an arpeggio or two. I wonder how many people have had (and taken) the chance to enjoy this particular acoustic.

Building 66

Monday 11th February

This is building 66 (the Chemical Engineering building) viewed from the pointy end. It is in the shape of a 30°,60°,90° triangle. All very clever architecture I'm sure, but the internal layout is slightly confusing, and there are no stairs from the 2nd to the 3rd floor. At all. You have to take the elevator, or go across to building 56, up an unlabelled fire escape, and back. This is utterly crazy. Although I guess because Americans never take the stairs anyway it doesn't normally matter.

Shrove Tuesday

Tuesday 12th February

Noone over here seems to have even heard of pancake day. But then, they don't know what pancakes are either. When you tell them you're going to cook pancakes, they imagine you're going to make them breakfast - like those things at McDonalds. Anyway, I did my bit for cultural exchange, and taught a few locals how (and why) to eat pancakes.

Tired

Wednesday 13th February

Today I had a huge cup of hot chocolate in the cafe up by Harvard (near the sports shop). We had gone to get ice-hockey sticks but it was so cold we needed to sit in a cafe for ages before we could dream of getting the bus back to campus. I hope I wake up in time for my PE lesson tomorrow - I'm rather tired, thanks to the 10.26 I-Lab and problem sets (and late night pancake party studybreaks!)

Busy Day

Friday 15th February

After lectures finished I jogged across to Boston to collect my free ticket to the BSO Concert. Steven Isserlis, the soloist in the Cello concerto, was amazing. Then I came back to campus to collect my free laptop. Yes, you read it correctly. As compensation for having to sit through boring A-level physics lectures once again, they have given everyone on the course a laptop, worth well over $2k, to play with. I'm dying to find out how they will use DVD playing game consoles with wireless internet access as educational tools!
In the evening I went with a bunch of undergrads to Mark's Waffle Party, which was nice (so were the waffles).

I really am not doing very well with these photos, am I?

Sleepy Day

Saturday 16th February

Slept all morning (after turning the heat exchanger on at 7:30am), played with my laptop, then went to a very nice concert of Baroque German music (mainly Telemann and Bach) featuring (among others) Mr Green, at the Friends' Meeting House up near Harvard.

Rainy Day

Sunday 17th February

So I admit: Sometimes it rains in Boston. Not often though - I could probably count the number of rainy days since I've been here on my fingers. To do the same back home in Kendal you'd have to use binary!

Sunny Day

Monday 18th February

Well it doesn't stay wet for long! Today was Presidents' Day, which is a good excuse for a three day weekend. Apparently the administration here at MIT looks at the suicide blackspots in the academic calendar and gives us extra holidays. I must say, the extra 24 hours sleep did me some good.

Coffee House

Tuesday 19th February

You know all those those special places on campus that you used to go to get away from the distractions of your computer? Well the great thing about laptops with wireless ethernet is that you can now check your emails while you're there! (D'oh!)

13.8 Seconds!

Wednesday 20th February

Today, in their last home game of the season, the MIT Engineers beat the Bates College Bobcats three goals to two in the last 14 seconds of the game, putting them through to the semi-finals of the NorthEast Collegiate Hockey Association thingy. It was the first ice-hockey game I've seen, and it was very exciting! ("Best game ever!" I've been told).

Final minute of the game 11.4Mb

Lobby 10

Thursday 21st February

Lobby 10 is the name given to the lobby of building 10. It is directly under the big dome, and faces out onto the big grassy courtyard and then the river. Sitting half way along the length of the infinite corridor, it has a lot of traffic, especially between classes. All the buildings to the west of here have odd numbers (or a W prefix) and all the buildings to the east have even numbers (or an E prefix). It is thus totally obvious you have to walk through buildings 56, 8, 4, 10, 3, 7, then 5, to get from 66-110 where you have 10.302, to your 2.001 class in 1-307.

Lame Photo

Friday 22nd February

Maybe I'm taking this whole photo a day thing too seriously, but I reckon I need a better digital camera. This black smudge is where I spent this afternoon in the MIT Music Library. It's one of the nicest spots on campus. Most people here use libraries to sleep in (they all have big couches) but this one has CD players too!
Went to a weird concert this evening of music by Ligeti and Kurtag (Hungary's most famous living composers). Alarm Will Sound played it very well, whatever it was... [Ligeti is the bloke who in 1963 put 100 differently set metronomes on a stage and called it Poème Symphonique.]

MIT Henge

Saturday 23rd February

At certain times of day on certain days twice a year, the path of the sun through the sky crosses the axis of the infinite corridor, and shines all the way to the far end. The last such occurrence was over 3 weeks ago, but even today the effect of the sun reaching only a short way down the corridor is quite impressive. However, this is MIT not Amesbury, so nothing is left to magic when it can be calculated: Assuming Bosworth built it right, and the corridor has an Azimuth of 245.47391075 degrees true, 1 month before my 100th birthday MIThenge will occur at 4:49:04pm.

Chez moi

Sunday 24th February

This is Burton Conner. I live on the 5th floor (UK style numbering) in the block level with the pedestrians. You can practice your 3D trigonometry by comparing with the first daily photo to locate the window by my desk. Or you could go to bed early instead. Something that doesn't happen often enough.

Thermodynamics

Monday 25th February

You know what? Hess's Law hasn't changed much since Mr Drake taught it in Lower-VIth. (Junior Year High School for any Americans stumbling across this page). The bored person in the stripy sweater is Steven.

Faryal perfecting her flying volley

----- Email Message -----
Subject: CMI Kickarounds
Sent: Tuesday, 26th February 26, 2002 9:57 AM
From: Ben Lishman
To: CMI Exchange

A few of us have become aware that Americans don't appear to know what football is. In a bid to set this right, we thought it would be good to get together and play some "soccer". . . .

... and so the revolution began.

----- Email Message -----
Subject: Re: CMI Kickarounds
From: Bill Cunliffe
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 1:35 AM
You guys must have made an impact today - I heard some grads talking about people playing 'soccer' during lunch.

Weather??

Wednesday 27th February

So where did all the sunbathers go? [see yesterday's photo]

Today I helped with the Alumni Association Telephone-a-thon to raise money for the MITSO tour. In three hours, I spoke to 3 alums, one wife, and about a million answering machines, raising a guaranteed total of $0. And yes, I deserve the free T-shirt thank you!

My Birthday :-)

Thursday 28th February

A good day. Even the exam wasn't too bad (I hope). A total of 6 MITSO-Violinists made it to the pre-rehearsal birthday dinner [see 7th Feb] , this time at Royal Eastern, the Chinese opposite Bertucci's. I got a nice load of books for my birthday, so studying has just been pushed even further down the list...
(I also got my first Euro banknote - very cool!)