Blogs from Geneva, South-West, Switzerland, Europe - page 17

I'm writing this here in Geneva in Fabrizio's apartment, while Fabrizio is out at the conservatory coaching a string quartet, and Michel is right next to me on the grand Kawai in the middle of the flat, playing the solo part to Beethoven's third piano concerto with a recorded orchestra blasting from the stereo. That is to say, we are really living a fantastic life here, and have encountered probably the best workspace ever: fabrizio's apartment, where there are CD's lining all of the windowsills of the high, sloped ceilings, two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with scores, abundant windows that flood light onto the score-strewn piano, and a view of the fashionable part of Geneva and of the Rhone from every room ...including the bathroom! So we've taken this opportunity to catch up on some music things ... read more

I have posted here photos of my visit to LHCb. They closed the tunnel to this experiment a couple days after my visit, so I barely made it in time! LHCb is an experiment that will study the beauty (also referred to as "bottom") quark in order to explain the relative lack of antimatter in the universe. Basically, the question it is trying to answer goes like this: When know that when matter meets antimatter, particles annihilate. We also know particles are created in particle-antiparticle pairs. So then, why is the universe, to the best of our knowledge, composed mostly of matter? Why do we exist? The tour took us into a lot of specific details of the construction of LHCb. One of the more interesting things about the setup of LHCb is I could still ... read more

Wednesday was our last day of anything productive as Thursday should consist only of a museum visit and a dinner with some of the UN delegates (despite publishing on Thursday, I’m writing this on Wednesday). While there are certainly some aspects of this chunk of life that I will miss - ie the lake, Old Town, knowing for certain that I’ll have people to eat with, and even the UN cafeteria! - I can honestly say that I feel as though I’ve done everything there is to do here and it is time to move on. Geneva has treated me really well. In one particular sense, it’s made me put some serious thought into what possibilities there are along the lines of careers. Granted, I keep reminding myself that I am only 21 years old and ... read more

Lesson of the month: Do not make assumptions about your own intelligence with regards to technology... just read the friggin' manual. I had all of these lovely photos of me and my new friends all around Geneva and pretending to be UN diplomats (no shocker here: I was one of the US delegates meaning I got to be an outspoken jerk for 3 hours... and be the center of attention... mwahaha), etc. etc. and instead of properly uploading them, I simply deleted them. This is not cool. However, I did manage to salvage a handful -- these in particular are near and dear to me because they are what put me into the actual traveling spirit. On Saturday, see, we had a complete day off so a few of us took to wandering "Old Town" Geneva. ... read more

Hey There, So, eventually these posts will slow down and I will not be overwhelming anymore inboxes every two days with meticulous updates... but there have been a lot of questions as to what it is, exactly, that I am doing here in Geneva. Basically, it's like this: My school has a short-term study-abroad-like program called a "Dialogue of Civilizations" wherein a class (aka 20 some-odd students) are accompanied by a professor with the intent to use that country (or some element of it) as the classroom. Therefore, my class is IAFU938 - Globalization and Social Science as well as POLU938 - which I believe to be International Conflict Negotiation or something along those lines. Essentially, we are using the United Nations as our classroom. So, a typical schedule, these days, looks like this: 7:30am - ... read more