A taste of America

It is about time for me to write a new post. After more than two weeks in Cambridge, I finally found the time to write...
Today is the Sunday before the last Monday of May, which means it's the day before Memorial Day. Indeed tomorrow is a free day (also shops will be open and doing sales...). I must admit that I spent most of the day inside. I am not quite adapted yet to the climate here, with the 27 °C, and also, I do not have sun cream, so I stayed inside, where the ceiling fan (Emily and Jenny, you were right, it's so great, too bad that I don't have them in my new apartment) keep it a bit cooler. But this evening, I went out in Boston to go to the cinema with a nice Chinese guy I met online.
For the first time since I am here, I decided to actually take the metro to go downtown Boston instead of my usual 1 hour walk. This let me about half an hour before the set time for the cinema, and I went to the nearby park, the Boston common. After a five minute fight with my bag, that I had to repair with a paper clip, I walked through the park.
That is when I truly realised I was in the new world... I saw a bird, going around the park... looking pretty normal, but it was bird of a species I never saw... for a moment, I felt like an adventurer scientist of the 19th century, travelling through a wild country and describing the exotic wild life... also this feeling did not last very long, it remains in my head as a faint taste of adventure... after that, I discovered really what is memorial day, coming close to meadow full of American flags.
Each flag is for a fallen soldiers from MA, (the description does not specifies since when it is counted though)....even though it seems to be a quite solemn thing, apparently the main point is to be taken in picture smiling in front of the flag's field...
Moving on to the next point, I met the guy and we entered the cinema. Of course you buy your ticket with your credit card... after traveling through long corridors and different levels we reached the correct cinema. I then spend about two nice hours watching Jake Gyllenhaal playing prince of Persia... haaaa Jack...
Another interesting thing then happened: the movie was about to be finished, the last scene was still on screen that almost everyone stand up and started to rush to the exit.... that's quite different from the Swiss cinema where you wait that lights are on and try to decide if you can go out as the credits are still on...
We then decided to go for a drink... well this did not really happen.... because I did not bring my passport with me... no way to enter a bar without it to prove I am over 21... I will now try to figure out how to do a liquor ID...That's all for today, just another picture


A picture of my new house... I have the appartment on the 2nd floor(american counting, so the first "normal" :-) floor), with the big window without curtains (yet). My bedroom is where the two smaller windows on the left are.

Printing the thesis

The defence time being nigh, I am printing the 5 copies of my thesis requiered by the librairy. Given the high number of colour pages (thanks metabolomics) I decided to print it in the lab, even if it is a quite long task, but undoubtely cheaper. After spending some hours near the color printer, which takes about 1min to print a page, I started the printing of the remaining pages on the B&W printer. After ~20 min, the noise made by my wisdom being printed stopped. Going to the printer, I was amazed to discover.... a new error..."top bin full"... this might sound a bit stupid or geeky, but I was extremely pleased to see this error I never thought of... my thesis managed to give this error... for about 2 min I was very proud of myself...ok it's because it's six copies, but still...
Also the printer was slightly smelling like burning electronics, but still working fine..

Harvard !!!!

Cela fait maintenant un long moment sans que je publie un billet. Aujourd'hui est une bonne occasion. Je viens en effet de recevoir ma première lettre de Harvard, avec le saint Graal, le formulaire DS-2019, qui me permet de commencer les démarches pour obtenir mon visa pour les Etats-unis....

Je suis tellement content, que cela merite un billet, et une photo :


J'hésite à faire encadrer cette brochure... :-) notez aussi que j'ai choisi une image de fond appropriée :-)

Shame on Switzerland

Today is the most dishonourable day for Switzerland since the polls on the foreigners restrictions laws some years ago... Switzerland is now, de facto, in its very constitution, back in Middle Ages. I am now awaiting a new proposition by the UDC, the right wing party, to restore inquisition... or maybe camps to hold Muslims?
I still can't believe that we have since today a new amendment in our constitution that deny the right to build a minaret in switzerland. I can barely restraint myself to howl my shame... If I wouldn't be so attached to my city of Lausanne and my state, which is one of the only 3 swiss states that rejected this amendment, I would give back my passport and abandon my swiss nationality...

How can it be allowed to have a amendment in the constitution that is against basic human rights, against religion freedom?... some of the arguments for this amendment was that if you look some radical muslim countries, they deny Christians the right to build churches, so why should we allow minarets to be build in switzerland... most stupid argument I ever heard.. but now at least, I hope that these personns are happy, because switzerland is turning into a radical Christian country. Why not send our army in a crusade also?
And why not also now forbid the construction of any religious-related buildings that are not Christian... now that we have started... why not also force everyone in switzerland to go in churches...
I still can't believe it... Switzerland, the land of the red cross, a land supposed to be welcoming, neutral... now is country that is more and more xenophobic, racist, muslimophobe... how could I now watch our national flag without seeing the wound to the very swiss essence, this pure white cross is no longer a symbol of safety for everyone, but a new stigmata of human stupidity and egoism...
Shame on this 57 % of people that voted for this amendment... and this same people have joyfully refused the new law forbidding weapon export... so we'll still be exporting weapons to help other people kill other people...
Switzerland is not what it should be...

Star Trek Online

I am so excited by what I just discovered on the net, that I decided to post it. Every one knows my passion for Star Trek. Now that I finished watching the whole original serie, The next generation, Deep Space nine, and that I am in the second season of Voyager, I feel slowly the end coming. What will I do when I will have watched completely Voyager, and then Enterprise? I was thinking of that, listening to star trek music while extracting aldehydes.
So of course I end up on youtube to watch some scenes of the movies... and I discovered that there is a game in preparation !! Star Trek online! A MMORPG of Star trek! I guess Emily would say that this is awesome :-) http://startrekonline.com/

Unfortunatly, it isn't yet released, but I will follow this up.

ok, I should now continue to extract aldehydes, the most interresting activity for a saturday afternoon...

Ma fibre artistique

Bon ça fait un moment que je n'ai rien posté... et on me le rappelle.... donc quoi de mieux que de faire un billet maintenant? Ce n'est pas de la procrastination, non môsssieur, même si je suis sensé travailler en ce moment même.. c'est une pause syndicale..
Donc je suis sensé travailler sur .... ma thèse ? non, bien sûr... j'ai l'extrêêême honneur d'aller à la "21. Irseer Naturstofftage" organisé à ... Irsee (fameux village en Bavière) par la DECHEMA (l'éminente société allemande des chimistes)...
Ce qui veut dire:

1. que je vais assister à deux jour et demi de présentations, en allemand, sur des sujets du plus haut intérêt pour moi (comme "Stereoselektive Synthese alpha-funktionalisierter Carbonsäuren durch Multiheteroatom-Cope-Umlagerungen", ce qui veut dire à peu près " synthèse stéréoselective d'acide carboxylique avec fonctionnalisation en position alpha, par réarrangement de Cope multihétéroatomic".... qui n'a jamais rêvé de cela ?hein?)
2. que je dois présenter un poster
3. que j'ai une présentation de 4 minutes, sur rétro-projecteur (oui oui, rétro-projecteur.. en plein rétro... ça existe toujours....), pour aguicher tous ces vieux professeurs allemands de chimie à venir voir mon poster pour le discuter (sans doute en allemand...)

Donc je suis en train de préparer ces 4 transparents... qui doivent être, selon Georg, ...differents. En gros marrant et concis, et non pas comme tout le monde (i.e. pas de copier coller depuis le poster....). Me voici donc à faire de l'art scientifique, et je me dis que j'aurais dû plus m'appliquer durant les cours de dessins.
bon voici mon premier dessin :

C'est fou le temps qu'on peut passer sur Illustrator pour réussir à faire une diatomée ou une bactérie...remarquez que certaines parties sont non reproductibles.... je suis pas sûr de la séquence exacte de commandes à faire pour obtenir ces résultats et non pas un "patatiforme" vert-caca-boudin...........
bon j'y retourne..
** mise à jour**

Après avoir fini tard hier soir, je reçois aujourd'hui mon premier commentaire de mon prof... l'idée est là...
il m'avait demandé une presentation mickey mouse... maintenant bien sûr ma présentation est trop mickey mouse, et il faut changer les couleurs, etc etc etc... qu'est-ce que c'est que de perde un samedi entier à faire cette p***** de présentation en style mickey mouse, à passer des heures sur Illustrator... après tout je suis qu'un doctorant... je pensais idiotement qu'une fois par mois je pourrais avoir un dimanche de libre... stupide que je suis... je n'ais qu'à changer ma présentation... une autre journée de travail pour en tout 4 min dont je n'ais rien à faire, pour rester poli... .Des fois je me demande pourquoi je continue ce doctorat ici...