18/05 - Eugh. I hardly slept last night, and had to be out of the house by 0600 to get a train to Gatwick. I felt exhausted and a bit ill all day - probably not aided by my ridiculously spicy 0730 duck and hoi sin gyoza soup. I was in the office by 1200, meaning that it took me exactly 5 hours door to door. Had I left a little later (I had to wait ages for a train anyway) and had the CERN shuttle left on time I think I could have made it in 0415. I had lunch in the sun and managed to stay at work until about 6 o'clock, when I headed back home and made a massive bowl of pasta, intending to take some with me for the night shift tomorrow. This backfired, as I ate half and immediately passed out for two hours on my bed. I have a talk to give tomorrow in the Top UK meeting which I am pretty worried about, so much so that I went over to James' flat for a quick tutorial on histograms at about half past 10.
19/05 - I then stayed up making plots until about 0330, fell asleep for 4 hours or so and then got up to finish the talk. I decided that, as I would only be videoconferencing from CERN anyway, I could just as well do it from home. I finished my talk at about 1530, and gave it at 1550 - cutting it a bit fine. It went OK, I nearly froze a couple of times but sort of blagged my way through it. I don't know why I get so worried about talking in public, it really cripples me with fear. I stayed connected until the meeting finished at 6, then fell asleep for another three hours before rousing myself and going, via Mike Wong's, to CERN for my night shift. Yet again there is no physics scheduled for tonight, so I have spent the last two hours or so writing all this up. Phew.
20/05 - So I got home and slept for a long time, then received the following email:
As the LHC has gone in access mode & there will not be beams for 24h,
We cancel the DAQ/HLT shifts for today.
Yes! Apparently I still get the credit for this too, as it is not my fault they are cancelled. I milled about in my house for a bit until it was time to go off to French class. This passed without anything of note happening, apart from the fact that it was a great day outside and only about 6/20 people turned up. I grabbed a kebab on my way home, which was a surprise as it was about 11pm, and nothing is usually open. It was salary and adequate, I suppose.
21/05 - I was on course for getting into CERN just after 9, which would be a new record, but I accidentally knocked a whole pint of Ribena all over my bedside table, so instead of being early I arrived late, with slightly sticky flip flops. I had a long talk about my service work today, and essentially figured out what it is I am meant be actually doing. I hung around until about 7, when I went and got Kelly from the airport.
We headed straight to a restaurant called Takumi, a Japanese place which Zack and Masa recommended to us a week or two ago. It was pretty flash, nice inside and it had a few set menu options ranging from CHF 60-115. These were a little steep for us, so we went for a selection of awesome nigiri and maki, along with some scallops and fish skin chips, followed by red bean mochi. It was awesome and probably set us back about CHF 60 - I have definitely had much worse meals for that much money. We had some great wine with it, and we stopped off at Café Rond Point round the corner for another glass of wine, which tasted oddly milky.
22/05 - So today was the Caves Ouvertes in canton Vaud, where all the vineyards in the canton open up for a day of free tasting. Kelly and I got a train to Morges, where we wandered around the town a little and just missed the first bus. We got to our first vineyard at about 1330, and so we settled down at Domaine de Valmont for a few wines. We tried all the Chardonnays, a Chasselas and some rosés, had some awesome free snacks and I ended up buying a bottle of rosé and a Chasselas.
On our return to Geneva, we went straight to Sushi Train, a place in Molard which has a happy hour from 7-10pm every day, so we had loads of food (10 plates for me, 5 for Kelly) for about £30 total, which soaked up the wine nicely. We went home afterwards, intending to hang out until Matt Fraser called us to let us know when to go to a party he had told us about yesterday - instead of this we fell asleep for about three hours, waking up at half past 11 in a bit of a panic - I rang Matt to see if we had missed our opportunity, but it turned out that he had only just got home and so we went over to meet him and Sara, and walked to La Boisserette - this is a squat on a leafy sidestreet which backs onto a huge fancy house. We were walking through this wooded area when we heard the music, coming from a house with a scruffy garden. We walked around the back, past some alternative looking types and down into the basement. It was incredibly hot down there, they had a bar in a sweaty little bomb shelter and a much cooler room with Mario Cart on an N64. It was packed, and they had a 'pay freely or die' policy, which means you dropped CHF 10 in the jar and then you can have all the drinks you like.
We were there for ages, dancing about, chatting, exploring and generally marvelling at the fact that there is a part of Geneva which has girls with half their heads shaved, guys in vest tops with make-up on, skinheads and punks (who turned up about 3) all coexisting and living rent free in an awesome house in the woods. We stayed until about 5am, when we walked Sara halfway home and got in at about 0530. I texted Matt to see where he had got to and he replied with "I just woke up slightly hypothermic in the garden", but he seemed chipper. We put the blinds down to keep put the encroaching dawn, and went to sleep.
23/05 - Today was a hangover day, that's for sure. We woke up at around half 10, meaning we probably had about 4 hours of sleep. The main reason we got up is that I was starving hungry and in need of pizza - however, I became confused and found that the place I was hoping to go to was closed on Sunday. Today was one of those mornings where a croissant simply would not suffice, so we ended up walking quite a long way - we had intended to have breakfast in Parc Alfred Bertrand, at the end of my road, but instead we walked all the way down to the Arve and ate it sitting on a bench by the river. After this we climbed down a ladder to the actual river, where before too long we came across a beach, where I paddled in the incredibly cold water and skimmed some stones. It was nice, but there was quite a bit of dog poo along the path, and Kelly was convinced that some of it was human. Adventure completed, we headed along the river and through Planpalais up to Parc des Bastions, where we lay in the sun for a while listening to Ukelele players, which was pretty nice.
After a while I got a message from Zack, asking if I could come over and 'satisfy her Britannic majesty', which meant signing some forms so that his son Finn (currently about a month old) could get a passport. We hung out for a while, looking out over Geneva from their 6th floor balcony, basking in the sun - it really was a beautiful day. We headed home via the food market on Planpalais, where we assembled an amazing picnic from roast chicken, tomatoes, mozzarella, avocados, fresh bread, strawberries and a bottle of wine (Zack advised us to have a 'sharpener' to deal with our hangovers). We ate this in the park we had originally intended to have breakfast in - only about 5 hours and about 5 miles late.
As the sun began to set we headed home and watched The Time Travelers Wife, which I had not expected to like but found myself really drawn into it - there was a moment where we were concerned that they were about to whack in a load of sciencey nonsense to give a medical explanation for time travel, but they refrained. Just before we went to bed I thought I would double check the times for the morning, in case they had randomly changed the bus routes (as the Swiss seem to do often), and I discovered that tomorrow morning is a public holiday so the first bus was a full half hour later than usual. I rang the taxi company (there seems to be only one in Geneva) to find out how much a taxi would be at 0520 in the morning, and how long it would take - the lady on the other end was incredibly unhelpful, she took a booking but refused to speculate on either price or duration. I said (in French) "how much will it roughly be? You have no idea? 10 francs or 50 francs, no idea at all? And will it take 5 minutes or half an hour?" To all of which she replied that she did not know, as if it was not her job. That is precisely her job, to take bookings and maybe know a little about the actual service she is brokering. I did not have the French to explain this, so instead I resolved to look elsewhere and just turn my phone off in the morning if we decided not to use them. What a twat. I ended up finding out how far it was on Google Maps, finding the mandated taxi rates and working it out for myself - under 10 minutes, under CHF 20. That wasn't so hard was it? I would not have bothered, but I did not have much Swiss cash (Kelly had none left either) and I needed to know if we could cover it or whether a late night trip to the cash point was required.
24/05 - It was really warm last night, and coupled with the fact that Kelly had to be up at 5 I don't think we slept too well. After I sent Kelly off in the cab I fell asleep for 6 more hours, waking up just in time to get the bus into CERN before the end of the lunch. Or so I thought. Even though I already knew that all transport was doing a Sunday service, I still waited at the bus stop for 20 minutes before I remembered that it was a public holiday. Consequently I got to Vaudagne (where I change buses for CERN) at about 2 o'clock, so I had missed the chance to get a meal. I went to the big shopping centre down the road, intending to grab lunch and dinner, forgetting that everything would be closed because it was still a public holiday. Idiot. I ended up buying a kebab sandwich and some takeaway pasta for later, and made it into CERN with enough time to have a bit of a sunbathe (I went to the top of the fire escape on the side of the ATLAS building, where noone can see you except from directly below).
My shift was uneventful, as always - there were about 6 trigger experts sitting next to me making loads of noise for the first hour or two, then they left me in peace for the next 6. The pasta was pretty minting, and on my way home I just missed a bus and a tram and a bus so the journey took me absolutely ages. I had a good chat with Dad about what we'll do when he comes out here though, which was good - hopefully he'll get round to actually booking flights soon.
When I arrived home I had a chat with Clare, who reminded me that I should watch the remaining episodes of Lost ASAP so as to avoid any spoilers of the ending - I watched episodes 13 and 14 (of 18) and came out of it elated and heartbroken. Phew. I will try and fit in the next two tomorrow and the final two on Wednesday (if not before).
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