I arrived last night in Columbus after 12 hours of driving. I left Montreal around 6:15 in the morning, and dropped off the rental car around 7 pm last night. I’m staying in a hotel outside the city – getting around by cab isn’t too bad, and I’ve had some gracious offers (accepted) for lifts here and there by my colleagues. A short pictorial representation of my trip yesterday might look like this:
The first picture is of Mexico . . . New York. I thought it was amusing that just south of the U.S./Canada border is a town called “Mexico”. This is probably an old joke, but it’s new to me!
My grilling by the border patrol on the way back was pretty light. In fact, I found the experience a stark contrast – perhaps a telling one – between the U.S. and Canada. Entering Canada, the Canadian border guard had lots of questions about my work. The U.S. border guard, as I went south, upon hearing that I worked on physics remarked, “I’d ask you for more information, but I probably wouldn’t understand.” I offered to explain anyway. He waved me through.
I believe every person has the capacity for physics, because all of us have the curiosity needed to drive the need to learn such things. I was a little sad that one of my fellow countrymen saw so little in his own potential to understand. I like to believe this isn’t a common thing, but my deepest fears about the world warn me otherwise.
Today, I went to OSU and immediately ran into one of the faculty members I work with. He took me on a tour, showed me where to get coffee, and then showed me to the group’s offices. The physics building is a 10 on look and office space, but I’m told it’s a 2 on lab space. New building, new problems.
I gave my seminar at three and it seemed to go really well. I got to have pizza and brewed beverages afterward, and did a lot of chatting with an old colleague of mine from BaBar. He graduated with a Ph.D. from BaBar a few years ago and is now working in astronomy at OSU. He loves it. The focus of our conversation, however, was largely the current state of U.S. politics.
Tonight, I’ve been catching up on e-mail and working on job application material. It’s time – time to write that research plan, get those letters of recommendation, and get those applications in. It’s time.
