Two countries

I'm getting behind on my blog. I'm in China and therefore feel that I should be writing in red, but I still want to write about Australia. Australia certainly has bluer skies than China and therefore I'll use a blue font - sorry if you're colour blind.

The conference is going well. It's a mix between a few wonderful talks about neutron stars, quark stars (which may not even exist) and X-ray binaries, and also a lot of completely incomprehensible theoretical talks. My entire notes for one talk was a quote that the lecturer said "This is not meant to model reality". I'm not sure what it was meant to model! The flight over from Sydney was fun. We flew up the coast of New South Wales and then inland, over Arnhem Land (Wow!), across Indonesia, just to the East of Hong Kong and then up the Chinese coast line to Shanghai. I then had to change aircraft which was interesting as "China Eastern" didn't have any record of my ticket. They kept wanting a number that I didn't have. Anyway they finally gave me a boarding pass and I got to Beijing at 11:30pm. (The flight offered me "exquisite rice, bread sets and a rational mix of delicacies. The menu is regularly refreshed with nutrition rich beverages".) I got to the hotel rather late at night.

A few days ago I was in Parkes. Wow! That was an exhausting trip. Ms Mao and I drove over the mountains to Parkes where we met up with Gary - a work-experience teacher - I hope he doesn't mind, but take a look at his excellent blog about his stay at Parkes! Ms Mao, Mike and I started off our observations (which immediately broke the telescope), but we did manage to record more than 3Tb of good data by the end. Unfortunately our initial processing hasn't led to a pulsar discovery :(

I'm trying to write this blog whilst drinking green tea and keep getting sharp tea needles in my mouth or going up my nose. This is very distracting.

Apart from the observing Ms Mao and I were in Parkes to give lectures at a teacher workshop. This was fun!! I gave two talks. One on "what it's like to be an astronomer" which Ms Mao completely disagreed with and one on "pulsars" which seemed to go down well! We also had a viewing night where we saw 47Tuc!! :) BTW ... in my talk on "what it's like to be an astronomer" I did some research and looked up "astronomer" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Apparently an astronomer "looks at heavenly bodies'. I then looked up "heavenly bodies" with google! That was interesting! Probably not the best idea with a work computer!

I can't see many stars from here. Last night I met up with Nicole and Vernon and we jumped into a taxi to try and find a restaurant. The taxi driver ignored (as far as I can tell) our request and drove us somewhere completely different (whilst repeatedly blowing his nose out of the window without the aid of a tissue). Anyway, we ended up finding an interesting restaurant where we ordered all sorts of things (including dumplings - I ordered them in Chinese! and chicken feet - that was not planned, but they turned up anyway). I'm impressed by Nicole and Vernon's grasp of Chinese. They were calling the waitress over and trying (and often succeeding) in asking for more food, drink or the bill. We (actually Nicole) spotted a hedgehog (not in the restaurant where it would probably have been eaten, but near my hotel)! Oh, before I forget. I became very excited on the China Eastern flight because the map had two destinations that I'd never heard of: Okinawa and Saipan. Looking up Saipan in wikipedia makes it sound even more interesting: "Saipan (pronounced /saɪˈpæn/) is the largest island and capital of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands" - should I have heard of this place? Anyone want a trip?


The dinner at the Dish Cafe in Parkes with all the teachers was rather posher. Ms Mao and I started a fight (on the table cloth) about whether galaxies or pulsars were more interesting. I won! (hah -- you'll have to get your own blog Minnie!) I can't remember too much about that night ... that may have something to do with the amount of free wine available.

My hotel here is full of very useful advice. Not only must I "cherish the furniture", but I must note that "in the pot the water level must be higher than 'MIN' in order to avoid the parched phenomenon". Also: "If you need replacement put the card on your bed". I might try that! I'm not feeling up to giving another talk tomorrow. Just as well I'm alone: "mixed accommodation of male and female shall be witnesses with legitimate certificates". "Please don't raise poultry in the guest room or corridor".

We had a long drive back from Parkes with a wonderful stop at the Borenore caves. I love that place. We drove down a rocky unpaved road (don't tell anyone at work), grabbed some torches and plunged into the caves. We went a long way in. And then sat with the lights off. It was pitch black and absolutely silent. Wonderful! Ms Mao subsequently decided that we'd get out (sliding on our backs) without turning the lights back on. Silly idea. Nursing my black eye (almost - sympathy please) later we went hiking up to the cliffs over the top of the caves. It really is spectacular. We then got stuck in a traffic jam.

Tomorrow I have to visit Beijing observatory in the morning to give a talk on tempo2 and then will spend the afternoon having a look around. On the weekend the conference continues and then I get Monday free before flying back to Sydney. I do like China! It's full of happy, smiling people and you never know what you're about to eat. I had a terrific hot-pot meal tonight. I've no idea what was in it, but it was spicy and tasty.

I'm absolutely exhausted, but had better get back to writing my talk.