Leogulus-Champ's (Taweewat Somboonpanyakul) blog

A Farewell to the Past, an Exciting Journey Ahead

2023-10-05T23:51:00.007-05:00

It's hard to believe that my journey, both personal and in the blog, began over 12 years ago during my freshman year of college. Admittedly, I haven't been as active here for the past couple of years – life has a way of keeping us busy, and sometimes, I confess, procrastination takes over. This post might even serve as my farewell to blogging, or at the very least, my last post from the United States, where I've called home for the past 13 years.

California Street, with a glimpse of the Bay Bridge in the distance—an iconic San Francisco vista

Putting these words down on paper feels daunting because, once written, they become real and unchangeable. Nevertheless, the time has come. My flight back to Thailand is set for October 14th, at 00:10 AM. Interestingly, it coincides with a solar eclipse day in California, which I'll have to miss.

In recent months, I've had the privilege of reuniting with people I've crossed paths with throughout my American journey – from high school to college (at various weddings, Phoenix, SF, and beyond), graduate school (visits to Boston and SF), and my postdoc stint here at Stanford. Many have asked how I feel about returning home, and truthfully, I didn't have a clear answer then, and I still don't now. These last couple of months have flown by at an alarming rate, and despite my best efforts to slow time down, it appears unstoppable. I'm not ready to move, not just yet. But then again, are we ever truly ready for such a transition, or do we simply embrace it when it arrives?

I'm excited about the upcoming chapter in my life – starting a new job, living in a "new" city, building a new community, and, most importantly, being just 20 minutes away from my parents, instead of a 20-hour flight. However, I'm also grappling with a sadness at leaving this place, this life, and the wonderful people who've been a part of it. I know it's not a farewell forever. In fact, many have expressed plans to visit Thailand now that I'll be there (ok, that last part sounds a little too self-absorbed). Still, I can't shake this sense of sadness and worry.

I've grown fond of the person I've become during my time here in the U.S. But I'm also anxious about the person I might become upon my return to Bangkok. I love my current job and am eager to embrace my first permanent position. Yet, I can't deny the uncertainty that accompanies starting a new job in a role that I can't fully predict. I cherish the friendships I've forged over the past 13 years, but I'm also looking forward to making new connections in the place I once called home.

All in all, my time in the United States has been an incredible journey, from North Carolina to Chicago, Boston, and the Bay Area. I hold deep affection for all the places I've lived (though I usually pick Chicago as my favorite). I write this note to share my feelings with those close to me and, perhaps more importantly, as a keepsake of my emotions as I sit in my office (PAB206), late at night, just seven days before my flight.

Champ

10/05/2023

My thought before my thesis defense

2021-07-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

4 days before my defense/a month before moving

- This past week has been pretty interesting. Since I will defend my thesis at the beginning of next week, I have reached out to so many people in my life that I have met over the years to tell them about the defense. (I guess one good thing about doing a defense online is that anyone can join the defense from anywhere.) People that I reached out to include physics friends from my old high school in Thailand, high-school friends, a physics teacher (Ms. Cianciulli!), college friends, people I met during an undergrad summer school, people I met during my PhD from old roommates (quite a few of them), classmates, and Thai friends around the city. This just made me realize how many people that I have met over the past ten years in the US and even more in Thailand.

Boston Skyline from the Charles river

- I feel like a PhD thesis defense is one of those things that I have been thinking about for so long. I thought about this moment since I learned that I want to study astronomy and do a PhD. I imagine myself standing at the podium in a fancy suit, talking about the science that I have done for more than half a decade, and making bad jokes. Even though it will not be exactly the same as what I have in mind because we have to do a defense virtually, I think it will still be a good memory for me. I feel like with all the talks that I have given since I came to MIT from student grad lunch talks, journal clubs, conference talks, public talks, and job talks, have prepared me for this one moment in time. This will mark the end of my career as a graduate student and a student period. After 13 years of school, 4 years of college, and 6 years of graduate schools, it is hard to believe that this chapter of my life is close to the end. Being a student have its perks from being to learn and get educated as a "job" to getting to all the museums for free on a student discount. I guess we all cannot be a student forever although we can all keep learning for life. But. this is the end of this particular journey.

- This also signals that a big change is coming soon. In less than two months, I will be in a different state, living with different people, hanging out with different friends. I am pretty excited about that aspect although it will be difficult to leave my comfort zone. Boston has become a place that I am really familiar with. Because of its size as a smaller city, it is not difficult to explore a large part of it. I love the history of the city. Every store, every shop, every park has a story and they are all connected.

- Boston is also a place that I met so many people. With graduate schools, most people are only here for one or two years. This means that I have to make new friends almost every fall when new people arrive. I did not really like it at first since it feels like you have to spend so much energy just to get to know new people every year. Now though, I appreciate it a little bit more since meeting more people allow me to learn so much more about the world that I do not know anything about. Everyone has different backgrounds and different stories. I really like hearing about all of them.

- New England is also a start of my love for hiking. With our close proximity to beautiful mountains in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine, it is not difficult to fall in love with outdoor and nature. Every hike is unique and the views are amazing. Another thing that I start to like when I move to Boston is, of course, board games. I still remembered the day that I played my first and only 8-hour board game. I remembered walking into a game group in a dorm, sitting down to look at what people are playing, and starting to learn all the games. I did fall into a trap of buying a lot of board game for a year or two. It was just so much fun to learn about these board games, buying them, and bringing them to people's houses. Some year, I met more people who also like board games, so I get to try even more board games. Speaking of the pandemic, one thing that I did not expect is that I get to play so much games online. Not just with people that I regularly played with in Boston, but many more people from my high school (even started a regular play group from that) and college. I also met new people from these board game sessions. Luckily, this part can and will continue after I moved from Boston.

- I have no idea how to end this. I just want to write down how I feel and what I am thinking right now in this moment. It would be interesting to see how I feel once I have already moved away from this city that I have been called home for the past 6 years.

นักดาราศาสตร์ MIT ค้นพบกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ ที่คนอื่นหาพลาดไป

2021-03-28T15:08:00.003-05:00

เขียนโดย Kelso Harper

วันที่ 26 มีนาคม 2021

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นักดาราศาสตร์จาก MIT ได้ค้นพบกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ที่มีความพิเศษแตกต่างไปจากกาแล็กซี่เดิมๆ ในงานวิจัยที่มีในปัจจุบัน ผลการศึกษาที่ได้ตีพิมพ์วันนี้ เสนอว่าประมาณ 1 เปอร์เซ็นต์ของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ มีความพิเศษ ทำให้ถูกจำแนกผิดเป็นแค่หนึ่งกาแล็คซี่ที่สว่างเฉยๆ ได้ เมื่อนักวิทยาศาสตร์สร้างกล้องโทรทัศน์ใหม่ขึ้น ก็ควรที่จะใส่ใจกับรายละเอียดผลการศึกษานี้ ไม่เช่นนั้นก็อาจจะมีความเข้าใจจักรวาลได้แบบไม่ครบสมบูรณ์

กระจุกกาแล็คซี่หนึ่งมีประมานหนึ่งร้อยถึงหนึ่งพันกาแล็คซี่ที่อยู่ด้วยกันได้ด้วยแรงโน้มถ่วง ในทุกๆ กระจุกกาแล็คซี่จะมีแก๊สที่มีความร้อนสูงมากๆ เรียกว่าสสารที่อยุ่ในกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ สสารเหล่านี้จริงๆ แล้วมีน้ำหนักมากกว่าดาวทั้งหมดในทุกๆ กาแล็คซี่ที่มาอยุ่รวมด้วยกันอีก ในขณะที่แก๊สร้อนที่กำลังเย็นลง มันจะเป็นแหล่งสำคัญของการเกิดดาวใหม่ๆ และปล่อยรังสีเอ็กซ์เรย์ที่มนุษย์สามารถมองเห็นได้ด้วยกล้องโทรทรรศน์อวกาศ

กลุ่มก้อนแก็สเหล่านี้ทำไมเราสามารถมองเห็นกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ให้เป็นภาพเบลอๆ ในกล้องโทรทรรศน์อวกาศ ซึ่งแตกต่างจากภาพที่เป็นจุดคมๆ ที่เห็นกันทั่วไปในกล้องโทรทรรศน์ซึ่งส่วนมากจะเป็นแค่ดวงดาวหรือหลุมดำ อย่างไรก็ตามเมื่อ 9 ปีก่อนอาจารย์จาก MIT ที่ชื่อว่า ไมเคิล แมคโดนัลด์ ได้ค้นพบวัตถุที่ไม่เป็นไปตามความเข้าใจนี้

ในปี 2012, อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์ ได้เจอกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ที่ไม่เหมือนกับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใดๆ มาก่อนเพราะว่ามันสว่างมากจนดูเหมือนดวงดาวจากกล้องโทรทรรศน์เอ็กซ์เรย์ กาแล็คซี่หลักของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่มีหลุมดำที่กำลังดูดกลื่นมวลสารเข้าไปอย่างมหาศาล ทำให้มันสว่างมากขึ้นมากๆ ในกล้องเอ็กซ์เรย์ มากจนทำไมมองเหมือนเป็นแค่ดาวดวงหนึ่ง ในขณะเดียวกันตรงกลางของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่นี้ก็กำลังสร้างดาวใหม่ๆ ขึ้นมากจำนวนมาก หรือประมาน 500 เท่าของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ทั่วๆ ไป ทำให้สีของกาแล็คซี่ที่อยุ่ตรงกลางเปลี่ยนเป็นสีฟ้าจากดาวใหม่ๆ ที่เพิ่งเกิดมาแทนที่จะเป็นสีแดงจากดาวแก่ๆ

อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์พูดเกี่ยวกับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ฟินิกส์ว่า "เราพยายามหากระจุกกาแล็คซี่แบบนี้มาเป็นสิบๆ ปีแล้ว" แต่ทั้งนี้ทั้งนั้นกระจุกดาวนี้ก็ไม่พูดค้นพบสักที เพราะว่าทุกคนคิดว่าวัตถุนี้ยังไงๆ ก็น่าจะเป็นหนึ่งกาแล็คซี่แทนที่จะเป็นกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์พูดต่อว่า "จริงๆ แล้ววัตถุน้ีอยุ่ในฐานข้อมูลมานานแล้วแต่ไม่มีใครเห็น มันดูเหมือนอย่างอื่นเพราะว่ามันไม่เหมือนอันที่เราเข้าใจ"

อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์เลยสงสัยว่า ยังมีกระจุกกาแล็คซี่แบบนี้ในฐานข้อมูลอีกหรือเปล่าที่รอให้เราค้นหา และนั้นก็เป็นจุดเริ่มต้นของโครงการ Cluster Hiding in Plain Sight survey หรือเรียกย่อๆ ว่า โครงการ CHIPS

ทวีวัฒน์ สมบูรณ์ปัญญากุล ซึ่งเป็นนักเรียนปริญญาเอกที่แลปของอาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์ ได้ใช้เวลาทั้งหมดของปริญญาเอกกับโครงการ CHIPS เขาเริ่มหาโดยการเลือกวัตถุที่เป็นไปได้จากฐานข้อมูลเก่าเป็นสิบๆ ปี เขาใช้ทั้งข้อมูลที่คนอื่นเก็บมาแล้วจากกล้องโทรทัศน์ที่ฮาวายและนิวเม็คซิโก และบินไปใช้กล้องโทรทัศน์แมคเจลแลนที่ประเทศชิลีเพื่อถ่ายรูปของวัตถุที่ไม่มีใครเคยถ่ายมาก่อนเพื่อที่จะหากระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ หลังจากที่เจอวัตถุที่น่าสนใจมาก ทวีวัฒน์ก็จะถ่ายรูปวัตถุนั้นอีกครั้งด้วยกล้องที่มาความคมชัดสูงขึ้นเช่นกล้องโทรทัศน์อวกาศจันทรา และกล้องโทรทัศน์อวกาศฮับเบิล

หลังจาก 6 ปี โครงการ CHIPS ก็เสร็จสิ้นลง วันนี้ในวารสารฟิสิกส์ดาราศาสตร์ ทวีวัฒน์ได้ตีพิมพ์ผลทั้งหมดของโครงการ ซึ่งรวมถึงการค้นพบใหม่ของสองกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ หนึ่งในนั้นชื่อว่า CHIPS1911+4455 ซึ่งมีคุณสมบัติคล้ายๆ กับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ฟินิกส์ และได้ถูกตีพิมพ์ในวารสารจดหมายฟิสิกส์ดาราศาสตร์ การค้นพบกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่นี้เป็นสิ่งที่น่าตื่นเต้นเพราะว่านักดาศาสตร์รู้จักกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ที่เหมือนกับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ฟินิกส์น้อยมาก กระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่นี้ยังน่าจะศึกษาเพิ่มเติมเพราะว่ามันมีแขนเกลียวสองข้างไม่เหมือนกับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่อื่นๆ ที่ส่วนมากเป็นกลมๆ นักวิจัยคิดว่ามันน่าจะเกิดจากการชนกันระหว่างสองกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ ทวีวัฒน์บอกว่า "คุณสมบัตินี้แตกต่างจากกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ทุกอันที่เคนเจอมาเลย"

โดยรวมแล้วโครงการ CHIPS ได้เปิดเผยว่าฐานข้อมูลเก่าจะพลาดกระจุยดาวใหม่ๆ นี้ประมาน 1% เพราะว่ามันหน้าตาไม่เหมือนกับกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ทั่วไป อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์อธิบายเพิ่มเติมว่า "เพราะว่านักดาราศาสตร์ศึกษากระจุกกาแล็คซี่เพื่อที่จะทำความเข้าใจเกี่ยวกับการขยายตัวของจักรวาล ถึงเราเจอกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ถึง 99% มันก็ยังไม่เพียงพอถ้าเราจะทำความเข้าใจเกี่ยวกับจักรวาลได้อย่างลึกซึ่ง เราจำเป็นที่จะต้องหากระจุกกาแล็คซี่ให้ครบ 100%"

กระจุกกาแล็คซี่พิเศษที่ค้นพบนี้จะช่วยให้นักวิทยาศาสตรเข้าใจเกี่ยวกับภาพรวมของจักรวาลได้ ในขณะนี้ เรายังไม่แน่ใจว่าจำนวนกระจุกกาแล็คซี่พิเศษที่เจอนั้น (1%) เพราะว่าวัตถุพวกนี้เป็นสิ่งที่หายาก หรือว่ากระจุกกาแล็คซี่ทุกอันต้องผ่านสถานะนี้ในช่วงเวลาที่สั้น ประมาน 20 ล้านปีซึ่งถึงว่าสั้นมากๆ ในช่วงเวลาของจักรวาล นักดาราศาสตร์แยกแยะสองกรณีได้ยากเพราะว่าเราสามารถเห็นแต่ละกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ในช่วงเวลาสั้น แต่ถ้าเรามีข้อมูลเยอะขึ้น นักดาราศาสตร์ก็จะสามารถพัฒนาฟิสิกส์โมเดลของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่พวกนี้ห้ดีขึ้นได้

ผลสรุปของโครงการ CHIPS บังเอิญตรงกับการปล่อยกล้องโทรทรรศน์อวกาศใหม่ที่มีชื่อว่า eROSITA ซึ่งจะช่วยขยายฐานข้อมูลของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่จากหลักร้อยเป็นถึงหลักหมื่นได้ แต่ถ้าพวกเขาไม่เปลี่ยนวิธีการหากระจุกกาแล็คซี่ พวกเขาก็จะพลาดกระจุกกาแล็คซี่พิเศษแบบที่หาเจอที่งานนี้เป็นร้อยๆ อัน อาจารย์แมคโดนัลด์ชี้แจ้งต่อว่า "กลุ่มคนที่สร้างกล้องโทรทัศน์อวกาศอันนี้จำเป็นที่จะต้องรับรู้ถึงงานอันนี้ ถ้าเราพลาดแม้แต่ 1% ของกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ทั้งหมด เราก็จะไม่สามารถเข้าใจจักรวาลนี้ได้อย่างลึกซึ้งได้"

งานวิจัยนี้ในรับการสนับสนุนจากทุนวิจัยของ Kavli ณ MIT, ทุนวิจัย NASA ผ่านทางโปรแกรมผู้สังเกตการณ์ของกล้องโทรทัศน์อวกาศจันทรา และกล้องโทรทัศน์อวกาศฮับเบิล

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This article is translated from "MIT astronomers discover new galaxy clusters hiding in plain sight."

What would you tell yourself back in January?

2020-06-15T13:53:00.000-05:00

I sometimes spend my isolated weekend going through my photos from when I was in junior high all the way up until the past couple months. It is surprisingly an effective time-sink activity when you have lots of free time, like I have now. One time, I stopped at my photos from January of this year (2020) when I spent two weeks in Hawaii, looked that my past self, and told that person "the world that you know it will change completely in just over a month."

Me on top of Koko Head, one of the nicest place to hike in Hawaii

What would you tell yourself back in January?

I thought about this question a lot recently after watching a Youtube video about it. Obviously I cannot tell my past self what exactly is going to happen since that might have an unforeseen consequence that is too difficult to deal with when you messed with the past.

I think I would say:

Pleas clean up your room more often since you will be staying in it way more time than you thought you ever would. If you could, getting couple more furnitures, like chairs, might be the best thing you can buy right now."

Please go exploring even more. Although it will be cold in January and the spring is coming soon, just do it and do not take it for granted that freely exploring cities even the city that you are currently living will be possible all the time. Just like the quote that you love said "Do whatever you want to do tomorrow today."

Maybe pick up some new hobbies that you can enjoy when you have free time indoor. Ok, this one is probably not going to happen for me personally since I know myself too well and simply picking up a new hobby cannot just happen right away even when my future self show up and tell me to do so.

You might think that this year you will be traveling as much as you did in the past couple years. You don't. In fact, your Hawaii trip is probably your first and last traveling trip this year. It might sound surprising since you already had planned to go back home during spring break, touring Vietnam during that time, attending European conferences in the summer, and giving job talks in the fall. Again, you don't. But don't feel disappointed yet. I know you love traveling (since I am you), but you will get through this. Traveling is not everything. You will have much more time in the summer to hang out with friends that you don't usually have time to both online/offline.

2020, at first, might sound like it is going to be a great year at the beginning. It could still be. Just don't be afraid that many of your plans will be cancelled. They are just plans. You can easily create a new one. Oh, one good news from this year is that Parasite became the first non-English film to win the Best Picture for Oscar. My most favorite quote from the movie is "With no plan, nothing can go wrong." Even though it is the best quote, I still don't believe in it. Instead, I will give you another quote: "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail[1]". That's a better quote.

Now, my past self would be super curious about what will happen in couple months. Don't worry too much about it. You will get through this.

You have to.

[1]: Quote by Benjamin Franklin

What a weird dream ...

2020-05-08T19:21:00.002-05:00

Recently, I have been having a weird nightmare that the entire world has turned upside down.

The Eiffel tower, once crowded with tourists trying to take just another selfies and locals enjoying their brunch on the lawn nearby, is now completely empty. Not a single person or a single car on streets, but pigeons remain packed surrounding the area. Some even notice that these birds start to chirp a little bit louder than usual.

A tree

Across the pond, New York City is not that much different. Instead of thousands of people trying to cram into a tiny space in front of glowingly bright billboard signs of various broadway shows, a lone pedestrian crosses a nearly empty street.

Not everything is bad news. With no car on streets in every major global city, the sky slowly begins to clear. Residents from New Delhi, frequently credited as one of the most polluted cities in the world, start to see a clear blue sky, unlike anything they are accustomed to before. The air, many experts used to say is impossible to improve in this developed, technologically advanced society, has been clear without any intervention.

Not that I am protected from this weird situation. Instead of walking through feet of snow to my office to start my works every morning and leaving the office at 5pm when it was completely dark outside, I just hop off the bed and I am already at work. Never once have I imagine myself get any work done in my tiny 146-sqaure-foot apartment. Now, this is the only place I can do work.

Instead of planning for my quick weekend-getaway trip in the spring once the weather improves, I simply plan my video-conference hang out with those who are in the same situation. But since the entire world has turned upside down, "everyone" is in the same situation from colleagues whom I usually meet everyday in the office to friends whom I hang out with over weekends to friends who live on the other coast of the country to old friends whom I normally meet once every two year. Now everyone is the same distance apart, just one Zoom away. In my dream, I often try to tell myself that I start to get used to the new situation and once I feel totally comfortable with this weird circumstance I will feel much better that I feel now. I wish this is true. ...

Now, I simply feel alone and anxious at the same time.

And then, I wake up and I remember that it is just reality now.

The First Post about Museum of Fine Art

2018-11-10T16:57:00.001-06:00

The first topic that came to my mind during my visit of MFA this time is about "the perspective".

The perspective from where you see the painting actually change how I feel about the painting, especially couple landscape paintings from Monet. I found this is a unique way to experience the art like I never did before. You can't really do it from the photograph of the painting online or elsewhere. This makes me appreciate my time going to different art museums more.

The two photos below show the same painting but at a different angle. Looking at the painting at the 45 degree angle gives me a sense of three dimensions from the painting which is gone as soon as I stepped right outside the painting.

Valley of the Petite Creuse, Claude Monet, 1889

Another topic that came to mind is the historical context of each painting. Especially pairs of paintings that are done in the same period/era.

For example, the two paintings below were done around the same period by Frech artists living in Europe. They were astronishingly different from the subject matter (historical figure, stories vs landscape of everyday life), the technique they used to paint each painting, to the location where the paintings were painted (indoor vs outdoor). Back in 1860s, most Frech academic prefers painting about the Hercules fighting with its horse and absolutely dislike quick paintings of the mountains and views. One benefit of love/hate relationship between different kinds of paintings in Europe is that many of these now-so-called classics impressionism like Monet were not very popular in Europe at that time. This allowed the Americans, who came to appreciate many things that Europeans hates, gathered much of the early impressionist works from the very beginning. In fact, MFA has the largest collection of Monet outside of France because of this reason.

Just image a guy, grabbing his color tubes and going outside to draw all the 'impression' that he got from experiencing the view while his friend is sitting in the dark corner inside the studio trying to finish this masterpiece. They both are artists but their world could not be more different.

By visitng art museums, it made me realized that even though the art has progressed so much in the past several centuries, we can still experience art from the past as if they were just finished recently. That is the beauty of museums.

What about other parts of our life? Have they progressed as much as the art did? Can we experience and appreciate those moments in the past like we could with art?

PS: shout out for Museum Day by Smithsonian which make me go outside and enjoy the outdoors for a while.

Automedon with the Horses of Achilles, Henri Regnault, 1868

Entrance to the Village of Vetheuil in Winter, Claude Monet, 1880

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 4 - Lima

2017-12-13T17:15:00.000-06:00

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

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I had to wake up early (6am) again to catch my flight to my one day trip to Lima, the capital of Peru. Another day, another city. I read up some information about Lima but didn't really plan the exact path for the trip.

The first thing I did in Lima is meeting up with Guillermo near his office. I met Guillermo back in UChicago as we were a student at the InterVarsity group there. We had a great ceviche (spicy seafood salad) for lunch. He also showed me how to use the metro (which is, surprisingly, a bus on a special lane! instead of a train) to get around the city.

The Cathedral, Lima

I headed to Plaza Mayor de Lima to see the Cathedral, but the main attraction around this area is definitely Basílica de San Francisco with the Catacomb in the basement. The experience is similar to the one that I went to Paris, but this one is underneath the church. Unfortunately, no photo allows inside the church, so I only had the photo of the yellow church. After I finished the tour, I decided to walk around the city a little more and heading to Chinatown for dinner. My friend recommended me a Chinese restaurant that specializes in the roasted or bbq pork. I just got a plate of bbq pork and the fried rice (34 sol or ~$10). It was definitely too much meat for me alone. I took the metro back to my hostel (Kelebek Hostel), which is located in Miraflores, a more touristy area of the city as it will be safer. I walked around Miraflores a little bit and saw a ton of restaurants everywhere I went. I stopped a cone of ice cream before heading back to the hostel and went to bed early for another morning flight (again).

Kelebek Hostel was located in a great neighborhood with a reasonable price. It might be because it was not a super popular season for a tourist or this place is not very popular in general, I end up with an 8-bed room for myself. That was pretty nice. It's hard to compare today trip with the yesterday one which I walked in Machu Picchu for 8 hrs, but I definitely had a good experience in Lima. And now it is time for me to head back to Boston after a full 4-day trip to Peru. With a little bit of flight delayed both in Lima and Santiago, I managed to get back to Boston at around noon. I did go to work that day for a quick meeting with my advisor before the weekend.

Peruvian Chinatown

And that is the end of my latest trip to Peru. It was fun, amusing and more connected than I thought it was going to be. I think the highlight for my trip, apart from seeing Machu Picchu for the first time, is definitely the people that I met along the way from my first roommate in Cusco, the 3 siblings from Poland (Kasia, Kasia, Kuba) to a guy I met in Machu Picchu from Italy (Francesco). We talked to each other and they helped me in different ways from ordering me food/drink in Spanish to taking a ton of photos of me. This trip won't be this memorable without these nice people that I met along the way. Thank you again for all your help and hope to see you all again at some point! (Not that I expected any of them to get a chance to read this, but who knows. Anything is possible)

Outside Basílica de San Francisco

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 3 - Machu Picchu!

2017-12-12T17:09:00.000-06:00

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 2, and Day 4.

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I woke up at 4.30am to had some breakfast since it will be another long day for me. I left the hostel and get the bus station at around 5am and had to wait for 30 mins for the first bus to leave towns. As I was waiting in line, I saw the same 3 siblings just got to the line and also met the same group of American whom I met in the hostel in Cusco. We exchanged a little bit but didn't really end up stay together in the end. I arrived at the gate for Machu Picchu around 5.45am, but since the gate opened at 6, I had to stand in line for couple minutes. The wait didn't last long and I finally got inside.

5.30am waiting to catch the first bus up to Machu Picchu

I climbed up the hill for the most popular view in Machu Picchu, but the result was kinda disappointing, but it is all foggy. You can't really see the ruin and you can't definitely see the famous mountain behind. I sat down a little and decided to take a walk as waiting here isn't going to make the fog go away. Before I came to Peru, all the website said that it would be a rainy season there. I was worried about the rain. Lucky, it didn't rain here, just some morning fog. They recommended you to get a tour guide so that you can learn all about the history of the place and the importance of a different site. I didn't really have anyone with me, so I decided to go solo without a guide. I did some research in the beginning, so I know some landmarks that I wanted to see. I stopped by the Temple of the Sun, the Royal Tombs, the Royal Palace, The Three Windows Temple, the astronomical site (Intihuantana), and many other places. I also eavesdropped on some English tour guides as they told the story about the place to other people. The story about the Incans and how they created this place is an amusing one. The creativity and engineering powers that the Incans put to build such an enormous architecture at the top of the mountain was another great achievement in human history. But the Spanish came too soon and the Incans did not even have much time to enjoy this marvelous construction.

The first view that I saw at Machu Picchu!!

Since I was alone, I had to constantly ask people around me to take my photos as I walked around the temple. It was all one way inside the ruin so you will have to get out before going back up the hill for the photo spot. Not until almost the end of the walk that I met Francesco who is an Italian traveling alone in Peru. We decided to join each other on the walk so that we don't have to ask many more strangers to take our photos. We walked back up the hill to the famous spot of Machu Picchu. We spent almost an hour (from 9am-10am) to take the photos of this place at different angles. It was incredible. The place is as amazing as it was shown in all the postcard. The view was stunning with the ruin in the middle and green mountains surrounding us in all directions. Taking a LOT of photos was definitely a fun way to experience this place as everyone was literally doing the same thing. After we finished with all photos (too many photos), I planned to walk up to the Sun Gate (Inti Punku) as I learned from the internet that it was another place with a great photo. My new friend met up with his groups of friends while we were taking photos and he decided to stay with them. I said bye to him before heading to the Sun Gate alone (again). The walk was about 45min-1hr to get to the gate. It was hot and I was pretty tired from waking up early and had been walking around the ruin. I manage to get to the Gate at around 11am. I sat down, enjoyed my water and little snack while watching Machu Picchu from afar. It was an amazing view with a nice breeze blowing through me. After 30 mins, I decided to walk back to Machu Picchu and got back at 12pm.

Francesco and I at the most touristy spot of all Machu Picchu

Instead of getting to the exit, I decided to walk through the whole ruin again for the second time to see all the stuff that I skipped during my first walkthrough. I didn't finish the whole thing until 1.30pm. My feet started to hurt from all the walking, but instead of just taking a bus back, I decided to walk down from Machu Picchu back to Aguas Calientes, which is about 1.5 km (~1hr15min) for a pure staircase. Yep!, it was as bad as it sounds. I managed to get down to Aguas Calientes at 2.45pm and stopped by the same local market to get a nice meal again for just 8 sols (~$2). In its entirety, I spent almost 9 hours walking around Machu Picchu and hiking down. It was fun. I got back to the hostel, packed up and headed to the station to catch a 5.20pm train back to Cusco. I also met another nice person from Brazil on the train back. I just found a quick dessert for my dinner as I wasn't super hungry and fell asleep almost immediately.

Walking 1.5km down the stairs back to Aguas Calientes

Before I finish the story about Machu Picchu, I had to mention that you also had an option to hike the famous mountain (either Huayna Picchu or Machu Picchu). I didn't do any of these before I was alone and hiking for more hours alone did not sound that exciting to me. If I had a chance to go back, I will definitely hike Huayna Picchu for sure.

Now, let go to the last day of the trip, heading back to the urban area, Lima! (and more photos from Machu Picchu.)

Me walking around the ruin inside Machu Picchu, and constantly asking people to take photo for me

Halfway to the Sun Gate, with another popular Machu Picchu spot

Panorama view of the entire Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 2 - Aguas Calientes

2017-12-11T16:57:00.000-06:00

I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 1, Day 3, and Day 4.

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The next day started pretty early as I had to take a taxi (again) to the nearby town to catch the train to Machu Picchu. This is a disadvantage for people who travel alone as you have to pay for a taxi by yourself and public transportation is not really an option here. The hostel called the taxi for me and he sent me to the train station about an hour before the departure. I was early. I also managed to talk to the driver to set up the time for him to pick me up on the way back the next day. The train that I took was from PeruRail which is about $150 for a round trip. It is not cheap by any standard, but the cheapest option is to take a van and a bit of hiking (several hours), which I don't really want to do. Most of the seats in the train are in a pair of 4 with the table in the middle. I was alone so I will definitely have to join some groups of people on this journey. Luckily, they were the nicest people that I have ever met during my time of travel. They are the 3 siblings (I think) from Warsaw, Poland. We didn't talk much at the beginning, but because the train took 3 hours to get to Aguas Calientes, which is the town near Machu Picchu, we ended up talking to each other for the last hour of the journey. Having been travel alone for the past few days, having a good conversation with people who shared the same experience was such a great break from being alone.

On the trail near the train track to the Waterfall (Cataratas)

Aguas Calientes is a small town near Machu Picchu, which the main industry is tourism to support people who come to Machu Picchu. I arrived at Aguas Calientes at 10am and did not plant to go up to Machu Picchu until the next day. Since I didn't really plan what to do that day, I decided to take a walk to the waterfall (Cataratas) even though the walk would take me 1.5hr to get to there and 1.5 hr to get back. About the first half of the walk, I walked along the road, which is usually for buses to Machu Picchu. I walked passed Machu Picchu entrance. The second half of the walk was just a train track. I had to walk along the track and step away as the train ran passed me. The walk was amazing as it was surrounded by tall green mountains and the river. Even though the waterfall is fairly small and might not actually worth the 3 hr I need to get here, the walk is great enough for the journey. I stopped the waterfall just for about 1.5 hr at the waterfall before heading back to the town. I ended up getting back in the hostel (Don Andre) at around 2.30pm. I took a break for about an hour, ate some instant ramen, and looked for the next thing I want to do.

I am at Cataratas (1.5hr hike to the waterfall)

What I found unexpectedly is that there were other waterfalls just the back of the town. I left the hostel to the next waterfalls at around 4.15pm. This hike is much steeper than the previous one. I was also worried that it will get too dark on the way down the mountain, so the hike was not as delightful. (In fact, I was super worried that I will have to walk down in the dark, which is definitely not what I want to do in a foreign country without knowing the language.) The waterfalls were still amazing. If I had to recommend, I would pick these waterfalls instead of the first one as you saw more waterfalls and you are higher up the mountain, except you might miss the view that you get along the path to the first waterfall.

The waterfall near the town (Alcamayo Waterfalls)

I got down to the town at 5.30pm. I was ready for dinner after all day of walking, so I slowly strolled to the town. Surprisingly, I found the 3 siblings from Polan again in the town square. We chatted a little bit, but since they all just had a huge lunch earlier, we decided to just stop for a drink instead. We ended up just picking the bar at the square and got 'pisco sour' for all of us. This is my first time tasting pisco. Can't really tell the difference between this and a typical cocktail, but it was delightful. We had a nice conversation for an hour before I went on my way to find my dinner. I said bye as we separated with the hope that I would meet them again in Machu Picchu. My dinner for that day was a quick one. I found out from the people at the hostel that there was a local market near the square that serves local food for cheap. The food was just 10 sol ($3.1). I went to bed fairly early as I had to catch a 5.30am bus to Machu Picchu, as they recommended you to get there as early as possible to beat all the tourists. I also met two new friends in the same hostel (one from India and one from Brazil who didn't speak English), but we didn't talk that much.

The third day will be the highlight of my entire trip, the journey to Machu Picchu and back!.

Me and my new friends from Poland, having pisco sours in the town

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 1 - Cusco

2017-12-10T16:49:00.000-06:00

Before I start this post, I had to say that I didn't try to write the whole miniseries about this trip, but as I wrote about the story, there are more and more stories that I wanted to write down as a reminder for myself and share to other, and the post becomes really long for my typical post. So, I decided to separate into a post for each day. You can find more post here for Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.

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Even though this trip comes from the observation in South America as a starting point, I will not talk about my observation run, as this is my fourth time going to Magellan, and I already talked about it few times in previous posts.

Instead, I will start the story with my first flight from Chile to Peru. I had to stay in the airport from around 9pm to catch the flight at around 5am the next morning. That was 8 hours layover. It wasn't super exciting since everything close around midnight except Starbucks in the terminal. I tried to sleep in the airport, but couldn't really fall sleep as I was worried about my luggage. Unfortunately, this flight was delayed until like 6am, which made my flight landed in Lima, Peru at 8am which is just one hour before my next flight. I had never been to Lima before so I don't really know what to expect at the airport, how the custom works and where I should head too. Once I landed, I had about 45 mins to get to my next flight. I ran to the custom, ran inside the airport, and finally reached my flight in time with about 5 mins to spare. And that was just the beginning of the trip that I travel alone.

Plaza Mayor de Cusco with Cusco Cathedral in the background

I reached Cusco without too many problems, except the little hiccup with the taxi driver. I had to pay $10 for the taxi which usually cost $3. I didn't really read too much about Cusco before my trip. Once I settled down in my hostel, Mama Simona Hostel (which I highly recommended), I headed to the center of town with an amazing view. I exchanged for $200 for the whole trip, which turns out to be enough for my 4 days trip to Peru. I also went inside Cusco Cathedral, which was amazing. The most exciting part about the Cathedral was the painting of "The Last Supper" with a guinea pig at the center meal, painted by local Incans during the Spanish occupation. I walked around the city, stopped by a local restaurant for a quick lunch (which wasn't that good), and visited Qurikancha, which is a temple that was built since the Inca time. By this time, I was super tired since I didn't really get any sleep last night (or the night before for observing). So, I decided to head back to my hostel, took a shower and find a place to eat. Fortunately, my roommate in the hostel from Austria knew some Spanish and I decided to follow him for dinner. Since I was not super impressed with my first meal in Peru, I decided to just let him choose the place. We walked past all the tourist traps in the center of the city to the local market and picked a small shop near the market for our place for dinner.

Qorikancha with the view of the mountain

The shop is very small and super local. I would not be able to order anything here by myself as I don't know any Spanish. And the food turned out to be amazing. I got a fish plate that comes with a rice soup, fried rice with fried fish and a coco tea (my new favorite kind of tea) for just 5 soles (or $1.56). That was amazing. Now, my impression about the food in Peru has improved greatly. And my new mission is to eat this type of food again even though I will be alone next time. Before heading back, I went to a supermarket to try a dessert and a Peruvian Coke, called (Inca Kola). I think it tasted like Fanta. That concludes the end of my first day in Peru. It was a good day in general, except the dinner just made it to an awesome day. (I also met another person from UCLA at the hostel whom I will meet again at Machu Picchu). The second day will be about my experience heading to and spend some time at Aguas Calientes.

My favorite meal of the entire trip (5 sols or $1.5)

Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse 2017

2017-08-24T12:49:00.001-05:00

The planning for this trip is very different from any other trips as it was the first time that the focus of the trip is one particular event at a particular time and nothing else. The trip was formed rather quickly as I found one of my physics friend who is also interested in going to see the solar eclipse. We looked up the map and decided where in this solar eclipse path that we can potential go with rather cheap flight tickets and no driving involved. After few hours, we decided that we will fly to Atlanta and will take a bus to a nearby (4 hours drive) town, called Columbia, SC without knowing anything about the town or anyone there. I later learned once I got to the city that it is actually the capitol city of South Carolina. You would not have guess that if you did not visit the state museum there.

We flew Spirit to Atlanta on Saturday afternoon before catching a late evening bus to Columbia. We had to wait for the bus in the middle of the night for an hour. I thought that the station should be indoor with restrooms and restaurants. I was completely wrong. We in fact had to wait on the sidewalk. The bus took about 4 hours to get to Columbia and 3 AM. I was tired (from traveling and probably jetlag from my previous trip). We managed to get to the hotel with a plan that we will visit the state museum the next day for the eclipse glasses.

SC State Museum with the telescope dome at the top pointing to the sun

After waking up early, we quickly finished our breakfast before walking to Walmart to look for eclipse glasses. There was none. My friends already looked for them in multiple places in Boston with no luck. Fortunately, the SC State Museum gave out a pair of glasses for every visitor with just a entrance ticket. We initially planned to have a whole Sunday free for exploring the city, but because of the weather and a rather quiet town, we decided to just explore the museum instead. The museum was large enough to accommodate us for the whole day. The highlight of the museum is a planetarium which told a story about this coming solar eclipse. Another thing that I found fascinating about the museum is the civil war history. Learning about the civil war from the Confederate side was not something I was expected from this trip. The exhibition is well-done with artifacts and stories about the war, but the story is a little different from what I was told about this war.

"You always learn something different about the war if you learn it from the losing side."

We went straight back to the hotel after the museum. We didn't really get to explore the city because of the weather and the fact that we were pretty tired by that time. Well, that was not really the point of this trip anyway.

Before going to bed, we decided to go to Historic Columbia Speedway since they had a event called "Soda City Eclipse" (still not really sure why they called it that). We learned nothing about the place since we were there just for an empty land with some tents and chairs for the solar eclipse. Thinking that there might be tons of people coming to the event, we got to the event at 10am while the total eclipse will occur at 2.41pm. We basically had to wait for 4 hours to see the solar eclipse. I spent the first 30 mins walking around the place and spent the rest of 3.3 hours just sitting around and reading books. At least I almost finished one book during this trip.

Finally, 2.40pm arrived and people stopped their activities and stared into the sun with their glasses. I was one of them. The whole place was quiet and once people took off their glasses, they started to cheer as if someone just win a competition. But no, the moon just covered the sun completely. The sky went darker, the temperature dropped, but we all kept staring into now a dark sun with our naked eyes silently.

The exact spot that I was watching the total solar eclipse.

Now, I will quote what I wrote right after I saw the total eclipse at that spot in Columbia, South Carolina.

"You have to wear this special glasses for most of the time so that you can actually see the sun. I used mine until I saw the last part of the bright sun with my glasses before I took it off. But what I saw after I took off my glasses was unexplainable. The sun is totally blocked off. You can see the whole sun without any protection and the surrounding area was dark like a twilight right before the sunset, but it was dark on all sides. I don't really have any more explanation to explain this feeling. But if I have a chance to see another one, I will definitely do it again a million times even though I have to wait for more than 3 hours in the middle of the town that I knew nobody and had to take a midnight bus to go to a rather random town in a not-so well-known state." - 08/21/2017 - 2.54pm - Columbia, SC

The sky turned dark and everything stopped during the total solar eclipse

The trip back to Boston is simply reversed what we did before. We had to spend one more night at a hotel near the airport. We also didn't explore Atlanta because we wouldn't have enough time to get back to the airport. But it doesn't matter. What mattered was that I did see the total solar eclipse for the first time, and hopefully not the last time.

A weekend at Acadia National Park

2017-06-25T01:45:00.000-05:00

This is one of the most random trip that I have ever organized in awhile. Basically, one of my friends from Chicago is visiting Boston and she wanted to go to Acadia National park. So, she asked me whether I would know enough people to go to Acadia together. The target number for the trip is 5 people as it can fit exactly in one small car. I manage to find other 3 people fairly quickly so that we can start to organize the trip.

This weekend is pretty simple. We start by leaving Boston Friday afternoon so that we can get to Ellsworth (a small town near Acadia) before it is too late (5 hrs driving to get there). We stopped in Portland for some quick dinner before heading to Ellsworth.

Gorham Mountain with Sand Beach in the background

We started Saturday pretty early as we have day-packed schedule ahead. The weather was amazing that day as it wasn't too hot or too cold. Before starting the trip, we stopped at the information center to get a map and asked for some specific trails that we want to go to. Then, we decided to hike on the Beehive trail and Gorham Mountain trail. The Beehive as an interesting hike as we have to climb iron rung ladders and handrails to get to the top. The view on the top was amazing with a view of a Sand Beach and many small islands nearby. The hike took us less than 2 hours to complete, so we decide to continue hiking to Gorham Mountain. This second hike is less steep than the first one, but a little longer. We also stopped at the peak for some lunch that we got before coming into the park.

Sunset in Acadia National

On the way back, we have to walk along the road. We get to stop at the Thunder hole to wait for some loud action as waves hit the shore, but the waves were calm so we didn't get to see much action. The Sand Beach was our next destination. We only spent about 15 mins there as the water was way too cold for anyone to go in. Plus we have to make our way to Bar Island by 5pm as it was a low tide to see some tide pools. Before we headed to the Bar Island, we also stopped at Jordan pond. It was one of my favorite places in Acadia as the sky and the pond were in a perfect blue. It did feel like a very nice spot after a long hike even though we simply drive to the pond. Land Bridge to Bar Island was a great walk in the summer. We can see different creatures around tide pools, but we only saw some kind of shellfish on the beach (still not sure what kinds of shellfish it was). We end the day at Bass Harbor Lighthouse in order to see the sunset. However, the sun didn't actually set there (If you want to see the sunset, I don't really recommend to go there). We had to drive back for awhile so that we can have a good spot for sunset.

Crystal clear water at Jordan Pond with a perfect blue sky

Sunday was an easier day with not many plans. Basically, we drove up Cadillac Mountain to get a good view of the park as a whole from the highest spot. The view was nice and the weather was refreshing. Then after a quick breakfast, we rented a bike from Bar Harbor Bicycle Shop for $25 per person to drive around Carriage Roads in Acadia. This road was first developed by the Rockefeller family for horses and buggies. There were some uphill parts that might be difficult, but I was surprised by a long-way downhill path around the Eagle lake. It was fun and a little bit dangerous. The road is very good for biking. I highly recommended for people who had some time in the park. We finished our biking around 3pm which left us enough time to drive back to Boston before it was too late.

Biking on Carriage Roads

Overall, it was a pretty nice weekend trip which required only a small planning. If you are in New England for the weekend, Acadia national park is one of the options that you should keep in mind.

Wind is what we have to worry about

2017-06-24T22:45:00.002-05:00

From the previous post, we were talking about observational astronomy. Specifically, we talked about 'seeing' and how weather can affect the ability for the astronomers to do observation. In this post, I want to talk specifically about wind.

You might be wondering how is wind has an effect on the telescope. The answer is a strong wind can literally shake the telescope and have a damage on the telescope itself. The criterion for a strong wind is 35 mph (56 km/h). Therefore, every time the wind gets stronger, a telescope operator (a person who is responsible for moving the telescope and dome) will shut down the dome to protect the telescope from the wind and an astronomer can just sit there waiting for the wind to stop. If you think sitting and waiting for cloud to go away is bad, waiting for the wind to stop is even worse simple because you can literally see a clear night sky outside your dome, but you simply cannot do the observation.

A wind chart from 3/17-6/17

(Note: the data came from the same data source as a previous post.) You can see that most of the time, the wind speed is well below 35 mph threshold. However, there were couple days that the wind is greater 35 mph and those days will correspond to 'a terrible night' for the observation.

Other weather factors apart from cloud and wind that can have an effect on the observation includes temperature (if it is too cold, we cannot really operate the telescope otherwise we risk to have some components frozen as the temperature at the telescope has to be the same as the outside to reduce the thermal noise), humidity (too high humidity will cause water droplets to be formed on the mirror and/or the instruments which might damage those instruments. water droplets will form once the humidity is higher than a dew point). There are many factors that can contribute to the obstacles for the observation, so we should not take a great night for granted as it might not happen that often anymore. Lastly, I will leave you will two night panoramas from the mountain. You can say that it might one good thing on a terrible night at the observatory.

Panorama from Magellan Telescope during sunset

Panorama to Magellan Telescope during daylight

Average Seeing on Magellan Telescope in the past 4 months

2017-06-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

It has been awhile since I wrote my last blog post. I am not sure why. Maybe I felt like 'blogging' was no longer exciting and novel, or maybe I just spent too much time consuming media and did not create anything. Then, someone commented on one of my old data visualization works that I did several years ago about Bangkok. Thank you to that person since it made me want to write a new one again.

Enough about excuses. Today, we will discuss about something that is near and dear to my heart, which is observational astronomy. During my PhD study, I got a chance to visit Magellan Telescope in northern part of Chile (I mentioned a little bit at the end of my last post). However, coming to the telescope is not enough for this kind of works. Weather also plays a huge role in this kind of works. And as we all know, we cannot really control weather. More often than not, astronomers travel to the top of the mountains, sit quietly inside the dome, and wait for the cloud to disappear. But, how often?

To answer this question, we have to pick a specific place and time to get a finite answer. Naturally, I picked Magellan Telescope and within the last 4 months as a starting point. I put the method and all the resources that I used in the note below.

Seeing at Magellan Telescope from 3/17-6/17

This is a plot showing an average seeing on a given night. What is 'seeing', you may ask? Seeing is a measurable quantity to represent how clear the sky is at that particular moment. Technically, it tells you how far two stars/objects have to be so that we can distinguish them as two stars/objects. And, an average seeing tells you how good was the weather that night for observing. 1" is a standard to quantify whether it is a good night (At other telescopes, 1" might be the best that they can get. It all depends on the site's location). And a day without any box represents a day that the weather is so bad that we didn't even open the dome.

As we can see from the data, a terrible night (no data was taken that day) is ~22%, and a great night (an average seeing is less than 1.) is ~70%. This doesn't sound that bad, but we have to recognize that one group might be able to only get 2-3 nights at a time, and there is a non-zero probability that they will not get any data at all.

This data can tell you much more than 'how often we get a bad weather'. For example, we can see that almost all nights in March 2017 were amazing with every single night except one is a great night. On the other hand, in May 2017 ~40% (12 nights) were a bad night.

However, this is not the end of the story. A seeing is simply a result from a combination of various weather effects. In fact, cloud is not the most important factor in this story, instead it is wind. In the next post, I will discuss further about wind and how it can have a effect on the observation.

Magellan Telescope

Note: The most important thing for answering this question is data. I had to scape the data from the telescope's weather website. Fortunately, there is a weather calendar website that archives the previous weather. What I had to do is using Selerium on Python to collect the data by running individual day data from the website and converting it into meaningful numbers. After that, I just made a box-plot to show the data.

A Person without Home - Homeless person

2017-06-01T02:41:00.001-05:00

I recently read a Thai essay about a person without home by Roundfinger (นิ้วกลม) facebook page and it made me realize how similar the idea was with my own idea even though I have not ever properly written it out. So, I want to use this opportunity to write about my value of home, places to sleep and traveling.

During the summer or winter break that I spent in the states, people often ask me like why I did not go home or how long I have been away from home. In the course of three and a half years I live in US (as of 1/2014), I went home twice. My first time was after graduating from high school in North Carolina and my second time was about three weeks after my second year of college.

So, why didn't I go home?

Mansueto Library of the University of Chicago (not my home, but I did spend a lot of time in there)

Because I am home.

My definition of home is a place where I can truly be myself, where I can just relax without constantly thinking about anything and, most importantly, where I can sleep safely and quietly. That is all my definition of home, and I never say anything about the the limit of the number of home one can have at one time, but, please keep in mind that, one can live at one place at a time.

I am feeling thankful that I am a type of person who can sleep easily. I can sleep under some annoying noises (my house is next to a road), with light on (already did that), on the ground (also did that during the trip), on sofa (did that for a whole summer) or any places that one could possibly sleep. This might be one reason why I never really consider just my own bed is a place where I call home.

Update: I am not sure why I haven't posted this post yet. More than 3 years have passed since I wrote this post. Here is a quick update on this topic. After 7 years in the US, I went home 3 times (including one more time that I went home after graduating from University of Chicago). Well, I am going home next months though. I am not sure when I started to set my time that I will only go home every two years, but that makes it easier for me to plan anything. Now, my mom never ask me when I will go home since she already know that the next time will be in two years. I am not sure whether two years is a perfect number, but it has worked for me so far. The one thing that I was sad about going home every two years is that I missed lots of occasions at home from my friend's graduation, my sibling's graduation, to other family vacation. But I would not change anything.

Since I moved to the US, I have lived in 5 places (4 student dorms and 1 off-campus housing). I do like the dorm-life as there are activities happening all the time and you have more chances to meet new people as people move in and out all the time. Not sure how I feel about not living in the dorm as I finish school. I hope it is as good as it is in the dorm.

Update 2 (5/10/20):
Back in 2017, I wrote an article title A Person without Home - Homeless person and said that "my definition of home is a place where I can truly by myself [...] where I can sleep safely and quietly". After this weird dream, I realized that a home is much more than that. A home is likely not a place where you can be yourself 100 percent, but a place where you get to live with people that you love and want to spend your time with.

Adventure through the Southern Chile

2017-01-10T18:50:00.000-06:00

Even though I went to Chile before, I wasn't really planned to go visit the Patagonia region (southern Chile) any time soon. But that changed as soon as my friend from Caltech asked me whether I want to join them during Christmas. Of course, I would like to go to Patagonia and visit Torres Del Plain. Plus, I have my second observing run in Northern Chile at the beginning of the year, meaning that my flight will be covered from works. Before the trip, I barely know anything about this region, including what are the highlights and why is it a popular tourist destination.

However, because of my last final exam is pretty late this year, I will not have time to visit Bolivia with my friends. Instead, I arrived Santiago, a capital of Chile, two-three days before we meet up to go down to Puerto Natales (a town that we will be staying during my trip in Patagonia). First thing I did was going back to the same empanadas shop (Empanadas Zunino) and getting the same empanada that I had during my first visit. I ate it so fast that I didn't have time to take a photo. Below is a photo from my first trip.

Original Empanadas at Mercado Central's restaurant (Photo from my summer trip)

I also had a chance to show my new friends around Santiago as I had some experience around the city. After chilling and waiting, we took a flight from Santiago to Puerto Arenas early morning of Dec 24th. Then, we took a 3-hour bus ride from Puerto Arenas to Puerto Natales, where we will be staying for the next 4 nights. On the flight to Puerto Arenas, we also met with another Thai student who is traveling to the park alone. Since I didn't really involve with a planning process for this part of the trip, I have absolutely no idea where we are going and what we are doing next. People also said that it rains often there as well, but I didn't know so I didn't bring any rain jacket (well, I don't really have one). Fortunately, the weather was great almost every day, except the day that we arrived in Puerto Natales. It turns out that the first thing we do at Torres del Plain National Park is hiking 4.5 hours into the mountain to see the actual Torres del Plain. It was a long hike for my standard (actually too long). I did make it to the site eventually, after almost 5 hours of hiking. Weirdly enough, I also met with another friend of mine from MIT at the Torres. He was there for five-full days with camping experiencing the whole national park. I definitely would not do that after what happened today.

After 4.5 hours of hiking to see Torres del Plain

The next two day at the national park is a lot better. For the second day, we hiked for about 4 hours (in and out) to see Grey Glacier from a viewpoint. We don't have enough time to go see it up-close (well, I don't want to do it too). Probably because of the pain that I gained during my first day, it was a difficult second day. For our last day, we only visit a viewpoint to look over the park from the other side. It was a quick 1-1.30 hour walk, which is much better compared to the first two days. The view was, of course, gorgeous. After the hike, we decided to take it easy and wait at a coffee shop. Unfortunately, the next bus that will take us back to Puerto Natales is in four hours. So, we spent that 4 hours simply relaxing at the coffee shop and wait for the bus. There was a brief rain while we were inside. Lucky for us again!

Torres del Plain National Park on my third day (Sendero Mirador Cuernos)

After three days and four nights in the national park, we left Puerto Natales and took a flight to Puerto Montt for our second destination, "the Lake District". After the hike, we were ready to be back to a bigger city with a car and no more hiking. Puerto Varas is a tourist hub for the region. We spent two nights at a really nice-looking house in the city. Since it got dark pretty late during this time of the year (the sun sets around 9:30pm-9:45pm), we drove to Frutillar to visit a small German town of the region. The weather was nice with a cloudless sky. We can clearly see the top of the Osorno Volcano, which we will visit in the latter day.

Osorno Volcano from Frutillar

For the other two days in the lake district, we visited Chole Island and Osorno Volcano region. To go to Chole Island, we took our car onto a ferry in order to cross the sea. Chole Island is not a small island as I thought before. We drove about 2-3 hours to go to the capital of the island, which is at the center. I went down to a small boat to see some penguins. Our guide tour can only speak Spanish, so we don't really understand what is going on. The best well-known things about Chole Island was the churches. According to wikipedia, the Churches of Chiloé were designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 2000. For Osorno Volcano, we took a ski lift to go to the top of the mountain. We didn't go up all the way to the peak, but it was still a nice view. We can see all the lake from there.

After the trip, we were all exhausted. All of my friends headed back to the US while I caught another flight to Atacama desert for my observing run at Las Campanas Observatory. Spending New Year Eve on the mountain was fun. Even though there was some weather issue from high wind, we got some good data using PISCO. It was a great way to end my eventful winter break.

Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory

PS If you want to visit Torres Del Plain, Adventure Alan website has a great resource about the planning and steps you need to take to visit the region. (Credit to Pon)

What I learn from Astrostatistics Summer School at Penn State

2016-06-17T15:14:00.000-05:00

During my first summer as a graduate student at MIT, I got an opportunity to participate in the 12th Astrostatistics Summer School at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), organized by Eric Feigelson in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. My first impression about the summer school is mostly about some fancy statistical techniques that astronomers are adopting in their research to do data analysis. But the reality is much more than I can ever imagine.

Learn Bayesian Statistics from Thomas Loredo

Instead of diving into different fancy technique in statistics, we started the summer school just like every statistic classes in college start, "Probability." But this time, we got to learn from the head of the Department of Statistics at Penn State, David Hunter. It was a great opportunity to refresh some of these materials after saw it 2-3 years ago. Then, we continued into more general topic in statistics, including "Inference" by Kwame Kankam, "Introduction to Regression" by David Jones from Harvard, and "Model Fitting and Bootstrap" by G. Jogesh Babu. This is the first time that I learn about Bootstrapping after hearing it from different places many times. Even though we do not have time to go over all the details about the technique, I would say that I have a little understanding about the technique and how important it is in astronomy. Instead of assuming underlying distribution for the sample, Bootstrapping essentially randomly draw samples of actual data multiple times to get a set of samples that we can do statistical analysis on. This set of samples have statistics properties similar to sample that we draw from correct distribution.

We also learned about "Multivariate, Clustering & Classification" and "Nonparametric Statistics" from Jessi Cisewski from Yale, Time Series from Eric Feigelson, and "Bayesian Analysis" from Thomas Loredo from Cornell. This is also the first time that I formally learned about clustering and classification outside the context of machine learning. But, I think the main point that I got from this summer school is from Prof. Loredo on Bayesian Statistics. As he explained, most astronomical data analysis is more suitable to Bayesian analysis than Frequentist approach as we often than measurement uncertainty and know some prior knowledge about the problem. Bayesian analysis allowed us to incorporate this information explicitly, which makes the analysis very clear.

Apart from learning about statistic, we also learned a basic of R (a programming language of the statisticians, by the statisticians, and for the statisticians) from Derek Young. Even though I learned a little bit of R from both my statistical classes and my social science classes, it was still a great review and good introduction to different part of the program that I have never heard before, such as nls (non-linear regression), boot (Bootstrapping), princomp (Principle Component Analysis), etc.

R Studio for running R

In addition, we also had a half day field trip to Penn Cave, where we took a boat ride along the all-water limestone cavern. Although it was rather hot outside, the temperature inside the cave is surprisingly cooler. The cave was huge and we saw different type of limestone inside the cave. Plus, we also spotted bison and deers around the lake near the cave.

Penn Cave

In conclusion, the Astrostatistics Summer School at Penn State was a great introduction to different field in statistics that astronomers started to use in their analysis, but it was, by no mean, detailed enough to be useful in any cases. It's up to us to continue learning about this topic and adapt it in our own research in order to make the most from our time here.

PS: an unexpected journey happened the night that I supposed to leave State College. My flight got canceled. It was "canceled", and not just one of those delayed flight. Fortunately, I contacted Noah, my astrophysics friend at Penn State to spend a night. I got a chance to visit his campus, his office, and also a laboratory for making X-ray instrument. I was a quick unexpected journal that was interesting enough and didn't make me feel like I wasted one day in town. Oh, I also went to my first ever Game of Throne viewing party. But what I liked more was the TV show called Bob's Burger!

The Second Part of AAS 227th Meeting in Florida: Poster!

2016-02-14T21:41:00.000-06:00

While the first post for AAS meeting is about my experience at the conference in general, the second post will be dedicated mostly on my first experience in a poster presentation.

During mid-October, my advisor and I decided that I should give a poster presentation on my current research project at AAS as a good way to introduce my project to the community in order to gather feedbacks about it. I spent around two weeks in December working with the poster from creating a template for the poster, generating the information, figures and diagram, and finalizing the poster. It was a rewarding experience as you got to see the physical poster at the end. We decided to use a fabric poster for easy packing and traveling which made an awesome poster.

My first poster for the AAS Meeting

Some people argue that a poster presentation is more useful than oral presentation as the speakers have more time to interact, answer questions, and clarify with the audience during the poster session. However, one of the downsides for poster presentation is the time spent at the poster. In order for a poster presentation to be as effective as possible, you have to spend most of the day at the poster and ready to present your results to anyone who might stop by. But, this also implies that you will not have any time that day to participate in some other events. Specifically, I was really excited to participate in the Hack Day at the conference, but I could attend as I had to present my poster. I did not say that I would rather attend the Hack Day than presenting my poster. I simply said that by doing so, I limited myself to fewer things that I could potentially do that day.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the most interesting part in presenting the poster is, in fact, people that I got to meet during the meeting. I got a chance to talk to many people who are working on galaxy clusters and x-ray observation. The notable ones are:
- Mark Brodwin (UMKC): he is my advisor's collaborator and find one of the most massive galaxy cluster in the high redshift region.
- Thomas Conner (Michigan State): he is working on crowded field photometry in the CLASH clusters by using red-sequencing.
- Allison Noble (UToronto): she is working on z=0.2 galaxy cluster and probing dust temperature and star formation rate as a function of environment and accretion history. (She will be joining us at MIT for a postdoc in 2016).
- Yuanyuan Su (CfA): she is working on deep Chandra observation of NGC-1404 to constraint on the transport processes in the intra-cluster medium.
- Wenli Mo (UFlorida): she is working on Massive Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), and trying to find active galactic nuclei in galaxy clusters.

There are many things that I can do better during the poster session from answering better for each question and actually remember people's name who came to the poster. But in general, it was a great experience and definitely a good start for my research in X-ray and galaxy clusters.

Me with a poster at AAS227th meeting in Florida

AAS 227th Meetng in Orlando, Florida

2016-01-18T16:30:00.000-06:00

I would say that I am fairly lucky to have a chance to join this year AAS meeting because not many first-year graduate students usually come to the meeting. My main goals for this meeting are attending my first "Astropy" workshop and presenting the progress of my current research project about finding galaxy clusters. The size and the scale of this meeting are completely different from my first scientific meeting I attended last year in Vietnam. There are more than ten sessions running at the same time covered not only all kinds of research topics in astrophysics from exoplanet to cosmology, but also public outreach and other astrophysics-related topics such as coding and writing papers. The conference could easily feel overwhelming as many events occur simultaneously. I can only write about the conference from my own perspective, and keep in mind that each one of us will have a totally different experience.

AAS 227th Meeting at Kissimmee, Florida

Non-Academic Events

Even though the Opening Reception for the conference starts on Monday evening, my first event at the conference started at 9am on Monday for a Python workshop. I had previously attended few workshops about Python program, but this is the first one that targeted specifically people working in astronomy. The organizers, which mainly consisted of astropy volunteers, started the workshop with an introduction about numpy and astropy. Astropy is a project of unifying all astro-related python packages into one package that can easily be distributed and implemented by astronomers everywhere. As more people got involved with the project, Astropy Project also became a community of astronomers who are interested in software to work together to promote and support the project. Throughout the workshop, I have learned different packages in Astropy, including:

Units and Quantities: a unified way of organizing different units and constants in astrophysics calculation
Table and QTable: a similar package as Pandas but with an ability to export in more formats such as aastex table.
Celestial Coordinates: a package that helps locating celestial objects and its relationship with other objects in the same area.
WCS, modeling, and fitting: World Coordinate System Utilities (WCS) to help convert between pixel of the CCD to the position on the sky.
Other astropy-related packages including Photutilis (Aperture: counting photons in different sections of the image & Image Segmentation: detecting sources from the image using a threshold/background level), Glue (Interactive visualization tool for scientific analysis) and Specview (Interactive visualization tool for viewing spectrograph).

The organizer also provides a Github page for all the materials that we went through during the workshop for future reference.

Astropy: astrophysics package for Python

Apart from the Monday workshop, I also attended two non-scientific session during the conference, which are "How to write Code and Software" on Tuesday and "AAS Writing and Journal Workshop" on Wednesday. The main points for writing software workshop are code documentation (for future reference of your own code), code testing (for validating the software), and code management (version control with Github). After the talks, I created my goal to start documenting my codes seriously and also begin to use Github as a backup for all my scientific and non-scientific codes. You can check my Github page here.

Another workshops that I went to is about writing scientific papers, specifically writing for AAS. It was a great opportunity to learn about all new features that will be included with the newest version of AASTeX, AASTeX v6.0 such as figure set, column hiding and decimal alignment and other things like AAS Nova for research highlight for the journals and ORCiD. There are many other things that I learned during the conference that I have not had a chance to talk about it all here. There will be something for everyone at this conference.

Another non-academic talks about World Wide Telescope as a tool for researchers to use to analyzing the data.

Academic Talks

Although there are many talks about other things related to working in an astrophysics community, the main goal for the conference is to share new results in the field with other people in the community. As this is my first time coming the AAS, I decided to attend all the plenary talks regarding the subjects in order to learn about every field in astrophysics. I started the conference with New Horizon with the latest results of Pluto by Alan Stern, then dynamics of celestial bodies by Smadar Noaz, Event Horizon Telescopes by Feryal Ozel, the overview of the cosmology by Marc Kamionkowski and David Spergel, NuSTAR mission by Fiona Harrison, Spitzer Space Telescope by Giovaani Fazio, Zwicky Transient Survey by Shrinivas Kulkarni, VERTAS and HAWC by Branda Dingus, planet formation by Ruth Murray-Clay, Satellite Galaxies by Keith Bechtol, and lastly the latest result from Planck by Jan Tauber. In addition, there are many graduate students and professors giving talks about the latest results for their research during the conference.

One of many plenary talks I attended during AAS Meeting by Shrinivas Kulkarni about Zwicky Transient Survey

Even though more than 90% of these talks have a very little association with my current research topic, it was still beneficial to attend such talks in order to expand my general knowledge of astrophysics and understand what other people are working on.

I will continue talking about my experience during the poster session and other things relating to the conference in the next post.

Vacation in Orlando: Theme Parks

2016-01-09T03:37:00.000-06:00

Visiting theme parks in Orlando is one of the top tourist activities in the US. I didn't get to do it until my 6th year in the US. It was much more fun that I expected even though I was already 24 at that time.

The trip started with me finished my first astronomical conference in a nearby town. In fact, the only reason that I spend 5 days in Orlando is because I was already here for the conference.

The first day is not super exciting as I was waiting for my friend to join from New York City. I simply walked around the hotel and had Popeye for the first time in a place nearby. I also had a chance to plan all of our days in Orlando, which mostly consist of visiting different theme parks each day.

We started our theme park vacation with Aquatica. It was an enormous water park, except it was pretty empty when we were there (probably because it was January 😅). "Ihu’s Breakaway Fall" is one of the most scariest ride I did for the whole trip with four different theme parks. The ride is that the floor will suddenly disappear and you fell immediately down the slide very fast with angle of more than 80 degree. What I realized was that a fun part about visiting a theme park is seeing people walking around the park, but we didn't get to do that at this park. But, it was still a great experience and I really like a water park. At night, we also visit the Disney town near the Disney World. There were so many shops in the town.

Empty water park with an empty ride. It is good that you don't have to wait in line for any rides.

We had to wake up pretty early on the second day as we headed to Walt Disney World: The Magic Kingdom. There are 4 theme parks and 2 water parks in Disney World. We only picked to go to one (the Magic Kingdom) as we want to have more time to visit Universal Studio later. My experience for the Magic Kingdom was pretty similar to my experience with Disneyland in Paris with similar rides and firework shows. It was still fun and I still enjoyed all the rides that I did previously including Space Mountain and Small World.

Walt Disney Castle at night while waiting for the fireworks

The last two days were probably the main focus on this trip with the Universal Studio (both Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure). And the reason for it was a "new" Harry Potter theme park inside these two parks. I was curious for how many attendees increase since they open Harry Potter section of the park. It mush be pretty successful such that they already opened another one in Osaka and one more in LA. Both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade were great in a different way. And the train to transfer between the two was memorable. Apart from Harry Potter theme parks, there were many rides which based on many films and animation, including the Simpsons, Minion, Transformer, Shrek, Spider-man, Jurassic park, and many others. If you are a big fan of these movies, you will have a great time at Universal.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Universal Studio

It was rather tiring toward the end of the trip as packing 4 different theme parks into 4 consecutive days was not really a great idea. It was a fun and exciting experience, but spacing out a little bit might be a little better. Overall, it was a fun experience even with a 24-year-old boy. I highly recommended any of these parks and you feel like you are kids again (in case you want to be).

Story about Pixar

2016-01-02T22:09:00.000-06:00

In the past two weeks, I had experience several things related to Pixar from a book written by the president of Pixar, a new Pixar film, a documentary about Pixar and the exhibition titled "Science behind Pixar". Thus, I would like this chance to write about what I have learned from this period of learning about Pixar and share my obsession about the company.

Me with Buzz Lightyear at The Science Behing Pixar Exhbition in Museum of Science

A Book written by the president of Pixar

I started this journey when I decided to pick up a book called "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration" by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace as one of Mark Zuckerberg's recommended books. Ed Catmull is the co-founder and current president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Even though the premise of the book is not solely on the history of Pixar, but instead the management of creative enterprise, it still manages to tell different accounts related to Pixar as an example. Being a co-founder of Pixar, Ed had a first-hand experience with all the ups and downs in Pixar ranging from founding the company with the help from Steve Job, achieving an incredible success after its first movie "Toy Story", to facing different struggles as the company expanded and merged with Disney in 2006.

One great example of a creative culture at Pixar is "Notes Day," which is a day dedicated to the entire company to get together, reflect on different aspects of the company, and offer ideas for possible solutions. By listening to each person carefully, as they suggest new ideas, the employees felt that they are a part of the company and they also had a chance to meet new people from different departments. Another great thing about this book is the last chapter of the book, dedicated to Steve Job as their first investor. Even though there have been numerous books and movies about Steve Job, Ed wrote this section in such a way that you can feel more connected to Steve and how important he is to people around him. Lastly, the book suggests that what makes Pixar successful in the past two decades is its dedication to creativity and originality in the story in each film.

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters. - John Lasseter

Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

"The Science behind Pixar" Exhibition at Museum of Science, Boston

The second thing that I experience about Pixar is the exhibition about Pixar at Museum of Science. Being an exhibition in a science museum, it mostly showcased the process of making a computer-graphic animation from modeling, sculpting, animating, simulating, lighting to rendering. Unlike the book that focuses on the stories and ideas, this exhibition addresses the technical challenges of making a film. Even though Pixar is a animation studio, it has a whole team of software engineers, helping to create new tools that animators can use to help to make a film.

Drawing for Wall-E in the exhibition

Examples of these challenges are a crowd simulation to create hundreds of ants in A Bug's Life, a human animation in The Incredibles, an underwater background in Finding Nemo, and fur and hair simulation in Brave. Although the story is the most important thing in animated features, the technical progresses helps animators to achieve these stories as John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of Pixar, often said,

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. - John Lasseter

**A new Pixar film "The Good Dinosaur" (2015):**

The third thing that I decided to do about Pixar is watching the newest Pixar film that just came out in theaters recently. After reading the book and went to the exhibition, I watched the film in a completely new way from amazing details in water, trees and environments to different characters. I would not say that The Good Dinosaur is my favorite Pixar film, but there are many things to like about the film. Now I am ready to go back and watch all the previous Pixar films again as I will definitely appreciate them more than I watched it for the first time.

The Good Dinosaur (2015)

**A documentary about Pixar "The Pixar Story" (2007)**:

The last thing that I did about Pixar is to watch the documentary about Pixar, called The Pixar Story. After reading the book, I would like to know more about Pixar and its history as the book only addresses different snippets of the whole story. The documentary tells the story of Pixar from the beginning until the acquisition by Disney in 2006 and interviews different people who involves with the company, including Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E), Pete Docter (director of Monster Inc, Up and Inside Out), Brad Bird (director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille), George Lucas (filmmaker who created Industrial Light & Magic computer graphics division at Lucasfilm where Ed Catmull and John Lasseter worked together before founding Pixar) and Steve Job (the first investor of Pixar).

The Pixar Story (2007)

After all these, I found myself want more from Pixar. I want to read more books about Pixar and re-watch all previous Pixar films. But this is a good start.

Quick Trip to New York City for New Year Celebration

2016-01-01T22:26:00.000-06:00

I would say that I started this trip with so little planning and not many things I wanted to do for the trip. Maybe the only reason that I decide to go to New York City for a couple days is simply an opportunity for me to see my old friends from various groups that I would not see in Cambridge and Boston.

This trip had so little planning that I only got a round-trip bus ticket three days beforehand. I would say the shortest amount of time that I prepared for any trips. I had some idea that I would want to go to New York City for winter break, but I did not know when exactly until there was no time left to me to decide. So I just bought the tickets.

There are two things that I liked about this quick four-day-and-three-night trip to New York City.

What I wanted to do: see old faces in a different city.
I started this trip, not with finding a place to stay, but with a quick meet up with my Thai friend from Northwestern (Mind). I didn't expect to see him there until I realized that he was in New York City and actually flying back to Chicago on the night that I arrived. So, I purposefully booked the earliest bus ride to New York City in order to see him before his flight. It was nice to get to meet with people from Chicago, where I spent my last four years. I also met his friend who is currently studying law at NYU.

P'Mind at Grace Street in New York City

The second group of friend that I met is my other Thai friends who I would stay with for the next three nights. It was nice catching up with these friends after each of us has moved from undergraduate to graduate school. We shared the experience of our first semester in graduate school, how they are similar or different. As a host for this trip, they also showed me around New York City. I wouldn't say too much about it here as this will be the second thing that I liked about this trip. Yet again, I met another new Thai friend who was also visiting New York City at the same time.

Then, I met up with one of my old classmates from UChicago (Mingli) at a cafe where she was, unexpectedly, studying for her Masters Program. We quickly chit-chatted before decided to get dinner at a Mexican burrito nearby. We ended up talking about my research projects in astrophysics and other related topics in black hole and galaxies. Nice to talk to old friends again.

The last person that I met in The Big City is another classmate from UChicago (Lisa) at a sushi place near where I stayed. Again, it was always nice to get to meet an old friend from college. We talked about our current works (banking/grad school) and life (living in an apartment in The City/living in a dorm in Cambridge) and other experiences that we had since we graduated from college.

Just with these experiences, the trip to New York City this time is worthwhile and I am ready to do it again if that means I will get to meet more of my old friends who is now living there (surprisingly, there are many more but they simply went back home to celebrate the holiday). However, that wasn't all I got from this trip.

What I didn't expect from this trip: chance to explore more of the city.
I guess most people would say this should be the main focus of the trip to New York City, to explore. But I didn't think about that when I got on a bus early morning heading toward the city in the first snow of the year.

Nevertheless, I got a chance to visit various places in New York from Chinatown to art museums to Central Park to Times Square.

The two places that I spent most of my time are The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) (which is similar to Art Institute in Chicago and Museum of Fine Art in Boston), and Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) (which is similar to most contemporary art museums. Either looking at George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River at The Met or walking along Claude Monet's Water Lilies at MOMA demonstrated that there are many more things that I had to explore in New York City.

Bicycle Wheel - Marcel Duchamp

Apart from these two museums, I visited Chinatown in the morning to be the first in line for all-you-can-eat hotpot, and Central Park as we walked to the Met from the train station (I have to come back to Central Park in the summer when the park is more lively). I also walked to Times Square just two days before New Year Eve. Even though I didn't attend the celebration (because of countless stories about it from closed friends), I could feel the atmosphere for the holiday as I walked through a Disney's store that day.

Because of all these, now I want to go back to New York City, not just because I wanted to see old friends (well, I still want to do that), but also because I want to explore more of The Capital of the World.

Now it is time for my first website to be published on the internet

2015-11-28T21:40:00.002-06:00

I have always fancied about what kinds of website that I will build once I enter into a graduate school. The reason that I decided to hold on until I come to graduate school is that I don't have a good justification to actually work on the website as an undergraduate student. However, as I have attended more talks, lectures, workshops and conferences, I found myself quickly looking up some graduate student online when they gave their presentations, so that I could be informed about who they are and what they are working on. Subsequently, it helped me realize that I aspire to have my personal website as early as I can get into a graduate school.

Fast forward a bit, I am currently a first-year graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the physics department. I have been in graduate school for almost a semester and have been working on my website for a few months. I think now it is the time for my website to be live online. Here is the link if you are interested.

The first version of my personal website

And here is the tip for those who are thinking to make their own website for the first time.

1. Web Creating Tools: the tool that I used for making this website and my first website is Weebly. I found Weebly easier to use than other similar tools such as Wix and WordPress as you can simply drag and drop any elements such as images, text, empty space (and yes! empty space is pretty important to help make a nice looking website). More importantly, you can use a lot of stuffs for free on Weebly and also have lots of options for more advanced features such as a search box, audio, site passwords and a shopping cart. You will be able to start working on your website in a short time.

2. Examples: I found it super helpful to look up different examples of the website that you want it to be. It could be from your academic advisor, other classmates in the department and also other scientists. Looking at these examples will help you understand what the website should look like and so on.

The page about my academic interests

3. Tracking Tools: The most interesting about the website is tracking how many people and who have visited your website. And my favorite tracking tool since my first blog and several websites is Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tool. Google Analytics will help with tracking the number of people who have visited the website and also give you a quick report of their behaviors and other information. Whereas, Google Webmaster Tool will help you understand and improve your site in Google Search.

Lastly, you can find lots of resources and materials online that will help you make your first successful website. I learned about everything that I used to make the website from the internet. You just need to have the time and motivation to make it happen.

PS. "Your website, taweewat.weebly.com, was born at 7:36pm PST on Saturday, November 28, 2015."

My second layover country: Japan

2015-08-20T16:08:00.001-05:00

After I had a fairly good time visiting Istanbul for a layover, I am now eager to visit many more countries for layover as I found it was a good way to start getting to know the country, the public transportation and local food. My second destination for a layover is Japan for both Osaka and Tokyo. Instead of flying to the same airport for layover, this time I fly to two different airports at two different cities for a layover.

My first layover for this trip is Osaka. Even though I went to Osaka before during the visit with LESA, this is my first time coming here by myself. Fortunately, I found another Thai friend of friend who study in Osaka. He recommended me to go to Namba for the visit during couple hours that I have and also suggested public transportation from the airport to the city.

Dotonbori, the night life in Osaka

Because of my short time that I have to visit Osaka, I could only choose one place. Dotonbori is a great place to visit at night as there are so many places and tourists around the area. Even though some places have a strong feeling of catering toward tourists, there are still lots of great authentic restaurants around. And, the Running Man neon-light billboard is still as awesome as I expected it to be from all photos that I saw.

Ramen and Takoyaki at Osaka

Even though I already had two meals on the airplane before visiting Osaka, I still couldn't resist to try at least two things in Osaka. Eight pieces of takoyaki at the stand was only 550 yen (or 5.50 USD). It was so good that I did not understand how it becomes so bad in the US. Seriously though? The other thing that I tried there was a simple ramen for 600 yen. The soup is not as thick and concentrated as I had in Chicago but it had a sense of authentic ramen in a small Japanese shop. The resturant also gave free Kim-Chi and rice for those who are really hungry (unfortunately, it was not me at that time). Now, I am excited for what I will find again when my second layover in Tokyo.
----
For my second layover trip on the way back to Chicago, I stopped by Tokyo for few hours. This time is different from the one in Osaka as I met up with Balloon instead of walking around by myself.

The first thing that I found in Tokyo instead is another Thai student (Kan) who is waiting in line with me at the custom when we are leaving the airport. We talked a little bit and he helped me contact Balloon to meet in Shibuya earlier than I was expected. Thank you him again for all the help and it was nice to meet you.

Once I met up with Balloon, instead of walking around Shibuya, we went straight to find some dinner to eat. I have to admit that I was not hungry at the time because I just had lunch on the plane. But I just could not resist to have a great Japanese food in Tokyo. We tried to find an all-you-can-eat BBQ restaurant in Shibuya, but it was full. So, we decided quickly that we will go to another station (Yoyogi) for some BBQ at the same restaurant that I went with Balloon when I was working in Tokyo last summer. The food was still awesome as always, and I definitely ate too much food for my next flight. I ate so much that I could not fall a sleep on the airplane. It was that bad. One thing that I learned from this trip is never eating a buffet before flying. You will feel really uncomfortable.

All-you-can-eat Japanese BBQ with Balloon

Even though I didn't do much in Tokyo because of the short time that I have and the food that I ate, it was still a great time for me to be able to meet a new friend and meet up with the old one.

Asian Science Camp 2015 at Bangkok, Thailand

2015-08-10T10:21:00.001-05:00

If I can pick one highlight for each summer, it would not be too difficult for the previous three summers. My highlight for my first summer is easily Yellowstone with my Thai friends from University of Chicago. For my second summer, it would be a conference about technology at KAIST, South Korea. Last summer, it was definitely UTRIP, an internship program at University of Tokyo, Japan. However, it was not so easy this summer. Previously I would say either an exoplanet conference in Quy Nhon, Vietnam or my sightseeing trip to Ho Chi Minh City. But after going to Asian Science Camp (ASC2015), I am certain that the best thing that happened to me this summer is being a liaison at ASC2015.

Panel Discussion with famous scientists, including two Nobel winners and Field Medalist (Credit: Theerapoom Boonprab)

I would say this is my first time organizing the camp at this size with roughly 300 students and 50 teachers and committees. It is also my first time organizing any camps since I went to college four years ago. I still remember all the energy that I got from interacting with young participants and working with other teammates. It was definitely a great feeling that I have been longing for. At first, I did not think that I would join the camp as I only had six weeks at home and already spent a week and a half in Vietnam. I am not ready to spend another one and a half week with a camp that I know nothing about. (Well, I guess nobody knows anything before the camp as well.) I have no idea what made me change my mind, but it was definitely the best decision that I made in a while.

Unlike other science competition which solely focus on competing, this camp's goal is to allow young scientists to have a chance to meet Nobel Prize winners and to meet other young scientists from different countries to start a meaningful relationship. The model for the camp is similar to Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings but in a smaller scale, focusing mainly in Asia. It had a great intention because this is how science actually works in the real world. Scientists are all about collaboration, and not competition. Nevertheless, I could not tell whether the camp reaches these goals since I am an organizer and not a participant. (Looking at all Facebook posts from various delegates, I think we pretty much achieved these goals.)

My main job at the camp is to facilitate leaders (teachers/professors who bring the students to a conference). Because the main focus of the camp is about students and young scientists, we often forget these leaders and do not provide as much supports for them as it should be. Thus, six of us have to plan everything for these leaders from leaving the hotel to going back to the hotel at night. It was not an easy job as we have to take care of all leaders who have different needs. For example, some can barely speak English, some want to travel during the conference, and some want to be with students at all time. In the end, I think we did our jobs fairly well, judging from all the souvenirs and thank you notes from the leaders.

Group photo with all 45 staffs + 3 teachers from ASC2015 (Credit: Toffy)

There are many exciting/interesting/frustrating moments in the camp, ranging from listening to Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry and Biology, finding missing students/leaders in Ayutthaya and the farewell party, helping students find their stuffs and getting up at 3.30 am in the morning to pick up/send leaders to the airport.

However, the best thing about ASC2015 is neither all the Nobel Laureates nor young scientists from different countries, but is meeting with many enthusiastic people and teachers from Thailand who get excited about organizing a camp as I am/used to be. Even though being abroad widens my connections with people around the world, it ironically narrows my networks in Thailand. Participating in a camp provides me with more than 40 new and meaningful friendship with those who are interested in science (and two in linguistics). This is definitely the best thing that had happened to me for a long time. Finally, thank you for giving me a chance to participate in the camp. I have learned so much more than what I expected before the camp. Thank you!

Thank you card for main team (ทีมแกน) from all other staffs

Leogulus-Champ's (Taweewat Somboonpanyakul) blog

A Farewell to the Past, an Exciting Journey Ahead

My thought before my thesis defense

นักดาราศาสตร์​ MIT ค้นพบกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ ที่คนอื่นหาพลาดไป

What would you tell yourself back in January?

What a weird dream ...

The First Post about Museum of Fine Art

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 4 - Lima

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 3 - Machu Picchu!

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 2 - Aguas Calientes

Trip to Peru Miniseries: Day 1 - Cusco

Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse 2017

A weekend at Acadia National Park

Wind is what we have to worry about

Average Seeing on Magellan Telescope in the past 4 months

A Person without Home - Homeless person

Adventure through the Southern Chile

What I learn from Astrostatistics Summer School at Penn State

The Second Part of AAS 227th Meeting in Florida: Poster!

AAS 227th Meetng in Orlando, Florida

Non-Academic Events

Academic Talks

Vacation in Orlando: Theme Parks

Story about Pixar

A Book written by the president of Pixar

"The Science behind Pixar" Exhibition at Museum of Science, Boston

A new Pixar film "The Good Dinosaur" (2015):

A documentary about Pixar "The Pixar Story" (2007):

Quick Trip to New York City for New Year Celebration

Now it is time for my first website to be published on the internet

My second layover country: Japan

Asian Science Camp 2015 at Bangkok, Thailand

นักดาราศาสตร์ MIT ค้นพบกระจุกกาแล็คซี่ใหม่ ที่คนอื่นหาพลาดไป

**A new Pixar film "The Good Dinosaur" (2015):**

**A documentary about Pixar "The Pixar Story" (2007)**: