Category Archives: microscopes

Nihon e

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Welcome back, family, friends, and co-workers, to my travelogue of my prosaic travels.   

I am in Japan, and thankful that my knee gave me less trouble than expected, despite having to lug my two suitcases up and down a few flights of stairs in Shinjuku. 

The “alpen rose” Japanese inflight magazine contained a “colmn” that centered on watchmaking in the Vallee de Joux, with a nice picture of the Lac de Joux from the Dent de Vaulion that I recognized immediately, having just been there.  Are they trying to get the Japanese off the beaten path, or are the Japanese bored with Switzerland? 

The white wine appetizer nearly put me to sleep, but I made the mistake of waking up for dinner.  I never fell asleep again, but not for lack of trying.  I watched “The Namesake,” an interesting movie on a second-generation Indian immigrant to the US coming to grips with his family.  Then I tried to sleep, until the ice cream came, and watched “Music and Lyrics,” a cute, breezy romance with more eighties sound than you’d ever wanted to hear on a movie soundtrack other than Footloose.  Then I tried to sleep, until breakfast came, and watched the beginning of “Ghost Rider,” a movie where the first few minutes of film suffice to instill confidence that it won’t matter if you don’t watch the whole flick.  Unless, that is, you enjoy Nicholas Cage with a flaming skull instead of a head.  Gratuitous and goofy special effects on top of a ridiculous story line that tries to get the viewer rooting for the Devil as the lesser of two evils than his rebellious and pasty-faced underling that wants to subject the world, because the Devil send Flaming Brains Cage into the fray in his stead.  Or so. 

I filled out the Chinese language immigration form by mistake.  I think I got everything right; I used the Spanish example to guide me. 

The customs girl asked me if I had anything to declare, any samples, and when I denied, asked me to open my smaller trolley suitcase.  I did; she identified the shoes, ignored the free pens and pocket knives, and finally found the microscope scan head.  “What is that?” she asked. 

“A microscope.  I sell microscopes.” 

“Oh, ok then.  Thank you and have a good day.” 

I’m still a little puzzled she didn’t pull me out.  How was she to know that I won’t leave the scan head here? 

I dropped off the big suitcase with the big microscope at our distributor’s office and walked through the love hotels to my Toyoko Inn.  A couple walked out of one of them and I wondered if it didn’t feel weird to walk in (or out) of one of them considering that you’re announcing to all present what you intend to do (or did) with whom. 

Now it’s about time to check in, after lunch at the Cafe WILL.  I’ll shower, shave, and change into my suit, and perhaps apply that removable tattoo I won from the Swatch airline ticket raffle to the nape of my neck.  The Japanese dig Godzilla – they’ll love my lizard tattoo. 

 

Catching up

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I’ve been back in Switzerland for a week and am already planning my next trip. Today my Frequent Traveller card arrived. It’s a good day to finish what I left undone.

March 5: I forgot to mention that I had jellyfish. It’s a lot like mushrooms.

March 7:

I took the train to Oyumino and showed our microscope to a small group of 7th-12th graders at CCSI (Covenant Community School International). They varied in their enthusiasm, but most of them thought it was pretty cool to see the dots of a CD stamper. It was fun to experience what it’s like to teach and interact with students – after all, this is what many of our customers do for a living.
Judith gave me a ride to the Tobu Narita Holiday Inn where I should have prepared for the seminar on the 9th but instead went for shark fin on rice at the hotel restaurant. It hardly has any taste of its own and has an odd stringy texture that has me wondering why it’s a delicacy and what happens with the rest of the shark instead of sitting in rapt wonder with a morsel in my mouth. My main achievement was to re-pack my suitcase and backpack. I like this hotel for cheap rates and being the closest to the airport. Book on the Japanese site for cheaper rates…

March 8:

I did a poor job, but the Japanese ANA girl let me fly with 26 kilograms of checked baggage. She also took my Star Alliance card number for that flight even though Air Nippon, unlike its mother carrier ANA, doesn’t belong to any alliance. In Taiwan I was welcomed with unseasonably cold 15 degrees °C and pouring rain. After sleeping of travel tiredness in the Welcome Hotel I was invited to dinner at the buffet of the Sheraton Hotel, where as usual I overate. Buffets require more discipline than regular restaurants, and in a place with fresh bread, fresh seafood, Taiwanese specialities, and scrumptious desserts from apple crumble to matcha ice cream I fail the test. The buffet stands in the 12-story atrium of the hotel and I find the atmosphere refined, albeit imposing: the paintings on the wall exceed my bedroom in size. Every now and then the elevators will move and send light reflections wandering across the room like a light show, making the place feel like a rock concert on TV with the volume muted.

I prepared my presentation for the next day until 2 a.m.

March 9:

I got up after four and a half hours of sleep, packed, and got ready for a seminar on our microscopes. A good turnout, good demonstration, and a helpful translator made the event a success. I think especially the simple cantilever exchange had people impressed. I’d never been translated before, and found it a helpful experience. It made obvious to me how often I use long sentences that can be hard to understand; it made culturally embedded jokes painfully clear.

After the seminar, I was driven to the airport, mostly because Taiwan’s new high-speed train was all booked out. There, I compensated for delicious food with a visit at Burger King, the slowest fast food place I’ve ever been to. It amazes me that in an international airport only one staff member of a restaurant speaks English.

The airport, by the way, is no longer called Chiang Kai-Shek but Taoyuan International Airport. The name change happened, according to my partner in Taipei, because Chiang Kai-Shek is a mainland Chinese. In the slightly grungy terminal 1 that Cathay leaves from I passed by a store that sold Taiwanese Aboriginal art and picked up a flier because I had no idea that Taiwan had Aboriginals. Apparently they are the northernmost branch of the Austronesian languange group.

I read through the short flight to Hong Kong, where we docked at the gate farthest from the gate I needed to board at. As far as I could tell, it’s tough to get a longer walk in HKG than from 49 to 18. I sat and waited, still reading in Robert Inchausti’s “Subversive Orthodoxy,” unable to shake the feeling that surely this must be a smart and wise book even though I routinely don’t understand what he’s saying because I lack a lot of background knowledge. It’s the first time I’ve heard of William Blake, for instance, and Blake’s the first guy he portrays. In that subchapter, Inchausti quotes Altizer and Hamilton: “Through Blake we can sense the theological significance of a poetic reversal of our mythical traditions, and become open to the possibility that the uniquely modern metamorphosis of the sacred into the profane is the culmination of a redemptive and kenotic movement of the Godhead.” Aside from the problem that “kenotic” isn’t in my Webster’s nor in my vocabulary, even my relative grasp of the other words doesn’t help me attain to an understanding of what these authors are saying. What is a poetic reversal of mythical traditions? Where do I need to look to see this uniquely modern metamorphosis they mention? I want to understand, but I can’t, due to the lack of background and examples. It seems ironic for him to say, “When human beings use words and phrases, they are not responding to stimuli; they are symbolizing: sharing worlds,” and to fail in his attempt to share his world with me – or at least ironic that the possibility of failed communication isn’t even mentioned in his book, at least not before page 80. But I’ll continue and at least try to get it.

BA had us line up in a giant queue for the flight to London. I slept more on that flight than the night before, even though the lady beside me woke me up to go to the bathroom. (On that note, ladies, please don’t travel on planes in skirts.)

March 10:

Heathrow. Or rather, Hea Throw Up. We arrived at five a.m. and I thought I could simply proceed to the next flight and chill at the gate. Well, no. I was carrying two carry-on pieces of luggage and there were two people whose only job it was to speak the following words: “Only ONE carry-on baggage per person.” Occasionally, they’d branch out: “I have nothing to do with the regulations. All I know is Only ONE Carry-On.” So I went through passport control, round to check-in, where I explained my dilemma of having a microscope and a computer and wanting to check neither. “It’s not the airline, it’s the regulations,” she said. I was to hear that from every single BA employee I spoke to in this matter. She continued: “Why don’t you ask customer service what they can do? They’re down there, at counter H.” I walked down there and waited until a guy whose English was hard to understand showed up. “We have a special belt here where we hand-carry your fragile item to the plane,” he said. “But I can’t guarantee for what happens on the other end.” Then he paused. “Where are you going? Basel? Why don’t you go to Terminal 4, where your flight leaves from, and ask them there.” I walked back to where I came from, the elevators, and decided to try the vending machine for something to drink. Of course, although there was no label indicating currency, the machine only took pounds, and the 80p someone had forgotten in the change return weren’t going to buy me water. I said to the guy waiting behind me: “I guess it only takes pounds.” “Tragic,” he said with a supercilious grin. I made off for Terminal 4, and despite the misgivings of Mr. Customer Service the Terminal Express was already running. At least one ray of hope. At Terminal 4 I tried to figure out where I needed to stand in line, and approached a counter that looked BA-ish and reasonable, but an employee approached me and after finding out my destination pointed me to the only counter that had a long line. I’ll take that as a rule of thumb. I stood in line and well, long story short because I’m tired of typing, I checked the microscope with a heavy heart. Then someone drove a loading vehicle into our plane and punctured the skin and made us walk all across the terminal to switch planes and arrive in Basel over an hour late. At least the weather was nice and afforded a neat view of France.

It’s not the airline, it’s the regulations.

March 15: I was waiting for a friend on the cathedral square in Basel. A guy bikes across it. He has a boom box strapped to his bike, and it’s playing this.

Fair excitement

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Tuesday, February 20:

Booth set-up.  This takes about three hours because our biggest challenge is to get the LCD projectors to point the right way and make a large enough image.  Our instruments are much easier to set up…

Dinner: Shabu-shabu, and a taste of the glaring difference between regular beef and “wa-gyu,” the marbled Japanese beef that almost melts on your tongue. 

Wednesday, February 21:

First exhibition day, with a good number of visitors, a lot of whom are Korean.  The latter fact has something to do with being right next to the Korean pavilion.  Whether our location there also keeps Japanese away is an open question. 

Dinner: We took the Yurikamome to the Joypolis area on Daiba and trekked through the waterfront buildings until we got to the restaurant Gonpachi.  The waiters there followed the Japanese synaesthetic principle that lively and genki waiters give the impression of fresher food.  By the end we were helping them shout “Haiyou!” every time one of them shouted out an order such as “Namabiiru icchou!”  We started plotting how we could apply these principles to our booth.  The food, small shared portions of yakiniku and tempura and tofu, added up to a most filling dinig experience, but to me the matcha-milk-shochu cocktail was the take-home winner. 

Thursday, February 22:

Several friends from Nippon Steel Company visited our booth, which was the personal highlight of my day.  Aside from talking about impending visits we allso talked technology and Joël even met his diploma advisor at the Swiss pavilion. 

We had dinner downtown in Shinjuku this time, at another traditional Japanese restaurant.  Sashimi, whale bacon (better than the other whale we had – the Japanese are clearly benefiting from the scientific purposes behind their whaling), horse sashimi (YUM), smoked pickled daikon radish, and numerous other delicacies again filled us up until we didn’t think we’d have to eat the next day. 

 

Zipping around Sydney

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I took it easy on the morning of the 13th and slept in a bit.  Before I was picked up and chauffeured out to the leafy suburbs of Sydney for a lunch of prawns and cheese and Shiraz, I went out to Woolworths and purchased the elusive Bushells.  From one of the ridges I could see the Blue Mountains off in the distance, which apparently look more bluish when the weather’s hotter, but since I had brought rain to Sydney they looked like regular wooded mountains. 

My next stop was back in the city, or almost, at the main campus of the University of Sydney, where I stopped by the physics department 3rd year lab to visit our customers.  We set up the STM (scanning tunneling microscope) to run beautifully and I showed some equipment which I hope will one day also sit in that lab and keep students busy.  I enjoyed the atmosphere of the lab, emptied of students but full of equipment, and talking to the men excited about instructing the students. 

I walked from there to Redfern station and caught the train to Normanhurst, where James McFarlane picked me up.  His wife Amanda had prepared a tasty lamb roast and Allie Beckett joined us for the dinner, where we talked about my sister and their baby son and silly wickets.  James was kind enough to drive me home, which meant I got some sleep before getting up early to pack and leave at 7:15 on the 14th for the airport.  Beat gave me a lift there, and we made good time, so I could post a load of postcards and educate the Qantas employee that my JAL Mileage Bank card now accepted Qantas (athoughI am almost convinced I’ll get no miles out of these flights because of the booking class).  I read a little more in “Babbitt,” and to give a flavor of the book’s satire I’ll quote a short passage. 

When, beyond hope, the pitcher was empty, they stood and talked about prohibition.  The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trouser-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever. 

[…]

“[T]he trouble is the manner of enforcement,” insisted Howard Littlefield.  “Congress didn’t understand the right system.  Now, if I’d been running the thing, I’d have arranged it so that the drinker himself was licensed, and then we could have taken care of the shiftless workman — kept him from drinking — and yet not’ve interfered with the rights — with the personal liberty — of fellows like ourselves.” 

I spent my flight in the company of Babbitt and his friends. 

 

Trans-Tasman

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I got up at 5:00 New Zealand time, checked mail, showered, packed, and almost missed my shuttle for being late.  The driver blamed the hotel because they wouldn’t call me and drove the van with its trailer like a little Schumacher to the airport.  I checked in and even checked the poster this time, as fragile, so I only carried on two bags on to what turned out to be a half-empty 767.  Then, I paid my departure fee. 

The check-in lady insisted that one paid a departure fee everywhere, that the departure fee in Australia was over 70 dollars, only it was hidden in the airfare.  Maybe so.  I still don’t understand why I need to pay 25 dollars to leave the country. 

In duty-free, I finally found a map of New Zealand and bought it.  I’d read a cartoon on Waitangi Day that bemoaned that New Zealand takes its name from the Dutch and its flag from the Aussies who ripped it off from the British, so I offer here in gratitude for a pleasant stay a bold new name for this beleaguered country to express its identity: Ovinia. 

As usual, departure card in New Zealand, then the useless Australian entry card where the fields are white rectangles on a pale yellow background and near illegible in a plane.  Apparently it doesn’t matter if one writes off center – they let me in anyway.  Their main concern was my food (chocolates) and soil (dust from Rangitoto) that they then completely ignored when the Asian guy in front of me had to have his baggage searched for noodles and rice. 

Beat picked me up and drove me to Cremorne, where I met his wife Muoi for the first time.  Their daughter Elena soon woke up and made a silent appearance, shy and sleep-weary.  We went to Balmoral beach, where I took a quick dip in the water and a lot of pictures of Elena.  I wasn’t staying out long after Saturday’s sunburn.  Elena was sad to leave.  She likes the water and the seashells and kept playing with the ones she’d collected, now suddenly transformed into a garrulous but cryptic one-and-a-half-year-old.  (That looks odd with five hyphens.)  We had excellent Asian ravioli and noodles courtesy of Muoi’s culinary arts and I was stuffed when Allie Beckett drove up to pick me up for the evening service at Beecroft Presbyterian. 

Allie and her husband John studied at Regent College with Cornelia, as did James McFarlane, assistant pastor at Beecroft, and his wife Amanda.  John was on a trip to Kenya, and Amanda home with her son Thomas, so I did not get to meet them, but it was fun to continue what’s now fast becoming a tradition of meeting Cornelia’s friends from Regent.  We were a bit late to the service, because (a) intermittent showers of driving raid slowed us down, (b) Allie was unfamiliar with Cremorne and I even more so and (c) in Sydney, the shortest distance between two points may still be a straight line, but there’s no way you can legally take it. 

That evening, James spoke on the blessedness of those who mourn and those who are meek.  Before, after, and in between the two, we sang.  After the service, there was a spread of munchies, but I was still well full from the ravioli, so I stuck to drinks.  One of the announcements struck a chord: people were being asked to sign up as hosts or guests for “Someone’s coming to Dinner,” an effort to get people from the three different services to intermingle and build community. 

The drive back saw even more torrential rain, and back at Beat’s I gave a short private demo of our AFM. 

Monday morning, Beat dropped me off at the North Sydney train station on my way to work.  I took the Northern line all the way out to Hornsby and there figured out that the North Shore line might well have been faster.  From then until now, the weather has alternated between patches of sun and downpours.  Of course, at this basement internet café I can see neither. 

 

Microscopists in bloom

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For the past few days I kept myself busy with my booth at the 23rd New Zealand Conference on Microscopy at the University of Auckland. 

On Tuesday, I lugged my stuff down to the site and set up my booth, then got to move it to a less breezy location where I was able to measure.  I met some organizers, some co-exhibitors, and then some delegates at the mixer that evening.  New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in particular impressed me that evening, as did Colin Doyle’s delicacies.  (Not the Birmingham City goalie, nor the Vonage NLL MVP, nor the actor, but the Colin Doyle from the RCSMS at Auckland University, which I probably shouldn’t even mention because they don’t use a Nanosurf AFM.) 

On Wednesday, I bought water and snacks at the convenience store and readied my booth, then went in for the first round of talks, the “gristle talks” as an unnamed member of the RCSMS put it.  They centered (or centred, in New Zealand) on ovine this and ovine that.  Ovine spine, ovine ovaries – it seems that after rugby and beer Kiwis care most about sheep.  (And yet, at the time of writing, I have yet to eat lamb or mutton here.)  In the afternoon, I stayed at the booth, talking to delegates, and measuring a CD stamper (the tool that stamps the little pits into raw CDs) on the shaky little table of mine.  The display company obviously had no idea what a microscopist understands when he hears “stable table.”  In the evening there was a poster session and a trades evening, and people did indeed stop by and marvel at our cute AFM, but did seem to prefer the dinner we collectively sponsored.  Who am I to blame them? 

I believe it was on Thursday that in a conversation I was introduced to bryozoans by a visitor to our booth, whom I will refer to as “Lady Bryozoan” to protect the innocent.  Bryozoans are allegedly fascinating living blobs (“a phylum of predominantly marine, clonal, sessile invertebrates,” i.e. marine couch potatoes) randomly equipped with “avicularia,” the function of which has yet to be determined (which Lady Bryozoan dreams of doing).  These bryozoans form colonies (albeit neither commonwealths nor cricket tournaments) and, mysteriously, some colonies have no avicularia, and in those that do have them their location cannot be predicted.  (I propose a division into “Monastic” and “Big-Mouth” colonies.)  Later at the dinner in Auckland harbor Lady Bryozoan gazed forlornly off the deck at the crustacean grime on the pilings opposite and voiced her regret at not being able to climb down there and check for bryozoans or at least the diatoms they grow on.  The real shocker was being able to mention bryozoans in separate conversations with two other people without them batting an eye.

Ah, yes, the conference dinner.  Excellent steak, excellent wine, and dancing microscopists.  You didn’t really think microscopists were that different from your likes, did you?  The floating pavilion offered a great view of Auckland as the backdrop and made even teetotallers sway. 

That night I slept badly.  Whether it was jet lag’s last attack or something in the food or not being prepared for Friday’s talk, I tossed and turned and woke up at 4:15 after three hours of sleep.  I prepared my presentation just in time to leave for the last day of the conference. 

In wise foresight, the organizers had set the starting time a bit later than the other two days.  The time people showed up stood in a rough inverse proportional relationship to the time they had returned to their lodging.  Maybe that helped the Annual General Meeting go faster. 

My talk went well, although I really wanted to go to the bathroom at that time, but I wasn’t running out and missing being called up.  I enjoyed that whole session, with two talks on metallic materials and one after mine on telepresence in microscopy use.  Then, after a phenomenally short closing address (“Thanks for coming, come again in two years”) the conference ended, and I took down my booth.  It was a small conference, but one where I enjoyed the sense of mutual encouragement and collaboration between microscopists in very different fields.  I also noticed that of the organizing committee two thirds were women, and so was a large number both of trades delegates and regular delegates. 

Obviously, after a long day and a short night I was tired, and so when I got back to the hotel just before seven I decided to take a nap.  When my alarm woke me from that nap I lost no time deciding to skip dinner and just go to bed. 

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