Where have you been?

You may be asking: 'Where have you been? You haven't updated in almost a month!' The answer is surprisingly simple: no where.

Without travels (other than the tail end of a lovely week in Vienna), my January was not particularly blog-worthy. I spent one Saturday with Cambridge Hands-On Science (CHaOS) recruiting volunteers for our upcoming outreach event during science week in March and the summer roadshow. I spent another Saturday enjoying Britten's War Requiem inside Kings College Chapel whilst a celebratory light show to commemorate the end of the University's 800th anniversary year went on outside.

During the week, I've been up to my usual activities. We had a dinner to celebrate the Chinese New Year last week (I went with the Language Mentoring Programme). There was a really good lecture on the science of climate predictions this afternoon. On Wednesdays, I've been playing in orchestra rehearsals, where we're reading through (and now learning) Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, Rimsky-Korskov's Russian Easter Overture, and Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1.

The biggest news for the month has been in lab where, unsurprisingly, I spent the lion's share of my January. The laser system I've been building (finally!) worked for the first time on Monday. I'll post a description of what the system does in schematic terms later; however, the punchline is that--with a well defined amount of work--I will have enough material to write up my thesis even if the next few projects don't get results before I have to write up!