Grad School: Round Two

After my very long break (somewhere around 5 glorious weeks) I'm finally back to the grindstone, well, that is I will be after Jen and I go back to Texas this weekend to visit my parents.

A very exciting development (for me at least) is that I joined a research lab today. Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto kindly agreed to let me help him and his team look into the potential for ultrafast lasers (femtosecond pulses) and the nonlinear optics problems and potential they create. A "femtosecond is one billionth of one millionth of a second. For context, a femtosecond is to a second, what a second is to a hundred million years," from Wikipedia.

The project I'm currently working on is micromachining. Some other really cool research being explored includes optical tweezers (pretty much a Star Trek tractor beam on a really small scale), pulse shaping to control chemical reactions, and optofluidics to name a few. I won't go into details so as not to bore you, but it's really interesting stuff. So check out the links if you're even slightly interested.

The classes this term are looking up as well. I'm only taking two (which will leave me with one to go before finishing my course work--just thesis and seminars after that!):

• BME-101: Medical Optics and Lasers
• BME-131: Principles of Medical Imaging

I'm sure I'll let you know how things progress.

God's Amazing Creatures

This past week Jen and I went to the zoo and the aquarium. The New England Aquarium gets 4 big thumbs up--definitely the best and nicest aquarium either of us have ever visited. The Frankin Zoo gets maybe 1.5 thumbs up. Somewhat disappointing as far as zoos go, and all the animals looked miserable. Getting there only an hour before closing gave us plenty of time. We hear there's a really great zoo down in Rhode Island that we should visit soon.

I thought I'd share some pictures so you can visit them vicariously.

Getting Into the Community

We’re finally starting to feel settled in. We know where to get groceries, we can generally find our way around town without getting lost (too often), we’re figuring out the public transportation system, we’re bracing for our first winter. We’re also trying to make friends and get a feel for the culture and people of Quincy. Integrating into a new community is a long process.

Jen and I have gone to a couple professional sporting events since we’ve been here. One Red Sox game and one Celtics game. They were both enjoyable and interesting, but the subway ride back home has been the most interesting part. Sporting events tend to help create community between people who would otherwise never talk. Striking up a conversation with someone who just experienced the same (in our cases) defeat is so much easier than trying to start one without any common ground.

On the way home from the Celtics game a couple weeks ago we started talking with a couple guys who were a bit younger than us. They were friends–one a Celtics fan and the other a Suns fan (who had won that night). The conversation went from the game to space aliens (don’t ask). Unexpectedly the more talkative of the two started loudly exclaiming, “I believe in aliens more than I do in Jesus’ making wine out of water.” When this got no reaction from anyone on the train he tried a new tactic: “F*** Jesus! Does anyone disagree? F*** Jesus.” After a few seconds of this I decided to chime in. We actually had a good time talking about faith and Jesus. Our stop came sooner than I would have liked, but I’m glad to have talked with them.

One of the other guys who had been in the car with us had mentioned how he was really late getting home and “his girl” was really angry. He had actually stood up for Jesus along with Jen and I on the train, so when I saw him getting into a taxi outside the station I decided to offer him a ride home. He was very appreciative and told us how much he likes Christians. He is a nice guy. He definitely has problems, but we all do. He gave us his phone number and said he’d like to get together some time. Perhaps this is the beginnings of another friendship. I sure hope so.

God’s always providing us all with opportunities to bless and engage those around us. I just pray that we each have the “eyes to see,” the “ears to hear,” and the courage to act when they come around.