Back in the USA

A quick update. ISU is over. I am back in the USA, currently hanging out with the awesome 2007 Ames NASA Academy on base at NASA Ames Research Center. I get back to Maryland Tuesday morning and leave Wednesday for Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia.

ISU was amazing. One of the most fantastic experiences of my life.

ISU is never truly over. The network of people and dear, dear friends will continue forever. Yet, I feel a great loss. There was so much more I wanted to do while in Beijing, surrounded by those people.

Yet, time does not wait for us to be ready. You have to experience as much as you can while you can. Try not to hesitate. Speak up. Ask the questions. Experience Life.

I'm still working on this.

Specifically to those from ISU SSP 2007. We are now bound by a common experience. I will hold you in my heart forever. If you ever need anything, contact me. Even if it is just someone to listen. If humanly possible, will be there.

Team Project Help Request

The next phase of ISU focuses on the team project. The team project I am working on is relating to creating a combination of a lunar archive and earth based repositories containing of information that would be useful for society in the event of worldwide disaster. We have named our project Phoenix.

Can you help me by providing references (Historical, Science Fiction, etc) where archives have been used? We already know about "A Canticle for Lebowitz" and "Earth Abides."

Also, if you know of any appropriate quotes, regarding survival, phoenixes, etc,?

If you have any ideas, please post your response in the comments.

ISU Individual Project

Going to be a long night finishing my ISU Individual Project for the Space and Society Department. Did I mention that I am writing the outline for a role playing game? Likely No. No time now. That will have to be a story for later.

Mission Report

3....2...1... Mission Report.... Just a brief note from to let you know I am still alive. Who would have thought that after my exam the workload would have dramatically increased. I'll be back as soon with many stories to tell.

ISU v/s China

I am conflicted about what to tell you. I don't have a ton of time to blog, but I am going to try and get better about doing so. The conflict comes from whether to talk about what is going on at ISU, or what I am seeing and doing in China. Of course, I want to tell you everything, but I can only type so fast. You don't want to read a novel every day.

On one hand, the ISU schedule and curriculum is online, but that doesn't give you a good impression of what our daily life is like. On the other hand, China is a fascinating place, and I would like to share my stories. Likely you will get a mix of both.

Tomorrow we go to see the Great Wall of China. We are going to Badalin, which I hear is one of the more rebuilt and tourist oriented areas. (I would rather go to a more rustic location on the wall. Perhaps I will arrange a trip later in the summer.)

What will tomorrow hold for you? What will you make of it? Anything you want.

Where Am I?

So, where on Earth am I? By now you should know that I am in Beijing, China, but Beijing is a really big place. In homage to my recent remote sensing class, I have created this Google Map for you. You can either follow the link or search maps.google.com for ISU SSP 2007-BUAA. This map shows some of the key locations Beihang University (BUAA) where we have class, eat, sleep, etc. From there you can zoom out and explore the rest of Beijing. Without too much trouble, you should be able to find:

1. Tienanmen Square
2. The Forbidden City
3. The Summer Palace
4. The Olympic Park
5. The Airport

Updates... Sort of

Wow, Week two is over. I had planned to spend a large part of today updating the site, perhaps posting pictures.... but I got a headache... a big one. It not only kept me from going shopping, but also kept me off the computer. Instead of going into a lot of details, I will instead give you some thoughts from when I first left the US and arrived in Beijing.  With the internet issues and my schedule, I haven't had time to post them before now. This covers the flight and my arrival in Beijing.

Flying to  Beijing

If you are reading this, I must have arrived in Beijing, buty this entry, I am typing from the flight from Washington D. C. Dulles to Beijing. Much to my surprise, I was upgraded to business class which makes a huge difference.  The seats recline almost horizontal, I have a cool personal video display which I can control, and the food is pretty good.

The video display has a map that shows me where we are, the route, and some relevant statistics. It is hard to believe, but it has been 9 hours, 52 minutes since departure.  Only 3 hours until arrival. Currently we are flying over Russia, but getting close to the border with Mongolia.

After leaving Dulles, I quickly fell asleep. I woke up long enough to eat, but for most of the first 6 hours of the flight, I was asleep.  I woke up long enough to note that we flew due North, and at one point were very close to the North Pole.

Leaving was hard. I have been so busy over the past six months, I haven't had the time to really do the things that would allow me to get excited about this trip. (For example, reading my books about China, planing places to tour, etc) Within a day or so (perhaps hours) I will be excited and ready to embrace this experience. Right now, I am still well aware of what I am leaving behind.

Evening in Beijing

It is now 11:00 PM in Beijing, China. I haven't yet got internet access in my room, but I wanted to type something up anyway.

Wow. I wish that I could have just recorded everything I saw and heard to play back. My broad opinion is as follows, it is not as foreign as I had expected. It is not just the prevalence of English or Western stores, it is also the big city attitude, the clothes, the attitudes of the people. I definitely feel as if I am in a foreign city, but it doesn't seem as foreign as I expected. Perhaps being in Dublin so recently has something to do with it.

Thankfully I got some sleep on the plane, so I wasn't completely sleep deprived, but I wasn't at my best either. Arriving in China posed no real problems. There are three steps: Quarantine (to look at and see if you said you were healthy), Immigration (Where they look at your passport and visa), and customs, (where you declare anything you are bringing into the country.)

From there, it took a bit of wandering to find the ISU folks. Having a bit of time before the bus arrived, I went to get a drink and perhaps some food (even though I wasn't hungry), My options were Starbucks and KFC Express.  I settled for water and an egg sandwich from Starbucks. I only ate about 1/3 of the sandwich.

From there began the ISU experience. Meeting fellow classmates. I was really impressed with those with enough excitement and energy to run around introducing themselves to everyone. I talked to whomever I was near, but I didn't have the energy to implement a broader effort.

RavenCon Update!

OK, so I finished this on the flight to Beijing. There is no really appropriate time to post it since it is so long overdue. Now is as good of a time as any.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wow, was RavenCon really that long ago? I have been dreadfully remiss in posting about this great convention. It is kind of funny that it takes flying to China for me to finally get this post completed.

The whole experience started on Thursday. I was already taking Friday off work, and I had class on Thursday evening so didn't gel  on the road to Richmond until very late. The drive was pretty uneventful, until I got to the Richmond airport. I drove around for 20 minutes trying to find the hotel. Once I found the hotel, I discovered that I hadn't extended the reservation to include Thursday night. (D'Oh) Did I mention that this was after 1:00 AM and I needed to meet folks at 8:00 AM? Of course, it turned out to not be a big deal. The very kind hotel staff just extended the stay.

In the week prior to the convention, I had been pooling a variety of sources for cool handouts. My efforts were rewarded with about 6 boxes of handouts for the high school and the convention. After checking into the hotel, I had to spend the next couple hours sorting out materials for the students and teachers of Monacan High School.

Friday was a day of highs and lows. The next morning I met Tee Morris, Peter Prellwitz , Rich White and many others. (Sorry to everyone I didn't mention.) With my several boxes of hand outs, Peter Prellwitz and I drove separately in my car. On the way to the high school, we were separated from the main car. Thank goodness that I had printed supplementary directions and that I had Peter with me to navigate. Despite being hungry and lost in Richmond, Virginia we managed to make it to Monacan High School on time.

As I posted earlier, I had a great time speaking to an astronomy class about the James Webb Space Telescope and working in the space industry.

After the high school event, we returned to the convention. My plan was to update my blog and take a nap. The blog update happened, but l the nap did not. While updating my blog, I turned on the television as I usually do. That eliminated the possibility of a nap. For the next few hours I was glued to the television watching the drama unfold at JPL. I posted a bit about this as it was happening, and I don't want to go into a major tangent here.

Remaining sleep deprived, I finished working on my two presentations for RavenCon. I decided that I should re-join the convention. I walked down to the dealers room and talked to a lot of great people. Two months after the convention, I can't remember everyone I met. Everyone humored me in my sleep deprived, depressed state.

I did meet the Geeklabel Podcast crew who I have been listening to for awhile. Not only to these guys do a funny, geeky podcast, they make awesome, custom, geek T-shirts at www, geeklabel.com.

The other major event from Friday evening was dinner. Tired, I wandered into the hotel restaurant expecting to eat alone. While there, I ran into my good friend Tee Morris. Joining his group of 2, the prospects for an interesting dinner improved. We were only a group of three for a short time as we kept accumulating new people, including the author guest of honor, Robert J. Sawyer.

Bob Sawyer is a great person. He is very social and approachable. He made a point to make sure that people were not eating alone. I shouldn't have been surprised that such a cool dinner event could occur at a con, especially a small convention like Ravencon. Yet, as I went to dinner, I had no idea that it was going to be such an interesting evening. Eventually I had to excuse myself for exhaustion, but it was a wonderful time.

Saturday was a pretty standard Convention day. John and I both had presentations that day. My presentation came first discussing private versus governmental space flight.  I had a LOT of help with this presentation from Will Pomerantz. The talk went well, but not as well as I would like. The talk went a lot better once I stopped the presentation and opened it up for questions and discussions.

John's talk on the "Once and Flu-ture Pandemic" went very well. The room was packed and he gave an excellent presentation.

There was also the issue of the many boxes of hand out materials that I brought down to the convention. I had excellent materials of Hubble provided by the Space Telescope Science Institute, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) materials provided by the project office at NASA Goddard, and a few things from NASA Public affairs. Stocking the handout table turned out to be a bit of a logistical challenge. Overall, I ended up with some extra (which was distributed at Balticon 41) but I don't think that anyone who wanted something went without.

Outside the presentations, we did a lot of socializing, such as more chatting with the Geeklabel Crew. We also attended several of the other panels, specifically the podcasting panels. I think we may have gotten a bit of sleep, but not much.

Sunday was a half convention day. I gave my second presentation . This one went a little better than the first. It mostly covered  my project, JWST, but I also made a point to cover other things going on within NASA. For this talk the room was packed.

RavenCon was a great time. I hope to be invited back next year, and regardless, I plan to visit Monacan High School again. As I am finishing this write up on a plane to China for the International Space University, if I do get invited back, who knows what the presentation topic will be. I expect to have lots of ideas.

Updates Pending

Unlike my continual promises for a RavenCon update, you can expect a more detailed update from me soon. ISU is one of those strange places where time dilates and contracts at the same time. It is really hard to believe that I have only been here for 5 days, yet I know that the summer is going to fly by. Things are already beginning to fill the hours. On top of all of the hectic (and fantastic) ISU activities, we also are surrounded by Beijing. There is so much to see, so much to do. There is not enough time.

I came here alone, not having met any of the students in advance. While that is a bit intimidating, everyone is friendly and you never feel alone. I am rather glad that I came alone. (Or perhaps with one other person I already knew.) If I already knew a lot of people, I may have felt more comfortable socializing with that group than meeting the other students.

The weather here is VERY HOT, VERY HUMID, and VERY POLLUTED. There is a lot of walking and you definitely feel like you need a shower at the end of every day.

On a more logistical note, I can't access my blog directly from China. All of my updates are going to be coming through e-mail, so please excuse any typos. I think that I will be able to upload pictures, but not until I get internet access in my room. 

I miss everyone back home, but I am having a great time here with all of my new friends. Please leave me a comment and let me know that you are there.

Arrived

I am here in Beijing China at my computer orientation. Things are going well. More when I have time... and an internet connection.

Mostly Packed

It is 4:45 AM on Friday, June 22. I board the plane for Beijing in less than 8 hours. Most everything is packed. I still need to shuffle things in and out of my carry-ons, but the checked bags are done. I can't find some of the books on China that I am looking for. (They are, of course, the ones I bought first and have had more time to be misplaced.) I still need to write some work e-mail. I still need to do some household financial maintenance. I really wish that had time to sleep.

Some of my fantastic friends made me an audio send-off that I now have on 3 different digital devices. It was so sweet and funny. Of course, I cried when I listened to it. Heck, I cry when I think about it. I am truly honored to know such wonderful people. Thank you. I will miss you all.

It is 4:45 PM on Friday, June 22 in Beijing China. A new world awaits me with another turn of the globe.

Lists upon Lists

T-1.5 days

My plane leaves at 12:20 PM on Friday, June 22. I have so many to-do lists that soon I will need a list to keep track of all of my to-do lists. I hope to get at least 75% of it all done.

Panic Sets In

T-4 days until I leave for ISU in Beijing, China and it seems like the world is conspiring against me getting ready to leave. Over the weekend I traveled to Phoenix to visit friends and attend the Wingin' It Pool Party. The flights to and from this event have been close to the worst ever. When first arriving at the Dublin Airport Friday morning, I found the flight delayed over 2 hours. This delay immediately destroyed the entire day's flight plans.

The complicating factor was that I had two separate flight plans, one with airline A, the other with airline Z. Due to the delays, airline A redirected me to Phoenix. The problem was, they never told airline B. I spent hours, on little sleep, arguing with both airlines about why I have two reservations to Phoenix. The overriding fear being that they would cancel my return flight if the situation was not cleared up. Eventually, I made it to Phoenix, ensured that I had a return flight home, and was refunded several hundred dollars in the process. John met me in Phoenix Overall, it was a long day, for me, a 32 hour day.

The party was fun. We had a good time socializing with the podcasting crew in Phoenix.

All was going well until the flight home. We flew from Phoenix to Los Angeles and then planned to take the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Baltimore. Once the plane landed at LAX, we sat on the tarmac for 30-45 minutes. This delay caused us to miss our flight. Thinking I was confirmed on a flight to Dulles, the customer service agent sent John on a flight to Chicago and then on to BWI.

Unfortunately, I wasn't confirmed on the Dulles flight. We ran over to the gate, put me on the plane, only to find that the open seat they wanted to put me in, belonged to a man in the bathroom. They had to bring back the jet way to get me off the plane.

At this point, the next flight wasn't until the following morning, meaning... no work on Monday and one more lost day preparing for ISU and China.

I spent the night in a crappy hotel (for free) and took the morning flight to BWI. Unfortunately, due to time zone issues, that means I didn't get home until after 5:30 PM.

Should I start counting the time to ISU by hours? Perhaps so.

Saved!

My computer power problem was solved Monday night by the friendly hotel staff. They have loaned me a power adaptor that will work with my laptop. While I haven't made a huge blog post, I did get most of my pictures from Howth dumped to Flickr. No titles, tags, or descriptions... but they are there. Hopefully more later today.

Greetings from Ireland

IMG_1929, originally uploaded by Sci-Fi Laura.

I am in Ireland! As you can see in the picture above, I am having a great time thus far. For the next 3 1/2 days, I will be in work meetings, so I won't get to do as much touring.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my power adapter didn't have a grounding plug, so I won't be able to re-charge my laptop. So, unless I can find another way to recharge, you will only be seeing limited updates and photos. (This problem needs to be fixed before China)

Never fear, I will be taking many photos for upload when I return. See you soon.

3... 2... 1...

Hooray! Space Shuttle Atlantis launched today!!! Unfortunately, I was running errands relating to my trip to Ireland tomorrow and I missed the WHOLE THING. :_(

Hello to the NASA Academy folks who made it down to the launch. I can't wait to hear the stories, see the pictures, and watch the video.

Flights Booked

I just booked my flights to China. Because I waited so late, my options were more limited than I would have liked. I had to cut out my pre-ISU trip to Ames Research Center. I did add in a post-ISU trip to Ames instead. On the positive side, the change gives me a couple more days at home to get everything together before I fly to Beijing.

So Tired

One of the last things I need right now is to be sick. I have some sort of virus that is making me so very tired. I don't have time to be sick. Unfortunately, I don't have much choice in the matter.

Chinese Visa

It is odd to have a bit of down time. Currently I am sitting in the Visa Office for the Embassy of the People's Republic of China. I would take pictures, but the office isn't that interesting.

It is fascinating. On the television they are showing a Chinese variety show with 6-year old kids performing hip hop songs and a few little girls performing traditional dances. (Hip hop re-mix of The Sound of Music?)

It is actually sinking in that this trip is going to happen. I have been so busy recently that I might as well be in denial.

There is such a cross section of people here. I keep wondering why l they are all traveling. I wonder if and will be my classmates. As I wait for my number to be called (177), I am making up stories as to why people are here. (The couple with the baby are taking him to China to meet his grandparents, aunts, and uncles for the first time. The woman in the dress and sneakers is going to meet the man she met online. Little does she know but he is the uncle of the aforementioned baby.) No one seems excited to be here, but a lot of people seem confused by the variety show. The Chinese more amused than confused.

Instead of making up stories, I think I will work on this massive backlog of posts I owe you. (Especially since I can't do any paid work here.)

~~~~ Time Passes ~~~~

Well, I got some blog work done, but not as much as I would like. I really need to get a keyboard for my Palm Pilot.

I HAVE MY VISA. They will now let me in the country. Now a lot of other logistics, shopping, and stuff. One step forward, many to go.

So much to say...

I have so much to tell you. It has been a wild week full of fantastic experiences.... But it is late, and I need to sleep now. I'll be back soon.