Cool Cool Canada!

My arrival in Winnipeg was anything but smooth. it was raining in Ottawa and we were delayed by 2 hours on termac. the pilot of NorthWest Air (they are funny) wondered on the microphone why we wanted to fly to Winnipeg at all, least of all on that day! Winnipeg was at -2 C that morning with a snow-storm in its full glory. we were further delayed in landing and i was to meet Samar (my supervisor) outside. we were nearly blown away by the blizzard on the way to her car and it was really difficult to breathe. if anything, this was a natural ("befitting", i was told!) "Welcome" to Winnipeg Winter. i stayed at Jayanne's (my other supervisor) apartment for just one day more and then moved on to the first meeting, CASCA 2002 in Penticton, B.C.

i will not forget the first evening in Penticton as we were at the lake side. i saw the aurorae for the first time in my life. the swaying, mysterious, cloud-like structures were hard to define by eye. i did not attempt to photograph them. i believe i am going to have some better sighting some other day and i will be better equipped for photography then.

the conference banquet indicated that mostly the Canadian people are friendly, honest and helpful. i was late and joined a much older group of people on their table, some of whom had visited India (a nurse, traveler, etc) before my birth! so, there were stories to share with them. during the meeting i heard two stimulating talks, in particular i should mention one on Teaching Astronomy. we visited the Dominion Radio Astronomical Observatory (DRAO), which carried out the Galactic survey that is a basis for my postdoc. away from the town, DRAO site is gorgeous, surrounded by tall hills (Rockies are nearby), with a blue sky and woods around. the telescope itself is not remarkable (for astronomers, there is a 22-MHz telescope there which produced maps recently) compared to GMRT or VLA... DRAO is building their own proto-type of the Square Kilometer (area) Array -- the Generation-Y in radio telescopes. their weird idea of building this telescope includes a baloon of size 8 meters that hangs about 200 meters in air at the focus of the telescope on the ground below. i could not figure out how they would make the whole thing as stable as required at 8 GHz or so (a few centimeters or so)...

the next stop was at Edmonton for a meeting of IGPS collaborators, this is the consortium which has pooled the data used for my work. Edmonton has the largest mall in North America, apparently. this was refuted by a friend in US ("there is nothing bigger in Canada than in US"). but temperature stays below -30 C for weeks in a row for most North Canadian towns and the idea of an entire fun park built in a mall, all underground, is not unthinkable. but, i am not sure if that one was the largest...

i stayed with Jayanne through June and took possesion of my apt on 1st July. since then i am honing my homemaking skills-- cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc... it takes time out of the day, but there is hope that i will get more efficient at work and that would leave me more time to myself.

all this time i have been learning new things/tricks. and first come first, my accent: Jayanne/Samar worked hard on my pronounciation. Canadians pronounce the first letter of each (English) word in a pronounced way! astronomy is pronounced as "aastronomy", pronounciation is "ppronounciation", banquet is "bbaanquet", and canadian is (naturally) "kkanadian", etc. the French pronounciation, for the time being, is beyond me. but, I was told that even "French" French can not understand Canadian French language. Canadians also like to raise the pitch of their last word noticably higher, like "this"(?). it is supposed to mean some kind of exclamation (i am yet to figure it out fully). a few common terms are worth a mention: shopping malls (not 'complexes'), traffic lights (not 'signals'), sport arena (not 'stadium'): these are distinctly American terms. Canadians have their own specialities: "okie-dockie", "all rightie", "thingie". the last one could be used as, "Is that your thingie (cycle, bucket or a lawn-mower) out there in front?". Did you know the great outdoor games in Canada? i saw one program on TV, where there were competitions in wood-sowing, log-axing, snow-digging, etc. all under the banner of "Great Outdoor Events!" i had numerous embarrassments at my own gaffaws or pronounciation, e.g.: "chicken loin", "harroin-addiction", "whow-well", "saloon", "khemistry". But, English is a terrible language in some ways. tell me, how would you pronounce the name of the street that I live on, "Grosvenor"? well, it is "Grov-ner". and how would you pronounce, Cockburn (name of a nearby street)? do not try it phonetically :-) it is pronounced as "ko-burn". so there!

Canadians love to chat, everywhere and with an acquaintance or a stranger. so conversations start at any place, malls /bus/theatres... so, you meet different people unexpectedly. Jayanne met this Punjabi woman on bus and congratulated Jayanne for her punjabi dress (Jayanne's best friend is a Punjbai and she has visited India for a wedding, so...). That woman was so happy to see some woman (in Canada, that is) in such a dress, she gave Jayanne her phone number so that she could talk to Jayanne leisurely. Myself and Jayanne met this student from Univ of Manitoba (UoM) on a bus. this student identified Jayanne (Jayanne English, a Canadian, is a local celebrity and once appeared on the front page of the leading daily, Winnipeg Free Press. She also used to be on radio in a weekly show to answer questions on astronomy in general). so, we had a long conversation about our lives and Winnipeg... one night i met a group of dancers in a Gelati shop (Italian icecream parlor -- i live in a Italian neighbourhood of the city). we enjoyed Gelati together chatting for more than half an hour. the group invited me to join them to learn Salsa with them in their dance studio, wow! i also happen to know this person, who has a married-couple as friends in Toronto and the husband is a terminal case of cancer. this person in Winnipeg bakes cookies, muffins, breads, etc. for this family and sends it by express post across. they last for the family's breakfast for a week or so. it is difficult to miss such friendly behavior any time.

back to my life: cooking has been an experience, probably like pregnancy. i had to invent my own judgement of cutting, frying, baking, etc. thanks to Jayanne, i learnt kitchen utilities pretty much without any bother. with minimum stuff in my kitchen, i think i manage the whole thing okay, by now. without any previous judgement about Western cooking, i followed one book very thoroughly and have enjoyed the results. my favourite dishes are: "grilled chicken salad with peanut sauce", "stirfried barbecued beef and noodles","Hoisin-glazed salmon", "asparagus with ginger", etc. i also love pancakes and french toasts for breakfast, apart from an occasional egg-fry or oatmeal. laundry and cleaning are manageable tasks. shopping, particularly for vegetables and meat is an issue. so far Summer was warm and i did well. i have no idea what happens when there is chill (-20, gosh!).

notice, i have not spoken a word about my actual work so far. i am looking at a survey of our galaxy done at one important spectral line of neutral Hydrogen, which falls at 1420 MHz in the radio band. this probes the medium between stars, which is diffuse and consists of neutral and ionized gases, mostly Hydrogen, Helium and a little of the entire Atomic Table. not only can we study the distribution and kinematics of these gases, the dynamical events in the Galaxy leave their mark in the structures of this diffuse medium, much like an jet liner leaves behind trail of its trajectory in the atmosphere. those can be studied too. one such are supernova explosions, which leave behind shells and mushroom-type clouds in the interstellar medium. i study these "mushroom-type" clouds and their possible connection with the energetics of supernovae & the interstellar matter.


i should get the photographs scanned soon, this week-end quite possibly. that should go with the description above about my life here.

PS: i went for a canoeing and hiking trip about 250 Km away on September-long week end, it was fabulous. i received the developed prints of fotos this Tuesday. should scan them too. more about that later.