this mail starts with 'statics', the discharges that shock you sometimes when you touch metals, particularly on a dry day. one evening I kept getting statics. i touched hangers to hang my coat and there was a little lightening display in the cupboard, oops! i touched the water taps, my bed, light switches, or fridge, all the while statics kept stinging me--- tut-tut-tut! may be it was my electrifying presence, so I thought, or my magnetic personality or the charged atmosphere. always kind, Jayanne suggested it was probably my shocking appearance! i experienced so many statics on that evening probably 'cause it snowed the whole day and the heaters were on for the first time, which left the air very dry. in Canada, statics are way more common. ahhh! one more just now :-)
it has been more than half a year already in Winnipeg. Even so, when i go to parties, initial dialogue goes thus,
"Hi! So, when did you come to Canada?"
"Some six months."
"Oh! How are you doing in Winnipeg?"
"I enjoyed my Summer here and people are so friendly"
"Oh, Summer is gorgeous, isn't it? So is this your
first Winter, oh wow! Did you ever have this cold in
India?"
"It's fun, I like it. This is the first time I saw
snow in my life".
"Is it, how nice! Did you make a snowman or tried skiing?..."
not a remarkable conversation to write about, i agree with you. however, if you are asked this question in every party, gathering, perhaps several times on one evening, it is special! people get so excited to see an alien (my visa status), like the way Indians get excited when they see firang's. i am not sure if this conversation would change much till i leave.
i heard on the radio the other night that Winnipeg is the Winter capital of Canada. books, music, art, it is happening here, apparently. it all happens underground, i think. it is all snowbound since snow appeared a week before X'mas. it's snow white outside. i have taken great pleasure in stamping my footprints on the fresh, soft snow on the road, sidewalks and (errr-stwhile) lawns. it's one of those really touristic things to do. i also made my own snow angel, but not a snow man.
i am now a avid radio fan, CBC radio-I 990 (kHz). the morning programs, Current, Sounds Like Canada and weather are my usual staple diet. the last one is essential in these parts and one dresses according to the weather forecast for the day. one may add one or two layers suitably. it was a warm December and now is the cooler-than-normal February. we walked for more than an hour in a rally against a possible gulf war.
one time when my Indian identity is surely invoked (and challenged) is when we go and watch some Indian movie or attend a celebration. for their credit, Canadians are well educated about India and other issues. they take pains to understand others' view and correct their information if required. we, meaning a group of (mostly) astronomers from our group, have attended the local Diwali celebrations and culture festivals. we have seen movies `Monsoon Wedding', `Devdas', `Hyderabad Blues' etc. it's then i am asked several questions, about history, geography and religion--- "Are Hindus all vegetarians? do they at least eat pork?";
"How does (or doesn't) an arranged marriage work?" (how do i know); "What was the status of Kashmir before?" i have been asked for my own Indian recipes too, yo ho!!
Most of us know Mac as in MacDonald or Mac'intosh (astro guys know McCullogh and/or Cricket-lovers know McGrath). now, here are some more from Mc-Canada: McAlister, McBride, McDermott, McEvans, McGregor, McGill, McKinley, McLellan, McMohan, McNally, McQuade, McRoger, McVaughan... was just checking my memory :-)
this diary will not be complete without a talk of Canadian politics. Canadians consider themselves as cousins, if not as brothers, of Americans. a lot of them have their relatives mixed on both sides of the border and share a lot of things with Americans, foreign/economic policies, culture and art, etc. sometimes it gets hard to notice the difference between the people. however, there is a significant, possible majority, fraction of population which believes in a distinct identity for Canadians and also believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was the biggest mistake in their history. they loath the American bullying tactics and its right-wing politics. funnily, Quebec-French lean more towards the Americans!
One place where Canadians differ hugely from Americans is their health-care system, which is social. recently, there was a commission which evaluated the merits of this system and suggested numerous ways of strengthening it. the Roy Romanow Report was a matter of discussion for everyone, and it must have disappointed some MNCs from the South who hoped for some slice of the Canadian health-care market.
recently, a Canadian Foreign Affairs official created a huge stir when she referred to Bush (yeah, yeah, Dubya!) as "a moron" in some private talk on a conference premises. a reporter overheard it and the matter became a hot potato for the Canadian government. So, here was the Canadian Prime Minister the next day talking (on these lines) to the press,"Oh! I know Mr. President. he is my close friend and I played golf with him just a week. We share a great relationship. He is not a moron! I know that and this is not an issue". no one was sure if the Prime Minister was being sarcastic.
a last incidence in my mind is about the city mayor, Glen Murrey. a very visible and popular man, he walks around the city to see if the residents face problems of any kind. once, while standing in a bakery for lunch, i suddenly became aware that Mr Murrey was standing right behind me. without making a fuss he waited to meet the owner, obviously his friend and supporter, and left without making his presence an inconvenience. it was a remarkable thing given my experience of loud-mouth politicians in India. that was the incidence which made me aware of the live democracy that is at the basis of this nation.
I have been skiing and also walking on the river (Red River). it has been cold, but as i noted above, it has been quite enjoyable.
that's all at the moment. a lot of work is on hands and i look forward to my visit to Quebec in May and a possible hike in the Rockies.
take care and have an enjoyable world cup!
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Thursday, August 01, 2002
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.
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.
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