Rain

Today it rained for the first  time since I have been in Santiago, that's over 7 weeks and I suspect there hadn't been any rain for some time before that. This means its quite a bit cooler than it has been and I actually quite like the cooler weather, its nice being able to put on jackets and jumpers and breath fresh cool air. Living in Brisbane and now Santiago I don't think I have actually worn a jacket for over 6 months.

It hasn't been a particularly eventful week. I have slipped into some form of routine already, its amazing  how quickly this can happen. I go to work during the day then two nights a week I have a Spanish class, two other nights I go to the gym. At the weekends you want at least one day to relax and do nothing, at least I do anyway. I think I mentioned previously that on Wednesday I was attending a workshop on Biomedical engineering, the aim of which was to promote interdisciplinary collaborations. This is a nice idea but in practice my experience tells me that you can't force people to collaborate for the sake of it. If I have an idea and it requires the expertise of someone outside my field I go looking for that person, I suppose I now have an idea of the type of research that goes on here so I know where to go look. I know that at QUT in Brisbane over the last few years we have had various faculty mergers which initially I thought would be quite useful but the reality is that we all just carry on in our own little niches. Scientists aren't really known for their social skills anyway. There was a very nice plenary lecture by a medical physics professor from Stanford University who had worked for a long time with GE developing new CT and MRI scanner technologies and had more recently moved back to academia.

There's a very nice project that the BBC has started called the Listening project that's a collaboration between BBC Radio and the British Library. It aims to give people an opportunity to record short conversations with people important to them. I have only heard a few of them through the short podcast that is produced each week but it is a fascinating insight into real people's lives in modern Britain. A link is below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-listening-project

I have some hiking planned this weekend including an overnight camp out, with the change in weather I think that I will have to take some Pisco to help me survive the night. I'll report back next week.

Andrew