15 June 2011
Tonight was a lunar eclipse. Ken, Tiffany, and I walked down to the corner and watched, through the array of street lamps and blur of passing traffic, as the sun shadow slowly cast its shadow on
the moon. The night's clouds swung in between us and the moon over the course of 40 minutes until finally, the moon was engulfed in a dimmed, yellow-orange hue.
The Trip
The trip thus far has been great, it's almost been a month exactly since arrived and it's hard to believe that within a month's time, I'll be in London with Ben and Auntie Pura. Crazy how that happens, and it's crazy looking back at the trail of broken and incomplete journal entries I've left littered between my laptop, notebook, and scraps of paper. I'm only now finding the drive to throw my thoughts online if only because work and group activities has me bursting at the brim.
I'm sure my family doesn't appreciate the silence on my end, but they know I think of them and I'm sure they can feel me now...such is the connection I cherish :)
Project Work
Shawn and I have been working tirelessly the past few weeks to pull together the market data and applications for our technology. This week has been focused on evaluating the intellectual property and outlining an R&D plan. We've had generous help and advice provided to us from strangers, friends, and friends of friends, without which, we'd be guessing even more than we are now. But we've been finding and learning that entrepreneurship is about making new ideas work, with a gentle balance of assumptions and aspirations (not to be confused with delusion). The hardest part has been the disconnect between our actual grasp on the science of the technology and our desire to just lay a blanket of assumptions about appeal in the market. "Touching" the market has been key, and we will continue to do this as best we can (however awkward that expression might sound :P)
Dutchman
Yesterday, after we finished our lab visit to the Materials Engineering lab at Technion, we were corralled, last minute, into a speech being given by the Vice Prime Minister of the Netherlands on the future relationships between Holland and Israel. The timing was perfect given that Israel, a nation that has thrived on making the most out of limited resources, just found a huge deposit of natural gas deposits off-shore in the Mediterranean. Given the Netherland's history of similar fate and subsequent "squandering" (as the Vice PM said) of such resources, it seemed fitting if not expected that Israel should learn from the lessons learned from the Dutch experience. The Vice PM also went on to discuss the issue of the border disputes and also how to handle refugees from the occupied space. Sadly, I'm not well versed in the depth of politics surrounding the issue, but from what I understand, there is an issue regarding the future of the Palestinian state. The Vice PM stated that they "would NOT" recognize Palestine as a country (like many in the international community are beginning to do) but rather, they would recognize it only as an output of negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian people. It's an interesting issue and I feel fortunate, in some ways, to be on neither side, but rather on the learning side. However, from what I have learned so far about the history of this land, especially Jerusalem, I can understand why any side would be reluctant to concede to changes that might sway the balance of power and homogeneity that keeps one group in power. Everyone wants that small piece of land, or at least to control it. It saddens me though, since it seems that there is no reason the space could not be shared...after all, millions of tourists pass through those lands every year. Of course, I'm am an outsider, and likely lack the opportunity to understand truly the perspective of either side.
Lab Visits
Yesterday, we visited the Materials Engineering lab. The Technion has the only program n the world (they claim) to have a dual program in chemistry/physics and materials engineering/chemical engineering. We visited a huge inorganic microscope that uses electrons? maybe photons? to see at the nanometer level and analyze molecular structures and behavior under different conditions. Apparently you can only see so much with an normal "light" microscope and this microscope allows scientists to do all sorts of amazing things. Gitti, the researching guiding us around, showed us some of the work she was doing with new solar energy technology. The use the microscopy to study the behavior of inorganic material and organic materials. Apparently, they hope to use chemistry and physics to determine how to get organic polymers and inorganic materials to arrange in such a way that, when spread over a substrate surface, one would arrange atop another. In this way, light would excite the organic polymer and cause electrons to break loose and transfer along the inorganic material, thus generating electricity. Gitti hopes that these methods will serve as an alternative and perhaps substitute for the current PV based solar cells which are based on Silicon, a increasingly scarce element.
Me?
I'm doing okay, but have definitely feeling the wear, tear, and lack of personal space. I like to think that I'm a pretty social person, but when you are constantly with or around 12 people and share that space constantly, it becomes a challenge to get your work done and still find time collect your thoughts. The first few weeks were amazing, lots of touring, introductions, preliminary work, but now the combination of project group pressure/friction, weekly presentations, and zero downtime has really started to wear on me. After tomorrow's class presentation, we will be heading up to the Golan Heights and the Sea of Galilee. I'm looking forward to it, though, at the same time, dreading it. I'm beginning to miss home, family, friends, and calm. George (brother in law) is presenting his thesis defense of his research (from the past 5 years!). I wish I could stay up for it, but it'll be at 230am my time. *sigh* I hope Berta records it.
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