Category: MagAO-X

It’s been a week since I last blogged, and I’ve got an update on last week’s COVID-19 antibody test! The good news is: blood tests indicate I’ve successfully avoided getting sick. The bad news is, I’m therefore still at risk.

Several other eXtreme Wavefront Control Lab students got tested and they had no evidence of recent infection, either. I suppose we are the study’s eXtreme Wavefront control group.

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I have been encouraged to include a cute cat picture, as these are always popular with our readers. I have included a photograph of Mr. Alexander the Great expressing what I believe is called “a total mood”.

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On an unrelated note, I was reading through the group chat with my extended family today and saw a link to QuiltedNorthern.com. It was touted as a resource for obtaining TP in These Uncertain Times. Upon their site, it reads:

Now is the time to take comfort in one another and in the fact that we are working tirelessly to provide you with the comfort of Quilted Northern^® toilet paper.

Really makes you think, doesn’t it?

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Your song of the day: “Mask, Glove, Soap, Scrubs” by Todrick Hall off “Quarantine Queen”. Todrick has been making spectacularly involved YouTube parodies since I was in high school (at least). The below video is a re-write of one of his own songs that really puts the ‘house’ in ‘house music’.

We’ve had a string of high-quality, high-effort posts recently, so it’s time to restore balance to the blog with a low-effort post.

Other than my biweekly (in sense 1, not sense 2 [I question the value of a word that has to come along with a definition every time it’s used]) visits to the grocery store (and the long waits in line to gain entry), my primary source of excitement these days are walks on those rarest of days when it is simultaneously warm enough to be outside and not raining. My proudest discovery: a park a few minutes from my apartment that features bridges to not one but two river islands. Pictures below.

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In my last blog post back in April, I chose a song about March. Now that it’s May, the only reasonable action is to choose “April Come She Will” by Simon & Garfunkel.

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, last time was at the observatory using MagAO (Classic). Others have written about time spent on a submarines or in virtual worlds, which I think are excellent training for isolation, I’m going to opine a bit about the value of travel and particularly study abroad for coping with staying at home. And share some pictures (all shot in 2007 on a circa 2003, five megapixel, Olympus E-1 with circa 1970s manual focus Olympus Zuiko lenses) .

In 2007 I studied at the University of Ghana (UG), in Legon, which is just north of the capital Accra. Ghana is on the horizontal stretch of the eastern African coast, between Cote d’Ivoire and Chad (blue arrow below).

There are lots of ways this experience prepared me for this pandemic, some humorous and some practical.

As international students visiting via a US university’s program, we lived on campus in relatively spiffy dorms where we only had one roommate and where we had running water. They didn’t have all the comforts of home however. I learned quickly upon arriving in the dorms that toilet paper was a valuable commodity, a college classmate who was from Nigeria had packed his suite case with rolls of Charmin and I felt a bit silly with all my hand sanitizer and no “T-Roll”.

Fortunately, the dorms were close to the campus Night Market, seen below after a heavy rain. My room was in the distant building, second floor, furthest to the left. The Night Market was nearly a one-stop-shopping experience, from T-Roll to sandal repair and fresh food, with stalls specializing in Fufu (pounded casava), RedRed. My standby dinner was Waakye, a dish of rice and beans that you could buy hot, served in a plastic bag, for tens of cents. I chose to eat a lot of Waakye, it was a complete protein, it was tasty, it was fully cooked, and it left a lot of money in my pocket for travel. But it was surprising to me how easy it was to eat well on a few dollars a day, day after day, on rice and beans (and bread, eggs, and oatmeal).

The Night Market was pretty complete shopping, and it was possible to live frugally, but that also made big splurges, like dinner in Accra at a Lebanese restaurant that much more enjoyable. And re-entry shock is real, and in my experience, the primary symptom is wandering supermarkets. Consider yourself warned.

The dorms also had prominent public health signage, something that may be coming to US dorms this fall, while the focus is now on a new virus, these messages might be a template:

All that scrimping on food meant travel, and the travel didn’t disappoint, a 20+ hour bus ride to the Sahel and Mole National Park (go national parks!) meant wildlife sightings under the watchful eye of rangers, the unique pain of Tsetse fly bites, and the unique camaraderie fellow travelers.

On the more serious side, many of us came down with serious diseases, including malaria, despite prophylaxis while we were studying in Ghana. We were grateful for the treatment we received and that experience made clear the physicians and nurses in Ghana and other African countries are top-notch: educated, curious, and committed to their patients. But even before COVID19, they severely lacked the equipment to provide the care they knew was possible, making it even more imperative to “flatten the curve” in countries with just a few ICU beds. The WHO is publishing Africa SITREPs on CV19 if you want to keep an eye on things. This lack of equipment is just one symptom of a long history of colonization, maximally illustrated by the heart-wrenching slaves castles along this “Gold Coast”.

Studying physics in a low-resource environment brought it’s own challenge and learning opportunities. Much like today, where we’re cutoff from physical books in campus and department libraries, when I was studying E&M and solid state physics in Ghana resources like PDFs of course notes from MIT Open Courseware went from being nice to invaluable. My Ghanaian classmates were also more essential to learning than my classmates in the states, they were masters of logistics and could find textbooks and information that befuddled me.

Study abroad anywhere is training for today because normal is different in every time and place. Upending all your normal habits, books, problem sets, cafeterias and moving them across the world is training in the sense that it shows you how to adapt, and find the limits of that adaptation. (Malaria– not easy to adapt to; rice and beans, no problem). If we are OK and used to accommodating new normals in the context of human experience, and work on ways to improve them, it’s easier to focus on today and tomorrow, rather spending too much time trying to get back to the way things were. Like going to supermarkets or having nice toilet paper. Both are overrated. Stay safe at home, and when it’s safe, go train for the next pandemic and see the world.

MUSIC

I think music is in the rules still. I’m going to resist my natural tendency just to revert to Springsteen. Here goes.

Africa, but improved by Weird Al’s accordion:

Many Ghanaians have spectacular dancing and musical skills, unfortunately neither rubbed off on me during my semester there (despite several organized, multi-day interventions by professionals). These guys have some moves though:

And finally, to maximize our musical diversity, this is one of the first songs that popped into my head that I first heard while I was at University of Ghana (and isn’t by the Boss…):

Good night and nante yie (walk well, in Asanti Twi)

This week, MagAO-X was scheduled for its 2020A observation run at LCO. LCO is still closed according to recent updates, MagAO-X is still hanging out at the XWCL in Steward Observatory, and everyone continues to work from home. I decided to write this post about something that pleasantly surprised me when I visited LCO for MagAO in 2017B – seeing Milo at the dining hall. According to Wikipedia, Milo is a popular chocolate drink in Oceania, South America, Southest Asia, and parts of Africa.

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Milo brings back memories of my childhood, when I relocated to the Philippines for 3 years. I had grown up drinking Nesquik chocolate milk in the US, so finding a similar brand was a godsend for homesick child self transitioning to a drastically new environment. I remember the TV commercials focusing how drinking Milo makes an athletic child. It was the late 1990’s and being a child, it means these commercials were full of truth, right? (Adult me is skeptical)

Decades later, this theme still continues:

Let’s take a look into some other countries’ advertisements:

It’s been a few years since I’ve had Milo, so I bought some while grocery shopping at LeeLee’s International Market. I mixed it up with milk and drank it for breakfast. It tasted different than what I remembered in my childhood. I immediately suspected the milk – we mixed Milo with hot water and milk powder instead of fresh milk. I mixed the Milo with some excess milk powder I had lying around from a recipe experiment, and it tasted a bit closer to my childhood!

Back then, it was uncommon in the Philippines to have fresh milk, since long-term refrigeration is not reliable. Living in Quezon City, power outages happened all the time, from the seasonal small signal 1 typhoons (which once cancelled school for 4 days in a row) and overall infrastructure issues. There was also one significant days-long power outage that occurred allegedly due to jellyfish. Additionally, fresh milk is expensive in the Philippines because it must be imported. Even though the milk is not refrigerated when purchased, it must be refrigerated upon opening the container. It’s been almost 2 decades since I returned to live in the US full-time and 5 years since my last visit, so maybe it’s more common these days.

Last comment about Milo – the flavor varies based on country of manufacture because the palate balance is localized by region. The Chilean Milo tasted different from the one I bought at LeeLee’s (Singapore manufactured). Therefore, the Milo sourced from a Hispanic market versus an Asian supermarket versus your neighborhood small African market, will each taste different. I’m told there’s also a difference in the Milo produced between Indonesia and Malaysia.

SONG OF THE DAY
To keep with the sports theme of Milo, the song of the day is my favorite FIFA Club World Cup (La Copa Mundial) official song – Shakira’s “Waka Waka” from the 2010 tournament in South Africa. This quarantine got me reminiscing the times of sitting in bars with friends and enjoying the crowd energy while watching live matches of La Copa.

Here’s the Spanish version as well:

Along with “Waka Waka” playing in the airwaves, there was also media frenzy about Paul the Octopus. The magnitude of superstition around world cup matches is on-par with scientists applying for funding (Source: SMBC)

It’s officially May the 4th 2020, and may the Fourth be with you! The fourth of May is great because it’s an excuse for all of us to relive the fact that Star Wars is the greatest thing ever, even though it sometimes feels like it happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…

Where were you when “it happened” (when you first watched Star Wars)? Were you in theaters? At home? What year was it? For some, it happened in 1977. Unfortunately, I wasn’t born for that moment, but my life did not go too long without seeing Star Wars (thanks to my parents, although it wasn’t their idea to get me into swinging fake lightsabers around in the backyard, or playing countless hours of Star Wars Battlefront 2). For others, they have yet to even see Star Wars! I personally envy those people, because they have no idea what a great experience awaits them.

Star Wars may seem annoying to some people, while for others, it can mean much more. Luckily for both parties, we can all agree that Star Wars memes are a surprisingly great byproduct of the franchise. So following Lauren’s Post about “Star Wars Prequel Memes,” I wanted to share a few of my own favorite Star Wars memes.

As a tribute to the pun of the day, “May the Fourth be with you,” this meme takes the pun one step further:

The rest are a collection of random Star Wars memes I have saved on my phone:

For those of you who are eager for a little Star Wars action, check out this really cool fan film, Darth Maul: Apprentice.

The song of the day is not necessarily a “song,” but could be considered more of a “music video.” This fan-made video, called “Before The Dark Times,” gives you the same cool story that Obi-Wan tells Luke in Episode IV, but with a much darker perspective through flashbacks and John Williams soundtracks. It is sure to give you the chills, if you take the time to watch it.