Brian York's Life

China

Written on June 19, 2008

Well, here I am. Specifically, I’m attending IAU Colloquium 199, which just happens to be on the subject of Quasar Absorption Line Spectroscopy, which itself just happens to be the area I’m concentrating on for my graduate degree. So, for the rest of this week, I’m attending a major international astronomy conference in Shanghai.

I can’t comment much on the conference itself (since it hasn’t started yet), but it should be quite good, with pretty much everyone who has any impact on the field being in attendance. I’ve already met a number of very interesting people (including Donald York, the other York working on QSOALS), and the talks and posters should be fun (I’m co-author on one of the posters).

Shanghai itself is a very interesting city. Very urban, although the little park/garden right next to my hotel is nice (you can hardly hear the traffic and city sounds from the middle of it). The observatory is literally right across the street, and is part of a multi-function high-rise building. This strikes me as kind of weird. Not just having a 1.5-metre telescope (complete with dome) on top of a building in the middle of downtown, but also having an observatory that occupies one-and-a-bit floors of the building, sharing it with several company offices (etc.).

This place is a really weird mix of western and traditional cultures. Most of the signs (including all the street signs and a fair bit of the advertising) are bilingual (Chinese/English), but some of the details are just strange. The hotel I’m staying at (“The Sports Hotel”) advertises as “western” breakfast buffet (which is free, so I can’t complain), but western it isn’t. And what they call spaghetti, though quite good, also isn’t. I think the culture shock I’m getting isn’t so much that things aren’t the same, but that they almost are the same with minor differences. It’s also weird for everyone to be much shorter than me. In all the time I’ve been here, I’ve met maybe 3 or 4 people who were my height or taller, and they’re all attending the conference from either Europe or North America.

One of the things that Shanghai has made me appreciate is the air and water quality in Victoria (and Canada as a whole). My hotel room is (slightly) better than outside, but outside is enough to give me trouble sometimes, and there has not been a single moment without a haze of pollution over the city. The water is rather bad (I’m existing on bottled), and when I get back to Victoria even tap water is going to taste good for awhile.

The flight down was interesting. I’ve never before spent more than six hours in the air continuously, so the 13-hour direct flight was a learning experience. I figure it’ll prepare me for the equally long flight upcoming in April (Vancouver->Frankfurt, Frankfurt->Madrid, overnight at Madrid, and Madrid->La Palma). The flight back should be equally interesting, although at least I won’t have as bad a time on entry. And it’s easier to find your way out of Vancouver’s airport than the Pu Dong airport in Shanghai.

I really miss Morgan. This is the first time we’ve been really far apart since we were married (and the first time we’ve been this far apart since we’ve known each other). The 8-hour (across the date line no less) time difference seems like it’s going to be a bit of a problem as well — it’s hard to find times that we can talk to each other and both be awake and not busy. Next time I have a trip like this, Morgan’s coming along whether or not we have the money for it.

I think that’s it at the moment. I still haven’t quite adapted to the time here, so I think I’ll rest for a bit until Morgan calls (by the end of this trip, we’ll have put together quite a phone bill between us).

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Entry last updated March 13, 2005