Now that I am home and thus free for the holidays here is my long in coming entry about the trip to Victoria. Since my laptop harddrive with all the pictures on it failed last weekend I don't have any photos for you to browse though :(
On a fateful Thursday evening the day after my birthday I started reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone. My parent had just gotten me the book and I thought it would do a good job of taking my mind for the trip to Victoria the next morning. As it turned out I had trouble falling asleep at a decent hour being all nervous about my interview the next day ... so i read about 200 pages of Harry Potter that night and finally caught maybe 3 hours of sleep.
The next morning I set out bright and early at 6am to make it to the ferry. On the way I stole a tabloid from the lady next to me and started doing the Sudoku on it. Then spend about 10 minutes talking to her how the puzzles in the tabloid are too easy. On the ferry ride to Victoria I did the unthinkable, instead of continuing the read of Harry Potter I looked though a couple of presentations and papers from the ATLAS I had downloaded from the UVic site.
So after that and a short nap on the ferry I bused and taxied it over to UVic. Here I joined my potential supervisor Michel Lefebvre first for lunch and then a pleasant interview. He told me a bit about ATLAS, I told him a bit about my masters and why I thought working on ATLAS would be the coolest thing ever (well how ofter do you get to look for super-symmetry, the origin of mass, and extra dimensions?). In fact working at a huge physics lab looking for extra dimensions made me think of Halflife, but let's put that aside for now.
Next I met up with some of the grad student working on ATLAS, half of which were just getting back from a quantum midterm and hence on the way to the pub. I could not argue with going to the pub so I had a grand time getting to know some of the grad students, having beer, and enjoying the very nice student pub at UVic (kicks the crap out of the Pit anyway). From there on I went on a cruise to Victoria Downtown and it's many brew pubs with two grad students Kristin (i hope i got the spelling right) a girl doing theory at UVic and Ian a guy who used to work on ATLAS.
We ended up at Swans, a brewery pub and hotel where they had put me up for the night. A very nice place, the Oatmeal Stout there was quite good actually. And the rooms are prime.
The next morning I had breakfast and a beer at Spinnaker's. Following Michel's recommendation I tried their Extra Bitter, which was indeed one of the best beers I have ever had. After that I strolled over to the bus stop and was off back to Vancouver, feeling very happy about Striking a deal that will made Scott (my current supervisor) happy as well. I'll start my PhD at UVic in May, given that I finish my masters over the next 4 months :)
