New pictures

I didn't manage to write about last year's California trips yet, but I have uploaded a couple of new pictures. Since I bought a new camera (Fujifilm FinePix F72EXR) shortly before Christmas, I like playing around with its 10x optical zoom and long feature list including amazing ways to get bright night-pictures. Last week I went to the Huntington Botanical Gardens right next to Pasadena and tried to capture the colorful natural wonders in display there.

Today, I went to the Griffith Observatory located on one of the hills next to Los Angeles (right next to the Hollywood sign actually). The observatory features interesting exhibitions on the history of the universe, but most of all it has one of the best possible views on the huge city of LA. Especially at night with all the lights on, one can get a good feeling for the size of the city.

Pasadena

So as promised a few words on California. This time the getting settled part was pretty easy (especially compared to the struggle for housing I had in NJ). My professor managed to get me invited to join a lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena as a visiting researcher. So, after I got the letter of invitation, Caltech was quite efficient in providing me the required forms for the Visa (F-1 this time) and they also provided me with a room in one of the graduate housing apartments. This is quite convenient as those apartments are right next to the campus and there are plenty of shopping possibilities in walking distance. So, in strong contrast to my stay in NJ, I don't actually need a car here!

In the end the arrival in Pasadena worked out very smoothly. A shuttle took me from the airport to the campus (with a detour through skid row late at night) and a lab-mate from Zurich, who is also spending a few months here, met me there. He was also nice enough to help me find and get settled in my new apartment and so I was all set to crash and sleep away the jet lag... ;-)
Besides that, the first striking impression of California was clearly the weather. Big temperature difference to Switzerland! And best of all, it's predominantly sunny and still hasn't gotten colder... ;-) ...so ever since I arrived here the worst daily high may have been around 15ºC. Not exactly what I call a winter (or fall) but I could definitely get used to that... ;-)

So what about the city of Pasadena? I would say that it is mainly a really pretty city (lots of green, nice houses, parks, etc) with all one needs to do research. It's a bit like Princeton...cute but may get boring in the long run. Pasadena is mainly known for its research at Caltech and the connected JPL (one of NASA's main research facilities) and for hosting the Rose Parade (to celebrate the New Year) and the Rose Bowl Game. Since I happened to be there on the first of January and somehow managed to wake up (I celebrated New Year's Eve in Los Angeles), I also took some pictures of the parade and of the crowd at the Rose Bowl stadium. The pre-game festivities also featured an impressive flyover of 4 F/A-18 which I failed to take a picture of (and I even had the cam ready... :( ), but trust me that it looked quite impressive...

Of course I had no plans of staying put in Pasadena for 4 months and even though the public transports are quite good here for US-standards, it is still a good idea to have a car for these things. So, we simply bought one... ;-) ...I have no pictures of the car as it is not as impressive as the rental cars I had in NJ, but it is a very decent car (a 2001 Mazda Protege LX/ES 2.0L). So we used the car to do a couple of trips to Los Angeles, Las Vegas (forgot my cam, so no pics for that one...sorry ;-)) and to San Francisco (going through some of Sierra Nevada's national parks on the way there and along the scenic Pacific Coastline on the way back). But more on those trips in the next couple of posts. Now, I need to look at the pictures I took today in the botanical gardens of the Huntington Library in Pasadena. So, make sure to check the "Latest Pictures" on the right since I may add new pictures to old albums...

Back in the US

The new decade just started and it's time to write something in this blog again...especially since I (finally) updated my Web Albums. Since it's likely that I update the pictures more often than this blog, you may want to check the rss feed on picasa or see the updates in facebook.
So much for the organizational part, but what happened since the last post (which was in spring 2008)?

First of all I graduated in summer 2008. So now I'm a so called Master of Science ETH in Computer Science (or in the old school fashion: Dipl. Ing. Inf.) and since I couldn't get enough of ETH I stayed there to pursue a PhD (doctor) and do some research.
So much about work but what about travels?

Since this blog is about traveling, I should write about that part too and shortly go over some of the albums I uploaded. First one is not too far of a travel but a nice experience nonetheless. The European soccer championships came to Switzerland (and Austria) in 2008 and Italy played 2 games in Zurich. I was lucky enough to get some tickets and went to see those games (the only ones where Italy actually played decently).

Once I graduated at ETH, I also finished my UNITECH exchange program and got a diploma from them too...and best of all was that all UNITECH graduates were to get those in Barcelona. So, I spent some nice days in the Catalan capital and got to see and photograph many of Gaudì's masterpiece.

2008 ended, 2009 started and I moved to a flat in Zurich. I share an apartment there with a fellow PhD student and you can find 2 pictures of the house here.
A nice thing of being a PhD student is that you get to go to conferences to learn about the latest developments in research (and to show off own results if possible). Conferences may or may not be worth mentioning in terms of sight-seeing but some places like Ascona (with its ETH-owned conference center on top of Monte Verità) are quite photogenic and so I mention it here.
In summer even PhD students can get some time off and I used that to sight-see Prague and to visit relatives in San Fele (my parents' hometown). As I took the plane to Italy and the closest airport is in Naples (about 2h from San Fele) we decided to stop on the way in Caserta to take a look at the Versailles-style Palace there.

Now, the title of the post was back in the US and so I should shortly elaborate on that. My professor is spending 9 months at his former university in the US and has been sending his students around the world a bit. The result for me was that in September, he asked whether I wanted to join him in California for winter, until the end of the month it was finalized and a month later (after the usual paperwork) in late October I was on a plane to sunny California. But enough for this post which is getting too long...I'll write more on it in the next few days...promised...after all, I can't just upload all those albums without writing something about it... ;-)