I am on vacation at Bali island in Indonesia. I have decided to do nothing during this holiday and I am not doing nothing but relaxing. I am always at hotel. I am reading, writing, and of course pondering my life with Indonesian local beer Bintan. And I am playing chess which I have learnt how to play recently. I started winning against a weak computer but I keep losing against human players. I am listening to band playing tonight at bar in the hotel, what a relaxing night!
I thought I wanted to write more but maybe I am starting from tonight.
The reason why I wanted to have this kind of time was, I guess, because I have experienced a big jump in my career, which is good thing, but I have been kind of overwhelmed my responsibility even though I have been motivated and excited about the job. By looking back my last 2 years, however, I would say I grew a lot as a scientist. Still, I believe I can do better and I would love to be a better scientist. I am not satisfied at all. So I wanted to think what I have learnt, what I can do better, and then how I want to tune and check my strategy as a physicist.
So, anyway, I haven’t talked to anything about what I am doing in Australia, have I? I am working as an instrument scientist for one of cold triple axis spectrometer (cold TAS) newly built by Taiwanese research team. They have spent 10 years to build and now we are on business for science. I can quickly come up with 10 other cold triple axis spectrometers in the world but they are almost all. There are not so cold triple axis spectrometers in this world. So, Australia got one now. Sadly, Japan has two but Japanese had to stop using research reactor so Japanese are not using them. Europe (Germany and French especially) and America have great ones. As for Asia Oceania area, I would honestly say that I am taking great advantage by working in Australia because currently we have only one cold TAS in Asia Oceania area (since Japanese ones are not working). I am working as an instrument scientist which means I can know deeply what science has been studied this area by reading proposals and involving experiments. What a remarkable opportunity for a young scientist like me.
As I wrote, last two years, I have learnt a lot but I didn’t have time to write down, one reason is because I wanted to be careful what I write in public. I need to digest what I have seen and brew my ideas to express in public. I might be still wrong anyways. The other is because I was lazy to think through when I am working. Anyways, I am on vacation so it is time to ponder what I have learnt. For me, I am struggling by doing physics even though I am handling fundamental things such as neutron, electron, and magnetic moment! but it is still difficult. How am I comfortably able to be confident with other things around the world? So let me think and I will be writing following things within few days,
- As an experiment physicist – what I am doing as a job
- instrument scientist
- neutron scattering in Asia Oceania
- Statistics around me
- My current focus on physics – what I am looking for
- Magnetism
- Superconductivity
- Why they are mysterious in physics, in our space, and in our future
- What I have learnt – how much we can know from what we have
- Statics error and systematic error
- What was hypothesis? Conjecture, thesis, theory and physical law.
- Difference between tactics and strategies
- What is logical thinking?
- What is talent as scientist, what make a great scientist great?