Bye bye beamtime, hello bed.

Ah the experiments are finally over, and I'm so glad to be out of the synchrotron at last. The weather is God-awful but getting drenched was a refreshing change of pace from the constant 23 degree, 0% humidity of the ring. I think I as starting to go a bit mad being stuck in there for so long. But after many ups and downs, possibly more downs over the past six days we're done. Or at least until next Monday haha.

The final day was actually spent working on something a little bit different. We removed our CDI chamber for the hutch to set up the beast in the picture to the right. This series of tubes and needle tips is a liquid injector for use in imaging experiments and is the brainchild of Dr. Park. We were essentially just commissioning, trying to line up the very thin liquid jet with the very thin x-ray beam.

The injector itself works by forcing liquid through a very fine capillary at high pressure to produce a stream of liquid droplets. A gas nozzle fitted alongside the needle is used to make the liquid stream even finer through a process known as aerodynamic focusing. The gas flows parallel to the liquid jet and as it exits the capillary it converges and pushes the liquid jet to a finer point. This reduces the size of the droplet to a few microns in diameter. As they are so small they should theoretically only contain a single particle, provided the concentration of sample is low enough and the sample size is between 30nm - 1 micron.

To test the equipment out we used gold colloid particles as they are very electron dense and scatter X-rays very strongly. Of course once more the major problem here is alignment, the droplet stream and X-ray beam has to pass through the very thin droplet stream to get a signal, no easy task. We managed to obtain some data but sadly, due to some earlier issues with motor controls, not enough. Maybe next time.

So one of the cool things to come out of working nights is I’ve been leaving the ring in time to see all the deer that are resident in the mountains. I’ve been trying to snap a pic of them for ages and I managed to get one of a stag in the distance. Maybe when I’m on nights again I’ll finally get a good picture, but they move so damn fast.

I'm quite glad its all over. The experience was great but my stomach has not loved me, in fact I'm in agony today. I am however getting used to reading food labels now, amazing how fast you can learn something when pain is an incentive. I thought I'd share this little one as it made me chuckle quite a lot. This is from the back of a "Jiamu pan" (read jam butty) that one of the guys bought last night. The highlighted katakana reads "nachiraru chi-zu". God only knows what hat is and why it's in a jam sandwich, I'm sure it and my belly wouldn't get on though.

Anyway everyone has been in a bit of a daze today and I am in fact the only person left in the office. The guys set off for the airport to drop Chan off, can't believe he's flying straight back to Korea after an experiment, and myself and Shimada-san were left to do the final clean up. After we were done we set off to the cafeteria. This week is special power rangers 'kare raisu' week. Each day is a different colour/flavor and you guessed it, I'm allergic to all of them :(. If it doesn't contain milk it has shrimp, if it doesn't have shrimp it has butter, if it contains neither its beef I just can't win.

I bumped into Ignace whilst I picked up some scran and had a good catch up. He's been here for about 7 years I think and his Japanese is amazing, he was quickly chatting away with Shimada-san. Just as I was about to tuck in to my tofu and minced pork stew I plucked out a shrimp. Dammit but why is nothing ever clearly labeled. With some help from Ignace I exchanged it for some fried chicken, less of the racial profiling you.

Not to end on a bad note here are a couple of things I picked up that I could eat. The first is called “Tomado Sendei”. Unlke most senbei it;’s not made from rice but wheat. It’s name is derived from the fact it looks a bit like  a tomado drum I think and it basically tasted like a fortune cookie. Next was some “monaka”. This is any sweet filling sandwiched between two thin wafers. This one was anko jam. I think they showcase the Japanese emphasis of aesthetics over taste, not that they taste bad but they look incredible.

Anyway my bed is calling me, Mata Kondo.