Sunday, November 30, 2014

COMPASS: Common Muon and Proton Apparatus for Structure and Spectroscopy

What the COMPASS experiment is actually? I barely remember the name the abbreviation stands for... But I know some basic stuff I can share. I doubt I will ever understand the physics behind it anyway :)

So COMPASS is an experiment at the second largest working particle accelerator on Earth: the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron) from 1976. The experiment is in Prevessin, which is France and a couple of kilometers from Meyrin, the main CERN site in Switzerland. So you pay in euros and the food is maybe a little better :)

COMPASS investigates the way quarks and gluons interact to create particles like protons and neutrons, which you actually may have heard of in high school. So we collide some small thingies called muons, supposedly something like heavy electrons. I might describe the magic behind how it's done when I actually know more about it...

There are about 300 people from different countries working on this. My group consist of a bunch of Czech guys from CTU and Charles University. Most of us do IT but there are also some physicists. We are known as the Czech mafia because the guys keep wearing black coats and hats :)

Luckily enough, I was able to see the experiment this week. It is not accessible when the beam is on, so we were pretty lucky to get to see everything. You can have a look at how it looks like.

Every person entering the experiment needs to take a key with them.
Just to make sure you won't stay in there without somebody knowing about you. 

One of the magnets. Red as usual :)

The triggers are to be touched by experts only :)
The crazy system of wires looked very organized to me... 





Friday, November 28, 2014

What Do I Work On?

I thought I would write something meaningful and cool about COMPASS, what it is, etc. But I am super tired after trying to understand code written by a very creative French physicist 12 years ago. Some parts of it are really very... surprising and unorthodox. Or whatever you call it.

So what do I do here now? I am rewriting COMPASS logbook to something that would look more like from the 21st century. The logbook is on-line monitoring tool and kind of a journal for anything that happens at the experiment. There is information about every shift, the detectors settings, notes,... So some php and MySQL stuff.

The funny thing is after I finish with it, there will be people using it 24/7 for a decade or something. I think I will make it pink and include some Hello Kitty pictures to improve the user experience :) Oh, I almost forgot, the old logbook is in Comic Sans. I think I will need to keep it at least as an optional setting :)

This is the COMPASS control room and the logbook.
(The screens are usually not that red.)

My name is on our door now. Yayyyy! :)

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

How I Got My CERN Card Vol. 2

So... I am back here :) It didn't even take too long. So how did I end up at CERN? I met a few cool guys from my home department during the summer here. Then we went out in Prague again and I ended up joining the team to work on my master thesis at COMPASS. I will write a separate post about what it is.
How does it work? I will go to CERN several times during the next year, probably for a few weeks at a time. I will also work on the project in Prague of course. I will recode the COMPASS logbook, which is an ancient piece of on-line monitoring system, written by a physicist nicknamed "the monster". Sounds like fun :)

My classmate (and a new roommate) Martinek and I arrived yesterday. It felt a little surreal to be back, see the same old familiar places without the familiar people... Anyway, I managed to get a new
CERN card, which is a big deal of course, because there's "CERN" written on it :) I didn't even need to take a new picture, which was nice. So here it is. More information coming soon.

Martinek with his super old bills (a gift from his grandma)

My CERN cad number two



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

10 First World Problems Of CERN Summer Students

I just gathered a few of our first world problems. I hope it will remind you of CERN :)
  1. "I wanted to work but I had to go to visit Google in Zurich."
  2. "I wanted to work but I had to shoot a video in the CERN data center..."
  3. "I wanted to work but I had to have coffee with my team."
  4. "I wanted to work but I had to go to the lectures."
  5. "I have too many franc and euro coins in my wallet. It's so confusing!"
  6. "Hmmm... I cannot decide which ice cream I want!"
  7. "My belly is hurting because I ate too much..."
  8. "I wanted to go to the pool, but it started raining."
  9. "There are too many parties. I don't know to which one to go tonight."
  10. "There was no free food today."


Monday, October 20, 2014

Oktoberfest Reunion

It felt a little surreal to see the guys from CERN at the train station in Munich. So after everybody left Geneva, we wanted to see each other again soon. We concluded that the best place to meet is Eva’s place, because we can go to Oktoberfest!

Eva managed to fit almost all of us to her place, bought a lot of German beer and sausages, and took us to some bars, Oktoberfest, and BMW. I missed the rest of the weekend because of a stupid flu… I need to take better care of myself in the future.

German snack at Eva's place
So we went to Oktoberfest to drink some German beer and stare at people wearing funny clothes. Fortunately, Eva had two dirndls (the traditional dress) so I could wear one too! It really made me sit straight :) It was so cool :) We arrived too late to go to a beer tent, as they were full by 9 am, so we took a table outside and had some fun. Actually we didn't do not too much crazy stuff this time.

Okroberfest crew
So the next day we went to BMW to see some shiny expensive cars. It was pretty interesting but I felt awful so I decided to leave in the evening. The college life is too exhausting sometimes… I am really happy we could see each other and I hope we will meet again soon. Thank you for hosting this, Eva!



Girls wearing dirndls

One of the beer tents at 10 am


Monday, October 6, 2014

20 Things I learned at CERN

This time, I am sharing a list of things I realized at CERN. The long philosophical conversations with my great friends from all around the world were really enriching experience. Some of the ideas are funny, philosophical, hopefully interesting :)
  1. I actually don't need so much meat to survive. I started eating oatmeal for breakfast and mostly salads and fruits during the rest of the day. Anyway I still think a good steak is an amazing thing :)
  2. I enjoy eating outside. Everything tastes better. 
  3. I like eating with my friends. 
  4. I prefer drinking local stuff. I like beer in Prague, white wine at home, vodka in Ukraine, sweet white wine in Hungary, and red wine at CERN. 
  5. I can't speak Russian. Unfortunately. (Sofia)
  6. I can still read Russian. (Sofia )
  7. I can still pretty much speak Spanish! (Ricky)
  8. I can speak some basic French! (a number of shopping assistants :)) 
  9. I actually am a good dancer :) Thanks to the Czech traditional dancing classes at high school etc. I never really considered myself to be one. (swing dancing lessons)
  10. I can actually sing pretty well. I realized that when I heard myself singing on a recording and I sounded to myself as my sister Pavlina. The thing is she can sing really well so when I think I sing just remotely like her, it's good :) (Summer Student choir)
  11. I do love writing. I enjoy it, it helps me organize my thoughts, and makes it easier to share them with other people. (David, Bartek)
  12. When I go home to visit my parents, it feels like visiting them more than like going "home". Maybe not so surprising considering how often I show up, but I never realized that.Maybe I'm getting old... (David)
  13. I deserve to do the things I want to do. Seriously. When I do what I think I should do, I just get pissed off and then I'm tense and unhappy. (Sofia, Petr)
  14. I don't need anybody else to be happy. It's actually way easier when I just take care of myself :) (Petr)
  15. I can't drink as much beer as my Czech male friends. (Petr)
  16. I really want to stop studying and start working. 
  17. I can do some coding when I have to. And I'm actually not that bad, just slow. 
  18. Even though CERN is an amazing place I realized I don't want to work in research and I prefer being more in touch with the "real" business world. 
  19. Six hours of sleep IS enough when you believe so. 
  20. Tomatoes and peppers are fruits. (Rob)

Saturday, September 20, 2014

The Ultimate List of Compliments from CERN :)

I took notes on the compliments I was given at CERN and it ended up being pretty amusing. A lot of these were given by people who had drunk some amount of alcohol but it doesn't make it less funny :) 

The first list includes the positive compliments:
  1. I love your cheeks! Can I touch them? I need to touch them! You have the perfect cheeks... They are so... elastic!
  2. Your skin is so... soft. 
  3. You're like a teddy bear. I feel like I could hurt you if I hug you tighter. 
  4. You have very unusual eye color. It's like... ocher. 
  5. You spoke Spanish like a native speaker - by a person who unfortunately doesn't speak Spanish...
  6. Your Spanish is really good - a person who actually does speak Spanish :)
  7. You know, Hana is special. You don't meet a girl like that very often.
  8. You smell nice.
  9. I really like your blog/post! - I love this one so much :)
  10. I love your haircut!
  11. Wait, how old are you? When did you have time to do all these things?
  12. The best of the Czech IT - This one sounds really funny to me :)
  13. You are hot! - I must confess that was about my temperature after touching my neck... 
  14. You are a very optimistic person. 
Ok, that was just enough of being "so sweet" and let's move on to the funny part:
  1. Your pants are disturbing. The pattern is just like my grandma's carpet.
  2. You had a nice ass when you came here, but now you're too fat.
  3. Your jacket looks like a plastic bag. - I still hope this was just a joke.
  4. You're my favorite Russian. 
  5. You're not fat. - Without me asking...
  6. Let me touch your shoulder. Wow, you actually do have some muscle!
  7. I know what you have in common! You and your sister have the same bags under and above your eyes when you smile.
I don't want to tag you to a specific comment but I want to remember later. So I am adding just a list of you. Thank you all for telling me such beautiful memorable things :)

by Markus, Petr, David, Andre, Nikodemos, Dimitris, Ricky, Mary, Sofia, Robert, Hana, Anti, Joao, Katrin, Laura, Bartek


Monday, September 15, 2014

CERN openlab Summer Student Program: What Is It Actually?

When I went to CERN, I didn't really know what would happen there. I expected a full time internship and a lot of challenging work. But the reality was far more than only that.  So what do you do as an openlab Summer Student?

There are several parts of the program:
  • Working on a project
  • Taking lectures on IT at CERN
  • Visiting companies and research institutes
  • Random stuff
  • Unofficial: traveling and social life

WORKING ON A PROJECT
Everybody from the openlab had a project they worked on during the summer. Most of us worked at IT so our offices were mostly in Building 31 and 513 and we could go to lunch together every day.

As a part of the project, we gave presentations to our colleagues from IT department about our work. It was a great experience. We had to fit it in only 5 minutes time which was a challenge but it was also a lot of fun. Check it online.

To share our work with the world, all of us wrote a report which is publicly available online. One of the CERN policies is to share all of its finding publicly so do so as well. I think most of the projects were really interesting and all of us learned a lot.

TAKING LECTURES ON IT AT CERN
You can check the lectures online if you’re interested. I attended most of them but they were sometimes too technical and sometimes too much physics :) But I think I learned a lot after all and got to understand better how CERN works.

VISITING COOL PLACES
We spent a few days visiting some exciting places. We went to Zurich for two days and visited Open Systems, ETH and Google. (Epic!) Then we went to AMS, CMS, CERN Data Center, and CERN Control Center in one day. This was really amazing. I fully realized how many various projects there are at CERN.  The last visit was to Grenoble in France, where we saw a nuclear reactor and a smaller accelerator.

I also got to see ALICE with a bunch of Czech guys independently.

RANDOM STUFF

We were asked to write a short bio for the openlab website which was really fun to write since I’m pretty young and this made me feel proud of myself. It was also a challenge to fit it 100 words. It was pretty cool anyway.

There was also a video shooting. All of us were asked to introduce ourselves and describe our experience at CERN. Being interviewed felt like a movie star :) The editing will take some months so I will try to put a link here later.

UNOFFICIAL: TRAVELING AND SOCIAL LIFE

This is what the rest of the blog is about so feel free to stalk me if you want to :) I didn't include much information from party life for obvious reasons but it was great.

Dimitris put it this way: "Basically, the majority of all the summer students live in the hostel and this makes the program much more different than a normal job. It's like a campsite where people live together 24 hours a day, share their experiences and have fun. Even if you are the most introverted person in the world, it is very difficult to avoid friendships and social life in general." True that.

OVERALL

The openlab program is super selective. There were 851 applications in the CERN level round and there were only 24 of us accepted worldwide. You need to be smart, hardworking, and lucky to get in. All of this.

I am really grateful for this opportunity. I have great friends from all over the world now and I hope we will keep in touch and see each other when possible. I still feel nostalgic when I’m writing this…

So if you feel like this sounds like a good plan for the next summer, I have a piece of advice for you. Apply. Here.



Monday, September 8, 2014

What's Next?

So I am back from CERN but this blog is not dead yet :) I came home with about twenty drafts of posts and ideas. Roughly ten of them are about the CERN experience so I think most of these will eventually appear here when I finish them. You can look forward to some funny stuff :)

I also concluded I will keep blogging once a week. I will write more about this decision in one of the posts since there are a few reasons behind.

Thank you all for reading. I would never have expected it to be such a great experience. I am looking forward to reading some posts in the future and getting nostalgic :)

A sample of the future possible posts

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Big Brother Is Watching You. Muahahaha!

This post is actually about statistics :) But it's really beautiful statistics and there are picture so I promise it's not boring. I just wanted to sum up what I can see in Google Analytics of this blog and how curious and excited it makes me feel.
The purpose of this blog is primarily to keep in touch with my friends and family. So I expected there would be quite some traffic on a daily basis. And this was enhanced by the fact that I share my posts on facebook. I also enjoy the feedback I get this way, so thank you for it, guys.

In the beginning I had visits mainly from Europe and the US, where I studied, so this didn't surprise me. However after a few weeks, I was gradually getting more and more visits from surprising countries I never thought I knew anybody from. Such as Malaysia, Estonia, Taiwan, Peru,... After the post about dreams coming true, I stopped thinking about it. It had made me a nervous in the beginning, but nothing really happened so I got gradually comfortable with it.

Daily pageviews
So what are the statistics for July and August? I wrote 58 posts in two months. The blog had 3271 page views in July and 4416 in August, the total of 7687. I would never expect this to happen when I started blogging. The average visit is 1:26 long and average number of pages per visit is 1.63. The blog had more than 1200 unique visitors. The data for this are probably a little underestimated since I started using Google Analytics after 10 days.

The most fun and exciting thing for me is to look at the maps and wonder about who is reading my posts. It's interesting because some posts are more interesting for my friends from the Czech Republic and others are more interesting for people from CERN or for Greeks :) Now the blog has had visits from 50 countries and 20 US states. Wow, that sounds insane... I hope I just didn't discourage you from reading because I spy on you :)

Number of visitors per country worldwide
Number of visitors per country in Europe
Number of visitors per US state


Monday, September 1, 2014

Life After CERN

All my friends who had gone to CERN said it was the best summer ever. Oh, of course, everybody says this all the time, right? About traveling, Erasmus, internship... So I thought it would be great, was looking forward to it a lot, but didn't really believe it would be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

The summer was just wonderful. I worked on an interesting project, I learned a lot, I met many fun, smart, and inspiring people and got to know some of them well. I made a lot of good friends and I'm sure we'll keep in touch and meet in the future. I will see first of my friends from CERN in a few days in Prague, then we'll go to Oktoberfest to Munich...

The difficult thing was to say good bye and accept that everybody is leaving. I never said goodbye for so long to so many friends. And I think I did say goodbye to people I cared about several times in my life.  Our class from high school still regularly meet and we keep in touch. I also still get to meet my friends from (radio)orienteering. It's a little more difficult to see my friends from Union but I do my best and keep in touch with several of them and we visited each other a few times. And I am sure we will make the CERN reunions happen, because we are smart and rich now :)

So what's the problem? The thing is that everybody was at CERN, I could spend time with whoever I wanted to, and everybody lived basically in the same building. Do you feel like going to the pool? Hanging out? Drinking some wine? Watching a movie? Everything was super easy. And things tend to be more difficult at home. Not everybody lives with so many friends around, and has so much time and money to do anything they feel like.

Now what is the cure to the post CERN depression? Make my life back home as awesome as the life I had at CERN. Now it's super clear what's important and what makes me happy. So what do I need? I already live in dorms with my classmates and spend the nights doing sports and going out with them. I love it. I try to work on things I find exciting. And I need to start traveling more again, because it just makes me feel alive.

The life after CERN exists. It's a little weird in the beginning but it can be a good starting point in making my life as exciting, enjoyable, and meaningful as possible.


CERN Crazy Cars

I wanted to post these pictures for ages but there were so many things going on that I had no time to do it. I think I need to point out that most of the cars at CERN are normal :) I was pretty surprised how normal the cars in Switzerland seem to be compared to the BMWs and Audis all over the place in Germany. You can find pretty much anything here.

So here you are:




Sunday, August 31, 2014

GVA -> PRG

I am so exhausted that I am not even sad about leaving anymore. I said goodbye and hugged so many people in the last days as probably never before. I know I will probably see most of my friends again, but I doubt we will ever meet altogether...

So my flight to Prague was at 7 am. I ended up sharing a taxi with Stathis at 4:30. It took 15 minutes to go to the airport and cost about 35 francs. Plus I bought the flight ticket for 25 francs (low-cost Swiss Air) and paid 80 francs for an extra piece of luggage. So it was 120 francs for everything which is nice I think.

My backpack ended up being 17 kilograms heavy, which made my back really sore after the whole day. I put the beds next to each other again and left. I was really happy to go to the airport with Stathis, I would have been way more nostalgic by myself.

When I arrived to Prague, it was 15 degrees and raining. Even worse than the weather Geneva. But it's home now. And it will be for some time. I will stay in my hometown for a week and then I go back to Prague and to my "normal" life.

My super heavy luggage
Proud of myself for making the beds
Back to Czech

Saturday, August 30, 2014

My Last Working Day And ALICE

So this amazing summer is officially over now. I finished coding and said goodbye to my supervisor Luca and my colleagues yesterday. It feels so awkward. I feel like I came here yesterday. How come it's almost September?

Luca was a great supervisor. But I will elaborate on this later. Now I want to just mention the gifts I got from him. He got me the CERN helmet! And a book about CERN in French. I need to practice French more :) I wish I could stay here a little longer.

Wearing the CERN helmet!!!

After I returned my key and CERN card, I joined a group of Czech guys from CERN and other Swiss cities who visited CERN and ALICE. The visit to ALICE was great. It's older and smaller then CMS and it is designed to study a different physics, more about the Big Bang. We had a great barbecue afterwards and I ate way too much... I met a bunch of interesting people who work and study in Switzerland and it just made me feel like I want to go back at some point. We'll see what happens...

My own dosimeter
Old-school buttons
ALICE is so pretty!
Underground
Helmets, helmets everywhere :)

Thursday, August 28, 2014

The Most Expensive Thing I Have Ever Payed For: Swiss Housing

So I just payed almost 1800 Swiss francs (41500 CZK, 1500 EUR, 2000 USD) for housing at CERN. It would be enough money to pay for almost year and a half back in Prague. I must admit that the rooms at Strahov are not as nice though :)

Some rooms are cheaper here. It depends if you have a shared room and a bathroom. The point is if I lived in Geneva, I wouldn't get to spend so much time with the other Summer Students. Living together with everybody is a great thing. Just like back home in Prague or at Union in the US. It's so much fun and you can spend a lot of time with your friends, which I think is great.

So much money!

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Greek Traffic

Oh.My.God. So this is what happens to your blog traffic when you write a post about Greeks :) I had like 10 pageviews from Greece before that. I'm really happy you liked it. Too bas that I don't have any more crazy ideas. As Dimitris said, that is best post so far.
I mean look at the top countries list and you'll see.

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Greek Invasion

There are Greeks everywhere at CERN. I've been so lucky to share an office with two of them: Dimitris and Antonis. The first thing that probably comes to your mind is the stereotype of the Greeks being lazy. Are you curious what I think about it? :) I think they are in general loud, friendly, and fun to be around. They do wake up and do almost everything later then the Germans though. But my point is they are really nice and I loved to spend time with them. I will miss you guys...

Crazy Greeks are a pretty big subset of the Greeks here
Seriously, I know so many Greek guys now... Besides my colleagues I got to know: Alex the great singer with a cut off ear, Nikodemos the Cyprian, Dimitris the handsome :) from openlab, Anti the Albanian Greek, Stefanos who spends all his money on food, Stathis the sane Greek, Maria the mean, Mary who can calm me down, Mary and Kostas from openlab,... I'm pretty sure I must have forgotten somebody. They are too many :) As you can see, I even know a lot of people with the same first names. Or maybe they are just not creative in Greece :)

You can have a look at my dear coworkers and their most famous quotes, to have some idea of who I worked with here :)

Dimitris, the worst singer of all time and master of all bugs in Geneva

A "cernfie" made by Antonis


Sunday, August 24, 2014

I Am Too Lazy To Write A Proper Post Today

We went to a festival in Meyrin last night as it was Joaco's last night at CERN. So we went out with Luca, Julia, Mathias, and Anti. The whole place smelled of weed. It was so nice just to chill out, have some Chinese food, see some weird local people.

Luca was pretty sad about his roommate Yigit leaving and was asking everybody to sleep in his room so that he's not alone. After we came back to CERN Anti found out his hostel key card was not working, because he exchanged it for the working one by mistake. And I managed to break my key card by sitting on it. So after all the three of us slept in Luca's room.

It still feels weird that everybody is leaving this weekend but I'm more fine with it now. I think we will meet with the people who we want to meet.

Luca walking back to CERN

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Summer Student Choir And Concert

I waited to write this post for a few weeks because I wanted to put the concert and choir together. And now I am super tired after the goodbye party last night and a little confused because my friends started leaving and it feels so weird. Ok, so I made a separate post about that.

One of the great fun things Summer Students do at CERN is starting random stuff. This includes dancing classes, playing games and instruments, giving lectures to each other on various topics, cooking events, traveling, partying, and singing. And I must have forgotten something for sure.

Eva started a choir. There were people leaving early and joining late but it was a great fun. I think it's always funny when you're bad at something but you enjoy it and work on it. And that's what happens when you learn a new song. You make weird sounds, struggle to remember the lyrics, make a lot of mistakes, try to remember how your voice is supposed to sound... I think we had a great time :)

Then Eva had the idea of organizing a concert and people joined and it ended up being a pretty decent performance. By the way, it took place in the main auditorium, where the Higgs boson discovery was announced two years ago! Other guys were playing violin, piano, a random Iranian instrument, jazz. The jazz guys even made a special Summer Student version of Summertime! It went along like: "Summertime, and the living is easy... You work at CERN... And your code doesn't compile... " Just amazing.

And our choir performance was also really good I think. Compared to what we sounded like in the beginning :) I promise I will add a link to a video of our performance later. There are some pictures from Adrian for now. Thank you everybody involved! It was really a pleasure.

Eva, Bartek, Beni, Marta, Laura, Johannes, Alex, Chiara and I

Time To Say Goodbye (Or See You Later)

So people actually started leaving. It feels so surreal. My roommate Sofia left in early morning. I will miss her even though she's crazy :) Or maybe because of it :) Take care and see you my dear! And there's only one Greek in my office now. My life is so lonely. Actually not, but I feel like it right now.

And so many friends left today or are about to leave... I really hope we will see again. And often! With all you crazy, less crazy, cool, and just great guys. Thank you for being awesome. Yes, I mean you if you're reading this.

Of course I know that people just sometimes disappear from your life and that it means there's place for other people to get closer with. But the knowledge does not help much really. I could probably write a post about how great this summer has been and make it sound more like "Don't be sad it's over, be happy it happened". But I just don't feel like it now.

I think I will just go to my room and cry now.


Thursday, August 21, 2014

Nerds Or Cool Guys? Let‘s See!

Post by my little sister Pavlina and her friend Hana (Thank you!):

My sister Hana asked me and my friend Hana to write a post about people at CERN. The reason is simple. We are neither physics nor IT people so we can see the Summer Students from a different point of view.

So we made a few observations. It´s not any deep analysis, only some ideas that came to our minds. Of course we had some expectations based on stereotypes about people who work in a centre of particle physics research. And of course we expected lots of nerds hanging around. So are there nerds only or actually you can see a cool guy in data centre or at ATLAS detector? Well… You can make your own opinion after reading this :)
  • At first, when Hana the friend and I arrived at CERN, it looked like an empty place. There is actually 5000 people working at CERN and also 300 Summer Students and openlab guys during July and August. This is how I imagine a melting pot. Thousands of people from different countries and no racism. All the nations working side by side. Maybe it's because Higgs boson has the same color in China or USA :-P
  • Stereotypes say that at CERN, there should be much more guys than girls. It is true. A brief observation suggests 20-25 % of girls among summer and openlab students, which is still a good ratio. So every girl can have up to three admirers (so that the girls won't envy each other). Even though there could be a rough battle about women, the guys are mostly very nice and treat the lady with respect.
  • Like in every other group there are different types of people: leaders, jokers, critics and so on. 
  • They work and study at CERN! That means everybody is smart and kind of an expert qualified to present his opinion on every issue discussed. The fact they‘re smart (and aware of partners smartness too) is making their discussions nicely assertive even though they disagree in many points. 
  • Among Summer Students there are guys with extremely high self-esteem, average self-esteem and really low self-esteem. Some of them also present themselves as gods and some of them keep their know-how in private.
  • Even though physicists and IT guys could be considered as a possible target of bullying, sometimes they are engaged in similar behavior too. As always it‘s part of "fun." 
  • Maybe you wouldn't expect this, but they're funny! The jokes are sometimes really good, sometimes really bad, sometimes smart, sometimes stupid, sometimes sarcastic and sometimes there's only one person who thinks it's funny. Of course they make jokes with numbers (0, 1 and so on), particles, computers and other stuff in a way normal people don't understand.
  • They for sure like what they do and find it interesting. It seemed they mostly really enjoy their time at CERN as much as possible.  It's possible to see sparkles in their eyes from time to time. I still can't forget how enthusiastic they were during our trip to the tunnels. Pure childish joy :)
  • It was interesting to learn what brought them to CERN in the first place. They're opened to new experience. They want to learn, move forward, do something. And they're not afraid of such things like living in foreign country or participating in such a big project like research at CERN. 
  • I always imagined IT guys and physicists like people who don't go outside so that they're pale and skinny. Actually they mostly do go outside and some of them even have a tan! 
  • Last, but not least – they look good! Girls are pretty, guys are more than ok too, sometimes even having muscles! They wear nice clothes and take care of themselves. You wouldn't say they're "special" in any way by their appearance. But beauty is subjective. In the Czech Republic the media asked a young woman marrying an older fat ugly politician why she was going to get married with him. She replied: „Because he has a sexy brain!“ Girls, if you're a fan of sexy brains too – at CERN there's lots of fish in the sea ;)!
To conclude, there is a bunch of young people at CERN who love to have fun but also love what they study and they´re really good at it. Despite of that, I feel like they're like everybody else.

PS: We did some facebook research and found some nice photos and videos which can show you what kind of people they are. What do you think? Nerds or cool guys?


Openlab guys in tunnels 
(There are 2 non-nerds, can you spot them?)
Hana doing whatever
Love is all around
Large Hadron Collider makes you dance so... 
Clap Your Hands!

And another dancing one. There's a horse too!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Giving Lightning Talks

As a part of the openlab program, all of us gave a 5-minute talk about our projects we've been working on here at CERN. I think it was the shortest presentation in my life. And it made it surprisingly difficult since there was so much more to say and you didn't have time to go into too much detail.

I was so lucky to be the first one to present so you can actually see only the second half of my presentation, because the microphone was turned on but on mute which I of course didn't notice at first. We actually had a practice session last week and a lot of people took this opportunity to practice really seriously. Or practiced a lot more during the next days. Overall, I think we did a really good job. All of us managed to be pretty close to the 5 minutes limit, and learned something useful.

The best presentations were given by Harry, Benjamin and Sneha. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn from others in such a short time. You don't usually get to see 23 presentations in one day. It was another good experience from CERN. Oh, and you can watch the whole thing if you have the time to do so :)

Dimitris the handsome practicing his presentation


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Morning Runs

So I started running on Sunday again. I had some cold and was tired before... you know. So I went running three days in a row now and what's even better is that I actually go in the morning! Isn't it great? I even took my GPS watch with me on Sunday to have a proof :) It felt really great considering it was after two weeks of doing nothing.

Here it is, my weekend course. I usually go to the vineyards behind CERN on the Swiss side, but the gate is closed over the weekend so I go to this little forest in France instead. It's just next to a golf course. I find it pretty cool to go running to a different country :)

And I hope I'll keep doing it daily. I always feel like I can do anything because I managed to go running in the morning and there are not so many more challenging things in the world, right? :)

I went running!

French Modern Art

Since I fell asleep at 9 last night, I didn't write any post yesterday. I apologize. What I wanted to share is a great masterpiece made by Florentin, a promising young French artist. He specializes in work with metal. I was so lucky he gave me one of his early works as a gift :) My plan is to keep it and I can sell it for a ridiculous amount of money when he gets famous :)

This is French art



Sunday, August 17, 2014

Night in Zurich

Basically all of my crazy (mostly Greek) friends left for a road trip to Italy and I thought I would work on Friday night. However, my friend Roman was supposed to take a plane to Switzerland and we originally thought we would meet, but he flew to Zurich and I thought it’s a little too far for me to go there just to see him for a few hours.

I’ve felt tired or a little sick in the last days but Roman persuaded me in the last minute to take a train and go to Zurich. So I went to Geneva, took a super expensive Swiss train for the first and hopefully last time, saw a few ridiculously beautiful lakes, vineyards, and rainbows on my way, and came to Zurich at 10 pm.

We had a great time and the crazy money for the ticket was worth it.  Next time I can take a plane to Prague, it would be probably cheaper :)





Temple in The Tunnels

Another post made by my dearest sister Pavlina:

CERN is a pretty large complex of buildings. Normally everybody uses sidewalks and streets to go from one place to another but there is also another option. And it´s really cool! Actually there are tunnels under CERN for moving between buildings and for utility purposes. So we decided to have a little trip through the CERN underground as the rumor has it that there's a mysterious temple down there!

The tunnels are full of pipes, shelves and ladders. There is also a lot of welcoming boards, signs and warnings such as "No smoking, drinking, eating", "Danger of radiation", "Turn back now or you’ll die!" or "Break this in case of zombie apocalypse". Time to time you can also run into a locked door. (Most of them possess one of the welcoming signs). And then you continue anyway.

It was raining outside in the time of our underground visit but we found water in the tunnels as well. Going through them included crossing two pools of water, hundreds meters of floor covered with mud, hearing a waterfall, finding newspaper from 1989 and finally – finding the TEMPLE!

The temple wasn't actually as mysterious as I expected. There are no signs of religious rituals. In fact, it is a dirty place (little room at the end of a corridor) in every meaning of the word „dirty“. Obviously we weren't the first students visiting the place. It was filled with names, quotes, equations and advice how to survive everything written on the wall. On the ground there were various bottles, papers and other things I won´t describe here.

We left some signs of our presence there and went for other adventures. After finding two other smaller temples some of us were tired, so we took the first ladder out of the tunnels. It lead to an unnoticeable trapdoor somewhere in the middle of CERN's lawns! I have to admit it was a cool end of this remarkable evening with my friend Hana and the openlab guys! Thank you so much for sharing this experience with us as if we were one of you!

The tunnels of CERN


Saturday, August 16, 2014

Green Peppers Overdose

So I've been actually working on my pre-thesis project today. Instead of eating something salty and unhealthy, Benjamin brought some green peppers and we ate an incredible amount of them. I think anything is addictive when it can distract you from work :) It's fun to get work done while eating vegetables. Or possibly fruit: "Bell peppers are botanically fruits, but are generally considered in culinary contexts to be vegetables."

More posts to appear soon, I just need to get some pictures.

Small Area Estimation in R and a lot of green peppers...

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Salsa Classes etc.

To be honest, I am super tired today. Fortunately, I have a back up plan for these situations. Pictures instead of stories. My sister Pavlina and her friend Hana left yesterday but we went to dance salsa with Sofia when they were still here. Since this is CERN, there are more guys than girls which is usually not the case when you go dancing anywhere.

One of the great things about CERN is that nobody is actually at home here. That implies people have a lot of time to do fun stuff after work and feel like sharing it with others. There are salsa classes, swing classes, student lectures, cooking events, trips, etc. Oh, and parties as well :) No, seriously. I love the fact that you can do so much here and it's actually organized by your friends and colleagues.

And now I'm really tired. I think it's because I realized I need to start working more seriously on my pre-thesis if I want to graduate next year. I also gave a mock presentation today but I'll elaborate on this more next week and probably upload a video or a link to it. I hope it won't be too embarrassing :)

Sofia, me, Pavlina

Sofia, Pavlina, Hana jr.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Like a Movie Star

I feel like a movie star now :) We shoot a video for the openlab Summer Student program today. Each of us was interviewed in the morning. It was pretty fun. I had to introduce myself, describe my project at CERN, what I liked about the openlab in general, and what I would advise students who would want to apply in the future.

The whole interview could be five minutes long but it took ages, because there was so much noise around that I had to introduce myself seven times. I was a little nervous in the beginning, but after five attempts I was amused and relaxed and felt really good about the rest of the talk. 

The shooting continued in the afternoon, when we took videos in the data center. No more talking involved, you can hardly hear somebody talking in there anyway. The cooling is too noisy. Nitin and I were asked to just "naturally" walk around and pretend to check the racks :) It was so interesting to see how the communications team who took the video thought about the space and how they designed everything.

The girls were also so nice! They told me how good an actress I am :) At least when I don't speak and just walk around. But I thought it was easy and it's maybe even more difficult. You have nothing else to think about... So I was adding numbers in my head to keep myself busy. I am not sure if this what the actual actors do though.

The openlab video will be ready maybe in October, so I will put a link to it later. But I would really love to make a short video with only the embarrassing and funny moments from the shooting. It would be a nice memory for all of us I think. A great experience again. I'm so happy to be here. Maybe I should stop being so positive all the time.

Video shooting in the CERN data center