A hectic first few days!

Well, I planned to keep you informed with every event of my first week at work, but as expected by everyone that me it has been very busy.

I'm currently sat down watching the TV, something which I haven't had a lot of time to do, which makes me appreciate it more.

I have now officially been moved into my office, taking up the old coffee table in the corner of the room. I've got my computer and after a few hiccups it seems to be going OK (except the cleanliness of the keyboard and mouse, which I shall not describe!). I've got a few shelves above the desk which have already been filled up with 2 new books I have bought, on Maths and Dust, with one more on statistics on the way. Thrilling bed time reads!

I had a brief meeting with my supervisor in which he told briefly what my project would be, but I'm hoping we have a bit of a longer chat some time. We have lots of opportunities to do go on training courses, for a wide range of different skills, a few of which I think would be useful but I will talk to my supervisor first.

I've found that a lot of my time at uni is spent drinking coffee or eating! This makes us sound very lazy, but actually it's been a great way to meet people, find out what research we do at Cardiff and to learn of things which might be useful for my project. We've also had one talk from someone external to the university (http://www.physics.lancs.ac.uk/people/anupam_mazumdar.php) on Gravity, which looks pretty scary, but he explained it very well. He discussed how at short distances (and early in the universe) Gravity may not have (had) the same strength as it does today, which is new to me!

I also undertook my first Lab demonstrating session today. The first year university students undertake a laboratory module every week and to help them some of the PhD students going around the class helping them out. There are obvious benefits of getting experience and learning to teach/communicate with young physicists, but there are other benefits such as re-capping on bits of physics I haven't touched in years. I also have to mark their lab books, which I don't think is as fun!

After things settle a bit I'll try to talk a bit more about Physics, including the work I do and work I learn and hear about at Cardiff. Also pretty pictures!