My trip to US
Last month I was getting ready for my annual Physics conference, which was going to take place in Pittsburgh. On one of the many Sundays that I stay at home trying to plan my life, I had the bright idea of making a two day stop in New York City to visit a friend and renew my ties with the city. It turned out to be one of the best things I have decided to do in the last year or so, well after having decided to go to a wedding in Brazil.
New York is amazing. There is this gravitational force that doesn’t let you go. It is not the fact that it is a city with tall buildings. It is the mixture of immensity, of bridges, of mess, of chaos, of ugly graffiti, of nice restaurants, of cool people. I kind of have the feeling of falling in love with a married man. I love Paris, I have decided to do everything to find a job here and stay, and now my old flame for new york is renewing itself. I don’t want to give in to temptation …
For the two days that I was there, I visited some of the places that I always wanted to visit but for one reason or another I never succeeded. I put my feet in Columbia’s campus. Ten years ago, my dream was to get in to Columbia! I walked on Brooklyn bridge, visited MoMa and the Apple store.
By a Chinese bus, I got to Pittsburgh at almost 1 am. I had never taken one of these infamous Chinese buses and I am glad I did. We stopped in many small towns to pick up or drop passengers. I was amazed at how all these was organized.
When my cab driver found out that I was a physicist, he explained to me that according to a news he has heard, neutrinos and people have some spiritual exchange. He found that very intriguing. I was speechless.
My conference went very well, both on scientific and social level. I was very happy to find my old lab-mates and my colleagues. I was once again, drawn in a sea of many thousand scientists, where you feel like a drop. You can either be a single drop, dry and vanish, or you can be part of a whole and become a powerful sea.
I celebrated the Persian new year in a conference room without feeling any magic. That part was sad.
I came back recharged and happy.