Michael West’s Blog

I’m currently sitting in the Qantas Club in Sydney watching the sunrise over the city - a really amazing site. I’m here because I got upgraded to business class for my flight to Cairns and subsequently get free use of the Qantas Club. I’m off to Cairns for the week to attend the 9th International Workshop on the Interrelationship of Plasma Experiments and Space (IPELS2007), which is a conference on space physics that my research group SP3 is running. I’m really looking forward to conference and making the most of the warm weather. It was 28 degrees there yesterday and the minimum was higher than Canberra’s maximum yesterday!

It will also be nice to have the conference completed as I have been on the organising committee and been responsible for the conference website and online abstract submission system etc - quite a time consuming task. I will be presenting a poster at the conference so fortunately I don’t have the stress of doing an oral presentation. My abstract on my work on the Helicon Double Layer Thruster can be found here. The conference includes a day out at Green Island so I will do my best to post some photos.

As I reported here back in March, a film crew from ABC’s Catalyst program visited my lab to do a story on the Helicon Double Layer Thruster. The story will be going to air tomorrow (Thursday) evening at 8pm on ABC TV. It will include interviews with my two supervisors, Professor Rod Boswell and Dr Christine Charles, and show footage of the HDLT prototype operating inside its new space simulation vacuum chamber. I doubt I will actually feature in the segment, but when the HDLT is running and you see the purple glow of the plasma, I am the one working the controls

On Sunday afternoon I headed to Canberra Stadium to see Sydney FC take on the Central Coast Mariners in the A-League Pre-Season Cup. It was a good game which the Mariners won 3-0. There is a good overview of the match on the Football in the Capital blog. There was also a reasonable turn out of some 5,700 people which isn’t bad given how bitterly cold it was. Here are some of the other photos I took…

The past 4 weeks have been pretty hectic and the last week has been just plain awful (more on that later). It probably best to start at the beginning. So far this month has consisted of …

• Christina and I had an engagement party in Sydney (which was great) and then another one in Canberra the next afternoon (which was also great). Photos are coming soon.
• The upgrades on the vacuum chamber for the HDLT were finally finished allowing me to reassemble everything (about 2 weeks of work) and attempt to get experiments underway. More on that in my next post.
• I had a French engineering student shadow me at work for a week. It was good to have the extra set of hands to help with things, but keeping him busy was draining.
• I’ve been off to the physio on average twice a week for treatment on my hand, which is improving so at last I can return to goalkeeping duties. My two games playing in defense were admirable but contained moments of madness including conceding a direct free kick for a tackle in the box. Fortunately our substitute keeper saved it (and my dignity).
• Canberra was forecast to get snow down to 500 metres (basically everywhere) and it didn’t. Such an anti-climax. All we got instead were a few nights at -6 deg C and a nice white blanket on the ranges.
• I traveled to Brisbane for Christina and my final engagement party. After some running around to organise things the day before it all went smoothly and was also good. I even made raspberry & white chocolate muffins from scratch (under Christina’s guidance)!! Photos coming soon as well.
• I’ve been staying up to watch the Socceroos woeful performance thus far in the Asian Cup. Thankfully they rediscovered playing professionally and beat Thailand to progress to a quarter-final showdown against Japan.
• Finally, I got the reviewer’s comments back on my first journal paper. Their comments were positive but much work is required to get all the changes they requested done.

The photo above is a of brushtail possum that was perched in one of the trees outside the Research School of Physical Sciences & Engineering where I work. The poor thing looked pretty cold and was happy to sleep there most of the day. Even the noise from the workshops didn’t trouble it.

I went and saw Transformers at the cinema last night with some work friends and my house mates. It was awesome! One of the best action movies I have seen. The special effects were amazing and very smoothly integrated and there were heaps of explosions and cool car and aircraft chases. Rating - 5/5.

OK, so I have some good news and some bad news…

GOOD NEWS: After a 3 week break due to a bad leg injury (see earlier post here for details) I was able to play soccer again for ANU FC Division 4 on Saturday. We played against the 2nd placed team, Woden Valley FC.

BAD NEWS: Just 10 minutes into the match, while goal keeping, I charged a player who was shooting about 8 yards out. His foot and the ball connected with my right hand and bent my three middle fingers back about 45 degrees.

GOOD NEWS: I stopped a certain goal.

BAD NEWS: I took no further part in the match and had to watch the rest of the game from the sideline with my hand wrapped in an icepack.

GOOD NEWS: My team played the best they had all season and went up 1-0. Sadly Woden Valley equalised with just 3 minutes to go. But it was still a good result.

BAD NEWS: After the match my fingers and hand started to swell and bruise rapidly. See photos below. Notice the rainbow coloured fingers and the size of my knuckles! After seeking the advice of a friend who is a nurse (thanks Anna), I headed to Canberra Hospital to see a doctor. I was quickly referred to get an x-ray.

GOOD NEWS: A only had to wait 10 minutes to get an x-ray, a minor miracle for the overstretched ACT health system. X-ray showed that nothing was broken.

BAD NEWS: Doctor concluded that I had hyper-extended my fingers and over stretched all the ligaments. The bruising and swelling will get worse before it gets better. Hence I can’t play sport for another few weeks and it could take a month or two for my fingers to heal completely. That means I will miss even more games!
GOOD NEWS: It has rained continually all day today and so my match on Wednesday night has been washed out (again!). Lets hope it keeps raining (we need the run off in our dams anyway).

Last Saturday, while playing soccer for ANU FC, I managed to do a fair bit of damage to my left leg. I was goal keeping (and playing quite well actually) and ran out to punch a ball away and twisted and landed the wrong way. I ended up tearing my quad muscles (the big one in the centre of my thigh) and misaligning my knee as well as straining my hamstring, groin and other ligaments. Not fun at all. It was made worse because, while in the process of hurting myself, the opposition scored and we ended up losing 2-0. They scored later in a one on one when I couldn’t get to the ball fast enough because I could barely run (yes - with the help of adrenaline I kept on playing which in hindsight was a bad idea).

I didn’t help my cause either by getting in the car straight after the game and driving for 3 1/2 hours to Sydney to see the Socceroos play! Anyway, the physio says I was lucky not to rupture the whole quad muscle and will be out of action for 3-6 weeks. I’m hoping I will only miss three weeks of soccer. As such I won’t be training for a while and so will reclaim two nights during the week and in general will have to take things a bit slower. The joys of hobbling around and visits to the physio await.

On Saturday I drove up to Sydney after my football match in Canberra to watch the Socceroos play Uruguay at Telstra Stadium in Homebush. Although only a friendly it was billed as ‘The Rematch’ of that fateful night when we beat Uruguay on penalties to quailfy for the 2006 World Cup and the match didn’t disappoint. True, the Socceroos we minus many of their big names (Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Tim Cahill, Mark Schwarzer, etc) but Uruguay had a full team and it was a fiery encounter. There was a great atmosphere and a good crowd of 62,000 or so.

The Socceroos played well and kept Uruguay contained early on. Mile Sterjovski scored in the 7th minute after a good cross from Brett Emerton. This set off some wild celebrations including the obligatory flare being thrown onto the pitch (see photo below). Sadly Uruguay equalised just before half time.

It was good to have some friends (Josh, Annie, Jared and Jan) and my mum and aunt at the game. Jan (pronounced Jahn) and his other friend from Germany, Philip, were decked out in the Aussie flag and green and gold and really got into it which was great. Like true Germans they sang and cheered throughout the whole game Thanks also to Jeffery for organising the tickets!

Christina and I are pleased to annouce that we have set a date for our wedding. It will be in Sydney on Saturday 19th April next year. We still haven’t determined at which church but the reception venue is booked. Now there is much other planning to do!