Alex Koutsman

The Final Countdown!

So here goes my final blog for Quantum Diaries. I have just looked over my blogs of this year, and I think it's safe to say that  it has been a definitive year in my life. First of all I finished university with a Master's degree. I chose to continue in science and obtained a PhD position at my institute (NIKHEF). I spent some weeks at CERN helping out with testing and installation of the muon chambers.
This year my band has been very active and we have played more countries in a year then ever before. If I count quickly I come up with at least 20 countries me and my band have played, starting in Iceland and all over Europe and finishing in Asia with Indonesia and Malaysia. Politically much was happening in Holland and outside as well. My organization has decided that to build political alternatives in the Netherlands, it is necessary to join our forces with the forces of the much bigger SP (Socialistische Partij). This will be an interesting task/test for us over the coming year as elections draw near. And I stepped over a quarter of a century two weeks ago.
But the coming year is gonna be even more interesting, hectic and exciting for me. Starting from january up until the end of june I will be spending 3 months at CERN. The ATLAS spectrometer has to be finished for the greater part till that time, so me and a fellow PhD Zdenko will be spending many weeks in Geneva testing, installing chambers and doing everything necessary to finish on time.
My band is also gearing up as a tour of Brazil is in the pipeline, as well as several short tours of Europe and maybe even US for a couple of weeks at the end of the year. We will also be looking into getting more of an official recognition in the Netherlands, which started this year with our acception into the Dutch online music encyclopedia.
I'm looking forward to the New Year! Hopefully it won't be over as fast as 2005! Have fun, cause I sure know that I will!!!

The end is near

I have been away for very long from NIKHEF. First I spent 2 weeks at the PhD-school at Texel, right after that I went to help out with muon chamber installation at CERN for 3 weeks, then I spent one hectic week back in the Netherlands and off again for 4 weeks with my band all over Asia and Australia.
One of the most difficult things about being away for so long is having to start up again. Last two weeks I have been doing just that. I had some 600 emails to go through. Trying to get my brain back into fundamental physics I read some articles on supersymmetry. And last three days of the past week all the particle physics PhD-students in Netherlands (including me) attended Topical Lectures on "Supersymmetry and Higgs" hosted at NIKHEF. The bulk of the lectures was given by Abdelhak Djouadi, who was a very good lecturer, but as most scientists he was a little optimistic on what can be done in four lectures of 45 minutes each. It was extremely useful for me, as many subjects concerning Supersymmetry were discussed in detail. And even if I didn't follow it all right away, I can go back to his notes and study them if need be.
I have also finally started to look into some ATLAS software. Soon I will write my own program(s) to run analyses on data coming out of the detector, and who knows discover Supersymmetric particles or something totally new. The end of the year is drawing near and the next year looks like it's gonna be lotsa work and exciting developments. I will be stationed at CERN for at least a quarter of next year, when me and my colleague Zdenko will be helping out with installation of the muon spectrometer. (Read my previous blogs for more details.)
Now comes the big story about my trip/tour over the Pacific:
We started off on the 2nd of november from Amsterdam to Tokyo with a stop in London. We had too much stuff with us, as we were bringing enough t-shirts and cd's and sweaters to sell for four weeks. But somehow we got through the check-in without paying any extra. It was great to see all our friends from two years ago back at our shows. Some of the Japanese shows did not go as planned, but overall it went really well. Good bands, good crowds and good response. This time we also had more time to see the cities we went to. So what do they have a lot of in Japan?

Lotsa tall buildings.

Lotsa beautiful traditional temples which are being protected by fearless samurai warriors.

There are also many types of food which I have never seen anywhere else. Like fried grasshoppers or pickled horse-raddish roots. It can be tough on vegetarians like us, who don't speak any Japanese, but Indian restaurants are all over and serve very good food.

Next stop after Japan was Melbourne, Australia. Nobody from my band has ever been down under before, so it was a great adventure for all of us. The people organising our tour there were really nice and took good care of us. However they did manage to loose the key of our/their van every single night. But since the weather was always hotter then 20 degrees (Celsius), we had no problems waiting around and just enjoying ourselves. We went to swim in the ocean a couple of times, which was like having a vacation. So what do they have a lot of in Australia?

Lotsa kangaroos. We visited an animal farm/zoo where we saw these.

Lotsa other weird animals like this bird or a wombat or a echidna or a koala. Too many to show you all the pictures.

We had much fun walking around Sydney and taking touristic pictures like this.

Then we went even further north in a excruciating 13hour drive to Brisbane where it was even hotter. But after the show our hosts showed us the way to an outside swimming-pool, which was not 'closed' at night. The next day we went to a rain-forest nearby, where my singer almost stepped on a 6 meter long python. It was huge, but got pretty scared of all the attention and the camera's shooting so it turned around and went away. My singer decided that he still wanted to touch the snake, unfortunately the snake didn't sue him for harassment. I met another friend in the rain-forest, which I found out about next day after flying back to Melbourne. A teek decided that it was a good idea to go live in my armpit. I saw it just in time, as it was half way in, so the doctors could take it out without too much trouble.

That's me after the operation with my Australian mate Marty. Australia is a great country and I wish we had more time to spend there.

Then came the most insane four days Vitamin X ever had on tour. The schedule was to play four shows in four different countries in four days. First off was Singapore, where I think I lost three kilo's during the show. The room where we played had no airco and 150 people that showed up went totally mad, as if they didn't feel the heat. This show almost got shot down by authorities, as they were telling the organisers that it was illegal. Fortunately they made a deal that 3 bands out of 6 scheduled could play with us as headliners. We still had time to go the beach the next morning before flying off to Manila, Phillipines. And for the first time in my life I ate yellow watermelon. Yes yellow; it feels, tastes and looks like a watermelon, only it's yellow from inside. Check out the picture if you don't believe me.

So we flew to Manila and stepping out of the airplane was an experience by itself. The second you get out of the terminal, there are people all around you asking if you need a cab or want to buy water or cigarettes. Our friends were thankfully waiting for us outside and got us out of the chaos into the car and on the road which was a total mess. It seemed like there were no rules on the road, everybody just driving however and whenever they want. No lanes, not many traffic lights just everybody using the horn all the time. Later on 500 people showed up at our show and another 150 people decided to stay outside, because they did not want to pay to get in, according to our friend the organizer. The people standing outside told us that they didn't have the money to pay admission, but the organizer said they try to do this at every show. Before but especially after the show many people from the audience wanted to take a picture with us and have our cd autographed. It made me feel like some kind of rock-star, which I didn't like, but who am I to tell these people what not to do.
Next morning we were supposed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but our flight company decided 5 days before that our flight was gonna leave at 5 o'clock in the evening insted of 7 in the morning. So we were arriving in Kuala Lumpur airport at 8:30 pm. The show was supposed to start at 5pm, but as we called the organizers  after arguing with the aircompany, they managed to get the show started at 7pm. Still when we ran out of the airport into the car waiting for us and drove like mad, by the time we got to the show all the six opening bands were finished. Hundreds of people were standing outside waiting for us. So we ran upstairs to the show-hall with all our stuff. When we entered, the hall was totally full with 500 people and when they spotted us a great roar and applause went up. This made us freeze up and look around to see what people were cheering about, but everybody was looking at us. I wish somebody had put that on film. So we had to set up in 15 minutes and afterwards we played one of our best shows ever. There were so many people on stage taking pictures and filming or just plane dancing and singing along, that we had to ask everybody to get off stage a couple of time during the show. Here is a picture I took of the audience just before we started the gig.

After the show we went around Kuala Lumpur to see the city, where I took this picture of the national bank. I think that after the show at least 50 people asked us if they could take a picture with us and I signed probably 100 of our cd's.
After three hours of sleep we got back into the car, said good bye to our new friends and drove to the airport to catch the plane to Jakarta, Indonesia. When we got to the show hall in Jakarta, we decided that since the show hadn't even started we should go to a cheap hotel and get some more sleep. We told the organizers to wake us up in time for us to see one or two of the bands opening for us. When they did wake us up, it was already time for us to play and all the bands were already finished. So we we have played in Malaysia and Indonesia but we haven't seen any local bands. When we got to the show place there were many hundreds of people hanging outside. We went inside and started setting up and doing a soundcheck. In 5 minutes the organizer comes running to the stage telling us that we should hurry up, because the crowd is 'getting excited outside the doors', as he frased it. So we told him we needed another ten minutes and he ran back downstairs. Before the ten minutes were up, we heard a noise coming from the entrance and a huge stream of people was pouring inside. One of the first people in was the organizer, who told us that they "broke through the door. You have to play NOW!". So we did everything possible in those last moments and the organizer got on the mike to calm people down and introduce us.
The show was really wild and just as in Singapore, there were too many people inside a much too small room. So after 3 songs I was completely wet with sweat and oxygen was hard to come by. After the show I squizzed my t-shirt only to see at least 2 liters of sweat pour out onto the street. There were in total 800 people at our show and lotsa people again wanted us to be on a picture with them. So I decided that I want some pictures of these people as well, so here is one of them.

We spent another two days in Indonesia just relaxing, seeing some sights and visiting another rain-forest, this time without teeks. On one hand it was sad to go home as there was so much still to see, but on the other hand I wanted to get back to my girl-friend and my friends and my bed.

It was a great adventure. And as I look back over my blogs this whole year has been full of adventures and there should be many more to come.

The ATLAS pit

As I wrote last time, I have been working in the ATLAS pit. I was helping out with muon spectrometer installation. It was really cool to work there, as you really see the machine coming together. And it is very impressive to work in the pit, as the ATLAS detector is so enormous. I have tried to take some pictures, but only a few worked out.  Here is one of the better ones which my friend Aras composed with his camera. You can see part the magnet of the muon spectrometer with the support structure.

Back at CERN

So I totally remember what's it like to be at CERN again. All my summerschool days are refreshed in my memory now. I have done all the obligatory summer-student things: eat almost the same everyday for lunch, because the cantine always served, serves and will serve the same food; go to the cinema at Balexert (which is the closest to CERN); take a walk through down-town Geneva and past Jet D'Eau (a fountain which sprays water up to 150 meters above water-level); eat a Panini (great sandwiches which are served from a small streetcar all day and all night); miss the last nightbus, so pay for the taxi; miserably fail in talking french. I do miss some things from that time too, like having a big group of students who do cool stuff on the weekend and the kitchen parades. But I've tried to do some sports and read. And it would have been nicer if my hotel would have at least one channel not in French, except for BBC-World which copies CNN and repeats everything 200.000 in a day. But on the other hand I have seen some nice movies though, like Night Watch (a russian fantasy), Broken Flowers (with Bill Murray) and The Elephant Man (a classic David Lynch).

It was also cool to go to a two-band show of my friends from Brazil called I Shot Cyrus and Discarga, and scare them by showing up in Geneva. Their drummer Boka, also of the legendary Brazilian punk-band Ratos de Porao, is coming with my band to tour Japan/Australia/SE-Asia after their tour. This because our drummer couldn't come because of prior commitments and work. It was great to see them play, although the huge hall was very empty on that sunday, and they told me that the day before they played in front of 150 people in a really small hall. But you never know how it's gonna be on the road.

The work here at CERN has been progressing very well. Even so well that now I got restationed to another building, just above the ATLAS cavern. Down in the cavern this is happening.

The detector is being put together. On the photo you can see 4 of the 8 toroids, which together make up the magnet for the ATLAS muon spectrometer. Be sure to remember that this structure is approximately as high as a 6-storey building, so you can fully appreciate the view of our detector. You can check the progress of the ATLAS completion through a live webcam here. To bring all the parts inside the cavern, there have been built/dug two new shafts of 50 m diameter and some hundred meters deep. My new building is right on top of these shafts. So once in a while I take a peek over the secured perimeter, where it is permitted of course, it's quite impressive. Right now my work implies that we test the muon-chambers for the last time before they go down into the cavern. If something is broken, you don't want to find that out, when it's downstairs, installed and plugged in. So my work feels somewhat responsible as we are the "final frontier". Some of my new colleagues are from Russia, so they were happily surprised after the "Dutch" guy spoke Russian to them. It is also a nice way for me to learn the terminology in Russian, so I can maybe finally explain to my parents what it is that we really do. Because when I moved from Russia I was only 12, so my knowledge of physics in Russian stops at terms like current and voltage. These words are very useful for the tests that we are doing, but I hope to get a bit further. I'll try to blog once more before Vitamin X sets off on our tour, otherwise you'll here from me when I'm on the road.

Parlez-vous l'anglais?

That is the summary of my last two days. I have arrived at CERN, Geneva, yesterday and spent half the day going from one information desk to the other. I did however manage to get some work done here already, which was very pleasant. What was not very pleasant, was todays morning as I had to ride my bycicle for 40 minutes with my back-pack and my laptop to get to my work-place from my hotel. I just hope it's not gonna rain a lot the coming three weeks or that I can get a hotel closer to work. I think that these will be three productive weeks however, as most of the tests which we have to perform on the muon-chambers need some running time. So in-between I hope to get some reading done for my future analysis.

The last two weeks I spent on Texel at a joined Belgian-Dutch-German PhD school, which was really great. We had some top lecturers trying to cram our minds with useful information. Very interesting were the talks on cosmology by V.Icke and quantum field theory by R.Kleiss and P.Mulders (very informative but with a good sense for detail and humor).

Besides all the lectures we had a very nice group of students, so almost every day we would do something together like bowling, playing ping-pong or just dancing at the bar at night. A good story about bowling is that one night professor P.Mulders came to play with us as well. Him being a theoretical physicist, us experimentalists thought we had it all under control. How wrong we were! Piet showed us how it's done, by scoring 212 points, which was 70 points above the students record. He told us that the last time he played was ten years ago and that it was sheer luck. But throwing 6 strikes and 3 spares in one game is way above the amateur average. Also since we had some free time on the weekend a golf course was organized for us with instructors. It was good fun, but after hitting the ball for 20th time nowhere near the green it does get a bit boring. And we had a great outing in De Slufter, which is a natural reserve between two dikes.

Of course no student get together can go down without a party. So my bungalow mate, Aras, decided that since it was his birthday on the day that the school ended, we should give a "last summer day" party two days before. So eagerly we set to work buying summer memorabilia, beverages and getting the word out. Of course our lecturers were invited as well. In the picture on the right you can see Frank Linde (director of NIKHEF, top left) doing the Macarena with the rest of the students. The party went down with a blast, especially after yours truly took over the dj-laptop. Next morning we were up and running at 9am, as were our lecturers, but not everybody felt happy about it or better put not anybody. I'm really looking forward to the next PhD-school in a year. Below you see two results of me and Aras experimenting with his digital camera and a flashlight at night outside our bungalow. It turned out pretty cool, we thought, but with each shot we had no idea what was gonna come out. These are of course the best two.

Learning as a master

OK, some people who have graduated sometimes have a somewhat high image of themselves as they have a title. Ask my girlfriend if you don't believe me, but sometimes I'm also a bit of a wise-guy. In contrast to this the last couple of weeks I have been feeling not so smart.
First of all I have been trying to read up on the physics analysis I will be implementing in the coming years. This would include a search for supersymmetric particles, which decay into muons. The question of what is a supersymmetric particle or what is supersymmetry (SuSy) has been the focus of my attention. By now I have the idea that it might be possible for me to grasp this theory in the close future, but I will not pretend to understand it now. One interesting spin-off of learning about SuSy is that I came across ideas and parts of other theories (specifically the Standard Model of particle physics) that I misunderstood or just plain forgot were there. Following lectures ,given as a part of the Academic training at CERN in 2003 by F.Gianotti and G.Ridolfi, that were recorded on video and set up online has been very instructive. I will tell more about SuSy in the future, as I don't feel confident yet.
Secondly as I will be heading to CERN in two weeks to help out with testing of the muon-chambers for ATLAS, the last weeks were also a crash-course on how the chambers electronics, read-out, gas-system etc etc work, which went far beyond what I already knew from my master degree research. It was really fun, as each new chamber or actually set of 3 chambers which went into the test-setup had it's own problems and errors, which we have solved. And it is quite funny to see doctor's and PhD's walking around with screw-drivers and black carbage bags for temporary darkness inside the chambers. After learning a lot more at a PhD-school at Texel starting coming monday I will fly straight to Geneva. I hope that I will not forget everything by the time I get there.

There is a first time for everything

Yesterday was my first day as a paid physicist. Well, actually I'm still a (PhD-)student, but it's nice to think that finally all the studying pays off and this time financially. I have a tight schedule ahead of me. In a couple of weeks I will be attending a PhD-school on the Tessel-island (Netherlands). Right after that I will be off for my first job outside the country. I will be helping installing the muon-chambers of the ATLAS experiment at CERN. This is a very serious job, as I will be testing this chambers before and after they get installed down in the pit. If something goes wrong, then we might not have any muon information out of a region of the detector when the experiment starts running. So I have to be very concentrated, while I'm there. On the other hand it will be great fun to be back at CERN, where I spent two and a half months as a summer student in 2003.
Talking about CERN summer-school, last week I got to meet my old room-mate at CERN when going through his town with my band. We spent about two weeks travelling up and down UK. And for one show in Dublin(Ireland) we flew over, as real rock-stars do ;). It was well worth it as the show was the best of the tour, and especially since I got to meet Donough (pronounced as 'Donna' or 'Donut', whichever you prefer) my room-mate again. He has also just got his master's degree, so congratulations on that one dude.
As I have dropped my digital camera on the floor when I came home and it doesn't seem to work no more (oops!), I won't be able to show all the great pictures I took. But here are some highlights:
-I finally understand the english tradition of getting very pissed very soon. No wonder that in a country where all the pubs close at 23:00, everybody tries to gulp down as much ale as possible before you have to leave. (In Holland most bars are open till 01:00 or 02:00)
-Coming back from Dublin was a disaster, as we were playing Bristol the next day, and flying into Leeds first. So the bus to take us to the airport was 30 minutes late. Then the airplane couldn't take off, because there were problems with a computer (Windows I guess). We had to wait 2 hours on the runway. Finally after landing in Leeds much too late, we got on the road in a rented mini-van. Just about an hour away from Bristol we decided to stop at a gas-station to take a little rest, but the gear-box of our van decided that it was good time to die. Thankfully it happened when we were at a gas-station, otherwise we would be in much more trouble. So we had to get the van towed back to Leeds and the tow-company were nice enough to give us a lift to the closest train-station as we decided that the show must go on. We were very late at the gig, but we managed to play our set and good it was, as all the frustration from the day came out.
-Somehow everybody in the band got injured on this tour. We have done over 15 tours in our existance, some of them 6 weeks long but this has never occured before. Our singer fell to the floor after a stage-dive as the crowd did not catch him. I hit our guitarist with my bass during the show. And the next day I closed the car-door with his fingers still inbetween, so he was not very happy with me to put it mildly. Last day I fell myself on a wet floor while dancing to another band and injured my shoulder.
-The whole tour was great fun nonetheless, with lotsa good shows and great reactions. We  also managed to see a lot of the cities we were in like Brighton, Leeds and Liverpool. And I got to drink loads of Irn-Bru, which is only sold in the UK (as far as I know).

On the road again...

Afgelopen week heb ik weer sinds twee maanden concerten gespeeld met mijn band. Iedereen behalve mij was in de tussentijd op vakantie geweest. De eerste concert speelden we in Amsterdam en de tweede op een doorgeregend festival in Duitsland. Het is altijd leuk om voor je vrienden te spelen. Voor een dinsdag-avond waren er ook veel mensen op afgekomen, 200-250, en de dak ging eraf. De dag erna stonden er veel goede reacties op messageboards, wat voor ons ook verassend was. Tot nu toe werd Vitamin-X vaak niet erg gewaardeerd in Nederland, maar wel erbuiten. Dus eindelijk lijkt ook het publiek in Nederland te ontdooien.

Dit was onze tweede en waarschijnlijk laatste concert in onze thuis-basis voor dit jaar. Niet omdat we niet willen, maar omdat het gewoon onmogelijk is. We gaan volgende week voor 10 dagen naar Engeland en Ierland. Daarna moeten we veel oefenen, omdat we nieuwe nummers gaan opnemen voor een plaat. Vervolgens ga ik eerst voor 2 weken naar een PhD-school op Tessel en vervolgens vertrek ik naar CERN, om mee te helpen aan de bouw van de ATLAS detector, hierover later meer. Als ik terugkom eind oktober, vertrek ik meteen met mijn band en een nieuwe tour-drummer naar Japan, Australie en Zuidoost-Azie. Vooral dat laatste heeft ons veel moeite gekost om te organiseren. Maar het is nu rond en hoe. We spelen in 4 dagen 4 concerten in 4 verschillende landen: Singapore, Manila(Filipijnen), Kuala Lumpur(Maleisie) en Jakarta(Indonesie). We moeten dus ook vier keer vliegen, weinig slapen en vooral jammer heel weinig zien van de landen. Hopelijk kunnen de promotors van de concerten ergens nog een paar uurtjes per land vrijhouden voor wat toerisme van ons. Deze gekke planning moest komen, omdat we en vooral ik terug moeten zijn voor mijn promotie-baan. Ik kom op mijn verjaardag terug en twee dagen later ga ik weer naar Geneve om verder te helpen bij de installatie en bouw van ATLAS.

Het lijkt misschien alsof ik een heel avontuurlijk leven heb en constant interessante dingen doe, en dat is ook zo, maar er zit wel een adertje onder het gras. Wat ik heel vervelend eraan vind, is dat ik 3 maanden lang niet bij mijn vriendin kan zijn. En mijn vrienden en familie alleen per mail of aan de telefoon kan zien. Dus verwacht in de komende maanden wat zeur-verhaaltjes van mij over hoe ik mensen mis.

Er is nog wel een heel interessant gegeven, dat ik over de band ben vergeten te vertellen. Afgelopen week zijn we opgenomen in de encyclopedie van het Nationaal Pop Instituut. Een volledige boigrafie en discografie van Vitamin-X is nu dus hier te vinden.

What's up doc?

It's been a little quite over here...but that's how I'm taking life at this moment anyway. Since I've been to protests at the G8 summit in Scotland, I've been taking it a little easy. I didn't have to study for no exams or write any reports or give any presentations after graduating, I decided to take a vacation.

Since my and my girl-friend's budget did not allow us a trip to Antarctica, we were watching over the place and the cat of one of her friends for some weeks. The weather has not been helping us to have lotsa fun outside, but we did manage to go to the beach once. But we did have time to sleep, eat, sleep, watch a movie, invite some friends over, eat, play Trivial Pursuit, eat ice-cream, run around the park to lose all the fat from all the eating and sleep some more. This however does get boring after some time, so I'm happy to be back home. Especially since my parents have just gone on vacation for 3 weeks.

There has been some interesting developements going on at the institute and in my 'career'. The somewhat troublesome SCT part of the ATLAS project has achieved great progress in the last month. Read all about it at Maaike's blog, as she is one of the guilty parties. I however will be starting at a PhD position on the 1st of september for the ATLAS group. YES!!! The contract has been sent to me by the institute last week. So if all goes well in 4 years you may call me Dr. Koutsman. Getting this contract was not an easy task, as I had to talk to many people and convince them that I was the right candidate. I was not used to this at all, so an advise to all the students: forget about all your doubts, don't be shy, be an aggressive speaker, tell only good things about yourself and prepare yourself for these talks (maybe even write down all your accomplishments and skills for yourself before). What I'm gonna be working on is not absolutely certain, but for sure I will continue working on the muon-spectrometer of ATLAS. Possibly I will be working on Z-boson decay into two muons, which a very easy to find channel in the detector. And it will be one of the channels which will be used to calibrate ATLAS. On top of that supersymmetric particles might be created, that will also decay into two muons. But I'll tell more about that later as I don't really understand it so well myself....

Wat een week!!!

Weer even een blog in het Nederlands voor de verandering.

Afgelopen week was heel interessant (to say the least). Ik ben 8 dagen in Schotland geweest om daar te demonstreren tegen de G8-top en om met activisten uit de hele wereld te discussieren wat we hierna gaan doen. Het was heel erg inspirerend. Kijk zelf maar naar deze foto van de grote demonstratie op zaterdag 2 juli in Edinburgh.

Het was echt heel erg massaal. De speculaties verschillen tussen 200.000 mensen en een half miljoen mensen, maar in ieder geval de grootste demonstratie in de geschiedenis van Schotland. We moesten drie uur wachten om te gaan lopen vanuit het park, en toen we terugkwamen na 2 uur te hebben gelopen stonden er nog steeds duizenden mensen in de rij om te gaan lopen.

De dag erna vond er een tegentop plaats. Duizenden mensen hebben gepraat en gediscussieerd over de problemen in de wereld en over het opbouwen van de beweging. Op mij  hadden sprekers uit Afrika het meeste indruk achtergelaten, toen ze vertelden hoe ze daar met minime middelen al jaren aan het vechten zijn tegen verdere uitbuiting en milieu-afbraak door de multinationals en eigen regeringen.

Woensdag zouden we gaan naar Gleneagles om de G8 leiders te confronteren bij het begin van hun top. Enorme vertragingen, afgezette wegen, een zwaar overdreven machtsvertoon met 20.000 politie-mensen, 2000 amerikaanse 'marines', Chinook helikopters (echt waar), paarden, honden en traangas hebben onze demonstratie niet gestopt. Hoewel de top doorging, hebben wij de mensen aan de andere kant van het hek wel goed bang gemaakt, want op een gegeven momen lieten ze Chinook's vlak over ons heen vliegen om ons te demotiveren. "G8, Bush and Blair - we will fight you everywhere!!!"

Toen we donderdag-ochtend teruggingen zoals stond gepland, hoorden we van het verschrikkelijke nieuws uit Londen. Het was even onduidelijk wat we moesten doen, omdat de trein ons vanuit Edinburgh eerst zou brengen naar Londen en dan zouden de bus nemen naar Amsterdam. Maar uiteindelijk ging alles met wat vertragingen volgens de planning. Als je meer wil lezen over mijn ervaringen bij G8, kijk dan hier waar een dagboek werd bijgehouden tijdens ons verblijf in Schotland. (Er staan ook wat links naar reportages van Nova en 2Vandaag, die ons daar hadden gevolgd.)

Verder heb ik ook een dag voordat we wegginen naar G8 met mijn band 5 nummers opgenomen in een nieuwe studio in Den Haag. We willen in september een nieuwe plaat(vinyl) uitbrengen, dus we wouden deze studio uitproberen voordat we het echte werk gingen doen. De studio was echt een museum van rock. Alle mogelijke versterkers, gitaren, drumstellen en opname-apparatuur stonden overal. Voor een muzikant die van oude analoge technologie houdt, zoals ik, was dit paradijs op aarde. Ik heb het resultaat nog niet gehoord, maar morgen ga ik onze gitarist langs om het samen te beluisteren.

Qua natuurkunde heb ik niks gedaan, maar ik vind dat dat ook mag de week nadat je bent afgestudeerd.