The first month in review

The first month in Sendai has certainly been rather eventful. The excitement of the new environment hasn't worn off, yet, but fortunately I'm starting to become more productive. I still don't have my household, yet; apparently that will take another month. On the other hand, I do have:

• registered myself at the ward office (if you live east of Sendai Station, your ward office is surprisingly far away from the station).
• opened a bank account. This took about two hours, but it was rather straightforward (given the fact that my wife speaks Japanese). Unfortunately, I don't have a Japanese credit card, yet.
• met (most of) the graduate students. Seems to be a great bunch. I look forward to working with them.
• introduced myself a number of times to different groups. I find myself sharing different bits of information each time, just to prevent myself from getting bored.
• bought a six-months bus pass. I'm not an avid driver.
• signed up for a new cell phone plan with a data flat rate. This helped me survive several weeks without a laptop. See also my previous post.
• registered with a new certification authority (KEK) for a grid certificate. Apparently, moving between different certification authorities is not foreseen on the grid. I can currently not delete my old files.
• started to get involved with some of the different research projects that we work on at Tohoku University. I plan to post a bit about each in turn in the coming episodes.
• accepted the job of deputy Linear Collider Detector R&D liaison. This task will most certainly provide material for future blog posts as well. My responsibility is mostly to facilitate communication. To ensure the best achievable performance and cost-effectiveness of the detectors it's important to encourage the widest possible participation in building them. The Detector Baseline Documents for ILD and SiD have been written, but the detector collaborations are still in the process of being formed. Now is the time to get involved with the detector concepts and help shape the face of these collaborations. If you work on particle physics detectors and care about Linear Colliders, please make yourself known.
• not really studied as much Japanese as I had planned. Back to work.