First of all, I work in the Nuclear Sciences Division at the lab. To sum up what that feels like. Imagine walking into a room with a bunch of Asians that are speaking in Chinese and are smarter than you (well, that's a given, right?). And, they all know each other, and there you are...you only know English. Way to not be bilingual. That's how it is every day.
Seriously though, all my coworkers are amazingly smart. I get to work with a community of nuclear physicists all working on projects dealing with radiation. So, there are people working with sensors, others working on mobile robots, a few working on public policy, etc...and then, there's me with a Bubba water bottle having Crystal Light chugging contests by myself when no one is looking (not even joking).
I work in a shared cubicle with a professor. He works on Python codes that deals with data from an air monitoring system measuring the level of radiation in the surrounding Berkeley area. So far, I've learned the basic gist of a program called MySql to work with databases.
And the reason I have to learn MySql is because my job is to be able to target domestic public concerns that came from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011.
After the disaster, the Berkeley team created a forum (BRAWM forum) to address the public's concerns, and boy, did it get interesting. Conspiracy theories popped up. Trolls posted that the world was going to end in 2013. Yadda yadda yadda. We at the lab want to make sure that we can somehow gain the public's trust and be able to alleviate concerns and avoid bouts of panic and stress. So, I'll employ some type of data analysis and with a little bit of magic make heads or tails of the situation.
Anyways...I'm already a regular at the UC library and the Speiker pool. The librarians know me, and the lifeguards know me now. But, today, I went down to the underground floors, and they have this type of shelving system:
I was in between shelves today, and this girl started closing the shelves on me. If I hadn't gotten her attention, I would've been flat as a pancake...or run-over squirrel...or my abs (definitely mine).Also, I went to Lake Merritt with a good friend from my travels in South America. She gave me a mini-tour of Berkeley, and took in the sights and sounds around the lake. We saw crazy capoiera and an old guy jogging. Those were the highlights. Especially the old guy.
Happy Chuesday!
:edit: Oh my word, it's Chwednesday. I'm so off...
