Me and some friends from INL went skiing at Grand Targhee. It's the first time I've ever skied out west, or on powder, and it was awesome!
Lynn visited us all the way from Hawaii, so we went camping and hiking just before hurricane Irene hit New Hampshire and closed the national forest. We set up tents, hiked Mt. Willard, and gorged on mountain treats and revelry!
This year was the year I finally finished my MIT education, and it was also MIT's 150th anniversary. This year featured a trio of the best commencement speakers I've heard to date, including the CEO/Chairman of Xerox.
The day before graduation, MIT Ph.D. candidates are awarded their doctoral hoods, which complete the academic ensemble. The colors of the robe, hood, and trim spell out a secret code which tells people which university you got your highest degree from and what that degree is.
Pesach was held at Mom & Dad's house this year, with all the Chasons present. All six "kids" found the afikomen this year, despite having a combined age of almost 180!
Marina and I visited my parents and brother in Arizona to see their new houses. We climbed Mt. Camelback (it looks like a sleeping camel), took in some great Mexican food, and saw what it's like to live somewhere more spread out than I could have imagined.
I went out to Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) to work on CASL, the department of energy's nuclear innovation hub. While there, I managed to get in a bit of hiking on the mesas and catch some amazing views of the New Mexico scenery.
I attended the EPRI P-TAC meeting in San Francisco, CA for my postdoctoral work. While there, I stayed with Jose and Jane, biked up Old LaHonda Road, and attended the opening of Techshop in San Jose. The building used to be an AOL data center. Nice! Take that!!!
A pigeon somehow got into the 2nd floor of the CVS in Harvard Square. The windows were bolted shut, so we tried to catch it with my overcoat.
Prof. Hobbs of the materials science department offers a wine appreciation class during IAP, our month-long winter semester. Now that I'm not a student, I actually had time to attend! I never knew how complex fermented grapes could be.
MIT sent seven students and two professors to the 3rd annual symposium for innovations in interdisciplinary energy science. It was held on Ishigaki island, near the western most point of Japan at the end of the Okinawa archipelago. Afterwards, we had two days in Tokyo for a Tokyo Tech lecture & lab tour.
I went to a conference at Tokyo Tech for four days, which enabled Marina and I to have our honeymoon in Japan! MIT paid for my plane tickets, which was the main enabling factor. We went to Tokyo, Kyoto, and up to Sendai to visit some old friends.
Marina and I hiked most of the way up Mt. Lafayette with Dad and some of his friends from the hospital. We had to turn back near the top on account of high winds and icy rocks.
Marina was elected to be the student speaker at Brandeis' 2010 school of science graduation. Sources say her speech was better than that of the ambassador to Israel, and was topped only by a live performance of Paul Simon singing The Boxer.
Marina successfully defended her Ph.D. at Brandeis University. These are pictures from the public presentation, the lab party afterwards, and our family's party in her honor the next day.
Charles, my friend from MIT, got married to his fiance Tina at the Frontiers of Flight museum at Dallas Love Field in Dallas, Texas. It's the first Indian wedding we'd ever been to, and it was very interesting!
This year Tokyo Tech (TIT) hosted its 2nd annual forum on alternative energy research, which luckily included nuclear power! They flew us all to Okinawa, where we had a most excellent meeting. I then got the weekend free in Tokyo, and explored various intersting places.
My trip to Nepal with Dad, Steve and Sandeep. We stayed a few days in Kathmandu during Diwali, and then hiked in the Everest region until I got Nepali Napalm (severe food poisoning) and had to be helicoptered off the side of the mountain.
Marina, Sara, Fanny and I went to the aquarium for a lab outing. We saw tons of jellyfish, and then ate them in Chinatown!
Marina and I got married on August 2nd, 2009 at the Boston Museum of Science. We had a lovely ceremony and reception at the Washburn Pavillion, next to the Charles River.
All my friends surprised me with an extended evening of fireworks, meat and indoor skydiving in Nashua, NH!
7/25/2009, Prospect Park - The Grecian Shelter, Brooklyn, NY. Since Dan and Marie got married in San Francisco, they had a reception for all the East coast folks who couldn't make it before starting their extended worldwide honeymoon.
My trip with my mom to Koln, Germany for the Bodycote Paper Prize Competition. After the competition and a trip to Aachen (where we got locked in next to Charlemagne's grave with other Americans), We also spent a couple of days in Mol, Belgium to meet the folks at SCK-CEN (Belgian nuclear national labs), and one day we walked to Vaals, Holland for lunch.
Pictures of non-bike excursions and reverie in Idaho Falls, ID for the Idaho National Lab's User Week.
I attended a conference at Ecole Polytechnique, Lozere, France in January. Before that, I visited Marina's family living east of Paris. Somehow we managed to communicate, being that I didn't know any French, and some of them didn't know any English (and some spoke it very well!)
My friend Sou from Tokyo Tech came to an MRS meeting in November, and stayed with me for one night.
Our friends Lynn and Stevie graciously took a photo shoot of Marina and me at Shannon & Thomas' wedding in Michigan in August. This was a nice occasion for photos, especially because I rarely wear fancy clothes.
Marina and I stopped in Manhattan, NY between chinatown buses and took in some sights on our way back from Delaware.
Marina attended ACS in Philadelphia, PA in April, and I came with her! We stayed at my grandmother's house in Delaware and spent time with my family.
My friend Harold took us snowshoeing along with his friends on Mt. Cardigan, NH. It was bitter cold at the top, and windy too! We rended gear from MITOC at a $1/day per piece of equipment. What a deal!
My friend Jeff and I made 'fruit caviar' by dissolving sodium alginate in fruit juices and dripping it into a bath of calcium chloride. The result is small pellets of fruit juice, contained in a very thin layer of gelled fruit juice. They look very much like fish eggs. This was my first foray into molecular gastronomy.
Scott and I headed down to Langerado to demo my colortower, and to get up close with some awesome bands. Scott had crazy connections and got us a production pass, so we met the likes of Bela Fleck, Trey from Phish, Matisyahu, Perpetual Groove, Widespread Panic and Medeski, Martin & Wood. Very intersting people!
Blake, Marina and I headed to Bradley Palmer State Park in Topsfield, MA at the end of August to harvest blackberries. There are tons of blackberry bushes, and the end of August is a good time to get them while they're ripe, and before the animals eat them all. We ended up with a couple pounds of fresh, small berries that were bursting with flavor.
A few of us MIT students and professors attended the TM-INES2 conference at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) in Tokyo, Japan. Here are the photos from us at the conference, as well as pictures of our wanderings through Tokyo and a bike trip that I took into the mountains with some most interesting results...
My trip to Costa Rica with mom, dad and Jonathan. We stayed in San Jose, at Arenal volcano and in Tamarindo, a beach town. We also drove across about half the country, hiked up an extinct volcano, and enjoyed a geothermal hot spring. I was most interested in the insects, lizards and birds that were absolutely everywhere.
The MIT fall formal with Marina and my friends from Conner 2 at the Hyatt in Cambridge, MA. It was nice to go to a formal outside of MIT, but within 5 minutes walking distance. Plus we got to see the Spinniker restaurant while it was under restoration.
Marina and I went camping and hiking with her two sisters in Acadia, ME. We hiked Mt. Cardigan, slept in tents, and made delicious hobo dinners.
After graduating, I still hung out with the folks on Conner 2 with some regular frequency. This was a trip to Koreana restaurant in Cambridge, MA. Keith came too!
After biking from Seattle, WA to Monterey, CA, I took trains down to Los Angeles and met Marina for a week long vacation. We stayed in Santa Barbara, hiked in the Santa Ynes mountains, searched for an abandoned mercury mine, ate more good sushi than we ever have, and headed to San Ysidro, where I left Marina at the border and explored Tijuana, Mexico for all of 3 hours.
Prospective graduate students weekend at UC Berkeley for nuclear engineering. I had a great time, and seriously considered going. Best I could figure, both MIT and Berkeley had top-rate education and quality-of-life to offer. In the end, it was my family and friends in Boston that made me decide to stay at MIT.
While on my 'free ticket to Tokyo' trip, I met up with Stephen and Swapna, who had decided to come to Japan for fun. We met Ian, who was staying there that summer. We hit each other with fish in Tsukiji, learned how to read filthy signs in Roppongi, and stayed at a nice hostel with other very sketchy foreigners.
American Airlines had a promotion - if one flew to CA and FL via minor airports within a certain timeframe, you would receive a free ticket 'system wide.' MIT sent me to Stanford, and I flew to West Palm Beach and back 20 minutes later. My round trip ticket to Tokyo cost me $41.25 in airport taxes. I stayed in parks, capsule hotels, youth hostels and with Ian and Tina.
My dad and I hiked with the MIT Outing Club up Mt. Jefferson in the white mountains in New Hampshire. It was a beautiful day, and the first time I've hiked with experienced hikers from MIT.
Shannon and I went to Stanford, Palo Alto and San Francisco for spring break, where we met her friends Andrew and Charlie. We also met up with my friend Melanie and stayed with her, and we stopped by Tina's place in Sunnyvale.
Jose had a brilliant idea - the best place to rehydrate salt cod is in the tank of a toilet! It constantly replenishes the tank with clean water (especially in a dorm), and liquids don't travel up into the tank, thankfully. The result was delicious.
Our three families got together and took a seven day cruise to St. Thomas, St. Maarten, Antigua and a few other islands. I only had my hacked-together CVS night vision camcorder, so I only have videos which include a helicopter ride to Monserrat and a zip line in St. Maarten.
Our three families (along with Alyssa version 2.0) went to Puerto Rico for the new year. We hiked in El Yunque, ate mofongo, explored San Juan and watched hundreds of airplanes land right in front of our hotel.
Barbecue at Leslie & Harvey's house for David and Heidi's first born daughter, Rebecca.
A hike up Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire with my friends from Next House. The sky was so clear that we could see the Boston skyline (Hancock Tower, Prudential, CITGO sign) through my high-power monocular.
A spur-of-the-moment road trip to NYC and Nick's parents' house with Nick, Moria, Darrus, Maryann, Joy and Cathie.
All my photos from my summer in Sendai, Japan. I spent the weekdays doing materials research at Tohoku University, and made excursions every weekend to Tokyo, Kyoto, Matsushima, Taihaku-yama, Zaoo, and many others. I also met my friend Mike, and we hiked & camped in the heart of Shikoku up Tsurugi-san.
Jonathan and I surprised mom & dad on their 25th wedding anniversary by inviting most of their family to Legal Sea Foods in Chestnut Hill, MA to surprise them. Great success!
A hike in the White Mountains is never a sure thing. That day, the weather changed from sunny to mountaintop thunderstorms so quickly that we had to turn back about a mile from the top. We still had a great time.