2018.06.01. Starting over (again)

(Right now: Creating a new online identity. I maybe should start having social media accounts...) 

This blog is an attempt to document my musings on the complex physical world around us. 

I actually have numerous blogs; way before Facebook and Instagram, our generation expressed ourselves through blogs, which are mostly textual and less picture- or video-centric. I started my first blog in college under the Friendster platform [for those of you who are not familiar with Friendster, I think this Wikipedia entry will help you understand how old I am]. When the online social network was converted into a gaming platform in the late 2000’s, I migrated my content to Multiply [another social networking platform that folded; see the Wikipedia entry again for the details.]. Once I started to realize that Multiply may also be gone, I migrated all my blogs to Blogger; as a Google service, I just thought that it would survive for long [it sure did, thankfully]. That blog, my first one and is in Filipino, has kept all my random thoughts and observations since 2006.

Dresden by the Elbe River at night.

In 2012, I went to Dresden, Germany to work as a postdoctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems. The conditions were perfect for starting a new blog: (1) I was living alone, and practically talking to myself in my head; (2) I was full of ideas, in research or otherwise; and (3) I was living in a very picturesque city, one that would evoke not just intellectual but emotional and poetic thoughts. I started my research blog during that time; but because the blog contains original ideas, I had to make it private.

A now, this. Another blog, for marking the start of another phase in the journey.

The view from the back parking lot of the National Institute of Physics building.

You see, I am leaving the National Institute of Physics in the University of the Philippines Diliman to teach and do research elsewhere. I entered the B.S. Physics program of the Institute in 2001; got my B.S. (2006), M.S. (2008) and Ph.D. (2011) degrees there; and taught in its lecture rooms and teaching labs since 2006. Although my almost two decades of stay has proven to be worthwhile, the evolving conditions will make me have to start over again, somewhere.

And this blog will document the journey. One step at a time. However small some of those steps may be.

I intend this blog to be, first, a repository of ideas and skills. As a scientist, some of the things I will post here will necessarily be technical. It will help me document my state of mind at any point, and may be used as reference as I continue doing further research on the matter.

I would also like to make this a platform for expressing my opinions and thoughts. Yes, even the random ones. An English-language counterpart to my Filipino blog, if you may.  Even scientists can have literary expressions, after all.



So, yeah. Way to go on a pilot post! I hope to post follow-ups soon, and hopefully on a semi-regular basis.