November

My life-struggling, hope-finding, research-ignoring, advisor-off-pissing job-hunting story climaxed in November, a not so cold holiday month. I prepared for an on-site for praxair, scheduled on nov. 15th, an interview for an x-ray science post-doc at argonne national lab on nov. 20th, and had to catch a flight to the midland, michigan for Dow chemical on nov. 21th, the day before thanks giving.

The praxair company is located in Tonowanda, NY, a small suburban industrial town near the Buffalo city. The city's got some appeals: it's got toronto and the niagara fall right next door, and it's famous for it's chili chicken wings. Buffalo is small but it has three major sport teams: baseball, football and hockey. Not bad, huh? It's also in the snow belt. In winter it easily got blanketed by 6-8 inches of solid state H2O. I was told by a real estate agent that last year, too many trees were bent down by heavy snow that the traffic was literally paralyzed. Well, not that kind of my dream city. But it's got some water near by. The lake erie, if not to far away. I also bravely enough to walk to the Anchor bar, the original birthplace of the buffalo chicken wing, and ordered a single with a beer. The wings were OK, at best, not up to my expectation though. Over and over again, I was convinced by a notion that, don't put too much false hope on american food. However, I have to give credit to my dear girl friend, for being my live GPS towards the bar. Remember I was walking in an almost abandoned downtown in a rustbelt city. Caution and boldness are critically needed.

I forgot to mention the interview. It's again a two-day event, first day a presentation, and second day a full-day battle with 8 managers. It's quite exhausting, at the end of the day. Most of the questions are similar. Pinggui has also attended my presentation. I appreciate her support truly. She is a friend indeed. I put a lot of hope to the praxair interview, after hearing nothing from shell.

After returning from buffalo, I tango on to prepare for my talk in argonne and dow. The position I was interviewing for at argonne is a post-doc X-ray researcher, under prof. Ian Robinson's group. The spot was left by his former postdoc, Ross Harder, who received a permanent job offer from Qun Shen's group. Qun Shen is also a co-sponsor for the my intended position. The interview went very well. I talked about my work on coherent electron diffraction, the electron version of what they are doing using x-ray. After the interview, they gave me an offer on spot, not so surprising. What is surprising is that, Qun Shen, the group leader, even persuaded me by saying that I can be converted to a full time staff member after 1-2 years. I headed right to the o'hare airport, weaving my way in the rush-hour chicago traffic, trying catch a flight to midland, michigan.