I was born on a hot sunny afternoon on the 15th of December, 1982, in Johannesburg, South Africa. My brother was born almost four years later, and despite my valiant efforts to still think of him as my "baby brother", he has just finished school and left for a year in Thailand on exchange. It's amazing how fast we grow up. Here's how my life has flown by so far...
Even though the country was still in the grips of apartheid, in my sixth year I started at a private school which admitted black children. My best friend in my first year was a black girl called Lerato, who stayed in the townships. I remember a time during that year when things got quite bad, politically, and transport from the townships into the city was dodgy. During that period, Lerato came to stay with us so she could continue school, even though it was highly illegal to have a black person staying on your property! Being very young, the worst of apartheid went pretty much over my head. However, I remember clearly that famous day in 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and four years later my parents let my brother and I stay up all night as we watched the results come in of our first ever truly democratic vote. Talk about childhood memories.
 My school years passed by in a blur of various sporting activities featuring netball, hockey, cricket, karate and rowing. Respect goes to my parents for putting up with it all, but it did pay off. In 1996 I traveled to the Goju-Ryu World Championships in Japan as part of the SA Karate team, and in 1999 I rowed for Trident in the Rowing World Cup in Belgium, and in an international regatta in Amsterdam. (The team name "Trident" is a rowing remnant of apartheid -- while we were banned from competing in the international arena as "South Africa", they allowed us to enter as Trident Rowing Club, and the name stuck.)
 After finishing high school I started my BSc in physics in 2001 at the University of the Witwatersrand - or "Wits" as we call it here (the "W" is pronounced "V", it's an Afrikaans word). There was never any doubt in my mind that physics was where I wanted to be -- even my first word was "moon". Last year was my fourth and final year of BSc. There were seven of us who had made our way through since first year and we were by then close friends. We spent a lot of interesting times together last year -- doing Quantum Mechanics till midnight in coffee shops, hiking (and losing Gary for a while) in the Drakensburg, attending the SAIP conference in Bloemfontein, playing with the Radio Telescope at Hartebeesthoek, and going on holiday to Ballito on the east coast.
At the end of November -- basically just after our final exams -- I was given the opportunity to visit Jefferson Lab in the USA to participate in a Hall C experiment on Sub-threshold J/Psi Photoproduction. I am just starting my MSc this year in High Energy Physics, and the experiment presented itself at just the right time to be the topic for my thesis. It was a wonderful experience being over there, and I arrived home on Christmas eve, albeit minus my luggage which had been left behind in Philadelphia. It arrived three days later.
 2005 so far has been quite interesting. I spent two weeks in Tanzania and Zanzibar in January on holiday visiting spice farms and learning Swahili, amongst other things. So what does the rest of the World Year of Physics hold in store for me? Most importantly, working on my masters, which is principally what I'll be writing about on Quantum Diaries. June brings about the 50th annual SAIP (South African Institute of Physics) conference which should be great fun, and there are various other events lined up throughout the year. When I'm not playing physics, I hope to be wakeboarding, scuba diving, or just relaxing at a braai (South African for barbeque) with some friends. I also eagerly await the promised 11th book in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. In the meantime I have 2nd year engineers' tuts to run and lab reports to mark, which should keep me out of mischief, but only time will tell. See you in the Diaries!
|
