Week 2

I sat here and read for a bit today.
It was actually really stunningly beautiful and I was surprised at how understated the Miramare castle is as a tourist attraction. It's really beautiful and maybe its beauty comes from the fact that it's not overly touristy. So you can just go and sit there and read a book, listen to the sea, or just look out either at the beautiful scenery or the castle itself which is really stunning.

It's so quiet and calm, and just genuine that you can almost imagine what it would be like to have been one of the people who lived there. So yes if you are ever in Trieste, be sure not to miss it. I plan on taking a picnic up there (hopefully the weather will still be nice, although I doubt it will be as hot) when Maisie comes out in two weeks.

So I was out near Miramare cause I had gone to the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) for a workshop on modified gravity. It was really cool because there was an impromptu lecture by the people who have discovered the superluminal neutrino! Below a link to a New Scientist article about it:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20957-dimensionhop-may-allow-neutrinos-to-cheat-light-speed.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=dn20957
And arXiv article:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1109/1109.4897.pdf
After the guy gave his presentation there was quite a heated round of questions where the poor guy obviously turned on defense mode, as the question were all (obviously) trying to pick out errors in their experiment. However as someone pointed out, the questions are provocative as the result itself is provocative!

I went to Venice over the weekend to visit a friend, and we walked around Venice for most of Saturday. It's really pretty although its major downside is the amount of people. San Marco square is a bit too showy for my liking, and I much preferred the smaller, more colorful and quieter squares that seemed to be more local. Being a tourist there myself I shouldn't complain, but there are too many tourists in Venice. I don't even want to imagine what happens in the months of July and August!

So Trieste is rubbing off on me, so far it's been two weeks of impeccable weather (apart from the out-of-nowhere storm on the first night I arrived) and the decision of whether I should stay or not is turning into a tough one. A list of pros and cons is definitely in order...