Monday 25th - Friday 29th Jan

The jet lag was severe, at 13.5 hours’ time difference. I only slept 3 hours on Saturday night. I sleep talked my way through my most uninspiring presentation in the first Monday session, and drooled on my shoes when people came up afterwards to ask questions about my work, whilst muttering apologies about being extremely tired.

Daytimes were taken up with conference sessions, lunchtimes were taken up with dining with a selection of important physicists and conference sleazes. One particularly eminent member of the PV community who is famed for giving presentations along the lines of “10 retarded things other physicists get wrong about quantum mechanics” decided to make sport of me one lunchtime. He fixed me in his tractor beam, and demanded to know the advantages of quantum wells for solar cells. This man knows perfectly well the physics, mechanics, economics and all other aspects of quantum wells for PV. Every time I sputtered something out he deliberately misconstrued what I was saying, even as others at the table rallied to my defence. The poor laser physicist sitting next to me clearly had no idea of eminent physicist’s reputation, and patiently tried to paraphrase what I was saying for his benefit. I have no idea whether I passed the test or not, but he seemed to warm to me more as the week went on and thought that Quantum of Sol sounded marvellous. He even learnt my name.

Evenings we got a good crowd together and went out eating and drinking. I could barely manage any food with the combination of sleeplessness and the lingering effects of India on my digestive system, but there was plenty of company with current Imperialists attending the conference, ex-Imperialists who had emigrated to SF, our NRL collaborators, and various assorted others. Up to now I have seen almost none of SF by day, but I’ve seen a fair amount of the bars by night. We had a particularly memorable misunderstanding at the beginning when Pete’s English accent was too much for the waitress who understood somehow that he was ordering me a “pint of margarita”. Strangely, Pete did not take exception to this concoction at the bar, but the taste of tequila was so powerful that there was no mistaking what it was. Between the four of us on the table we managed to drink the whole thing.

A couple of us went on a tour of the National Ignition Facility, where the worlds most gigantic and powerful lasers fire at a tiny capsule a few mm across. They will eventually try to induce nuclear fusion with this, rendering all other energy generating technology immediately futile. The structure itself was impressive, but the tour guides were hilariously dull. They wanted to talk all about the optics, until my co-visitor demanded to know about the bit where they “blow stuff up”. They also presented us with a lovely photo of the tour group outside the facility as if we’d gone to Alton Towers for the day.

On Friday as the conference was over, we decided the best thing to follow a tour of a fusion facility would be a winery tour. They really should have swapped the winery tour guide with the NIF tour guide, this one was quite remarkable. He talked without cease for an hour with an absolutely rigid smile plastered on his face like an automaton on acid.