As my first quarter in Irvine draws to a close, I figured I'd finally make a post for this blog! My original ambition for posting once every few weeks to once a month has not quite come to fruition, but given the big move, I think that's okay.
We stayed in Laguna, Newport and Venice Beach, and took a weekend trip down to San Diego, staying on Coronado and visiting La Jolla on the way back up to Irvine. It was great fun, we found all the best spots to eat and drink (including Mutts, although a more recent night out there with friends has rather put me off drinking heavily for the foreseeable future), as well as spending a lot of time in the ocean - which, yes, was pretty cold! I think my favourite thing we did was going down to SD: I loved the city and Coronado was so charming and pretty. It felt like a movie set! The sea lions at La Jolla were very cute, if not somewhat pungent.
Needless to say, it's been a whirlwind.
Many things have been hard to get used to; it took me a long time to adjust to the distance from home and differing time zones. Balancing coursework and research is a whole different beast - one I am still acclimatising to - but the sun and the warm weather has been an easy (and very welcome) adjustment. Whilst moving away from everyone I knew was a crazy risk, I am incredibly lucky that UCI has welcomed me with open arms, with new friends coming from both the Earth System Science (ESS) department and No Voice Alone (NOVA), the a capella group I have been so lucky to join.
Despite the ups and downs, I have overall very much enjoyed my first quarter. Here are some of the highlights so far!
FAMILY
When I first flew over, I was extraordinarily lucky that Mum, Dad and Felix came along. For my first two weeks, we did a lot of exploring and eating good food in between my inductions.
the fam, accompanied by a large pod of dolphins and cocktails
We stayed in Laguna, Newport and Venice Beach, and took a weekend trip down to San Diego, staying on Coronado and visiting La Jolla on the way back up to Irvine. It was great fun, we found all the best spots to eat and drink (including Mutts, although a more recent night out there with friends has rather put me off drinking heavily for the foreseeable future), as well as spending a lot of time in the ocean - which, yes, was pretty cold! I think my favourite thing we did was going down to SD: I loved the city and Coronado was so charming and pretty. It felt like a movie set! The sea lions at La Jolla were very cute, if not somewhat pungent.
downtown san diego
I am very grateful for my lovely family for being here with me. It was hard to see them go, but having them to come home to made the transition that much easier. My flight home for Christmas is next week, and I can't wait to see them all again.
HIKING
SoCal is a beautiful place. I am surround by insane nature and blessed with a group of outdoorsy friends who want to explore and will take me with them. I have done a few great hikes this quarter at three very different locations - the breadth of landscapes that are pretty much on my landscape is awesome, especially given that I hail from the south-east of England, which is very flat (thank you, London Clay). In October, I hiked Mt. Baldy with Eric, Valeria and Vassili, and in November, I hiked Crystal Cove with Dad, and Black Star Canyon with Julian, Sam, Vanessa, Miranda and Chaithanya.
As a little geology nerd, it has been so exciting that a lot of the rocks around here have been relentlessly folded up and scrunched around - a very scientific description) by tectonic activity. When driving up to the trail head of Mt. Baldy, there was a textbook example of a black dike, almost perfectly orthogonal to the bedding planes. The undergraduate geology field trips must go crazy in California. Baldy itself was an extremely challenging hike, a bit of a wild choice for our first hike of the quarter, but ultimately absolutely worth it for the insane views. I have to admit that my knees were screaming on the descent, but the sunset and post-hike Denny's made up for it. We'd like to go back when the weather is warmer (it's snowy up there right now) and stay a night in the ski hut on the trail to acclimatise to the altitude and make the whole thing a little easier.
beautiful views hiking mt. baldy
At Crystal Cove, the geology also did not disappoint. The rocks here (a large amount of which are the Monterey formation, made up of mostly sandstone and shale) are often very folded and contain some cool concretions. There was a waterfall onto the beach, which is mostly urban run off, but pretty nonetheless. I really enjoyed this hike, it was very easy and flat, which was perfect for Dad and I to catch up - and I didn't get a stitch after having a decadent breakfast of crepe, fruits and whipped cream. On the beach we got to enjoy the geology as well as going for a quite freezing swim. We also saw dolphins swimming along the coast!
beautiful recumbent folds at crystal cove
Black Star Canyon took me by surprise - I honestly wasn't sure what to expect, but I had a wonderful time. It was a post-Thanksgiving outing with mentors and mentees from ESS, hiking along the creek and scrambling up large boulders before reaching a waterfall that had more actual water than I was expecting for SoCal! I really enjoyed the scramble - it felt like being a little kid again, playing in nature and picking out a good route up the canyon. Afterwards, we headed to Mercado González market in Costa Mesa for lunch, a cool Mexican food court that had amazing churros and also a bakery (I got pan dulce).
sam in black star canyon
It's getting a bit colder now, so I will probably need to bring some warmer gear back with me for the winter quarter, but I'm really looking forward to getting out again!
NOVA
Many people who know me well know that music is one of the things that keeps me sane. I knew that I wanted to stay involved with a capella, and at the beginning of the quarter I auditioned for six of the groups! I am so happy to say that I am part of No Voice Alone, a new group here at UCI. Thanks to our amazing board and members, NOVA has had an amazing first quarter, performing our first showcase, at Illuminate Irvine, and auditioning for the ICCAs. Yes, that is the same competition as in Pitch Perfect, and yes, we're going to be competing in February! NOVA is such a lovely group of talented people, I am so happy to call them my friends and rehearsals are such a bright spot each week.
Our MDs' arrangements are so beautiful, I have had so much fun singing them and I am so excited for our ICCAs set to come together over the next month and a half. Next quarter, we have three rehearsals each week to make sure we are polished in time for our competition date in early February, including learning choreography. We are also going on a retreat to Big Bear in January (I am SO looking forward to this!). The group has already come so far in one quarter, I can't wait to see what we accomplish over the next year and beyond.
nova after our festive showcase, polaris
TRIVIA
Most Mondays, a group of the ESS grad students get together to go to a trivia night at the local pizza joint. Personally, I'm a big fan of their Hawaii 5-0 pizza, which is a bechamel base with ricotta, pepperoni, jalapenos and pineapple - it slaps. Trivia is always a great evening, everyone just chills out and has fun. Our team is called Joshua's Duckz (Joshua as in Tree) and we have a small but ever growing collection of rubber duck mascots. We also have some rivals, although I'm not sure if they're actually aware of said rivalry!
a particularly good turn out at trivia night (we still didn't win)
We have not won yet, but I'm holding out hope...
RESEARCH
Oh, and let's not forget the reason I'm here: the science! The lab that I'm part of, the Saltzman-Aydin group, primarily works with ice cores to reconstruct the atmospheric history of short-lived trace gases. This work can tell us about their sources, biogeochemical cycles, and their impact on atmospheric chemistry and climate.
My work so far focuses on hydrogen, and doesn't directly include ice core work. Instead, we're focusing on precise, real-time measurements that could be taken out into the field. Currently, we are working on repurposing a mass spectrometer previously built by the group to measure air-sea fluxes of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) so that it can measure water - we can't measure hydrogen directly due to its mass/charge ratio. Instead, we are converting the hydrogen to water with a catalyst and measuring that! However, ambient air is very wet, so just measuring that would give us a very noisy signal. We are using a drying inlet based on the one I designed for my Masters research to remove as much water as possible from the sample stream and improve the signal/noise ratio.
Right now, the mass spec is giving us some crazy readings with more water than we'd expect, plus a bunch of wacky hydrocarbons. We're currently working on improving the signal, and once we've got that down we can work on precision and accuracy. Mass spectrometry is all quite new to me, but I love getting hands-on with instruments so it's good fun! Research is never without challenges, though: we already lost one of our vacuum pumps to a catastrophic shredding incident.
no, this is not what a vacuum pump is supposed to look like
It's all still early days, but right now the path for this project that I'd be interested in taking is using the mass spec for eddy covariance measurements of hydrogen uptake by high-affinity hydrogen oxidising bacteria (HA-HOB) in soils - or, more simply, measuring how bacteria consumes atmospheric hydrogen. One of the biggest gaps in our understanding of hydrogen right now is the soil sink, particularly in semi-arid regions. Water stress affects the metabolism of the bacteria, and in these regions, irregular rainfall patterns can lead to extreme variations in hydrogen uptake over periods of weeks to months. These uptake patterns are not well-parameterised, and models lack proper characterisation of the soil sink in these regions. It is vital in the next few years that we improve our models of hydrogen biogeochemistry to ensure that we fully understand its non-zero impact on our climate, especially as we move towards use of hydrogen as an energy source.
Needless to say, it's all looking very exciting. I am very much ready for the Christmas break, but I am also really intrigued to see where this project will go!
See you next quarter,
Isaac x
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