Apr 10, 2023
I really want Joe and Taylor to just walk some random street together cuz everyone is DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE THIS RUMOR 😭😭
seen from Canada
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seen from China
I really want Joe and Taylor to just walk some random street together cuz everyone is DRIVING ME CRAZY AND I DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE THIS RUMOR 😭😭
when you basically love Knuckle Puck and Real Friends and they give you this bb <3
Joseph Patrick Taylor (1908-1976), casino-operator and gambler, was born on 24 November 1908 in Sydney, son of native-born parents Edmund Barton Taylor, hotel cellarman, and his wife Norah Catherine, née Killalea. A 'magnificent, if unflamboyant, gambler at cards, horses or greyhounds', Taylor lived by his belief that 'money is nothing but betting ammunition, and it's not worth having if you can't get the pleasure of giving it to your friends'. He owned racehorses and served on the committee of City Tattersall's Club for more than ten years. In 1962 he had his most famous win when his horse Birthday Card won the Sydney Turf Club's Golden Slipper Stakes. He gave away most of his winnings and lost the rest on another of his horses which ran last in the last race of the day. Bill Waterhouse, the bookmaker, said that Taylor was 'one of the few men in the world who completely doesn't give a damn about money'. Nicknamed 'The Boss', Taylor was well known to many people, including the radio personality Jack Davey, the State premier (Sir Robert) Askin and the newspaper publisher Ezra Norton. He also associated with major illegal gambling operators, among them Perce Galea, and with more notorious individuals, such as Frederick Charles Anderson and Len McPherson. Police spasmodically raided Thommo's, but many suspected that the raids were staged. In the late 1960s, while Askin was premier and Norman Allan his police commissioner, Sydney's gambling clubs were transformed into fully-fledged casinos. #boormanlawyers #sydneyunderworld #joetaylor #sydneyhistory #kingscrosssydney #truecrime #whengangstershadstyle #criminalminds #gambling #sydneycrime #australiangangsters #gangsters #organisedcrime #hoodoos #australianhistory #nightclubking (at Sydney, Australia) https://www.instagram.com/p/CMBhPBRAg5L/?igshid=egt1hr09cix0
All good things come to an end
My friends, it has been an honor sharing this journey with you all. I’ll go ahead and get into our last full week, but get ready for those sentimental words of wisdom at the end.
I believe my last blog post left off with departure to Bloemfontein for the South Africa Institute of Physics (SAIP) conference. As advisor Mike described it, this is where everyone gives themselves a little pat on the back for their work and you hear lots of boring speeches, but it truly was more than that—Mike likes to exaggerate! The week was filled with good food, interesting talks, supporting our student resident friends on their presentations, a gala dinner with some fresh African tunes, and much more. Oh and watching the World Cup, of course.
Monday was mostly travel, so Tuesday is where I’ll start with the action: after some morning inspiration with Mike’s presentation, our crew readied ourselves for the annual poster review session. Not gonna lie, many of us secretly hoped our posters looked boring enough that no one would stop to ask us questions. But as the picture below suggests, I ended up enjoying myself:
Zama and I are having too much fun (Photo cred: Chris Thaganyana)
I sort of got into a rhythm of explaining the poster background info and results as people approached, and then I was able to answer questions pertaining to my research quite well! Knowing that I can have a conversation with experts in the field (ionospheric science) and having them be impressed with the work and answers I gave was a great feeling. Never really been on that side of a poster session before, but it's super satisfying to explain what you've accomplished.
Wednesday was the long awaited physics bowl, and let’s just say that we are undergraduates in engineering, not masters/PhD students in the hard sciences like our competitors... HOWEVER, we rocked the best-dressed category, even though our attire was as far away from “Game of Thrones” as possible.
Rush Triangle (Photo Cred: Abby Huff)
Thursday was a fun one as well. While Kit and Kyle taxi-ranked to the nearby country of Lesotho, I journeyed with Mike Kosch, Ed, and Lerato (a postdoc researcher) to the Big Hole in Kimberley, Northern Cape. What is the Big Hole, you may ask? One of the 2 largest hand-excavated holes in the world.
Photos can’t do it justice, but it is huge. Courtesy of The Big Hole FB page.
Diamond mining was a huge colonial activity in South Africa once they were discovered, exacerbated by Cecil Rhodes’ quest for money, land, and influence.
Over 5000 lbs of diamonds came out of this mine. Kimberlite (the igneous rock excavated diamond typically comes from) is named after this mining town.
Very interesting history of the mine, paired with a replica of Kimberley’s historic mining town (some buildings authentic) and even an underground mining shaft exhibit.
We then stopped for one last local street-food health monstrosity of the trip: kota, an open-faced sandwich loaf filled with various meats and atchar (pickled mango & chili).
I swear, I actually love vegetables.
Friday was the highly-anticipated Gala dinner. Got all snazzy one more time and set off for the event:
(Photo cred: Tsige Atilaw)
Food was nice, but the most memorable times of the night were seeing our South African student-res friends go bonkers for Soweto club music. Once again, I am ashamed of my dancing skills...
After the return from Bloemfontein, some of us managed to wake up for church on Sunday to join one of our mentors, Pierre (standing next to me on far right above). Him and I got to know each other pretty well at SAIP, and we even went out for a run with Zama one morning. Anyway, church! I helped make some BREWED coffee with Pierre and then we got to enjoy this lively, upbeat service with a good amount of live music.
Later that night, we were all invited to Pierre’s really nice, thatched roof home for a lovely soup supper.
So precious.
Afterwards, we had a fun little board game session. Though about halfway through the night, we discovered something lurking in the bathroom...
Heebie-jeebies! (Rain spider video cred: Kyle Webster)
Monday was my last day to wrap things up in the office and say goodbye to Zama before she left for the UK. The state of the project looks good, and I will continue to help her analyze data from European ionosondes for a future paper. Gives me something to do the rest of the summer—I’m looking forward to it!
That night we finally hosted our huge braai (South African barbecue) with all the other student residents, Mike, and Pierre. I had lots of fun tending the fire, prepping the meats, and just chatting with everyone. Oh and watching the World Cup, of course.
Photo credits: Eva Gnegy
Tuesday was primarily stuffing clothes into my bag, and scrambling to figure out a shark diving alternative once our original session was “cancelled” due to weather. Though it all worked out, and Kyle, Ed, and I made the trek on our final morning: we weren’t disappointed.
Rawrr? (Photo cred: Ed Lopez)
In total, we saw 5 great white sharks (2 absolute monsters over 4 meters and super girthy). The best view of the sharks came from above, but dipping down in the cage was exhilarating. You can’t really see anything while down in the cage with your head above water. So when the operators start yelling “down” and you dunk yourself, it’s always a total surprise how big the shark is and how it’s approaching (charging straight towards the cage or just meandering across, showing off it’s beastly bod). Tribute to Kyle for embracing the sea-sickness too, what a stud.
Finally that night, we had to say goodbye to our South African colleagues before departure to the Cape Town airport:
What a crew (Photo cred: Mike Kosch)
At the airport, Kyle read us back a touching poem (he’s single, ladies) about our trip as well as some classic, no-context quotes from the trip. Finally, we had our hugs and split ways in Amsterdam.
Now folks, we’ve reached our closing messages of the blog. Friends, thank you very much for supporting me on this trip by reading my blog and wishing me travel safety—it came in handy a couple times!
Thank you so much, Mark, CLaSP, and IPE, for providing this opportunity for me to explore the world and discover what research is all about. I really can’t express my gratitude enough for giving students this chance to test our boundaries, see another culture, and do good academic work along the way. Mark, it was a pleasure getting to know you on the Sutherland trip, and I’m in awe of how much you know about the world.
Zama and Mike, holy smokes you are fun people. Our group was so impressed with you guys going out of your way to give us cool experiences while in the country. Similar to Mark, I was blown away with how knowledgeable you were and I really enjoyed all our chats! Really looking forward to keeping in touch with both of you.
Probably starting to bore you all a bit, but Eva, Gabby, Abby, Kit, Ed, and Kyle, thanks for being such fun friends throughout the trip. We were a very adventurous group, and it was a blessing that we were able to do so much together. I apologize for pushing for certain activities fairly hard and being an ultra-organizer, but I’ve learned a lot about myself regarding just going-with-the-flow! Looking forward to continuing our relationships next year and keeping our GroupMe/Snapchats active this summer.
Photo Cred: Kit Ng
Keep it classy, friends, wish you all the best!
Joe Taylor
Mechanical Engineering
Research at South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa
Cape to Cairo (or that direction, anyway)
Wrapped up another busy and exciting weekend here in South Africa. I can finally say the travel is getting to me a bit—maybe I’m sounding old, but being a planner and being a tourist (at the same time) can be quite exhausting!
No complaints in the slightest, let’s get to the action: Last work-week consisted of consolidating all of our data into the posters I spoke of in the previous blog post. This is what all our research has led up to, and I spent most of my days verifying data and ensuring I was “seeing” the same trends that Prof. Moldwin (faculty advisor) and Dr. Zama Katamzi-Joseph (my mentor) were seeing. For the first time in this project, I really had to consult some reference papers to compare my conclusions with their own—let me just say I learned a lot of new words this past week.
PDF link of research poster if you’re interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15sMoaC21rmoldV7xG0l7yc0PP7KPhjV2/view?usp=sharing
In the end, everything worked out really well and I believe both Mark, Zama, and Mike Kosch were all pleased with my work after a few edits. I certainly was happy with it also.
After squeezing all our posters in a plastic tube, we departed to the hub of the Western Cape: Cape Town. Friday was a beautiful day, and we rolled into our hostel ready to start the exploration. Our group split up a bit, with some leaving for an escape room, one for a museum, and my group headed for Lions Head. Holy smokes, what a hike—more of a climb really. We scrambled over wet/sandy rocks, chains, staples, and a couple ladders to reach the 669-meter peak. The mystic fog made us feel like some famed venturer like Odysseus ascending to an Oracle (been a while since Greek Sport, probably botching the story).
Spooky.
So much more physical work than we expected, but the journey was absolutely worth it. The 360° view of the city, ocean, and Table Mountain was mostly shadowed in clouds, but the coverage broke a few times for us to take in the beauty.
No clue who these people are, but it’s aesthetic.
I wasn’t on that rock in the background, Grandma (Estes Park, CO reference)
”Walking down is going to be fun” - Abby On Friday, I also had to start my little food adventure for the weekend. I trekked from the Waterfront after our group’s Diamond Museum tour to the Eastern Food Bazaar for the unique South African dish of Bunny Chow: roasted baby rabbit delivered on a spit to the table... Just kidding, it's a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with a nicely spiced, Cape Malay/Indian curry. No bunny murder involved.
Looks more like this...
Saturday was set aside for some nice walking tours of the city. I visited several notable sites in Cape Town that played a role in Apartheid's grasp on the country and the fight to end it: a courthouse where some random white dudes decided what race you were, a beautiful Anglican church (St. George’s Cathedral) that allowed all races to intermingle, the market square which was drenched in purple die during 1989′s “Purple Rain” protest, the boarders of the once ghetto-like District 6, and the balcony of city hall where Mandela addressed a crowd of thousands after finishing his prison sentence in 1990. The tour was an incredible way of seeing the city, getting some exercise, and learning about its rich history.
After trying a Gatsby for lunch (another local cuisine—words can't do it justice, see picture below), I met back up with the group for a nice Taste of Cape Town walking tour.
The most American thing I’ve seen for awhile. Sunday was the highly anticipated/dreaded Table Mountain hike. We were super lucky to meet up with other SANSA friends who weren't going to let us accidentally fall off the mountain (thank you Zama!). We took a very steep path up and ascended to the 1,060-meter peak. All of us who started were able to finish. No broken legs going down either, just sore shins and wet socks.
Only Thomas could manage a smile out of us (Photo Cred: Thomas Chauque)
At the top (Photo cred: Thomas Chauque)
After a little leftover-based lunch (as you can imagine from the above food picture), I did one last historic walking tour of the city. This one involved an exploration of the parliament building, the largest open market near the Castle of Good Hope (a military fortress used to regulate the port), the Company Garden, and various monuments and statues.
At one of the statues of Jan Smuts (the 2nd prime minister who was one of Churchill’s right-hand men during WWII), I found it very interesting that the tour guides expressed completely different views. The historic guide discussed how smart he was (one of only about 10 people who Einstein said truly understood his theory of relativity). On the contrary, the Apartheid guide cited him as a supporter of fascism. Same tour company, just a burley, bearded man from Durban versus a blue-haired woman from Cape Town. Politics are everywhere!
Entrance of the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town
Finally on Monday morning, all we managed to accomplish was waking up and reaching the airport for departure to Bloemfontein. I’m sure you’ll hear plenty about that next week!
Enjoy the weekend, everyone!
Joe Taylor
Mechanical Engineering
Research at South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa
Let’s see, what now?
Kinda hard to follow up last week’s safari, desert, and astronomical observational center, but here goes nothing!
This week has been a little bland by our standards so far, but that’s okay. We made it back from Sutherland safely, and for the most part had a relatively lazy weekend.
Saturday was spent checking out a nice little market called Hermanuspietersfontein at the beginning of the famous Hemel en Aarde Road (Heaven and Earth—pretty catchy). Here, I had a very confusing conversation with a food vendor trying to choose an elk meat samosa instead of beef. After about a minute of confusion, I realized that the word “elk” is Afrikaans for “each”. Dang, my American was showing...
The most popular attraction (Photo credits: Eva Gnegy)
After that little escapade, we made our way west to the botanical gardens in Kleinmond. With heavy rains the day before, we saw some chaos as we trekked the Leopard's Kloof path to a large waterfall. Each way, we were forced to get our feet wet crossing the stream, leading to unexpectedly slippery shoes and moist socks. Kyle, being Kyle, managed to crack his phone screen and Kit lost a single tennis shoe down the waterfall. I can still see that shoe going straight up and *PLOOP* into the rushing water—instead of the plan for hurling it towards me and into my hands. I desperately wish I had a picture of him walking one-shoe’d down the mountain, but I felt too bad at the time 😞
The infamous waterfall (Photo Cred: Kyle Webster)
Anyway, once we made it back down, it was wild baboon city. From mere feet away, Ed and I witnessed the cutest little monkey dance by a baboon child after getting off its mother’s back:
Dang, that’s cute (Video Credit: Ed Lopez)
While we entertained ourselves there, the rest of the crew managed to capture this insane video of a momma and her li’l one stealing birthday cake from a German tourist.
They learn to be naughty from a young age (Video Cred: Eva Gnegy)
Sunday was super windy, but we made the most of it with our favorite bean bag theater and Incredibles 2. A wee-bit different than Deadpool, but just as amazing (maybe more!).
This work week has been focused on putting together our posters for the South Africa Institute of Physics (SAIP) conference next week. The results of my research appear to be consistent with what my mentor expected, so that’s certainly good! No revolutionary discoveries, sadly, but for the most part, I got a very solid understanding of space weather and atmospheric trends.
First draft of the poster is above, though I still need to make a few corrections before the conference.
This coming weekend, we will finally get to experience the city we’ve all been waiting for: Cape Town! The hostel is booked, and now we eagerly await a Table Mountain hike, Lion’s Peak, a renowned escape room, city walking tours, a comedy club, neat restaurants, and likely other unexpected activities (as always 😊)
Cheers, everyone!
Joe Taylor
Mechanical Engineering
Research at South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa
Checking-off the Bucket List
Lions, eland, elephant, oh my! Well, folks, we survived our Addo Elephant Park adventure. Complete with a bus passenger seizure, suspicious Port Elizabeth rail stations, and bathroom-adjacent red eye seats, the journey was not one for the faint of heart. However, it was 100% worth it. Loads of elephants, herd animals (Red Hartebeest were my favorite), “Pumbas” as our safari guide called them, and 4 lions were some of the highlights.
Red Hartebeest (Photo Cred: Kit Ng)
Meow (Photo Cred: Abby Huff)
Those are elephants (Photo Cred: Abby Huff)
Not sure what “Alight” means, but oh well! (Photo Cred: Ed Lopez)
I can’t recommend a safari enough if you ever make it to sub-Sahara Africa. Just being surrounded by animals in their true nature and hearing them just go about their business (in the figurative sense too—I won’t show that picture), was really a surreal experience.
Here’s a quick video of one of my favorite moments. Our guide stumbled upon a small herd of elephants crossing the road. As they approached, he shut off the engine and the elephants basically engulfed our vehicle.
*Jurassic Park theme plays in head* (Video Cred: Eva Gnegy)
Research for the week has been good so far. I met up with Professor Moldwin and my mentor Zama about the layout of our SAIP conference posters. There’s still a little data I would love to include once I update some Matlab code, but other than that, I’m confident about completing the poster in time. It’s crazy how fast everything is wrapping up: our group is getting kinda sad about that ☹
As you might remember, our next visit was off to the semi-desert Karoo in Sutherland, Northern Cape. Quite the different climate and terrain up here as I write. We had a beautiful tour last night of the Southern Hermisphere skies, with a guided description for what constellations, globular clusters, nebulae, etc. we were seeing. Of course, Prof Moldwin was super knowledgeable as well, and it was fantastic experiencing that with him.
Milky Way was pretty visible last night! (Photo Cred: Abby Huff)
Then this morning, we were hit quite hard by rain and wind (80 km/h)—finally a proper breeze according to Mike Kosch! Fortunately, we missed the brunt of it on our visitor center and South Africa Large Telescope (SALT) tour: largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere with a 10-meter primary mirror array. Absolutely massive, and we got to see it rotate while we were inside on it’s air-pressure guide rails.
Jazz hands! (featuring famed photographer Abby Huff)
Probably enough chat with you all for this week. Wish us luck as we brave the wind and rain on our return tomorrow!
Joe Taylor
Mechanical Engineering
Research at South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa
Bonus elephant calf (Abby Huff):
A Little South
Making the most of the country, I’d say! I’m currently en-route of a 10-hour bus ride from Caledon to Port Elizabeth (pretty much west coast to east coast). My friends and I are going on a safari expedition in Addo Elephant Park, though there are more than just elephants. Hopefully we have better luck than the shark dive!
This week’s research has been productive yet again. My mentor Zama had me look at seasonal variation in the double peak occurrences, followed by seasonal variation in the sporadic E-layer that I mentioned last week. The data for the most part appears how we expect, though occurrences in double peaks happen much more often in the winter during solar maximum (when solar activity like flares/sunspots is at it’s highest in a solar cycle). Solar cycles last about 11 years. Keep in mind, this info is pretty new to me too: just sharing if you’re interested! Don’t worry, you can just skim for pretty pictures below too 😊
Saturday was going to be a nice long hike in a nearby botanical garden, but wind and a little rain changed our plans. Instead, we discovered an awesome market with lots of food vendors, handmade clothing, and random curios. Kyle and I had to try the kudu shawarma at one of the vendors. You don’t see those words too often in Nebraska...
Pretty similar in taste to deer back home (kudu is an antelope FYI), and you can’t go wrong with shawarma: very delicious. I’m not much of a “oh, look what I ate for dinner” kind of social media user, but my mother gave me very specific instructions for this trip—can’t disappoint 😬
That evening, we then we saw Solo in our local bean-bag theater. I’m very serious when it comes to Disney not screwing up my Star Wars universe (they’ve done well so far for the most part), so I was hesitant about getting distracted by small children populating the beanbags. Fortunately, most of the audience was full-grown men with the same mindset as myself. Phew!
Sunday morning, Mike Kosch blessed us with yet another adventure this past weekend. We journeyed to a really neat cave recessed in the cliffs that’s only accessible at low tide. Therefore, it had some new critters I hadn’t seen yet, like this crab.
Photo credit: Kit Ng
Oh yeah, my parents also encouraged me to shave my face, so I reluctantly did that on Tuesday. Losing 5 years of my manhood marked my low-point of the week, but again can’t disappoint my mother...
Following that, we journeyed to Cape Agulhas, which is the southernmost point of the African continent. It also marks the boundary between the Indian and Atlantic Ocean—though I didn’t see any guard towers or boarder walls. I’ve tripled the number of oceans I’ve seen in the past month, so that’s pretty neat.
To cap the Sunday trip off, we ventured off road in Mike’s Land Rover to some dunes along the coast. Not exactly what I expected as “dunes,” but he did try to destroy his vehicle nonetheless. Holy smokes, that man is incredible.
The Land Rover was previously white. Photo credit: Kit Ng
During the past few days, we also had some excitement. Our faculty advisor Mark Moldwin arrived, so we have had good chats about the status of our projects and a lovely dinner. He’s heading to Sutherland, South Africa’s observatory with Mike and our group this coming Wednesday. Looking forward to telling you about our visit there next week.
Check back soon for safari updates!
Joe Taylor
Mechanical Engineering
Research at South African National Space Agency (SANSA) in Hermanus, South Africa