KITP is very quiet during weekends. I am in my office, but no sound in KITP. Normally in weekdays, I can hear many discussions here and there, but in weekends, silence has come. I bought my lunch at university center, and is waiting for my collaborator to come.
In Japan, it is not like this in universities. In weekends, I can find many people working, not only grad students but also professors: they are so busy with lectures and administrative duties during weekdays, so they just enjoy physics in the weekends. Here the situation seems to be a little different.
Any physicists needs discussions, and also silence like this. It is very important to develop one’s own ideas gradually. And also for calculations. Some of my friends told me that they listen to music when they calculate, but I cannot believe it. I tried it many times, but it ended up with just finding that the music came to the end before I noticed it.
This morning, here at KITP, I enjoyed the silence for thinking about various possibilities for developping my little idea. I walked in the office, I read some papers, and found out that one idea didn’t work easily, and some other ideas were already studied 3 years ago by other physicists. Good papers. It was a joyful moment to explore physics like this!
Just outside of the window is the beautiful sea. Quiet offices plus insightful discussions, plus wonderful seminars, all of these are combined here organiclly into a single institute — that is one of the perfect styles of physics institutes. Blackboards: everywhere. Anywhere one can start discussions. And seminars. The seminar by Joe Polchinski was beautiful. Next week, I am going to provide a seminar here and at Caltech. I know I cannot go that high, but I will try my best. Rather than going to deliver technical physics, I will try to express my enthusiasm and excitement which I felt during the collaboration. Can a Japanese who is not good at exposing feelings do that? Well, let’s see how it goes.
