Call it a day!

So let me do this unusual thing of blogging in English that is not my native language and will make my post not as nice and smooth as it deserves.

Today was a great day! After a week of really hard work we were able to upgrade our beloved telescope adding a third arm made of three new large area sensors completely digital. Since last Monday we did a hugh improvement and now we can see tracks crossing all 9 planes. I believe that for "normal" people this doens't mean too much, but you should have seen our faces while looking at the online monitor for the correlation plots to get filled. When we saw that faint straight line crossing diagonally all the planes we were all so happy that all the strain of these days vanished immediately. This is the first step toward the final upgrade that will take place in autumn and will consist in the replacement of the six old, analog and slow sensors with 6 brand new, twice as large and ten times faster detectors.

Today was also a sad day, unfortunately. Tomorrow I'll be leaving CERN and the test beam crew to go back home (this is the nice part ;-), but this means that today was my last day at an EUDET testbeam. My friends - they are definitely more than colleagues - decided to celebrate this event (that accidentally occurred in coincidence with the successful telescope upgrade) with a delicious cake, a bottle of coke (we're not allowed to drink alcohol in lab) and a present for me. They gave me a CERN "geek" T-shirt and a Swiss army knife I will for sure need in my new job.

EUDET was a fantastic project. I was lucky enough to join it when I was turning from a kid to a grown-up, in my professional life, of course. They gave me some work to do and even more important the gave me the responsibility for that. I'll never forget for the rest of my life when at the first test beam we had, when we were about to start taking data, the boss asked me: how much statistics do we need for this experiment? I was astonished! Not much because of the question, but because she was asking that question to me and the other were all looking at me for an answer. Since then, quite a long time has passed and now I'm not surprised any more when somebody asks me an advice or an explanation, but that one was the first time ever I was really feeling an important part of the team. I always try to do my best and I think I did something useful in the last almost four years, but thanks goes to my colleagues who believed in me.

EUDET was a fantastic team. As I said, I can't call my team-mates colleagues. Spending all this time, day and night together, made us good friends. If it was a pleasure working with them, it was even better enjoining a beer together. I will miss them very much. Among all, there a couple of people I will miss most. First of all the boss: Ingrid knows how to speak to people, she can be pushy but at the same time she will never ask for something that is not within your reach. Angelo, my living technical encyclopedia: everything you need to know, he always has the right answer. Daniel, a quick-witted person who likes good food and wine and can be a good friend. Emlyn is writing code the same way Shakespeare would write a sonetto. And then Livio, Philipp, Marie and Joerg: it was a pleasure and a unique opportunity working with them.

So what else should I say: call it a day!

Ps. Are you wondering why there is a lizard picture in this post? Yes? So try to guess...