Return to work and a bit about me

The past week was the first week back at work since taking maternity leave. I have a new office, which is spacious with a large comfy couch too! While I was looking forward to starting work again and getting life into a “routine”, of course I couldn’t help thinking how the baby was doing without me…

It was nice to be able to sit in one place without being disturbed. The days were unexpectedly busy as some colleagues and I are trying to finalize some new results – I will post about this project once we do finalize the results. 😉

In this post I thought I should write a bit about my background. I was born in the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, but did not live there for long. My childhood was spent travelling around the Middle East and South Asia. Finally my parents settled in Melbourne, Australia when I was in high school and this is where I call home.

I got my BSc from Monash University. I started out majoring in Maths (I like maths, sometimes I consider going back for further study in pure maths). For the extra elective subjects I chose astronomy along with earth science for a “change”. As part of the astronomy course we had field trips to Mount Stromlo Observatory (MSO). This was my first contact with telescopes. During the summer vacations I got a scholarship to take part in a three month project at MSO. During this project I went to the Siding Spring Observatory (SSO) for an observing run with my supervisor and really enjoyed it. In the office I got to see the life of an astronomer, heard lots of scientific talks and saw the passion for the work they do. This was when my own interest in the night sky and a need for more knowledge developed.

Naturally I went to MSO for my PhD in astronomy. The four years of phd time was mixed with “high” and “low” events. In the first year I got married to my then boyfriend. Then MSO telescopes were destroyed in the Canberra bush fires. The following year my first son was born, and then there was the Asian tsunami….

After my phd I started my first post-doctoral fellowship at ESO, Chile, supporting the operations of the Paranal Observatory. This was a big jump from MSO and SSO telescopes!! The night sky over Paranal is breathtaking and the operations of the Very Large Telescope is amazing. You can read the blogs of my former colleagues Linda and Rivi for more about life in ESO, Chile and Paranal. Just short of 2 years in Chile I found out I was expecting my second child. Since working at Paranal involves regular travel away from home, it was too much of a challenge to work there while looking after a baby and another young child. Therefore I will complete the remaining time of my fellowship at the ESO headquarters in Munich, Germany. I have now been in Munich for ~7 months, the baby is 4 months old and as I said at the start – I am now returning to work again!