What if there were no weather delays at airports?

The second day of work was similar to the second half of day one, which means that I continued reading up on the current state of augmented reality displays and their respective technology. It's really interesting, but it's hard to read technical papers all day. One of the goals of the bigger picture of this project (i.e. this is not my responsibility, and maybe not even my company's) is to develop technology that will allow airports to function as efficiently in low visibility situations as they do in high visibility situations. Imagine: no more weather delays! How great would that be?

I'm starting to learn the names of people at work, and we're all working on me practicing Spanish. I've decided that when we're at lunch or just talking, I'll try to speak in Spanish, and (at least for now) when we're talking about work, I'll stick to English to make sure I understand. So far, all of my research is in English. Here's a picture of something you see as you walk into our building, that was a project that they were working on before I got there. It's a chair that is somehow related to microgravity:

By the way, alarm clock in Spanish is "despertador". As best as I can tell, it's the same in Catalan, too.

I have a cell phone now, thanks to my boss, and I even put some credit on it, so I'm all set to call someone. I just don't really have anyone to call :)

This evening was my first venture into city exploration. My friend from school who also has an internship here arrived yesterday, so I went to see her tonight. I got lost walking to her apartment (big surprise), but I eventually made it, and now I know a few more streets around here. We walked around for a while, halfheartedly trying to buy some shoes, but we didn't find anything we liked. People in Barcelona don't wear flip flops, apparently, so I need to buy some more sandals that I can wear here. Unfortunately, the cheap ones are ugly and uncomfortable, and so far I haven't found any more expensive ones that seemed worth the money. Luckily, there are so many stores that it's easy to keep looking. That's one thing about Barcelona that's different from Boston: the stores of every type are much smaller, but there are many more of them.

Finally we found a place for dinner, which is more like lunch (the big meal of the day here is lunch, and dinner is small). We got tapas (cheese, bread with tomatoes, potatoes with garlic stuff, and my friend got ham but I didn't eat that) and as we were finishing eating, the guys at the table next to us struck up some conversation. Well, one of them did, and the other was pretty quiet. The one that talked seemed to want to practice his English, and he was very chatty. He was probably hitting on us, but in a friendly sort of way. We talked for a while, then paid our bill and went on our way, but not before he could give us his phone number and offer to take us on a tour of the Sagrada Familia. I'm sure he knows we won't call him (he's nearly twice our age), but I got to practice my Spanish and he taught me how to say goodbye in Catalan. All in all, a fun experience.

I'll leave you with a nice picture of something I walk past on the way to and from the train at work:
Nice, huh?