Observations From a New Point of View

Since she’s gotten back, Pam has said that she’s been seeing the world (including our home) a little differently lately:

1. While the coastal mountains may look big to us (and they certainly loom large enough that I use them to orient myself whenever walking downtown), the Andes Mountains in the south of Chile and Argentina make them look small.
2. The icebergs she saw were ‘roughly the same size as the container ships’ we saw yesterday in English bay. Bear in mind that this is just the visible tip of the object. 7/8 of it is underwater.
3. While it’s been pretty much dismissed as a myth, Pam did notice that the water going down the drain where she was always went down clockwise. We did a little test here and although the bathtub goes counterclockwise, the guest bathroom sink went clockwise as well. I stand by the opinion that the Coriolis effect, while clearly having an effect on large-scale weather patterns (like hurricanes), does not produce enough force on small localized phenomenon in order to lead to a consistent direction either way when things go down the drain. Instead, in these cases, it’s more a function of the size, shape, and angle of the bowl or tub.
4. When they left South America, the captain of the Pam’s ship said: “Say good-bye to trees for 10 days”. Indeed, there wasn’t a single tree on any of the photos Pam took on any of the islands or the coast of Antarctica. A landscape without a tree is something I’d have a hard time getting used to.
5. Moss (which was found on these islands) always grew on the South side of rocks (as opposed to the North side here).
6. Birds in Antarctica (including the Penguins, Terns, Albatross and Petrels) were all much larger than the birds we see here. They call the Cormorant (which we sometimes do see here) a Blue-Eyed Shag.
7. Even on a cloudy or rainy day, you need sunglasses in Antarctica because the reflecting snow is so bright.

I’m sure she’ll think of others as they strike her.