Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, I am new here!
I am Alexandrine, 33yo, living in Oxford. Occupations are Electrical design engineer in the research for nuclear fusion energy and local politician.
I have been diagnosed last year. My special interests are activism to set the world right, video games, and medical stuff.
Still a bit struggling with acceptance, kinda sad to not be able to fit it as I am very aware of my difficulty and it has a toll on my mental health. Working from home has been a blessing but social events on Zoom are a harsh reminder of reality. But that's life I guess.
Anyway, happy to be in touch with whoever want to !
This sounds so familiar. When I'm at home with my partner, I feel like my true self. But as soon as there's social interaction involved with the outside world, all the quirks come out and I suddenly feel very aware of how not normal I am. I hope knowing that you're not alone makes you feel more normal.
When I am alone or with my partner I feel perfectly OK, myself and "normal". But when I am out in the wild and have social contacts, I am reminded of who I am and it makes me sad.
Hi and welcome. I find acceptance is a strange thing. I mentioned it in a different post where I said it comes in highs and lows. Some days you feel like it all makes sense and the next it feels like a prison. Finding people who are on a similar journey helps. Glad to have you here.
He's probably talking about a Tesla Coil - lots of high voltage sparks - very steam-punk!
The stuff I was playing with uses vacuums better than space and magnetic fields larger than the Earth's and Mega-Watt power supplies. Proper Big Boy's Toys!
I think he may have tried to make a mini one of those at some point. He asked me to take him to b&q and Maplins so he could buy a load of stuff that sounds vaguely similar to springs / coils / accelerator - I'll ask him and get back to you
Nice, I'm a CEng too
Then I think we probably know a lot of the same people - I was a CEng for a large radio-pharmacuetical company until 2015 when I took an early retirement package..
NAS71069 said:What's a cyclotron
It's a compact accelerator that uses an expanding spiral principle rather than the big ring (a synchrotron) so the 35-miles of accelerator tube can be coiled into a small space that fits into a single room - with 2-metre thick walls of super-dense concrete.
Yes, I coordinate the electrical work for JET and involved with a few projects to upgrade MASTU
Thank you :)
Hello Alex welcome to the forum.
Ha, no, unfortunately not, but he learned a lot about how to disassemble and reassemble electrical items from our local dump - TVs, dvd players, video recorder, etc And he used a lot of tape i took him to see the Hadron Collider in Geneva, but he was only 8 and they wouldn't let him actually go down to it frustratingly, so we had to satisfy ourselves with the planetarium and the visitors gift shop! Maybe we'll go back one day What's a cyclotron?
Did he succeed? I used to run cyclotrons - if you want to full-on 'mad scientist' stuff, I was surrounded by it all!
That looks impressive...and vaguely resembles something my son built in our garage many years ago He was trying to build a time machine
That must have been a real eye opener glad you've found that out and hope it's helping you make sense of it all now
I visited a few times - I had some colleagues who went to work there for the MAST upgrade a few years ago and another went to work on keeping JET going - just at the point where they were making decisions on its future - tickle it along keeping the dose levels down for the maintenance or thrash it for the data but that would make entry into the toroid much more difficult.
I went all around MAST when it was in bits and stood on top of the big 'bean tin' chamber during the rebuild.
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Oh we could have been colleagues then, nice to meet you
Hello! Your son and I agree then :).
There is a link in my profile that explain all of that (I think I can't post it here)
Well I did what I could, lots of masking, not knowing what was wrong with me. After many struggles and breakdown, I was seen by the GP who gave me meds against OCD + panic attacks.
One day I saw a youtube video explaining autism in women and it clicked. It described my life so I self-referred myself for a diagnosis.
Welcome aboard!
I'm a fusion enthusiast - I was looking to move to the JET and MAST projects a few years ago. I took an early retirement package instead. What are you into?
I was only diagnosed in my early 40s - it's easy to hide in plain sight in the high-tech industries.
Hi Alex, or do you prefer Alexandrine? I'm Natalie, welcome My son thinks nuclear fusion is the way forward, he's 16 and was diagnosed a few years ago. How did you manage with schooling and getting a job? If you don't mind me asking? And why diagnosed so late?