HUMANS OF ŌTAUTAHI
Antonio PHILLIPSTOWN
“I’ve lived in Christchurch for three years; I came here for work. I came to work as a postdoctoral fellow for the University of Canterbury. “I’m originally from Progreso, Yucatan, Mexico, but I have been to several places already. I lived in the UK, in Glasgow, for four and a half years, and while I was there, I travelled and stayed for months – for example – in Spain, Japan, and Hong Kong. “We always joke that we have two seasons back at home, ‘hot’ and ‘hotter’. You deal with ‘hotter’ with a lot of sweat. You open the doors of the car, and you feel a sauna inside. Some people here tell me like ‘oh, it’s 25 degrees, it’s so hot!’, but to me, that’s winter. “I enjoy my work in astrophysics and astronomy. Originally I was trained as
an engineer, and then physics, and then physical astronomy. “I wake up; I go to work. I like routine, and I like to know I’m being useful for something. “My job is to search for extrasolar planets, yes, planets outside of the solar system. I had an interview last year with Radio NZ because we found a planet with similar conditions to Earth. People say, ‘that’s cool; why did you never mention it?’ But it’s just my job – it has become something common for me. You forget other people get interested. “In October, I always do a horror movie marathon, so every day, I watch a horror movie. Every year, different movies. So that’s 31 horror movies a year. I have enjoyed horror movies since I was a child.”
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