Two months after I set foot in the US for grad studies, I was taken uphill to LBNL to this funny dome-shaped place called ALS by my then-graduate-student mentors Ming Yi and Jiun-Haw Chu. I was shown a workstation (a beamline!) decorated with a wall of screens like it had been taken right out of a sci-fi movie scene, and the host at this station was known by the name Andreas Scholl. For me the name didn't ring any bell, and it was just so exciting to operate like a rocket scientist - officially for a 24-hour mission throughout the night!

At 3 a.m. in the morning, when Ming was staring at the nematic stripes on the screen, and when I was trying really hard to not dose off in my self-perceived role as a wingman, a little rattling sound under the desk woke me up. "Ming, do you hear that?" I said something like that. "Hmm? Not sure." Clearly, Ming was laser focused on the electron image of the iron based superconductor. My mind was of course instantly caffeinated by the new found pastime, and I started looking between the jungle of cables beneath the operation deck.

Then, right under the black-white stripy display of 1D domains of our sample, I saw two tiny glittering eyes. They are, if anything, as curious as ours. For a moment, I couldn't believe that the appeal of science at ALS has outreached this far. I mean, THIS FAR.

"Ming, I think we have company." I couldn't contain my excitement. It took some effort to divert Ming's train of thought away from the experiment, but as soon as she realized the source of the hustle, she jumped back with the intensity of an ejection seat and the pitch of an Aztec death whistle. We've got an advanced x-ray rat at the Advanced Light Source co-opting our night shift on advanced superconductivity science!

That sure woke all of us up, and resharpened our drowsy eyes and slowing minds in the wee hours of the night. Ever since then, whenever I saw the discreet pink mouse traps at the corners of the ALS rest areas, my face would don a little smile.

Many years later, Ming went on to be known by the field for her many seminal works on iron based superconductors, many done at the ALS and SSRL. She became elected as the ALS UEC chair in 2022 at the height of COVID-19. And in a serendipitous coincidence of fate, I came to join the UEC to help organize the user meeting one year later.

We never ended up publishing that set of data, maybe because researchers were moving so quickly on that topic or maybe not. But for very long time, both Ming and I would do everything to dodge eye contact with Andreas' smiling face when we cross each other in the ALS hallway. Well, very soon, Andreas Scholl became the deputy of Science of ALS, and we as UEC members had to talk to him on many cool things regularly. He seemed nice and mellow and happy everytime.

We both secretly hope that Andreas had forgotten that beamtime. However, when the sun finally shined through the tiny window on that dewy morning in the fall of 2010, my first and most memorable ALS experience had been forever engraved in my memory.