happy reunion

I’ve spent a wonderful two days at Hyytiälä, a research center north of Tampere, together with both current and former colleagues. It was great to see the people from Shimmi group again and just made me realize how much I miss them!!
A full program of lectures, a poster session and food food food. Here we are at [...]

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Det är så roligt att läsa tidningen

När man far utomlands och vill uppleva en annan kultur brukar jag:
1. Fara till en begravningsplats. Detta är väldigt informativt, tro mig!
2. Läsa en dagstidning. Tyvärr inte så lyckat om man är i säg Frankrike och inte kan franska – men om man råkar vara i Sverige, Irland eller Hongkong så kan det vara mycket trevligt.
Om man [...]

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water

             

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mini vacation

This Friday I’ll take the boat to Sweden.
And I sure need the break. Today was another of those days where you wonder why you went to work at all. Everything failed and I have to do the same PCR for what feels like the trillionth time… After finishing my PhD I’ll have the patience to [...]

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L’appartement

During midsummer I had the pleasure of spending some time with my friend Hanna at her amazing apartment. And I had no trouble sleeping over – her bedroom is bigger than my place (including the bathroom and sauna). And besides two bedrooms, a livingroom, a kitchen and two (half) bathrooms she and her roommate also have one [...]

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Oh how I love the Internet!

I thought I was alone in my quest for the perfect toilet but there are apparently some more people rating their travel experiences according to the cleanliness of the country’s public loos. Here is the lovely site to which I’m now going to add a lot of toilets in the Helsinki area  
http://thebathroomdiaries.com/

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Toilet ratings

I forgot to rate Estonia according to my system of public toilet availability.
Here is the result you’ve all been waiting for, drum roll please: I give Estonia a 9 out of 10 possible.
This is partly because they keep their cafés open until late at night but mostly because the bars don’t have doormen. This means [...]

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Visiting neighbours (part two)

Stupid wordpress does not want you to upload that many pictures to one post (or it might be that my computer is too slow) so I have to continue my previous post here. If you want to read the beginning just scroll down.
…we were picking mushrooms.
 

We found quite a lot of chantarelles, but not this many. [...]

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Visiting neighbours

Last weekend I visited a place where they greet each other with a happy “ciao”. You guessed it; Estonia.
My dear colleague Evely has gone back to Tartu university to finish her master’s degree, so I, Shinya and Jenni took this as an opportunity to go and visit our neighbouring country. When you get to stay [...]

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Helsinki in two days

Antonette came to visit me this weekend  I got to know her in Hongkong, where we took Cantonese class together. Now she’s working in London and is, at the same time, trying to travel all around Europe to see her old friends.
When she had left I got flash backs from when my cousin Hanna came to visit me [...]

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Like a tourist in my own country

Sara, a girl I met in Hongkong, spent a weekend at my place during her “Baltic tour”. It gave me an opportunity to do all the touristy stuff I’d otherwise never take the time to do.
The weather might not have been the best but we still managed to see a lot of the city.
Here we [...]

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This weekend: David & Elia and a little bit of Brussels

This weekend I did something very unlike me and went off on a spontaneous weekend trip to the beautiful Brussels. Mostly to meet the even more beautiful couple, David and Elvira, who were getting married.
David is a friend from my time in Hong Kong where we took Beginner’s Cantonese together. Fluent in Mandarin as he [...]

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