Earthquake Simulator

When did this actually happen? Sunday, November 8, 2015

Some of you may know that my research mainly revolves around earthquakes. As it so happens, there is an earthquake simulator ETH. In November (when I was already working at ETH for over 3 months) I still hadn’t visited the earthquake simulator. One of my office mates L. had the same issue (and he already started in February!). Thus, it was time for us to visit it!

However, you can only visit it during a guided tour of the museum in German. I actually understood most of the guided tour (*yay*), but L. not so much. Oh well.

When we finally arrived in the earthquake simulator (which is decorated as a typical living room), we were very excited!


L. is very excited!

It was a lot of fun, even though the earthquake simulator just felt as if you were sitting in a train and changing tracks.

Sinterklaas celebrations in the office!

When did this actually happen? November 2015

Sinterklaas is a children’s feast in the Netherlands. I love Sinterklaas. As I couldn’t celebrate it in the Netherlands this year (and couldn’t expect any presents in my shoe), I decided that I would introduce my office mates to the phenomenon of Sinterklaas.

First thing that went wrong was that none of my office mates had brought a spare shoe to the office on Friday. The idea was that they would set out their shoe on Friday evening every week (until Sinterklaas was gone from the Netherlands again) and then (hopefully) find something in it on Monday. Luckily, R. had his running shoes with him and C. quickly made a shoe with some staples and paper. L. however didn’t know what to do. So, C. and I (both Dutch) decided to give him the classic colouring picture of a clog, which you can then cut out and fold into a shoe. L. took this very seriously and spent a good 20 minutes on colouring in his shoe :)


Colouring in the clog


Finished!


Empty shoes on Friday evening (from left to right: shoe of L., C., me, R.). Will Sinterklaas stop by in Switzerland with some candy?


Yes he did! And he made poems for everyone as well!


More candy in the shoes on a different day!

After Sinterklaas left on December 6, he actually left me with a lot of chocolate letters for everyone in my office and my whole research group. Now everyone loves Sinterklaas!