Where is Iris now?

I have been neglecting this blog (for like, the 100th time), I know. I'm sorry. Shall I name work as an excuse again? Yeah let's do that..

You see, when you're a PhD at ETH, there is apparently this thing called a 'Proposal Defence'. Before getting into ETH, I had never heard of it, as it is not common in the Netherlands. The proposal defence is one of the two major deadlines during your PhD (the other being the defence of your actual thesis): before the first year is up (but at the end of your first year), you have to present your 'proposal' for the rest of your PhD to the committee. In order to make it appealing, a mere schedule and some vague plans are not enough: you basically have to show everything you have done so far (or generate results very quickly), and give a very detailed plan, including methods, time estimation, etc. This is also one of the most likely stages where you could potentially get fired. After this, you are pretty safe. So: it's a big deal.

Needless to say, when the date for your proposal defence comes nearer and nearer you realise more and more that you actually do not have enough results to fill the 'approximately' 10 pages report. So, you go into panic mode and work. At least, that is what I did. I sacrificed a total of 3 weekends (farewell!) and worked more hours than usual during the week, although I did not work crazy hours: I know I'm not productive when I try that. In the end, I did have a report of 37 pages and some (nice?) results, so I guess it was worth it? In any case, the committee let me pass (after a discussion/question round, which made me sweat a lot. I know they should ask me things, but it was nerve-racking.. )

My proposal defence was July 11, 2016 and I started really working on it (or rather: generating the results) somewhere in May. Busy times.

Unfortunately, these two months of work coincided with a lot of travel (most of them work related), so I was (and still am) a bit knackered.

To get over this, I am going on a (well-deserved) holiday soon to ... *wait for it* ... Japan! Not sure if I'll be completely rested afterwards, but it should be at least very awesome.

Before I will post pictures of Japan though, I wanted to share my recent (work-related) trips with you.

The first trip (which was just for fun, not work) was Tatort Jungfrau during the Pentecost weekend: a detective game in the Swiss Alps (Jungfrau region), where you have to find clues located everywhere in the area. It was a fun way of discovering one of Switzerland's most beautiful scenery.


Snowy landscapes at Kleine Scheidegg


( Click here if you want more pictures )

Next trip I will tell you about is the PhD retreat in the black forest in Germany. Stay tuned!

My blog has been a bit boring lately. The main reason is that I don't post anything. However, that doesn't mean I'm not doing fun stuff and making pictures of those moments. In fact, I have loads of things I still have to write about (mainly from November and December last year), and I will!

To wet your appetite (and to force myself to actually do this at some point), here are the posts you can expect from me soon:

2015
• Update of old post to include pictures of me riding on a camel
• Earthquake simulator
• Sinterklaas celebrations in the office!
• Visit from L. - Day 1: Museum & Christmas market
• Visit from L. - Day 2: Zürich
• Sunset in Zürich
• Christmas markets in Bern!

2016
• Zürich zoo with mom
• Pizol - First time Alpine skiing: The views
• Pizol - First time Alpine skiing: The falling
• Einsiedeln - First time cross-country skiing

After Milan, my mom stayed for a few more days in Zürich with me (to celebrate my birthday!) and then we went to the Netherlands together as I had a meeting there: the seismology group from Zürich (of which I am a part) was meeting with the seismology group in Utrecht (of which I never was officially a part, but I know everyone there anyway :) ).

The meeting was really fun! I got to see a lot of my Utrecht friends again and I got to know everyone from both seismology groups much, much better, which I really, really liked. The 'getting-to-know-each-other' things were facilitated by fun group outings that didn't have anything to do with research. The first thing we did was climbing the Dom Tower in Utrecht. I had never done this when I was still living there, so I was very excited! And it was really lots of fun :)


On top of the Dom!

Other things we did included having lunch (pannenkoekenhuis!), dinner (3-course meal!), and lunch again (2 courses, oh my!).

So then came the glorious day that me and my mother went to the world Expo, which was hosted by Milan this year. We thought it might be nice to experience something like this once, at it is a really unique experience. However, we didn't really think of the fact that a lot of people would attend this world expo. And I really do mean a lot of people.

This lovely sight greeted us in the morning:

We started to reflect a little bit: was this a good idea? Maybe... not?

Definitely not.

We queued for around 20 minutes for the Ireland pavilion (the expo was divided into pavilions of each country. Each pavilion was a seriously huge building. The expo was enormous!), only to discover that it was really boring (It mainly focussed on the fact that there are farms in Ireland. Thank you very much, I was well aware of that).

That's when we decided that we wouldn't que for hours and hours on end for popular countries such as Japan, the UK, and Italy. Indeed, we wouldn't que for anything and just enjoy the 'unique experience' by sampling food at stands that weren't teeming with people and go to some countries where you at least had the idea that you were able to move around a little bit, without waiting in line first.

And, granted, there was some really nice architecture (they really made an effort, although I can't see what they are going to do with all these huge buildings now that the expo has ended):




And we also had some fun, of course:


But, at the end of the day (when the entrance still looked exactly the same as the picture shown above), we decided that it was a very nice once-in-a-lifetime experience. Like, seriously, never again.

Because I like lists and I want to force myself to really travel around and see things in Switzerland, I made a bucket list. One of the things on this bucket list is to visit all the Monopoly streets (from the 1961 edition) in Switzerland. Just because it is possible, you know? And because it is fun to visit these 'famous' streets.

I started this weekend with this particular item on my bucket list, when I was in Zürich. Apparently, there are 2 Monopoly streets in Zürich: Rennweg (yellow) and Paradeplatz (blue; the most expensive street). I can proudly say I have been to both of them!