Where is Iris now?

When did this actually happen? Sunday, January 10, 2016

When my mom visited in January for a week to celebrate my new room (I am in a new room!), we went to the zoo for a (rainy) day. We stumbled upon the Penguin Parade: the penguins take a walk through the zoo every day (when it is colder than 10°) to greet the other animals. This parade is absolutely hilarious.


The Penguin Parade


We also found a capybara and an anteater.

When did this actually happen? Sunday, November 22, 2015

The second day that L. was visiting was more of a relaxed day. As it still was very cold and wet outside, we mainly stayed inside and watched Disney movies (best thing to do on a rainy day apart from reading!).

However, as this was also L.’s last day in Zürich we did a tiny bit of sight seeing: we went to the Focus Terra museum and my office (same building) and looked upon Zürich from the Polyterrasse: you can be sure of a nice view there!


There was an ice-skating rink(?) on the Polyterrasse! So much fun and happiness!


Very happy with the view!

To conclude the day, we had nice burgers at Holy Cow! A flattering picture is guaranteed.. Also, when we were waiting for L.’s train, we had Starbucks coffee in one of the shops near the main station. It is the best shop ever! Since then, I’ve been there twice more! It’s very cosy.

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!

It's been a long time since I posted anything on this blog and this has multiple reasons:
1. As it turns out, doing a PhD is quite busy and during my evenings and weekends I don't want to have another obligation of updating my blog. I just want to cuddle up in bed and watch netflix or youtube or read a good book :)
2. I've done a lot of nice things here and I still have a lot of pictures and stories that I'd like to share, but moving abroad, alone, isn't as rosy as I'd thought, so the hyper-enthousiastic me just isn't there all the time. Especially not after I've done a nice thing and I am alone in my room again. Writing a blog post in that mood is.. wel.. not fun.

Anyways, with the start of 2016 there is a lot that I am excited about and there are a lot of cool things in the pipeline. I hope I can find the motivation for blogging :p

Today was at least a nice an happy day. In fact, this whole week has been great, because I feel that I am going in the right direction towards a PhD again. Good things.

Today, one of our office mates R. wasn't there, and because it was Friday afternoon, we all got a bit silly. So, C., L. and me decided to make it look as if someone reversed our white board. We taped the festoon(?) at the bottom (to defy gravity), reversed all the pens (again, gravity is no match for us!), and I wrote some equations (that are particularly relevant to the absent R.) upside down on the blackboard. I am actually quite proud of how my writing turned out to be! I love the end result. A good way to start the weekend!


(Note the xkcd comic for up/down scale..)

Very suddenly there was a storm on an otherwise sunny day, which resulted in the following view from our office:


(Notice how the rainbow appears to be originating from the Swiss flag).