My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas. But I’ve always appreciated the associated Christmas break. To me, Christmas is the time period starting with Lucia on the 13th of December up until New Years Day. And it’s filled with different seasonally available foods, lights and candles in… Read More »‘Tis the time for holidays
This week was the Thanksgiving week and I was surprised to see how big this holiday is. Last year people started going back to their family homes early in the week, but this year I thought that travel restrictions would keep some people in the… Read More »Black Friday weekend
Today we´ve been in the US for one year. It´s been an eventful year and a not very eventful year, both at the same time. Obviously, we´ve had the pandemic going across the the globe in waves, and we´ve had riots and the politically induced… Read More »One year in the US
I´m so tired of watching and reading American news, so for the past week I´ve tuned it out and decided to watch dramas on Netflix instead. Although there are plenty of non-American series out there, I decided I´d like to watch something that wasn´t in… Read More »Korean Netflix-binge
This week started off pretty bad, with a blackout for three hours (!) between Sunday and Monday. It was a very hot night – made worse by the lack of electricity (and working fans). And the following Labor day was also very hot – if… Read More »Is this what the apocalypse looks like?
We´ve had some very hot days in the past two weeks, with temperatures reaching more than 38 degrees in the middle of the day and afternoons. Many nights have also been “tropic” with temperatures up to 30 degrees, meaning that we get no respite from… Read More »Firenadoes and evacuation warnings
I´ve attended a two-day webinar on the topic Gear up for research communication. The webinar was offered at Stanford and featured several speakers discussing everything from how to reach out to science journalists to how to feature your science in social media and what your… Read More »Research Communication
My first day working from home was 12 March. Today is the 10th August, which means I have been working from home for five months! Today we had some hand-over training that I had to attend and I was excited to leave the house and… Read More »1st day back in the lab
All staff at the university have to go trhough the sexual harassment prevention training once every two years. As I will only be at Stanford for two years it means I have to complete it once. As I got the e-mail I thought the training… Read More »Sexual harassment prevention training
It´s only been 70 days since we last had an Eid, but it feels like ages ago. Time goes fast and slow at the same time and it´s difficult to recall what has happened between now and then. It´s a good thing I keep writing… Read More »Happy Eid al-Adha 2020!
Just a week before Shelter-in-Place was announced we had gotten some really great news: Both our 2- and 3-year-old had gotten placement at a private daycare center close to our home. But as things closed and everyone started working from home we decided to wait… Read More »Are we opening schools or not?
I´ve been in the US for 8 months now and one thing that keeps bugging me is how old-fashioned my bank is. There are many things about it (and possibly the financial system in the US) that are different from what I am used to… Read More »US banking from a foreigner´s perspective
This week I took a look at my calendar and realized that I´ve spent more than 100 days working from home. It feels like time has stood still this whole time, but when I look through my calendar and my journal I see that in… Read More »100 days at home
Today is another pseudoholiday in an endless month at home (although as of today we are in stage 3 in San Mateo County). We have gotten e-mails from some administrators stating that they have gotten paid time off today. However, as we are all working… Read More »Juneteenth
Following the release of videos showing black males discriminated against and even killed by white people with police affiliations, people have started to protest on the streets and some cities have been crowded with people, mostly marching against police violence under the Black Lives Matter… Read More »Curfews
This has been a very nice, warm long weekend. Yesterday was Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of our first Ramadan in the US. And today, it´s another public holiday. So far, I´ve experienced several public holidays that we don´t have parallels to in Sweden. Among… Read More »Memorial Day and Eid
This week I attended two courses for my Teaching Certificate. Both were about backwards course design. What is backwards course design? Well, it´s a student-centric way of designing your course. Instead of thinking about what to fill a lecture with, then figuring out how to… Read More »Backwards course design
It´s Friday evening and seriously warm in California. In southern Californa there is apparantly a heatwave generating record temperatures. But here we have days and night warmer than I´m used to in May. 30 degrees (Celcius) is around 15 degrees warmer than Stockholm right now.… Read More »Halfway through Ramadan 2020
We´ve had our first day of fasting here in California and although first days are usually quite ok, today was really difficult. It could be due to the warm weather that we´ve had this wekk, or it could be due to having two toddlers in… Read More »1st Ramadan 1441
After almost six months in the US, I still find that it´s difficult to find out what has happened in the country without getting a biased message. News channels here are all biased towards either the Republican or the Democrat political parties. The main Republican… Read More »Which news should you watch?