After a month back home, I’ve decided that I really enjoy being back home. Although I miss my lab mates, I think I might have missed them more had I spent most of my two years in the US actually in the lab. But the… Read More »Switching Stanford for Sweden
It’s 3 AM, Swedish time, and I’m jetlagged. 48 hours ago we were sitting on the plane from San Francisco headed for Lisbon, Portugal. Three days before that, I was finishing up experiments and clearing out my things in the lab so we could focus… Read More »Flying in Covid times
It is the 4th of July, the Independence Day here in the US. It’s likely the last one I will experience and as I’m typing this fireworks are going off. Although we can’t really see any fireworks from our apartment window, we have been able… Read More »4th of July 2021
I came to Stanford in late October 2019 for a two-year appointment as a postdoc. But with four months to go, I’m already preparing to go home. This past year has been really different for a lot of people. Many have had the opportunity to… Read More »Preparing to go home
This week I finally got the second Covid-19 vaccine shot. And my arm is still sore. But in two weeks I should be fully protected against serious illness due to the coronavirus. I got my first vaccine a month ago at Stanford. One of the… Read More »Fully vaccinated!
I’ve successfully finished a 5-part workshop series going through various modules of the Schrodinger Bioluminate package. As part of the Stanford Teaching certificate I need to teach a certain number of hours, and at the same time I wanted to introduce my lab members to… Read More »Schrodinger online workshops
The US doesn’t have a lot of religious holidays, but it does have plenty of, let’s say, political (?) holidays. One of them just passed by – Martin Luther King Jr, or MLK day. Since this holiday happened to occur in the weekend this year,… Read More »Martin Luther King Jr – day
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?
I have been going through a protein expression and purification bootcamp, courtesy the graduate students in our lab. This is a hands-on experience, starting from the process of making growth media all the way to having a purified protein. Apart from the practical skills I… Read More »Making proteins is a slow process
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