 |
It was a lot colder than it looks!
|
 |
A final swimrun for 2020
|
I ended my last post with promise of a chilly weekend ahead, swimming and running in the Ötillö swimrun event on the nearby island of Utö. However, as with most plans in 2020, coronavirus got in the way. Just a few days before the event, it had to be cancelled due to concerns over the number of people travelling to Utö. Therefore, instead of spending a rather drizzly Saturday swimming in the Baltic Sea and running across Utö’s craggy trails, I joined Emil for a good helping of scrumptious waffles at Älskade Traditioner and a trip to Stockholm’s photography gallery: Fotografiska. Having the swimrun event cancelled did not put an end to mine and Felicity’s training sessions however, we’ve kept up our Monday evening sport and dinner slots with one final swimrun at the beginning of October (flipping chilly!) and since then, sticking to just running in order to save my poor toes.
Aside from Monday evenings, October has been a generally quiet month. Emil and I have taken to
 |
| Waffles at Älskade Traditioner |
going bouldering each weekend with a different lunch spot selected to refuel after each session, including some darn good cinnamon buns to mark kanelbullens dag (cinnamon bun day) on October 4th. One of these weekend sessions had to be skipped however, due to our good old pal Covid. A friend that I’d had over for lunch soon after developed a cough so we each isolated for a few days while waiting for their test results which thankfully came back negative, and she is now feeling fine! The weekend in question happened to be when Liam, one of my housemates when I lived in New Zealand, was visiting Stockholm for a few days. I decided it wouldn’t be wise to meet over the weekend but we did manage a socially distanced walk in the parklands around my place before he headed off on the Monday; a great chance to catch up on what he’s been getting up to over in Berlin for the past 2 years.
The calm of the autumn months has finally given me a chance to get going on my Swedish again. After a long break, I’ve started up again on the ‘Swedish for university staff’ course, which is run over Zoom each Wednesday evening. I must say the online format isn’t quite as effective as my
 |
Socially distanced walk with Liam
|
previous experiences of group activities and class discussions, but it’s good to have a bit of structure again; who knows, maybe one day I’ll manage to string together a comprehensive sentence beyond ‘May I have a coffee’ and ‘No, I would not like a plastic bag’!
On the PhD side of things, while I’ve been working from home where I can, last week involved a fair few days in the office as Benny (my old supervisor), Peter (my new supervisor), Ben (a postdoc), and I tried to fix the equipment ready for fieldwork next Spring (fingers crossed), and I took part in the Bolin centre PhD day. The Bolin Centre is focused on climate research and spans six departments across three universities in Stockholm. The PhD day was organised at Stockholm University with plenty of measures in place to ensure it was covid-safe. Twenty-two of us gave presentations on our current research in a lecture theatre designed to seat 400, so the thirty of us in the room had plenty of space to spread out! Between trips out to try and fix the field equipment, I attended talks on a huge range of topics from ‘Gender differences in adaptation to climate change’ to ‘Arctic glacier calving events’ and ‘The movement of aerosols in the atmosphere’: my brain was a little fried by the end! To finish the day there
 |
Kanelbullens dag
|
was a dinner at the department but I decided that, to be safe, I would have Emil over for cosy evening instead. As we tucked into our cottage pie, my phone pinged with a number of ‘congratulations’ messages. Turns out that at the dinner they announced the winning presentations from the day and my talk on ‘Geophysics over Glacial Forelands’ had earned me a nice pot of research money; looks like a few other people must be interested in how seismic methods perform on icy boulders after all!
 |
| One happy birthday girl (Eva)! |
Despite being a slightly slower month than normal, it’s been nice to settle into a quiet routine, try out a fair few new recipes and eating spots with Emil, and catch up with friends old and new, be that via lunch at mine, socially distanced walks, or over Zoom. I hope friends and family back in the UK are keeping well and am keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to see some of you sooner rather than later.
Comments
Post a Comment