Hi!

(Howdy, hello, how’s it going? – I’m always a bit unsure about how to start off a blogpost…)

February is coming to an end, and we’re patiently awaiting spring temperatures in San Diego. Wait, what? Is it cold in southern California? Everything is relative I guess, but this winter has been unusually rainy and cold. We’ve had frost in the morning and 10-15°C during the days. Sounds like a regular Swedish spring one might say, and it might have been just fine if it wasn’t for the fact that most houses here are badly insulated. We’re talking ”visible-spring-under-the-front-door” and ”windows-where-you-can-feel-the-wind-blowing-though” badly insulated. Especially mornings and nights are cold, and thus we have extra blankets for breakfast and double sweaters during the night. Of course there is heating in our house, but electricity is expensive, and with the bad insulation it kind of feels like a waste of energy too, and so, it is clothes on.

My courses in school continues to be fun, but time consuming, and you can tell that we’re approaching the end of the quarter. Out of 10 weeks of regular classes, we now have three left and then there is finals week during which most things are supposed to be presented or handed in. I could write a ton of things about what I’ve learnt in school lately (that Sweden has the longest running glacier mass balance program, how to make a conical lambert projection in Python, how a spectrophotometer for pH measurements work and how to connect climate change models with future food security and vector borne diseases), but instead I’ll show you some photos that I took in one of my classes, the one about ocean instruments and sensors. We’ve disassembled, cleaned and reassembled something called a ”SeapHOx” that can measure temperature, salinity, pressure, pH and oxygen concentration. As a part of the calibration process we’ve put some sensors in a big tank of sea water and manipulated the pH by throwing in some dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) and took independent pH measurements on a spectrophotometer (a very accurate pH instrument, depending on the isosbestic point of the indicator dye used). Dry ice was fun, lots of smoke and bubbles. All the Chemistry is a little less fun, it was never my favourite subject, but it is still very interesting to learn about. 

Other than that, things are chugging along here in San Diego. I’m doing gymnastics at school once a week, which is super fun, but also a very humbling experience as you realise the level of control of your body that you need to fling/twist/spin yourself in the air/on your hands. Being somewhat strong is oen thing, but having the ability to have all your muscles, including the small ones, to cooperate to do complex movements is something completely different. It is fun though, even though I’m pretty bad at it. Less fun was to sprain my ankle badly a couple of weeks back. I ended up on crutches for three days. I might have myself to blame a little too, trying to play tough and not ice it and walk around like normal the rest of the night, which I regretted the next day. Some lessons you got to learn the hard way I guess…

The weekend before last was a long one, with Monday being ”President’s Day” the ÅÄÖ-sorority decided to go on a roadtrip. On a Thursday night we boarded an overnight bus to San Fransisco and nine hours in our seats, and only a few of them asleep, we found ourselves in downtown SF. Might not have been the most comfortable of trips, but for the fair price of 15 bucks to get from San Diego to San Fransisco, you can’t really complain.

We spent all of Friday in San Fransisco, sightseeing and eating, and the next morning we picked up a rental car and headed south on Highway 1. The skies were gray and intermittently poured a bucket of rain on us, but we stopped for some good views in between the showers.

When we landed in Monterey in the afternoon we embarked on the famous ”17-mile drive”, an especially scenic coastal drive between Monterey and Carmel. It sure was pretty, but… I couldn’t really help being a little amused about the concept of paying USD 10.50 to enter a gated community of wealthy people, drive along a well paved road and see nature from the comfort of your car only to stop at designated vista points to take the same picture that hundreds of thousands of people have already taken.

When we towards the end of the drive arrived at ”The Lone Cypress”, a single Monterey cypress tree standing on a cliff, properly supported by a brick wall and wires holding it up, the whole thing reached a new level. On the way down the stairs to the terrace from which you can se the tree in its full glory there was a sign informing visitors that the Lone Cypress is the registered trademark of Pebble Beach Company, the small community nearby, and that any reproductions of the tree (painting or photograph) for commercial purposes is illegal. Good thing I’m not making so much as a dime off this blog, so here you go, behold ”The Lone Cypress”, one of North Americas most photographed trees. You’re welcome.

The next day we continued our trip, driving south on Highway 1, did some more stops for photos and food and by Sunday evening we arrived in Santa Barbara where we got to stay with some other students from Lund University on exchange at UC San Barbara.

Santa Barbara is an interesting place. Beautifully located between the mountains and the sea, nature is very present, but there are still some ugly oil rigs on the horizon (though they rarely show up on the postcards you can get from the boardwalk shops). There are a lot of people with thick wallets, and also lots of homeless people. The architecture very clearly has Spanish influences (from the Spanish founders of the town), but is very american over all. A city of contrasts in the land of contrasts.

Enough philosophising, time to return to essay writing and coding for python homework.

As always, thank you and take care!