Okey, so when you are home sick, what is then the best thing to do? Yes, to blog;) I discovered that it is quite some time since my last post, and a lot of things have happened since then. This post will be a quick summary of what I have been up to since the beginning of April.

10th of April DARE - the rocket group I am a part of, had a test launch of our CanSat launcher (a rocket specially built to launch two small satellites, aka CanSats, in each rocket). It went so and so, but the test satellite was ejected at least, and that was partially thanks to my programming - yuppi!! :) It was incredibly cool to see all your hard work come to reality as the rocket boosted upwards and indeed did eject the satellite at apogee (highest point of its orbit, at 1 km height due to restrictions in Holland) and the parachute a little later. The next rocket launch is on the 6th of June. Then the real launch will take place, where 10 CanSats will be launched and hundreds of high school kids as well as national press will be there - so it better work correctly! We are working hard these days to make sure of that!

The other big news is that I have gotten myself a new apartment, in Den Haag:) Pictures of it will come later, when I have finished moving in and decorating it. My family is driving all the way down from Norway with my things in the end of this month, incredibly nice of them!!

Btw, my parents visited me in April. It was great to be able to show them Holland as I have come to love it here! We mainly stayed in Delft and Den Haag, but we also visited Keukenhof - as you can see on the pictures here:)

Also in April, I presented a poster of two new scientific concepts which could be done by formation flying nanosatellites, at the 3rd International Symposium on Formation Flying, Missions and Technology, together with two other collegues of mine and our professor. It was a lot of fun to hear all the latest in the formation flying research, especially the American ideas - they never stop to think in huge enormous scales;)

In the end of April it was of course the celebration of Koninginnedag (Queens Day). This year the final musical act was the famous dj David Guetta, which of course made the day perfect. The day after some friends of mine and I drove 3 hours up north to attend the Dauwpop music festival where Madrugada played!! Absolutely fantastic to see them live again, and also quite emotional. I got very homesick, but in a good way. Thanks to some sun and good friends the day was great, just wandering around listening to good music and drinking beer all day:D

The first weeks of May have mostly been spent sunbathing and bbq'ing, cause we have had blue sky and 25 degrees the entire time, until yesterday. Here is a picture from the beach, to make you all jealous;) The beach is btw only 10 minutes by bicycle from my new apartment. Guess where I will be every weekend this summer;)

Well, that is all for now I think. I will finish off by congratulating all my fellow countrymen with their day today!! (17th of May...) I hope everyone had a great celebration, despite the crappy weather in Norway.

Dear faithful blog readers,

once again I have been absent for quite a while - I apologize for that! My time schedule kept me rather busy the last couple of months, but I hope it will get better towards the summer. After my presentation of the literature study research I have been doing these past two months (about nano- and microsatellites) and the rocket launch we in DARE are preparing for the coming Thursday, my time should hopefully be more available for blogging.

This evening I just wanted to make short post regarding some thoughts I made after seeing the movie "Rendition" with Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep. It is absolutely worthwhile watching, but you should also see the extra material on the dvd. It is a movie about the real life rendition that is taking place in our world, and it is a documentary published by http://www.witness.org/. Basically, it is a law passed in the US after 9/11 that they are allowed to take alleged terrorist suspects to any other country and detain them there for as long as necessary to get the "truth" out of them. It is quite "eye-opening" to see this documentary, and also the movie - which is why I chose to recommend it here on my blog.

Another very good movie to see is the "Catch a fire" starring Tim Robbins and Derek Luke. It takes place in South-Africa during the Apartheid regime, and concerns a family man who gets unvoluntary drawn into the situation by the US government accusing him of terrorist actions. After these accusations his life changes and we follow his struggle to determine what his next move should be - should he join the anti-apartheid forces or not...

Well, these were two of many movies worthwhile to see if you are tired of just seing brainless action or humor movies, and you want to evolve the way you see and think about the world. I, at least, always appreciate movies which make me think instead of just being entertained.

Just a couple of days after I got back from the Christmas holidays in Norway, my Portugese friends asked me to join them on a roadtrip to Hamburg, Germany last weekend! So, on a total impulse, we drove off to Germany:) The first night was spent in this totally abandon youth hostel in the middle of nowwhere, even the owner wasn't there when we arrived!! Really comforting...

The next day we went sighseeing all over Hamburg, before a little clubbing in the evening:) It is a great city, very diverse and with lots of "cultural flavour"... ;) You can see for yourselves in the pictures here.

One thing I must mention; the cars in Germany are awesome!!! I put in a couple of pictures of those here as well, cause you just have to see:)

Welcome back dear readers;) Sorry for the absent behaviour lately, Christmas holiday and all... But now I'm back and in business:D Meaning I just started the very long work on my thesis (it will hopefully be finished May 2009...), along with my work for the rocket club. To make an extremely short description; my thesis will consist of developing a set of scaling rules for satellite subsystems and parameters when scaling a regular satellite system down to micro- or nanosize. In other words; is it possible to perform the same scientific task on a much smaller and cheaper satellite? My rules will hopefully answer this! About the rocket club: I am part of the electronics division and my work consists of programming a set of microcontrollers to, among other things, ignite the solid fuel of our two-stage rocket, send the camera images to the ground station and release the parachute:) It is fun to finally get some hands-on experience!

But enough about that;) So what have I been up to lately? Well, before Christmas I finished my internship and presented the results at the European Mars Science & Exploration Conference. I also had a visit from my very good friend Anne:D We just did lots of shopping, partying and hanging out, in Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam. Here is a picture of Anne in a club in Rotterdam.

Sinterklaas (the Dutch Christmas, on 5th of December) was celebrated with the Portugese friends in the real Dutch manner. This meant that we hid our presents and had to find them in my tiny room. The presents were the first letter of our name made out of chocolate, along with a poem to a certain person which was selected beforehand. The pictures below show everyone in my room looking for the gifts, and afterwards when we happily can eat our chocolate letter:)

Right before Christmas I also managed to visit my sister in Gøteborg, it was really nice:) We went to the amasument park "Liseberg" which is beautifully lit up in the "adventstid"=time before Christmas. See some pictures below.

I just saw a 1-hour long documentary about climate change, one of the extra materials of the movie "The day after tomorrow". Last week I attended the conferance "Sustainable Solutions - focus on Africa". How can these two be related you ask? Well, sustainable solutions need to be climate oriented. We will not help the Third world if we introduce solutions which clearly only helped us if you look at it from a short term perspective. But we must also keep in mind that it is a human basic right to attain the same living standards as we in the Western world have become used to, a human right we do not have the right to deny anyone. So for others to be able to use the natural resources in the same tempo as we have, we have to go first and develop sustainable, environmental-friendly technology which enables EVERYONE on this planet to obtain a worthy living standard and still keep our planet intact. This technology must be developed by those with resources and knowledge to do so, and then later be spread to users all over the world. This was part of the theme of last weeks conference, which btw was opened by the Prime Minister of Holland!!! Some of the other major players at the conference were for instance the Director of the Royal Dutch Shell Company, as well as the director of the largest banking firm in Holland - Rabo Bank. We also had the director of the European division of the World Energy Council, which has the power to influence countries in what kind of energy they choose to use, and a guy named Mo Ibrahim who showed us a video advertising his foundation which in this video was thanked personally by among others Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton.... It was a grateful feeling to be at a conference which involved so many people with actual power all agreeing on the same problem and discussing actual realistic solutions for it. It makes you think about what you yourself are going to do and what your future may look like. Doesn't it?

I thought it was about time I showed you some pictures of the beautiful city I live in, and also some pictures from my everyday life these days (or at least my everyday travelling...). This past week I had the "delight" of getting some sightseeing on my way home from work, as no trains were going that day and they decided to set up 1 extra train for all the destinations. So I went from Utrecht to Amsterdam to Schiphol to Leiden to Den Haag and almost all the way to Rotterdam - nice to be tourist one day huh:) But I keep myself occupied on the train reading a really good book, namely the "Rainbow Diary - A journey in the new South Africa". I can seriously recommend it, especially if you have been in South Africa yourself like I have. It's a backpackers book telling all kinds of fun facts about animals and history.

The pictures above showed you Delft, whereas the pictures below show you Rotterdam and Utrecht train station along with some bike pictures (you cannot show pictures of Holland without including some bicycles;) ):

Let me also tell you something about what I am doing these days, other than travelling to work everyday:) My work is going quite well, I am soon finished with the main part and then I will present the results at an ESA-conference 13th of November (for those who don't know; I am working on making radiative transfer simulations to prepare for sending a spectrometer+polarizer to Mars). Next to my work I have also been cooperating with some people on submitting an abstract to another ESA-conference (this one is on formation flying missions) which will take place in April 2008. And this coming week I will participate in a conference here in Delft for Sustainable Solutions - focus on Africa. So there are a lot of conferences!

But my life does involve other things as well:) This weekend I learned Greek folkdance, as I am part of a dance group (bunch of girls who meet every Saturday to teach each other a dance we know):) It is my turn to teach "FunkyJazz" in 3 weeks - uuææh! After the dance lesson some of us went out to have lunch at probably the best lunch place I know! They serve heavenly good bagels!!

Tonight my Portugese friends are coming over (yeah, in like 5 minutes or so, I know I am late! ;) ) to watch a movie and play some cards, and tomorrow I get a visit from a French friend who I haven't seen since the conference in Japan 2 years ago:) I like the weekends :D

Until next time everyone; take care of yourselves:)

In honor of my cat Sussie...

This post is to honor my beloved cat Sussie who has now gone up to cat-heaven and is hopefully very happy chasing mice and eating tuna all the time. I love you so much Sussie!

Hi everyone:)
Just wanted to post some thoughts I had during my many hours on the train back and to work lately:) It will seem unorganized, but just bear with me okey? ;)
First I must tell you about the weirdest thing I saw: It was a cowhorse - yeah really!! At first sight it kinda looks like a deformed cow, until you notice that it is a horse with a very cowlike pattern - like identical! I saw 3 of them out the window the other day. Maybe I'll be able to post a picture here one day, we'll see.
Secondly; I listen to music a lot while I'm on the train. And when you listen to music you kinda block out the noise of the outside world, so for instance when people are talking around you - you can't hear a thing. Well, seeing this one lady which really made A LOT of gestures while speaking, I got to thinking of maybe that's how the deaf language came to be. Even though I wasn't very good at guessing what the heck she was talking about, I at least got a good show - cause she really made A LOT of gestures! :)
Talking about music; seeing the sunrise behind a mosque listening to Buddha Bar at the same time is really a nice experience, almost felt like I was on vacation in Marocco or somewhere, instead of on the morning train on my way to work...
Talking about travelling people; people do all sorts of things on their way to work - I see people brushing their hair, eating breakfast, eating dinner, eating in-the-middle snacks (yup, it is snackville delux on the train!), sleeping, reading books, watching movies on the computer, doing actual workstuff (just a few of them;) ) and the most amazing: a woman who was reading while she was walking - don't know how she did it! Btw, in Holland it is a tradition of giving out free newspapers to all the morning travellers, and these newspapers are being read by very many people. It got me thinking what kind of power the people who writes these things actually have...
Hehe, the other day I was sitting right opposite a teenage boy, and then two girls came and sat down at the two available seats next to us. The guy suddenly sort of noticed that he was surrounded by three pretty girls, and he decided to appear smart and immediatly picked up his physics book and pretended to read. But it was the worst pretending I have ever seen! :) He just didn't seem able to focus very much;)
Well enough with my babling, later on I'll tell you something more profound;) But before I "go" I just have to recommend a funny comedian (if you haven't already seen him): Pablo Francisco!!