Nicole's Visit: Tromsø

Well it is Friday, I have worked more than 70hrs in the past 6 days (Sat-Thurs), so I am going to write a short blog post about the last bit of Nicole's visit while I take a break for tea. Admittedly we did not do as much as we probably should have in terms of site seeing or hiking and so on, but we had the opportunity to spend some time together, even just chilling out watching a movie was very very nice.

After arriving back in Tromsø from Bergen we had one week left.  Saturday night we just hung out, got some groceries, etc.  On Sunday we did more of the same but we went to the Tromsø TIL vs Rosenborg game. Rosenborg was ranked number 1 and Tromsø is doing pretty badly this year but because Rosenborg is number 1 there was a lot of Tromsø fans hoping for an unlikely win, and TIL delivered. This was a good game to watch because we were near a section of die-hard TIL fans who were chanting and singing the entire game.  The officiating was pretty terrible (linesmen made several incorrect off-side calls, but hey they can't always be perfect). That was really nice.

On Monday and Tuesday we did a bit of shopping and looking a round town, but we did a lot of relaxing, reading a book, sleeping in late, it was great. On Tuesday night we picked up the fishing rods from Gunnar and Gabi and quickly said hi to Mats who was celebrating his birthday at the bar.  On Wednesday it was my birthday so we decided to go to Hellastua (Hella) to spend some time outside fishing.  We fished for several hours and had a nice hour bus ride each way. We did not keep any of the fish we caught, they were mostly too small, but Hella is such a beautiful spot, it does not matter.

We cooked ourselves a nice supper that night and watched a movie.  On Thursday we had a great dinner with Gunnar, Gabi and Jen. It was fantastic! On Friday Nicole and I joined people from work for an end of the week beer and we looked at the Tromsø food festival but decided we felt like cooking ourselves and enjoying our last evening together. On Saturday morning Nicole left.  

It was a great holiday and though it was very sad to have Nicole leave again, we will see each other in 3 months at the latest though there is the possibility I will see here before then (will let you know if it happens).

Well that is it, enjoy your weekend, as I mentioned yesterday I am hoping to go fishing but am definitely going to another TIL game with friends. Apparently it is an important match because TIL is doing so badly that if they don't win this one, they drop down a division...ouch.

Thoughts and Musings: Being in Norway, my blog and more

My wife Nicole was just here for a visit, we had two weeks of holidays together and it was fantastic. We saw some great sights and most importantly, we spent time together in person.  Even with video and voice chat and nearly constant access to email, it is simply not the same as physically talking to each other.

It was amazing to me that when Nicole came here, the apartment where I am living for the rest of my stay suddenly felt so much more like home, like it was normal. Nicole said she noticed it too. It is hard to describe, it felt like home, it felt lived in, it felt full.  The opposite feeling is easier to describe and I think most people can relate.  As soon as Nicole left (about a week ago now) the apartment felt empty and very quiet, like it was missing something.

As the person who does most of the traveling in our relationship I do not notice this feeling often, the few times Nicole has gone somewhere without me, I have noticed this bit of quiet, but then I was in our home and it did not feel so bad.  Plus I had Jax, my dog with me, and well I can at least play with him, and heck even talk to him (if that makes me crazy, so be it, at least he doesn't answer me back).

Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm not having a good time here, I am, I love it here, I could easily live in Tromsø. It's beautiful, close to mountains, small and friendly. It just was very nice to have Nicole here.

On a more positive side, this weekend I will go to another Tromsø TIL football (soccer) match.  TIL is doing terrible in their league so in order to make sure they have fans at the game they have lowered the price of all tickets to 50 NOK (less than $10).  In contrast, tickets are usually between 150 and 300 NOK.
Also, Tromsø did make it into the UEFA Europa league this year, albeit on a technicality.  Another team from Turkey was removed because of match fixing, so TIL advanced. But this means we will have three international teams here in Tromsø to play, one from Russia, one from Moldova, and the Tottenham Hotspurs from the UK.  I splurged and bought a ticket pack for all three games.  The crazy thing to me is that right now it is getting cooler, highs are around 8-10C during the day and maybe 4C at night, and right now it gets dark pretty early.  The first UEFA game is next week, but the last one is at the end of November. It will be dark and cold, and everyone hopes for snow, as that is the game against Tottenham).

I still find Norway expensive, but have gotten over it a bit, at least in terms of just accepting that everything costs more here. I still don't have a good sense of standard of living in the sense that I don't know what salary bases are.  I hear a bit from fellow scientists that the wage curve flats out sharply at the PhD level, i.e. a post-doc will make the nearly the same as a permanent junior researcher.  PhD students also seem to be paid adequately.

I keep following the news from the U of A back home, and I am really wondering what kind of university I will return to.  Post secondary institutions in Alberta received an average of 11% cuts (once you factor in inflation and a promised 2% funding increase).  As a result, the University has to slash its budget and it has been doing a terrible job on explaining how that will happen.  Grad students and undergrads will definitely be affected, loss of TA positions, increases in tuition and fees are not out of the question.

And finally I have been musing about my blog.  I wonder how it is perceived.  I'd love to talk more about my science and my work, but really I find it hard to a) make the time to write a blog post (write now I'm waiting for the oven to warm up, it's 9pm and I just got home from working a 12+ hour day). I need to eat yet, and if I don't take a little me time, I won't sleep well. The blog is sometimes me time, but othertimes I feel like I need to post and I should post.
I also do want to post more about my work, but honestly, it can be a bit dull, do I show figures I'm working on? Do I try to talk about news in the science field? Do the people who read my blog actually want to see this stuff?  Mostly I think not, maybe a little or something big where I am involved, but otherwise, I think the answer is no.  The blog really was started for my family to follow my life a bit while I travel, and I think they make up my primary audience.  Though I seem to have friends from other countries who read as well (thank you Google for tracking the country of the people who visit my blog). I think it could be fun to do a more sciency blog, and I hope that once I am back in Edmonton and start playing with my arduino I can do that, I will scrap the separate blog and just make the posts here.

Well that is enough on my thoughts for now.  and just because that was a lot of text, here is a picture:

Johnston Canyon, Oct 2012.

Bergen via the Norway in a Nutshell Tour

On Thursday Nicole and I went to Bergen with the Norway in a Nutshell Tour.  This tour takes you from Oslo to Bergen on the Bergen Railway, the Flam railway, through two fjords on a fjord cruise and then a bus trip along Norway's steepest road and then back to the Bergen railway for the final leg to Bergen.

It was very touristy but okay, what can else can you expect.  The Bergen Railway was very scenic, fjords, mountains, lakes, small towns, really pretty.  But the Flam Railway was spectacular.  This 20km railway line descends 850m through through 18 or more tunnels including some loops inside a mountain.  It is quite steep but offers great views of the Flam valley. Once in Flam we boarded a ferry for a 2 hr fjord cruise.  We had found a great spot to sit and look out but it was so great that everyone else was constantly walking by us, in front of us, it was a bit irritating, but oh well.

Waterfall we stopped at with the Flam train

Looking across the valley through the train windows (my window would not go down).

Flam Valley from the Steepest Road in Norway

While on the fjord cruise

It was a bit of a long day, we left Oslo at 8am (which meant getting to the train station at around 7:30 so up quite early) and did not arrive in Bergen until 9pm, but it was nice.
In Bergen we stayed at the Skansen Pensjonat, a beautiful B & B (with Breakfast included) on one side of Bergen with a great view).  We had a fantastic late dinner at Escalon, a tapas restaurant, that was a really nice meal.

We had all day on Friday to look around Bergen.  We checked out the Bryggen (old Hanseatic Merchants warehouses), saw the theater, looked at Rosenkrantz Tower and Haakon's Hall (only the outside though as it did not open until noon).  We also went to the Natural History and Cultural History museums at the University (free for students).  That was nice and interesting but I saw more stuffed animals than I ever wanted to see, pretty much one of everything from mice to lions and giraffe's.  The Cultural History museum showed some things from Bergen in the past as well as a small Egyptian mummy display which was pretty great.  Nicole and I were still feeling like we'd had enough of museums though.  We checked out the fish market, and had another nice meal.
Then on Saturday morning we had to fly from Bergen at 7am so we were up around 4:30 or so (had to catch a bus at 5:15)

The Bryggen

Theater

A church

All in all our holiday to southern Norway was very nice. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Up next: Tromso.

Nicole's Visit: Oslo Day 2 and 3

After our first day of walking around Oslo we decided the next day to take in some of the museums.  I don't have pictures from all of them but we visited the Viking Ship Museum where they have three viking ships from the 9th century AD, as well as a lot of viking relics, was really nice. The ships were found in burial mounds. There is so much detail on everything, on gold, wood, iron, just fantastic.

Detailing on the prow of the ship

Dragon carving found in the burial chamber on the ship. One of them had rope in its mouth.

One of the ships

Another one of the ships.

After this we headed over the the Fram Museum where you can see the ship Fram that Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, and Roald Amundsen used in several of their Arctic and Antarctic expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Check out this Wiki page for some general information on Fram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fram).  For more information on Nansen, Sverdrup and Amundsen, check out their Wiki pages.

We definitely saw some other site that day, the Maritime Museum (was not amazing).  We saw  the Munch Exhibit at the National Gallery, but maybe that was on Day 3. But I must confess, I don't really "get" paintings/art.  I find most paintings to be just okay, very few grab my attention or invoke any real thought/feelings.  I am much more interested in history and I do find photographs great.  Photographs may be because I take photos so I can appreciate the difficulty of finding the right shot, the right light, etc. Architecture interests me but paintings, not so much. Oh well, was nice to see.

Of course we ate at some point and also took our time to just relax and enjoy things too.  We sat down with a cup of coffee on the boardwalk just looking out over the marina/harbor. This bird came at one point and got quite close so I could take some nice pictures.

In the evening of Day 2, Nicole and I went to a World Cup Qualifying match, that's soccer. We saw Norway vs Switzerland.  I was hoping that because we were in Norway there would be a large contingent of die hard Norway supporters, and while there was more than 10000 people at the stadium, the Norwegian fans were very quiet.  There was not much cheering from the Norwegian, but the Swiss, oh boy were they loud.  There was not that many of them, though they did fill one section and you saw them everything throughout the day, all wearing red and white.  They chanted just about the entire game and that was great.

Now by the final day Nicole and I were starting to feel a bit tired of museums, but we had a few more we wanted to see and really could not think of much else to do.  First we went up to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump.  This ski jump is set on a big hill in Oslo and so has a great view of the area.  It also has a ski museum.  We spent some time there looking at the evolution of cross country and downhill skis and went to the top and had a look around.

Holmenkollen Ski Museum

View down the ski run

After the ski museum we looked at the Cultural History Museum but were really not feeling it.  We also had done some walking around and had a bite to eat, but by the time we got to the Cultural History Museum we were really done with museums.

Overall, I really liked Oslo, it is a capital city but it does not feel that big, it feels accessible and cozy.  Public transit is amazing, food was okay (pricey and fairly standard) and felt safe.

Next up: the trip to Bergen on the Bergen Railway, the Flam Railway, and a Fjord cruise (with a bus ride on Norway's steepest road).

Nicole's Visit: Tromso and Oslo Day 1

I have been on holidays for two weeks! And the best part was that my lovely, amazing wife Nicole was here to visit me for my holidays.  I was really starting to feel like I needed some time off away from work, so it was good timing, a chance to relax and reset. Sure I am now quite behind on many things and have many things to do in the next little while, but that's okay, it will keep me busy now that I am back to being on my own.

Nicole arrived on Sept 7 around mid-day.  We headed back to my apartment so she could drop off her bag and have a shower.  We then took the bus to town and just walked around a bit, checking out Tromsø's downtown.  We did some minor grocery shopping since the grocery stores are not open here on Sundays and then an easy supper at the apartment. Nicole managed to stay awake until 8:30 or 9 before she needed to sleep. She did not sleep much on the plane ride over, despite taking a gravol ( a motion sickness pill which tends to make you drowsy).

On Sunday we went for a short hike in the afternoon up Fløya, the mountain with the cable car (I think). We walked by the Arctic Cathedral, a beautiful church in Tromsø.  It was nice to do a short hike and get outside on a beautiful sunny day. I even managed to find some wild blueberries for Nicole to eat.

Tromsø's Arctic Cathedral. Photo by Nicole

Looking out over Tromsø. Photo by Nicole

Wild blueberries are so good!. Photo by Nicole

Again we had a simple supper and then did some packing for our trip to Oslo. On Monday morning we flew to Oslo, grabbed the train downtown and then a tram to our B & B.  The B & B (Frogners B&B) was a little disappointing, but mostly because we did not know what to expect.  B & B's in North America  tend to be someone's large home where there is a very personal touch to everything and they include breakfast.  Here breakfast was available for an additional cost (so not really a B & B then). Don't get me wrong, the room was nice, the house nice and had a good location, right by to Frogner Park/Vigeland Park, but it just lacked that personal touch.  We did not order breakfast when we booked and then we never saw the people who lived/ran the place again until we left, so there was no chance to get some insider information on places to eat, visit, etc

Anyway, we dropped our bags off in the room around 2pm and decided to go walk around and have a look in the Sentrum. We walked past a bunch of sites, stopping for a few photos but not really going inside anything but the main church (quickly)

National Theater.

Royal Palace and Gardens...open to the public!

Parliament?

Church

National Opera House

We ended our day in the sentrum at Aker Brygge, an old fish warehouse area converted to numerous restaurants, shopping and apartments.  It has a nice long boardwalk that you can enjoy and plenty of patios.  We ate a nice meal at Olivia's and then had an ice-cream cone and walked along the boardwalk.  It was great day, and then we went to Vigeland Park, right near the B & B, and it was great.  Now, neither Nicole nor I are all that into art (in general).  I find sculpture a bit more interesting so this was nice.  It was also just a beautiful evening and a good way to cap the day.

Vigeland Park Obelisk

Vigeland Park Obelisk

The Little Buoy that could.

Well my holidays are over.  Nicole left this morning bright and early and I have been working ever since I got back home at about 9:30. Luckily, my code is running and right now my dinner is in the oven cooking, so I thought I would take the time to write a quick blog post about that favourite little buoy of mine, Buoy 300234010730040.

I've written a couple blog posts about this buoy now, mostly because it has been running for so long and because it was starting to head towards me while I am here in Norway.  In the last blog post I wrote on the buoy (http://justinbeckers.blogspot.no/2013/08/buoy-300234010730040-still-going-north.html) it was heading up the coast of Norway, and I was hoping it would make it all the way up past Tromsø.

Well the buoy did keep heading north but as you can see it has moved back out into the Atlantic Ocean and away from the coast.

Well...not exactly what I had hoped for, but then I did not really expect what I hoped for to actually happen.  But now the buoy will be in an area it has not travelled before. Hopefully it provides some additional insight or useful information to someone sometime.  Otherwise it has just been cool to see this little buoy's adventures.  It's too bad it has no way to measure wave heights or something, that would be great....hmm..something to think about when tinkering with my Arduino I guess.

Okay well my dinner is done, want to eat and then write some more blog posts, stay tuned.

#FieldPhotoFriday Electromagnetic Induction Measurements of Ice Thickness

Electromagnetic Induction Measurements of Ice Thickness, McMurdo Sound Antarctica, November 201.  I think I stood on the back of that sled for a few hundred kilometers. Was nice except for the fact that most of the snow was rock hard and the ride was a bit jarring at times.

CoreSat Kick-Off

Well I was at another project kick-off meeting yesterday (and this coming morning too).  CoreSat is a project funded here in Norway but with partners from Germany and Canada. Within Norway there are several institutions participating including NPI, the University of Tromsø and the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center.

CoreSat is aiming to improve measurements of sea-ice drift and ice thickness in Fram Strait to ultimately improve knowledge of the volume export of sea ice through Fram Strait.  This strait is one of the most important pathways for ice from the Arctic Ocean to be transported south. There has been some work on this over the past decade or two, but there is still limited information and some conflicting information out there, especially regarding changes in the drift speed of sea ice, some studies have shown an increase in time, others a decrease in time, and others show no significant trend.

Another factor limiting our understanding is that few of the studies have placed uncertainties on their estimates, making it hard to compare and assess.  In this project new products will be derived, existing ones compared and uncertainties assigned in order to determine the best product.  That final best product will then be analyzed.

The meeting was interesting, had some presentations on the current state of people's work related to the project.  Then a short discussion on some initial tasks to be completed (which will be continued today). We ended last night with a dinner at the top of the cable car.

T - 24 hours until I see my wife!

Well it's been a bit over 3 months, but now it is less than 24 hours until I see Nicole. As you might imagine I am a little excited.  Will be nice to see her and visit with her. We have some exciting plans, a trip to Oslo and Bergen (by train, bus and fjord cruise), a World Cup qualifying match, and an important match for the local Tromsø IL team.  Otherwise we also have a week with no fixed plans yet, maybe we will do some hiking or exploring, or who knows, I will let you know.

Well off to the second day of the CoreSat kick-off meeting.  Have to leave work a little early today, need to do some laundry, pick up a few items for Nicole's arrival, and I want to make sure the apartment is clean.

A hike and some fishing: is there a better way to spend a sunny afternoon?

This past Sunday I went hiking and fishing with Gunnar and Gabriele, and Jennifer King, a new post-doc starting at NPI.  Jennifer and I actually met back in 2010 on the NPI cruise I joined.

Gunnar and Gabriele are participating in the Tipp A Topp program, a local program to get people out to hike and be active.  If you complete X out of 20 hikes (X=7,10,15,20) you get a prize.  At the top of each hike is a guest book and a number that you fill out in a book you purchase.

They picked a relatively easy hike this time, but it was also near to some fishing spots so we decided to do both.  The hike was very nice, not too difficult (only 250m elevation gain or so) and quite short (2km).  We added a bit to it on the way back by going around the lake at the top.

After all the hiking, we went for some fishing nearby.  It really did not look promising, but it was another beautiful spot and a gorgeous day so it did not matter that we did not see any fishing jumping. My feet/shoes were quite wet from the hike (was just wearing some sandal style shoes) so I stopped fishing to dry them out.  Gunnar and Gabrielle  kept fishing and all of a sudden Gabrielle had a fish, and a good sized one.  That was exciting.  We fished for a few more hours and kept one more larger fish, both were saithe.  We caught many smaller saithe, they seemed to just be hanging out offshore near some weeds, and there were some smaller minnows around so perhaps they were hunting.  It was pretty exciting.

Well here are more pictures of the hike since I did not take any pictures while fishing or watching fishing.

Fishing from Shore: Not as easy as from a boat!

I am behind on writing blog posts, luckily it's been awhile since I have backed up my data and since the scripts read from the folder I work in, I can't work in that folder without causing some problems, so I will take a short break (luckily I wrote a Mac Automator script that does synchronous backups instead of just copying the entire directory each time).

So two weekends ago, Gunnar and I decided that we wanted to do some fishing.  I was only half serious at first, but the more we talked about it, the more it sounded like fun.  So on the Saturday Gunnar and I bought fishing rods and some lures at the Co-Op, a grocery/everything store somewhat like Walmart.  The stuff was even on sale (40%off!).

So on Sunday, Gunnar, Gabby and I went to Hella, a well known local fishing spot. Here the fjord is quite narrow as there is a small island in the middle of it.  Because it narrows, there are strong currents and this apprently makes the fishing good.

When we arrived you could not see many fish but after an hour or so suddenly the water looked like it was boiling because of all the mackerel flopping around.  That said they often did not bite our lures, maybe we were using the wrong ones or the wrong size.  Gunnar and I lost a couple lures to the weeds but did pull in some fish.  However, we really did not know how big they should be before we kept them so we probably put back at least one or two that we could have kept.  In the end we only had the one fish to take home, but it was tasty.

Lucky for Gunnar and I, Gunnar's wife Gabrielle is not squeamish and was willing to clean the fish for us.  We both can do it but I at least find it tough.

#IcePhoto Wednesday ColdFactsBuoy

Deploying the ColdFacts buoy on sea ice in May 2013. Ken Borek Twin Otter landed our team on the ice. A beautiful warm, partly sunny day.

In May 2013, we deployed a ColdFacts buoy for Marc Cornelissen, a Dutch arctic explorer.  You can see his blog post here http://www.marccornelissen.com/blog/details/20/weather-station-deployed.  The buoy is incredibly light, simple, and easy to deploy, I look forward to seeing and maybe analzying some data from it.

WHOA! IT'S BEEN THREE MONTHS!

Today while walking to work I realized that it's now been more than three months since I left Edmonton, and more than three months since I arrived in Tromso. That is three months that I have not seen my wife or my dog. Of course it has also meant I haven't had to do many household chores either (I vacuumed a couple times, and have done some cleaning and lots of dishes, and cooking and even walked a dog (Yukon)). At least with Skype and Apple FaceTime Nicole and I can video chat, still not the same as being with each other but better than a phone call or a text message or email.
But Nicole comes on Saturday, that will be nice (understatement).  We will do a bit of traveling within Norway and just enjoy some time together. Jax is spending a couple weeks with Nicole's parents.  He likes camping with the camper van.  Nicole said he hopped right in, no concern at all.  We met with Nicole's parents once at Lake Louise and even I can admit as a die hard fan of tenting that it can be awfully nice to sit in a warm dry place....Jax fully agreed, and I think he liked that the camper van had windows while the tent does not.  Nicole mom did say the he wimpered a bit once he realized Nicole wasn't with them and wasn't joining (which makes me quite sad), though we know he will have an amazing time.  Jax loves Nicole's parents and their dog tupper (who doesn't want a border collie for a best friend).

Things here are progressing nicely and I am finally starting to feel a bit settled in.  On Monday I went to the police station to get my temporary residence card (which will come in the mail). And this past weekend I moved into my apartment, so I am no longer relying on the extreme kindness of my friends....who now have a place to stay if they ever come to Canada... My apartment is okay, it will do for the next four months but isn't somewhere I'd want to stay long term. It is not that there is anything wrong with it but it is a bit far from work, and is in a massive apartment complex.  Here on Tromso there are many small apartments, rooms for rent in houses that it would be a shame to live in a complex when you could get something with character and soul (and fewer neighbors).

That said, Tromso has about 10,000 students and in a town of 60,000-65,000 people that is quite something.  So when the students start looking in June and July, the rush is on and it is difficult to find something.  There have been plenty of newspaper articles about students unable to find a place to live and last year some students were living in the fire station for a few months.

I still find Norway expensive, but just don't think about it as much.  It is best not to price shop too much and while I was going to do a little blog post on costs of groceries and so forth, I decided it would just make me think more about how expensive it is here....we will see...maybe in a few weeks as right now I am way behind on blogging/posting.

I feel that I have made some lifetime friends here, already, hopefully this is true. It has been great to meet you people and strangely I often feel more in place here at NPI than I do at the U of A. Maybe this is just because NPI is friendly and filled with people who study the same thing as me. Back at the U of A, my office mate and fellow PhD student Alec Casey are some of the only people studying sea ice in the Arctic (there are a few others though we never really meet with them).

When I was staying with Gunnar Spreen and his wife Gabrielle I was working slightly different hours than I am used to, sleeping in a bit and starting work at 9 but then staying until 7 pm or so. This was kinda nice, and I had a really great time staying with Gunnar and Gabrielle (more on that in another post).

Friday afternoon usually means a beer at the end of the work day at 4:30pm, which is nice.  We go to Olhallen, which is a very old pub in Tromso right next to the old Mack brewery (it is closed).  The pub closes at 6pm so it is a good place for an after work beer.  I am not much of a beer drinker but these Friday afternoon beers are helping.  I usually get a Blanding (spelling may be incorrect)..it is a mix of a light and dark beer.  You can get it at most bars in Tromso but the amount of light beer vs dark beer changes with each bar. I'm still not crazy about it, but at least the second one always goes down smoother than the first.

Oh, and work is going okay too.  Met with Christian (my supervisor) yesterday as he is here in Tromso for a meeting this week.  It never ceases to amaze me how valuable his insight is and how quickly he can provide some ideas that take me from not being confident of what I am thinking or what to do next to having a plan.

Okay, well I want to write at least one more blog post this morning before starting work, so I better get to it.

Sorry there are no pictures in this post.  I think my monthly summary post will be text....unless there are some great summary pictures. But there should be a post on my weekend trips the past couple weeks and hopefully I will share some of my travels with Nicole.