May Wrap-Up

Life Events

Defended my thesis and got a top grade! Now I am officially a cosmologist!

Together with my husband and my family we celebrated one year of my marriage by eating a piece of wedding cake that we preserved in the freezer for that occasion specifically (Danish tradition).

Books

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas - I enjoyed it.

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster - really good read.

The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg - a classic popular science book in cosmology. Since it is from 19.. It is a bit outdated but it is still a delightful book to read.

Cruel Crown by Victoria Aveyard - two novellas Queen Song and Steel Scars as s prequel to Red Queen series. Both stories had potential that in my opinion hasn't been explored. I like the concept and ideas Victoria is presenting in those stories but I lack in depth description and dimensionality of characters. We are being informed that the heroines are interesting and unique personalities but we get to know way too little about them to really believe that it is true. 

Movies

I watched obscenely many movies on youtube. Here is a few that I saw first time:

Not Another Teen Movie - horrible but might squeeze from you few cheap joke provoked laughs.

What's your number? - funny enough if you really have nothing else to watch or if you want to watch Chris Evans playing a charmer.

The Switch - bearable.

The Accidental Husband - sweet and funny enough.

Hot Pursuit - funny enough. 

The Prince and Me - I thought it was funny and sweet but I am biased because I like one particular Danish man a lot ;)

Bad Teacher - horrible movie but it has a moment when the teacher played by Cameron Diaz checks tests of her pupils and probably most people who ever were checking tests/homeworks/exams will find it funny!

I also saw:

Money Monster - pretty good.

The Dressmaker - I liked it a lot. If you liked movie Chocolate then this one has a bit similar vibe, maybe a bit more dark.

The Intern - nice movie to watch with family excluding kids (they might not find it very interesting)

Deadpool - it was totally different form what I expected. At first I really didn't like it and couldn't understand why people loved it so much but in the end I got used to the format it was made and my final conclusion is that if I see it again I probably like it a bit more.

Travel

Keukenhof flower garden - spring garden. I was very lucky to have spectacular spring weather! It was a very nice bike trip :)

The first weekend of May I have biked to Scheveningen beach and Katwijk beach because it was truly "summerish" weekend. Together with the trip to Keukenhof I have made 90 km on bike in four days!

Delft - engineering town of Netherlands ;)

March/April summary

Books

Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Coles - it is already a bit outdated book because cosmology evolves very fast but still nice popular science book to read.

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard - it is ok young adult novel (first book in a series) but for me it doesn't live up to the hype. Nevertheless, I will read the next books in the series.

Calamity by Brandon Sanderson - final book in Reckoners series and it was as cool as the previous ones in the trilogy + novellas.

The Winner's Kiss by Marie Rutkowski - final book in the Winner's trilogy. I haven't been disappointed and I enjoyed the read.

Movies

I saw only two movies in theater those two months Spotlight and Room. Both were good.

Travel

Leiden





On a way from Leiden to The Hague





The Hague

Beach in The Hague (Scheveningen)



Rotterdam

Life Events

I handed in my thesis in cosmology on the beginning of March and right after I have moved to Netherlands to start an internship in a patent office. In the end of April I went to Denmark to prepare for defense of my thesis.

February Note

There is not much shareable stuff that happened in February.
What I mean is that I saw no movie or read no novel. But as for career/live this month was crazy!

I would like to share some small thing that I have discovered while doing my thesis project. I wish I had known about it before I started.

Breathing

Yep...
I always found meditation a bit hard and somehow I couldn't see myself becoming good in it. Now I do it every day just before sleeping. Why before sleeping? Well, because there is so much going on in my life and there is so much information and stuff in this world that sometimes one can feel overwhelmed by everything. I find myself very often laying in bed and thinking obsessively about an infinite amount of things that could easily wait until morning. It used to steal the night away from me. But apparently I am not the sharpest fish in the sea, and I cannot think and breathe according to a given pattern at the same time!!?? And I am so glad for that because a very simple app with breathing exercise helps me to calm down and get some quality sleep no matter how exciting/stressful/painful the day before was or the day to come seemed to be. Also doing this exercise on a daily basis builds inner calmness which fills one's body with positive energy... or, at least, it feels like that.

January wrap up

Books

"The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read"
- Internet claims it was Mark Twain who said it but who knows...

Last year I have read 26 books! So I actually managed to fulfill my aim of reading two books per month ;) I probably should aim for three books per month this year... Although I have read an article about some crazy challenge of reading 100 books in a year?! I am obviously intrigued... but let's see what improvement I will make this year and maybe 2017 will be my 100 books challenge year ;)

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - for those that like fairy tales it might be exactly what they need for relaxing read. On the other hand, for those that don't it might be too cheesy. I liked it. It was my book companion during Christmas/NewYearsEve break.

Movies

The Five-Year Engagement - it turned out to be a second-rate piece of work even I do like both of the leading actors Jason Segel and Emily Blunt. There was nothing exciting about this movie, it was sad to watch that is how bad it was. It also wasn't my type of movie. People that love each other but ruin each other lives that is not for me, way too stressful. My mum also didn't like it but we managed to watch it to the end so that we never ever have to see it again.

Love, Rosie - a bit better than The Five-Year Engagement but still really irritating to watch. The same topic, so again not really my type of story, but even more messed up plot. I wasn't alone my husband and my parents also thought that it was tiring to watch. Please people if you love each other then just be together stop being afraid - love is the best this short life has to offer, don't miss it and definitely don't waist time on hurting someone you cannot live without! I wish I could scream it at the leading characters on the very beginning of the movie then I could have watched beautiful love story instead of watching two people pretending that they don't love each other!?

Event

I greeted this year with my husband and friends by playing board games, drinking Pina Colada, and smoking Cohiba cigar. Both cigars and rum were recently brought by my friends from Cuba so the evening were under Cuban theme.

Dear world,
I wish you more peace, more love and more wisdom,
Cheers.

December summary

Movies

Les Miserables - this movie is phenomenal in my opinion but might be unbearable for those that do not like musicals.

Moulin Rouge! - weird tear squeezer. It is an old movie that I have never seen but I enjoyed it.

Ted - very funny.

Ted 2 - not as funny as Ted.

Star Wars - I am not the biggest fan of Star Wars but it actually was a quite nice movie.

Bridge of spies - a great movie based on a gripping true story of a lawyer James B. Donovan who took a case of a Russian spy Rudolf Abel in 1957 and afterwards in 1962 negotiated exchange of captured American pilot for Abel. I highly recommend.

Travel

I traveled  to Poland for this Christmas break so I had a lot of family time this December.

-
Goodbye year 2015 
You were grant!

November

Reading

arxiv - I can recommend arxiv web page as a good place to see what is going on in theoretical physics. arxiv has free articles that are pre-prints of articles later on published in scientific journals. Very often they do not differ from published versions and since they are for free most of people use arxiv as a main search engine of newest articles in fields like for example cosmology or particle physics.


news - unfortunately because of what is going on in the world I had to decrease my political ignorance. With my naive dreamer attitude I hope that regardless differences and problems we are facing that we will keep growing as more and more united global society.... I wish all of us more peace, more love, and education.

Movies/Shows

The Graham Norton Show - it is the most funny talk show ever for those that love movies. Just give it a go and you going to get addicted.

Spectre - new James Bond movie. I loved it but I am watching movies like that without any critic, I am just enjoying spy movies "period".

Woman in Gold - good movie, I haven't read the book, so I cannot compare but I found the story very interesting and I think actors did a very good job.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
I haven't had as boring November as it might seem from this summary... but then again it is not like I had a time of my life...

This month started horrible for me because I was feeling stressed and depressed but it ended with me feeling calmer and more confident about future.

I think it is because I have been very creative which always make me more emotionally stable and as a consequence more happy.

October

Books

10 billion by Stephen Emmott - very depressing book. It hasn't received the best reviews and has been very criticized for not being precise enough when it comes to numbers and data that it refers to. I do not have time to play a Sherlock Holmes myself. Therefore, I have decided to assume that the author probably made some mistakes and that he has a bias opinion. He himself admits that he is a bit on a pessimistic site when it comes to a view on a situation of humanity and on what is going to happen next to our planet. Regardless, I think it was very important book, it is loaded with information and there is nothing to like about future author presents but I think it is a healthy alternative to ignorance and non scientific optimism.

Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Maggiore - I am not going to describe details. It is an academic book meant for two semester course. I read it in 4 days so you can imagine a headache I had in the end. Regardless, I think it is not the best book for self study because it skips a lot of details.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - very cool book. I am not really a geek and I loved it, I cannot imagine how much geeks love it. This book is a science fiction, fantasy and adventure in one. It is about growing up, about how our world could be in 30 years. It is full of action book that go through enormous amount of references to 80s. Geeks were born in 70s this is a must read for you!

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow - I really enjoyed this book. Nicely written book about limitations of science and philosophical methods of dealing with it.

Movies/Shows

The Lobster - it is a very very weird movie. I guess one of most surprising and interesting I have ever seen. It is an anti-utopian love story that will shock you, and about some things you might laugh first when you leave the cinema ;)

The Martian - very good movie but unfortunately not nearly as good as the book. I am saying mostly because movie didn't manage to show how dangerous was the situation of Mark left on Mars on his own. In a movie it seemed way too easy. I was entertained but I would say book is a must whereas movie you can watch if you want to but you don't have to. For me Interstellar was better as a movie, but book The Martian is incomparable to anything because it is absolutely fantastic.

The Maze Runner II - number one was a better movie. This one is not as well rounded and balanced because we get so many new characters and so many turns of action that it is hard to care and fill in in their situation. I sill was entertained but I even stronger regret not having read the books.

The Voice - I have lost one day of my life to watch this program from USA, UK and Poland. It is a great show, funny and so pleasant.

Food

Jujube fruit - is kinda like an apple but very little, and has a stone in the middle. It is a first time I have tried this fruit but it stole my heart. Apparently if one lets it dry it will taste like a date.

Travel

Strasbourg, France - I have spend there almost whole month visiting my husband. I was very proud of myself because I managed to limit myself to manageable amount of luggage.

Paris, France - for the long weekend of October which was also the last weekend of the month me and my husband went to Paris. We have spend there four days. These were my last days in France before going back to Denmark. It was wonderful. Paris is great but we also were very lucky and it was warm and sunny.

Versailles, Paris - I also went on a bike trip to see one of the most famous palaces.