Cold February

February is always short and in February the winter holiday period starts in Finland. We also had a short vacation with the kids in the Lapland before the rush (school breaks) started. Well, on the border of the Lapland, in Ruka (near Kuusamo city). Of course, it is impossible to have a full break during such a high scientific season, but I noticed that I wasn't the only one who was working distantly from the Lapland! 😅 As it was such a cold week (16-28 Celsius degrees), it was impossible anyway to do downhill skiing or cross-country skiing for full days. So it was pretty convenient to to enjoy the sports in the morning and then have meeting in front of the log-fire. 

But perhaps due to such a cold week and a lot of outdoor sports, I got a flu. And yes, I took the corona-test and it was luckily negative. I must say that everything was organized in Ruka Ski Resort very well , e.g. the area where you had to queue the ski-lifts were spread widely, so that people would have enough distance to each others. But despite the heavy use of face-masks and hand-sanitizers, still I've got a bug... But then again, it seemed that my youngest kid had also very mild symptoms, so perhaps she carried it from the daycare, an unavoidable chain! Anyway, after slow recovery, we are now heading to the March, which will be full of different scientific events! And since my teaching (synthesis laboratory course) was cancelled from this spring, I have time to do some research also in March! 😎

Fishing of better future?

I'm so happy that we have a such a nice winter in Kuopio this year. The trees have been white at least for the 5 weeks in a row now, and we have had temperatures between 10-20 degrees, so real winter, which has not been the case in the past few years. To show our postdoc (who arrived in Finland in last October) the real Finnish winter sports and how we scientist make our living 😉, I took him to ice fishing. Despite the low temperatures, we have warmer period during the Christmas and therefore a there was a water layer above the ice and below the snow. And thus, it was not-so-nice to walk on the ice. Luckily, we went to place (Rauhalahti camping area), where you can do ice-fishing from the boat-platform. And as a responsible "superviser" I felt I need to show how one can earn daily living free-of-charge, just in case one happens to run out of the funding! 😆😂😜 And since by science, it really hard to make real money!