sey085

Last Saturday, I competed in the annual 20 km de Lausanne . As you might have guessed from the name, it is a 20km race (nearly a half marathon) through the streets of downtown Lausanne. As Lausanne is built on a fairly steep hill, the course involves multiple thigh-burning climbs designed to crush both mind and body. Fortunately for me, though, I'd been training for a couple of weeks, so I was not entirely out of shape for the race. Unfortunately for me, though, I spent Friday night in Geneva with a bunch of moral degenerates and thus was not entirely recovered for the afternoon race. Fig. 1: The course layout. By my estimate, it passes within one block of 15 different apartments that I applied for and was denied. Loren was kind enough to take the train from Grenoble to run the race as well, so I was not all alone (at least at the start of the race). He had not trained at all for the race, but on the other hand, he was smart enough not to have too much fun Friday night -- so...

As a general rule, I think it is a good idea that everyone keep a mental list of things they would like to accomplish in life. Nothing formal or complicated; just a few things (easy or difficult) that would really make you happy to do. For example, one of my goals in life is to form an all-ukulele all-David-Bowie cover band called "We can be Bowie -- just for one day." I'm still working on that -- I will keep you informed of my progress. Why do I bring this up? Well, after last weekend I can cross off one of my dreams in life. I'll get straight to the photographic evidence. Fig. 1: Pretty much the happiest I will ever be in a photo, ever. Last weekend, my good friends from Stanford, Rafael and Pin-pin, flew down from the dreary United Kingdom (where they are both doing post-docs) to visit Switzerland. As they were more interested in hitting the slopes than seeing the sights in Lausanne, it was up to me to plan some sort of outdoor adventure. After consulting wi...

Lots of old news to cover, what with me not writing an actual update in like a month, so away we go. Way, way back -- before Christmas break -- I took the train to beautiful Grenoble to visit my friend Loren, who works there as a lab monkey, like me. Although Loren has made it into Switzerland (successfully) two times, this was my first trip to France to visit him. I had heard lots of talk about how awesome the city, so I was pretty excited about checking it out. To most French people, Grenoble = the Alps. Located smack dab in-between three massive sets of mountains, Grenoble is known for its mountainy beauty. On the mountains to the north is La Bastille, a huge prison complex that was begun in the middle ages. Loren and I -- trying to recreate everything we knew about French history -- decided to storm the bastille. It wasn't the same bastille, but it was close enough. Fig. 1: La Bastille, in Grenoble. Pretty much the ultimate snowball fort. Grenoble hosted the winter olymp...

As I write, it is roughly 33 degrees outside my apartment and it has been lightly snowing all week. Earlier this week, it was really snowing. The only way I could describe it would be to say: it is like watching a Green Bay Packers game, except you got cold and wet, too. This isn't the first time it has snowed since I arrived here (it snowed on Dan, Chris and I a couple weekends ago), but it is significantly more intense this time. Of course, Lausanne is at fairly low elevation and is next to the largest lake in continental Europe, so the weather is almost certainly much more severe up in the mountains. Thus, the light snowfall we got a couple weeks ago corresponded to a huge amount of snow up in the Alps, which can mean only one thing: winter sports! A couple weekends ago, Loren, Chris and I headed deep into the "Alpes Vaudoises" for some winter fun. Fortunately, there are plenty of mountain resorts in the French speaking portion of the country, so it was easy for...