Working your ass off-dinner #phdlife

I love thai food! Often we order take-out (and I always have some kind of curry), but our "new year's resolutions" are about spending more money on actually going out, and then less money on just stupid take-out (not that it's always stupid, but we end up ordering take-out that isn't particularly tasty, and even though it's fast, it isn't that fast, and even though it isn't that expensive it adds up to being money that would have been more fun to spend on going to a restaurant, or the movies, or whatever). The "problem" is that both Anders and I work a lot these days, and we are often dead tired when we're finally home - that's when it's too easy to just grab the phone and order something to our door :P

Yesterday was one of those days when I wanted to make something for us, but didn't really have the time, so I decided my new thing for 2016 is working your ass off-dinner :D Something that's super easy to make (so that we don't end up ordering take-out instead), and at least as tasty as the take-out we would have eaten instead - for people who are "working their ass off" ;) A real working your ass off-dinner (either you're working hard because you're trying to do a phd, or you're a student or whatever) has to be:

1) easy 

2) no planning needed - it has to be possible to make the moment you think I'm hungry, I want dinner 

3) cheap (if you're not a student it doesn't have to, but it's nice to save money on everyday stuff even if you're not a student :D ) 

4) fast - it has to be ready almost the moment you think I'm hungry, I want dinner

The goal is that you can use stuff that's in your freezer, or canned, or dry - stuff you can buy long before you're actually going to use it. I have now filled my freezer with frozen vegetables: broccoli, green beans, spinach, and a "thai wok vegetable"-mix thingy. Also I buy a big bag of mushroom that I chop and put in plastic bags in my freezer, and I do the same thing with chicken. I also have canned stuff, like coconut milk and tomatoes - they last forever <3

Yesterday I made working your ass off-thai curry, and here's my recipe:

You need:

• curry paste (on the picture is a green curry paste, but I could just as easily have used a red one)
• tomyum paste
• mushroom - I use champingnon (prechopped, from the freezer)
• coconut milk - I normally prefer the normal, not light version, but this was what they had this time, and it was ok (buy many at a time, since they're canned, they last forever :D)
• vegetables - yesterday I used one small bowl of broccoli and one small bowl of green beans (both frozen)
• meat - I use mostly chicken, but all kinds of meat works

You can also add: lime/lemon, fish sauce (Nam Plah), some cream - these are ingredients I always have, and I added. Yesterday I happened to have some spring onions that needed to be eaten, and they are perfect for more or less everything so 4 of them went into the curry.

both pastes (curry and tomyum) lasts "forever" after they're opened - just shut the lid tightly, and put them in the fridge 

the IKEA zip lock bags are just perfect for freezing food - I have them in six different sizes <3

 Do:

Put some flavorless oil, like rapeseed oil, in a pot. Heat it and put in a tablespoon of the curry paste. (You can use more if you want a hotter version, and less if you want a milder version.)

Stir, and put a tablespoon or two of the tomyum paste in the pot. Turn down the heat, and mix the two pastes together.

Put the mushrooms in the pot. Stir. Put the coconut milk in the pot. Stir.

If you have, you can add some cream - I love cream, so for me it's (almost) no question about this one :)

Add the meat (chicken or other type) and the vegetables. When the meat is cooked through, it's more or less ready.

Taste it. Add pepper and a little bit of fish sauce (or salt), squeeze a lime/lemon if you have. Ready!

I like to eat it just as it is, but Anders prefer some rice at the side. You can choose whatever you like :)

This is of course not my "very best perfect fantastic gourmet"-recipe for thai food, but the very easiest way (I can think of) to do it. It's easy, it's quick, it's simple, and it's quite tasty - what you need when you're busy working your ass off <3

You can of course also change all the frozen ingredients into fresh ones, and suddenly you have an even tastier more "fancy" curry version. And if I had more time, I would have chopped a chilli and some garlic and added them at the beginning, before the mushroom.

The actual cooking part doesn't take any more time, but you have to cut the vegetables, the mushroom and the meat, and you have to buy everything fresh...:)

Bon appétit, and good luck with working your ass off <3

Looking back. Part 1

I started 2015 with a hope that that year wouldn't be so much of a roller coater ride as 2014 was - and luckily, it wasn't <3

In 2015 I've spent more time on my research in a long time, and it has felt really good. And on Saturday I was out, celebrating maybe the best and "biggest" thing of 2015 - my one year anniversary with Anders <3 We even made some "new year's resolutions":

1. go more to bars (a nice cocktail is, well, very nice)

one of my favourite places in Oslo for cocktails: Étoile

2. go more to the theatre
3. go more (once a month?) to the movies
4. go more out to dinner

(5. spend less on everyday "stupid" stuff, like buy lunch instead of making it yourself, buy coffee instead of making it yourself, buy take-away instead of making it yourself - I rather want to spend the money on point 1-4 ;) )

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So I've been looking back at 2015 - a very good year - and here are some of the highlights from the first 6 months:

January
What can I say? 2015 started with me getting the best boyfriend...

I wrote about heavy water, since I was inspired by the fantastic series at NRK ("Kampen om tungtvannet"). 

I turned 31. 

I thought about which scientific paper I like more - Chadwick's paper about the neutron, or Einstein's paper about E=mc2.

Then I gave a talk about publishing, as seen from the point of view of a young scientist - I was pretty nervous! 

February

Alexandra turned 5! And I was excited. I was also super excited since Sushi and Nuclear got nominated to American Documentary Film Festival 2015 :D

#phdlife was important.

I could tell you I was going to be on TV. 

I did my first radio show of the year. 

I went to Paris for the first experiment of 2015, and I had to admit I'd made an embarrassing mistake on the radio...(I guess we all make mistakes from time to time, right?)

On the 27th of February I celebrated my favourite particle - the neutron. 

March

We started filming Big Bang.

I gave several talks about thorium...

We celebrated pie day - of course :P

I went on my first vacation with anders, to Barcelona, and missed the solar eclipse. Totally worth it, though <3

While we were in Barcelona, both Sushi and Nuclear and Big Bang premiered!

April

I wrote about math and self-esteem, and how I did it in math in high school.

I did science, and asked (myself and others) "silly" questions.

It was finally spring, and the university was beautiful!

May

We went on a trip to the forest - around Sognsvann, with Lise and Joackim :) This was a preparation to see if we thought Alexandra would manage a "real" trip into the forest, where would spend the night and everything... It was a great day, and we concluded she was ready.

I scienced some more, and finally I was starting to figure things out :D

Then I started to get some actual real results, and it was 17th of May and sunny and hot, and a happy time:

We (the nuclear physics group) arranged a workshop in Oslo, where I talked about my preliminary results, and I gave a talk to the INSEAD Alumni group about thorium and nuclear power - and I met some very interesting people.

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Hope you enjoyed this little throwback on my first 6 months of a very good year - I can only hope (I do!) that 2016 will be just as good.

Part 2 of looking back will come soon ;)

Friday Facts is back!

After this week, when North Korea decided to do what they did, what else could be the theme for Friday facts than the hydrogen bomb?

1. the hydrogen bomb is also called the H-bomb, a fusion weapon/bomb, or a thermonuclear weapon
2. the point of a "real" hydrogen bomb is to get hydrogen to fuse, and to get a large portion of energy released from this reaction
3. to get the hydrogen to fuse you have to make it hot enough (you try to recreate what happens in the sun) so that light nuclei will fuse and release even more energy than in a "normal" atomic bomb/nuclear weapon - the word thermonuclear means that the fusion takes place when the temperature is extremely high
4. a hydrogen bomb is also an atomic bomb/nuclear weapon, but it was developed some years after the fission bombs ("normal" atomic bombs) that were used in 1945, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the only time nuclear weapons have been used (a hydrogen bomb has never been used - only tested)
5. the first step of a hydrogen bomb is a fission bomb, which makes the temperature so extreme that fusion may start
6. I don't understand this mushroom cloud from the North Korean bomb test on Wednesday, since they did it under ground... I think they've either had fun with photo shop, or they just "borrowed" the pictures of the cloud from somewhere else (maybe Kim Jong Un really loves mushroom clouds?)
7. in addition to a real fusion bomb (where most of the energy released comes from fusion reactions), you could make a fission bomb that is boosted with hydrogen - this means that there will be some hydrogen in the weapon that fuses, and from these fusion reactions you get more neutrons so that even more of the fissile material will fission. Almost of all the energy released in such a weapon comes from fission, so therefore it's called a boosted fission bomb
8. there is in theory no limits for how big a hydrogen bomb can be; you can just put more and more fusion material in it - I state that the real hydrogen bomb is the deadliest weapon ever made, and the biggest ever bomb test was the Tsar Bomba, which had an explosive power of 50 million tons of TNT (around 1500 times the total explosive power of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined)
9. the first hydrogen bomb was tested in 1952, by the USA - today there are at least five countries that have these types of weapons (USA, Russia, UK, France, and China)
10. this book is about the hydrogen bomb, and I got it from my sweet colleague, Gry, and now I'm going to read it <3

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Happy weekend from Rose castle - we are going to watch West Wing and share a bottle of wine now :)

(I'm a frog :D)

2 to the power of 5 (birthday)

I can now brag about being 2⁵ (or 2 to the power of 5, or 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2), or 100000, or 32 years old... 

Yesterday was my birthday, and I celebrated by trying to work (but I was kind of tired from Wednesday), and having a very nice dinner with Anders at Brasserie France ( which was much easier than the working part - yum!). Also Alexandra called from her new tablet (that she got for Christmas, so that she can Skype me or her father whenever she feels like it) to wish me Happy Birthday <3

I wore the same statement necklace that I wore on TV on Wednesday. This was a gift from my mother for Christmas, and it was actually in one of the bags that were stolen from our car. I did not get it back, but my mother wanted me to have it, and went to the store and actually bought another one. I was so happy they still had it, and that my mother just did this, because I fell in love with it the moment I saw it.

The necklace is from ALDO.

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I really love Brasserie France, and I have to remember not to let it be too long until the next time I/we go there! 

The food is amazing - I mean, it's French. The wine is amazing - I mean, it's French, land of Champagne. The atmosphere really makes me feel like I'm in Paris; Brasserie France is for me the closest I can get to Paris without actually going there. When I think about it, it's way too long since I was there, and I have never been there with Anders; I should do something about that ;) 

I had one of my French favourites for a starter - a duck salad, and then I had a really nice sea trout with Parmesan and spinach for the main course. Anders had a classical onion soup for starter, and entrecôte with frites, green beans and bernaise for the main course. After this, there were only room for a coffee, so no dessert this time :)

We started everything with a glass of Champagne, of course - after all, this is probably the second last time I'm turning something that's 2 to the power of something, and it's 32 years until the next time.

Nuclear physicist or girly girl? (Crazy day)

My original plan today was something like this:

• get up
• meet Ingrid for an early coffee
• meet my little sister, Carina, to get lash extensions (it was her Christmas present for me, and it's a good idea to do it now before the semester turns crazy)
• go to the University and write on my paper (write, make figures, and maybe even do some more of the remaining analysis).

Then I woke up at 06:30, by the radio as we always do: "North Korea has tested what they claim to be a hydrogen bomb", and then this happened instead:

• VG sent me an sms wondering if I could talk to them about the H-bomb
• I got in the shower
• VG called me - I talked to them
• I read a little bit about about thermonuclear weapons
• I realsized there would be no coffee with Ingrid, and Anders and i decided to have a coffee at Kaffebrenneriet at Sagene - where he could esily get to the University, and I could easily get to Bjerke (where I had the lashes date with my sister)
• VG called again, wondering if I could come to their studio, but I was on my way to my appointment with Carina, so I had to decline
• TV2 called, and I talked to them on the bus to meet Carina

At this time I realised that maybe this day would be mostly about hydrogen weapons, and not so much about the theory of the "Oslo method"...:P

I wanted to be a girly girl today <3

• Carina and I got to the lashes place, I muted my phone (but not my Apple watch), and we started the treatment, where I had to lay still with my eyes closed for 2.5 hours...
• my phone rang, but I couldn't answer it
• my phone rang again, but I couldn't answer it
• Carina's phone rang
• I got an sms 
• my phone rang again, but I couldn't answer it
• I felt like I had to pee, and when I asked if I had to keep my eyes closed for much longer, the reply I got was 1.5 hours...
• ...and so on...

We finished what we started, I could go to the toilet, and I could check my phone. It looked something like this:

I realised I wasn't going back to University, but home to Rose castle to charge my phone, my Mac, and talk and read.

• interview with VG
• interview with Stavanger Aftenblad
• I showered and picked out an outfit I felt was appropriate on TV
• went to TV2
• got make-up on
• interview for the news at 18:30
• live interview for the 17:00 news
• took a taxi from TV2 to NRK
• Dagsnytt18
• interview for Dagsrevyen
• met Anders, and we saw the strange lights on the sky as we were walking towards the metro, in the freezing cold <3

thanks Mari, you're the best <3

Now I'm finally home, and of course I have a long list of un-ticked to dos from today, which I'm not doing today, since now I'm going to bed. I've done my best today, and tomorrow's a new day, and I'll continue on my writing and my analysis and everything :)

Dagsnytt18 (I'm at 9 something minutes) 

I think the "title" Nuclear Physicist and Girly Blogger has never been more suiting that today...

One goal...

Happy new year my dearest!

I've been quiet since Christmas eve, and there are two main reasons for that:

1) I needed the time to relax and be with my family - preparing my self for what will be an intense year. 

2) Someone broke into our car and stole half of the presents we got for Christmas (for example Anders' present for me :( ), and our suitcase with clothes and stuff. This was a mentally exhausting experience, which also stole a lot of time since we've been on the phone with different insurance companies and the police and everything. End of the story is that even though we had the best travel insurance in the biggest insurance company in Norway, we got nothing, since we happened to be inside our own apartment when it happened (the car could have been parked at exactly the same place; if we had been somewhere else when it happened, we would have been covered). After the day when it happened (in the middle of the day, the 27th of December) when I cried most of the day, I've wanted to just put this episode behind me, and I've tried focusing on all the fantastic things I've got in my life - Alexandra, Anders, health, amongst others, and I haven't really felt I had any time for blogging. Hope you understand.

But now I'm back! Back at the University, back on the blog, back with my research.

Maybe you've already guessed why I'm saying this will be an intense year... 

2016 is the year where I have really just one, main goal: to finish my PhD. There is a lot of work to do be done, and I think it will be hard, but with the support and help of especially Anders, and also my fantastic supervisors, I think I'll manage! I will of course share (almost) everything from the last part of this trip, from a Master of Science to becoming a Doctor ;) Hope you will follow me!