New job

Well, well.. Finally got a new job, although it's only a temporary project for a few months. I turned down a more hardware oriented job in favour of something more up my alley and was offered a position in the ROOT/PROOF team to work with parallel computing. Even though the other job was a one year position, I wanted to do something that lies closer to my interests. A few weeks into the project I'm happy to say it's VERY interesting. It remains to be seen how long I can stay, but at least until Christmas.

Wedding at Bäckaskog Slott, August 27!

On a wonderful day in August, we finally got married at the renaissance castle in Bäckaskog. It was a really international wedding, me being Swedish, Maria Lucia being Colombian with relatives and visiting friends from Colombia, France, Sri Lanka, Spain, Romania and of course Sweden. The Christian ceremony was given in English by Reverend Göran Mellander. After the wedding, we went with a veteran car to Valje Hus where we had the dinner and the party. A superb three course dinner was followed by cake (with Colombian coffee) and dance to live music..

Preparing the wedding

Finally Maria Lucia came back from a very successful year in Sri Lanka. A year that did not exactly lack drama. She did a lot of work in the aftermath of the tsunami. The projects she helped starting are expanding and continue to help many people. At the end of May her contract finished and she left for London where we met for five wonderful days. She then returned home to Colombia and I went back to France, to prepare for our wedding. The drama continues with various problems with embassies and visas, and there are several hard problems we need to solve. We will get married at Bäckaskog Castle close to Kristianstad, Sweden, on August 27.

Tsunami

A lot of things has happened since the last entry. Basically a trip to Sri Lanka, a trip to Sweden for Christmas and another trip to Sri Lanka. Lucia was in Colombo at the time of the tsunami, although she had considered going to the beach before it happened. Luckily she didn't, but some of her friends did and literally had to run away from it. Afterwards, she went with the UN as a volunteer. During and after Christmas, my relatives, friends, collegues and neighbors back home donated 1000 Euro as well as three full bags of medicines and other medical supplies that I took to Sri Lanka first week of january. To make a long story shorter, we located a refugee camp in Panadura. The director told us they had received basic aids except shoes for the school children. So we bought 199 pairs of shoes for 900 Euro and the last day I was there AIESEC had organized a day long event for the kids in the camp with ball games, singing and shoe delivery. I think they were happy. The remaning money went to a fund for supporting the women at the camp to help them get started with small businesses, like bakeries etc. Lucia is organizing this too. The medicines were given to the Slovakian rescue team who took it to a hospital in Galle. We also went traveling round the country and saw many places, both destroyed by the tsunami but also unaffected places (the tsunami only destroyed part of the coast of course). It is important that the tourists come back as soon as possible since the country is relying on this income. 50% of the beach hotels were partly or totally destroyed but many of them are already back in business. We visited the hotel (the excellent Ypsilon hotel in Beruwela) which had been half destroyed. We were told that they would already open again on february 1! Here in Switzerland, I have just started my new contract that will last until summer. Our wedding will be on August 27 (new date), but will probably get legally married already in april to speed up and simply the visa/residence permit application.

Trip to Sweden

Went home to Sweden for a week and a half, at the end of August. Stopped in Hannover on the way and met up with Maria Lucia who was there on an AIESEC conference. At home, we did the usual tour to see the family and checked out a number of churches for the wedding next summer. We are opting for Backaskog Slott close to Kristianstad. We also went to Copenhagen for a day, walked along Stroget, saw Mme Taussaud's wax museum and rode on the most amazing Demon Rollercoaster at Tivoli. Only one minute long ride, but try to scream without drawing breath for one minute and you will understand! Pictures can be found here.

On holiday

Since the week has been particularly exhausting, let alone the mind boggling and fantastical trip to Spain last week, seen in the pictures in the link below, I will now go on (another) relaxing holiday to Sweden via Germany where I will pick up my fiancee who is on conference in Hanover. Back at CERN on September 9.
Trip to Spain, August 2004:
http://pnilsson.web.cern.ch/pnilsson/galleries/Espana2004/index.html

End of contract...

My two year contract + extention as fellow at CERN in Switzerland has ended. I will remain with the ALICE SPD group at least until the end of the year, but as a (paid) unpaid associate. This position might change to a project associate later on. Since I came here I have mostly been working on test beam analysis, i.e. mainly programming in C++, but have also done some LabView work for the test beam DAQ system. At the moment I am working on new analysis methods for retrieving the intrinsic resolution of the SPD together with my collegue Jan. We will at least write an internal report on it, and perhaps it will lead a publication.

Well... That was the boring professional part! In my private life things are moving rapidly. On June 9, I got engaged with my Maria-Lucia, just before she went to Sri Lanka for one year to work with AIESEC, the largest student organization in the world. We are planning to get married next summer in Sweden. In just over two weeks from now we will meet in Germany, where she will go to a conference, and then we will drive to Sweden for a week of holiday. But before that, I will have some holiday in Spain for the wedding of my friends Mercedes and Alejandro. Other private news include a visit of my cousin Malin and Martin, and later also her parents Per and Kerstin.