Christmas?

In case you haven't noticed christmas is coming nearer. I've noticed and still haven't bought the necessary christmas gifts. For some this also means that a holiday is coming. For everybody else but me. It's thesis time and thesis time does not equal holiday. Or weekend.
Now the challenge arising is making my mother understand why I'm not going to be the super helpful christmas elf!

Straight

I am 24. Still I’m treated like a child. Not by my parents, nor by my friends but by “the big mother”: the state. Because she thinks it is necessary to smother me in care in the form of rules and guidelines to keep on the right track, because the adults know better.

I have to hurry up and finish my education, no detours. I should stay healthy and eat properly, lots of vegetables, less meat, no sugar, no fast food. I should be sensible and not drink more than five units on one evening, and get up next morning, hangoverfree, and go for a run. I should have the children as soon as possible, preferably three, and send them to the nursery and go to work. I should buy organic products and bike to work.

I am 24, and I can handle it myself. Maybe “the big mother” doesn’t think so, but I know what consequences my actions have, and I’d love to take them. I’d love to decide myself how much I should weigh, if I do fitness or get hammered Saturday night.

Why is the new happiness, the ultimate goal, to become 100 years old? When did a good life become a long life? Why is it wrong to smoke and be overweight? People are classified as wrong or right. Other people decide what a good life is looking at statistics and scientific studies.

And all this can be done without protests because it is for the common good, men when did politicians become so omniscient that they can figure out how I get a good life? Everything is planned for the citizens, just shut up and do what you’re told. That’s how they raised children 50 years ago. But people are not children, and they are not stupid. As a result they shouldn’t be treated as such on pretext of getting a better life. We ourselves decide how we want to life our live, otherwise living in a democracy is useless.

For all danish readers: the danish version can be found on jp.dk.

Skinny

A lot of things are happening in the fashion industry these days. It seems a rebellion is in the making, a rebellion against the picture of the perfect model, the perfect woman.
The german women's magazine, Brigitte, now only wants to use normal women in their editorials and articles. Also Ralph Lauren is being critisised for photoshopping an already very slim model even slimmer.


Generally I appreciate that attention is being drawn to the unrealistic expectations to women set by the fashion industry. Nobody can look like Jennifer Aniston on a magazine cover, not even Jennifer Aniston herself.
On the other hand modelling is a job and a model can offer more than a normal girl, simply because it's her job and what's she's good at. But models can be good models even if they are not 175 cm tall and weighs 50 kg. If I understand everything correctly being pretty as a model is not enough, you also need charisma and a whole lot of talent. So theoretically any girl with the right personal qualities should be able to do the job.
Let's hope all of this fuss can help give a more diverse picture of women.

Smile

Sofa

I present to you all my new sofa!!

Cute little thing i got on Lauritz.

Journalism?

Today my (free!) newpaper came through the letter box as usual. And as usual I sit down with my breakfast and the newspaper and look forward to skimming through the news of today.
But today there were no news. In stead I found myself confronted with a two-faced newspaper, imagining what the paper would look lige 50 years from now. The one end fantasising about the consequences if we do not reduce the emission of CO2 and the other imagining a world where we have done nothing.
Since I'm what they call "climate-denier" I find this somewhat offensive. I wasn't able to read these actually quite well-written articles because they lack any self-criticism what so ever!
This brings me to my biggest problem. I want to write something about this theme but I can't find articles that are critical towards human induced climate change.
Can anyone help me???

Good ideas??

I love my radios, i really, really love my radios. They are spread all through my appartment and turned on all the time. And they are all tuned in on the same station: 92,6, P3.
This great, public youth-radiostation has almost monopolized the FM-area, and almost every person under 30 listens to P3.
But at this moment a new media-settlement is being discussed. In their eagerness to promote commercial radiostations, which have all been going bankrupt, one of the suggestions is to commercialize P3!!
I can only say that I'm horrified. The reason everybody listens to P3 is that it is actualy good. As a atter of fact this radiostation is the only success the public media cooperation DR can present. So why fix what wasn't broken in the first place?
The fear is that since DR is funded by the state, and hence taxpayed, it is favored compared to commercial news services since every service from DR is free. So no advertisement in the middle of a movie, free online news and so on.
I do see the problem but riuning the only well-functioning part of this enterprise serves no one. Least of all the listeners who by the way are also taxpayers.

Sunday

Rhine

The very cute granddaughter of a good friend

War

Yesterday Politiken, a danish newspaper, published a long discussed book written by a former soldier in the special forces.
The discussion had centered around how the Danish Defence tried to stop the publishing of the book claiming it's content could endanger danish soldiers stationed around the world. Whether that's true or not I can't say, I haven't read the book, neither am I an expert on military secrets.
What I do know is that Politiken violated the copyrights of the writer to get publicity and come off as the defender of the freedom of speach against the oppressive state.
Not a behavior I agree with, but at least it was impossible to get a cope of Politiken yesterday. And that's a first!

Dreams (the second)

Now who wouldn't want that baby??

New!

I finally decided to get a new cellphone choosing the new Nokia 6700 classic. I had it recommended by friends and newspapers. ;-) Unfortunately the standard memorycard is only 1 GB large so I ended up bying an additional memorycard of 4 GB.

I chose this phone because it has the most important functions such as decent camera (not amazing), mp3-player and good batterycapacity. And of course because I think it looks absolutely beautifull!! :-)
Looking forward to getting it!

Eloquence

Luck

I'm currently sitting in my room blogging while my new roommate is washing the kitchen floor. Does that sound surreal? Not until you hear that she basically has done the dishes for a week, has cookes for me and insists on that SHE is the lucky one.....

The story began when my mother called and told me that she had a very nice italian exchange student in her shop who was looking for a room the next five months and since I have a room the case was set.

So after trawling the city for bed, table and clothing rack Greta settled in. And so far I'm not complaining! :-)

Success

IT WORKED!!!
It only took 6 months but IT WORKED!!!!

Malaga

Doesn't this picture just say it all?

Transit

Came home from UNF chemistry camp...sore, tired and with a thousand new friends on facebook. It has been a great week, allthough it has been hard work. Standing in the lab being available and on the whole day really gets the best of you.
Luckaly I'm going on a little holiday on thuesday, starting in Remagen Germany going back to Denmark on the 12th and leaving for Malaga on the 13th. Just a tiny little trip to clear my mind. Can't wait!!! :-)

Camp

At the moment I live at the university. I sleep, eat and work at the university. There is a reason for that, and it's not my thesis. (Thank God!)
I'm teaching at the UNF Chemistry Camp for high school students. 40 students voluntarily spend one week of their summer holiday doing chemistry at the university. They are incredibly committed and ask tons of questions, which is quite cool but also quite exhausting.
At the moment I'm working on developing and printing 20 NMR-spectra, all of the same compound.
The biggest downside is that I have now spent five nights in a gym hall with 40 high school students thus reducing my sleeping time to a minimum. The only reason I'm still awake is loads of coffe and chocolate bisquits. :-)

Dreams

I was looking through some pictures and came across an album from my first and only time in Paris. And I really want to go back! :-)

Spill

Got a phone call this sunday after a great night on the town. The phone call was from a labpartner that told me the cooling fluid from the cryostat I've used in a reaction had spilt all over the lab floor, leaving my reaction uncooled and the cryostat beeping.
So I turn up in the lab today at about 7.30 and start cleaning the mess up. Also my reaction hasn't worked but that was to be expected.
Another great monday to start the week.

Link update

A new link has emerged on my important stuff list. This homepage was recommended by a laboratory technician at the university. It can supply you with anything a geek heart will ever need. I'm especially fond of the periodic table shower curtain and the LED faucet lights. :-)

Failure

Don't you just hate those days?? Where everything goes wrong, you miss the dustbin andthings spontaneously fall out of your hands?? Now imagine having an entire week like that.
This friday afternoon things just don't look bright. Not one reaction I've started this week has worked. Not even the simple ones, that have been done a million times before, seem to like me. On top of that my equipment hates me too. Flasks brake when I look at them, machines stop working the second I touch them and for some reason every fluid containing vessel is leaky....
At least I had cake today. :-)

Beach

Just spent three days at my friends beach house in Nyborg. Lovely place, everybody wants to be there, espacially moskitos. They also liked me and accepted me as their breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Still I went there in my fathers cute little Alfa romeo spider sportscar which really does boost your mood and selfconfidence. I can only recommend driving in a sportscar as a terapy for....well anything!
And cold water for the moskito bites. ;-)

Surveillance

We all need structure; rules that define how far we can go, how loud we can yell before we break the rules of society. Rules are necessary for us to find our feet as citizens in the society. You have to know where the boundaries are to avoid overstepping them.
This conviction unfortunately has not been prevailing among politicians in Denmark during the Cold War. PET (police intelligence service) was given a carte blanche to monitor people that according to PET were “interesting”. Apart from it being a problem to define what interesting implies, nowhere in the law it says that “interesting” people automatically run the risk of surveillance.
The Constitution should secure the inviolability of your private life, but in this case some of the highest ranking people in the country, elected on the basis of their credibility, have disregarded the constitution and decided which boundaries and rules people should know about. They even appointed a committee, the Wamberg-committee, that, with the benefit of hindsight, only served the purpose of creating false security.
As a young person, who has never experienced war or been threatened on my existence, I can still relate to the decision to monitor and register certain people. The only problem was that these people weren’t doing anything illegal. Many of the people registered, acted in good faith and were moving on a thin line without knowing whether it was there.
If you wished to register people or political parties, that worked to overthrow society, you should have made a law. It would have been fully acceptable to submit a law protecting the country against revolution or coup d’etat. This has been done in many countries and it works.
Unfortunately this whole problem is not just something that belongs to the past. As a citizen in Denmark you can still be registered or monitored without actually having broken any laws except the unwritten ones. I don’t want to live in a society where I’m not sure if I’m going to be registered for a critical opinion.
A law is just as relevant now as it was during the Cold War, especially in these days where terrorist threats are part of the daily news. This report must have consequences besides: “Ja, but we knew already knew that.” The electors and politicians must learn from this new insight. It shouldn’t be possible to trick the citizens of the country at one’s pleasure. The politicians are here for our sake, not the other way around.

This post can also be found in danish on jp.dk

Sexy Back

Or just happy back. Back is fixed (almost) and I've now stopped screaming at people when they disagree with me.

Summer school

My group is a member of the Nucleic acid center (better known as NAC). Every year NAC organizes a summer school in Odense which PhD-students from all of Europe are attending.
Now I'm not yet a PhD-student but in order to become one I should definitely spend some time on my Master Thesis. But my Thesis is suspended for the upcoming week because of NAC summer school.
We were politely told that our presence was not optional. So I have to spend five days incl. this sunday afternoon, which was supposed to be a total hangover-day, at the zoo being a social human being. The rest of the week I'm stuck in a lecture room listening to about 8 lectures a day.
This is not why I became a chemist!

Red wine

Now seriously, is there anything better than red wine?? I'm pretty sure nobody dares to argue. :-)
The reason for my love of red wine is its many talents:

- It tastes wonderfully
- It looks great
- It goes neatly with chocolate (me second great love)
- It comes in 3 L boxes
- It's a better painkiller than any over the counter drug

The last reason is especially important since I have had a constant headache for a week due to tensions in my back and I couldn't get an appointment at my "back-fixer" untill saturday.
Of course I can't round around tipsy at the lab, and do prefer painkillers in work-situations. But in the evening there's no one to stop me. ;-)

Choices

This Sunday I did something I would have sworn I would never do. I cast a blank vote. Not for the election for the european parliament but for the election about the succession to the throne.
The question was whether ot not a woman should have the same right to the throne as a man. The whole thing was put up to be about equal rights for women but in reality this has no impact on any one except two people in 60 years.
We are voting for equality for people who are in no way equal to the rest of the population. They pay no taxes, no VAT and they still expect freebies at restaurants. Also we are paying an entire family, including Queen and husband, firstborn son, his wife and their two children, their second son , his new wife, and his three kids. Anyone who claims that a president would cost just as much, has a math problem!

Hm...

So the wonderfully pure compound I was talking about in the post "Lucky" turned out to be a beautifully pure impurity. This should teach me not to count my chickens before they're hatched.

Lucky

Purifying compounds is a tedious and often repeated task in the life of an organic chemist. Column chromatography which is essentially a filter with varying affinty for different compunds is the standard in the lab (and most others).
Today I was to run a column on a compound for the second time, since it didn't get entirely clean the last time. So I start out with my solvent mixture and half way through the column I realise I used the wrong mixture. Way to go!! The impurities start coming out in a mess and I figure I'm going to be doing this column again tomorrow.
Surprisingly my product comes out totally clean without any impurities. I'm slightly amazed.
I finish the column and start collecting the fractions. After removing the solvents I discover that I have collected impure and pure fractions!! Fantastic!! Again I figure I might have tomorrows work cut out for me. As it turns out the pure fractions that I have isolated contain more compound than the mixed ones!!
How lucky can you be!!! :-)

Milestone

It is now oficially summer! How do I know that? Well, there are several signs to point you in that direction, for example the number of dresses seen on the street, the smiles on peoples faces, the sound of children playing outside, the abundance of sunglasses, the icecreampapers on the ground, the picnics in the park and of course the sun shining from a cloudless sky.
But the most obvious sign that summer has finally hit the country is my annual sunburn on the back. ;-)

Weather

Only few things are better than spending your day on the terasse in the sun listening to p3 (super danish readiostation). Actually I don't think there are better things, so all in all I'm completely happy right this moment!. :-)

Protection

I happen to love my brain. I also love biking (mainly out of necessity, but what the hell). So a year ago I decided to buy one of those misshapen hats, also called a bicycle helmet. Since then it has rarely left my side...or head to be precise.
This however is in no way due to its outer appearence, which I find absolutely hideous. In helmet commercials people look if not smart, at least charming in a helmet. I am not one of those people! Actually I'm disturbingly aware of how stupid I look with my helmet on. I still wear it, 'cause compared to how stupid you look drooling in a weel chair, my dear helmet still has a long way to go.
Still I come across people that seriously claim that wearing a helmet makes you look smart, or at least sensible. That must be mere wishfull thinking. People might think I'm sensible or smart (or both!), but the look of the helmet will not have contributed to that opinion.
Love my helmet, HATE the way it looks on me.

Tired

This title actually describes my generalt state of mind pretty well. A Master Thesis is no holiday, especially when nothing is working the way it should. :-)
Looking outside (even though that is difficult from the castle of rust) I can see sunshine and people studying outside. When are they going to invent the outdoor fumehood???

Revenge???

Saying one's opinion is not always without cost, most people experienced that at some point in their life. Since I love to express my opinions in the form of contributions in the new papers, I often get critique, positive and negative.
My last contribution, which I also posted on this blog, resultet in an anonymous letter containing four sheets of pure verbal abuse. All of it written in perfect English.

I have some beautiful extracts:

"Your contribution in Jyllands Posten was undoubtedly the stupidest thing I've heard in years" Always nice to be noticed. ;-)

"God help little Denmark if people like you are going to be an influence!!" Too late! ;-)

"And please stop insulting JP with you opinion." Well, they actually ask me to write contributions, so I think they're ok with it. :-)

"I think a 6 year old could reason better than you." Luckaly that is a matter of opinion.

I have often received feedback on my contributions in JP, but never anonymous or that insulting. Then again, this person didn't dare to reveal his or her identity, which makes it very difficult for me to take this letter seriously.

Well, I guess I'll continue living and expressing myself as usual, and no one's going to stop me. ;-)

Publishing

Just to show off, it's now possible to read my post "health" (in danish) on the website of Jyllands posten.

Sunshine....from the wrong side of the window

The weather has been beautifull lately. Unfortunately I haven't been able to enjoy it, since I have been either in the lab or sick.
Yes, I have (again) caught a cold, which is rather impressive, since I'm not actually chasing the damn things. The result is nevertheless that I now have been besieging my couch for three days and by now can tell you exactly what's on tv any time of the day. Also I'm going mad, slowly but steadily. And poor, I curse onlineshopping!!
So I really hope that I'm good again tomorrow, and if not I hope it's cold and rainy.
Sorry everybody! :-)

Healthy?

The Danish parliament has appointed a commission to investigate the possibilities to increase the life expectancy of the average Dane. And here’s what they’ve come up with: Everything that is fun is also unhealthy and should be forbidden.
Your life is no longer your own, it has become communal property. Every citizen is a statistic, a factor that should be controlled and regulated, a number in the system, en expense that should be kept low.
According to the commission a Dane should go without whole milk and sugar in their coffee, quit the snack with the coffee, wean himself off meat and skip the soft drink at birthdays. Speaking of which you shouldn’t smoke or drink on that occasion either. If you insist on pouring down anything ethanol containing fluids you may do so in a bar, situated as far away as possible from residential areas and people that could be affected by the sight. Additionally you should exercise at least one hour a day. This will probably drive people to the fitness centers since most team sports aren’t able to accommodate such a demand.
This way every Dane should life on average three years longer. Quantity instead of quality.
While I imagine my life, where coffee, red wine, good steaks and dark chocolate has been replaced with a fitness center, low fat cheese and sparkling water, I start to wonder when enjoying your life became a crime.
It is not yet decided whether these suggestions are going to become actual bills, that will pass. Nevertheless they reflect a tendency in this society, which is mainly concerned with regulating the life of the citizen so that he or she can spend a couple more years in a wheel chair.

Feelings??

Today is the big day, the day of the Durban II conference, UN's anti-racism happening! Despite the pronounced wish of many muslim countries to include criticism of religion as racism, delegates from Denmark still showed up.
Several times I have aksed myself the beautiful question: "Why??" Racism is a word confined by it's origin, it refers to racial discrimination. Since religion has nothing to do with your racial/ethnic origin this conference should not treat the subject.
Of course I understand that ridiculing and mocking religion can hurt peoples feelings, sure. But we are talking about feelings!! People hurt my feelings all the time, when they question or make fun of my beliefs. That's life!!
Lucky for my Denmark and several other countries chose to walk out during the conference due to an anti-israeli tirade wonderfully performed by the iranian president Ahmadinejad.
Now I am happy!
:-)

Waiting

Allthough very politically incorrect vacation does have a downside; everybody else is also in vacation meaning that I have to wait ages for my ordered reagents to arrive. Untill then I can spend time wondering about how I can make my reactions more efficient and consider the reaction following the present one (meaning: surfing on facebook).
If people wonder how you can get through a master thesis without a serious psychiatric problem, it's the waiting that keeps us alive. ;-)

Vacation....that's what they call it

Chemist's definition of Easter: a beautifull excuse not to show up on the lab, mainly becuse nobody else will be there.
Truly I have not been in the lab for three days in a row, allthough I was considering to work up a little reaction on thursday. Luckaly I made it on Wednesday and could spend thursdah cleaning my appartment. How great is that?? ;-D
Also I have spent a lot of time in the sun, feeling like summer. Sadly the feeling was no more than a feeling, and I might have fallen a bit ill. Nevertheless it was totally worth it!! :-)
This is consistent with the behaviour of most danes when the sun hits around spring: we become sunloving, out-door vikings!! Nothing will stop us from throwing on shorts and dresses and sit outside in the sun sipping coffee and licking ice cream. It may be cold, it may be windy, it may even be raining, but we're not going to miss the first rays of sun because of that!
So if you see a dane strolling around in their best summer outfit, smile at him or her and I will guarantee, you'll get a smile back. ;-)

Welcome to the new Prime Minister

The recent days have been all about one thing: Election of the new Secretary General for NATO. Since our former Prime Minister has been the inofficial candidate, the media has been all over the place to answer such important questions as to when, why and how his whereabouts could be remotely connected to the NATO-meeting.
Finally a decision has been reached; Ander Fogh Rasmussen is the new Secretary General for NATO and replacing him in the office of Prime Minister is another Rasmussen, Lars løkke.
I personally welcome this change, since I was getting rather tired of looking at and listening to our previous goody two-shoes version. Generally I like that our Prime Minister actually enjoys a beer once in a while. And that he is not sports and health-obsessed.
They don't all have to be like me, you know. ;-)

NMR-trouble

Receiving an NMR-spectrum can be the most exciting event in the course of a lab-day. Especially if you have waited the entire weekend for a result. The more deviastating it is that on your arrival to the lab monday morning, you find that your test-tube has been marked as run, but no spectrum is to be found.
What does the frustrated chemist do? He (or she in this particular case) replaces evaporated CDCl3 in the test-tube and puts the tube to another run. The rest of the day is spent in eager anticipation of the spectrum.
So now imagine, that by the end of that day, which has been spent mainly with waiting, you receive your long awaited spectrum and conclude....there's nothing in it. Except TBAF, but that was not exactly what you were looking for...
I think I'm going to go home now, or I will smash some glassware to get rid of my frustrations.

Optimism

A couple of days ago, while I was listening to the radio (which is something i always do), the news were on. They were running a story about the public sector which suddenly is flooded with applicants. An HR-manager is asked and happily declares that people now finally are realizing the advantages of being a public employee.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not surprised at all that people are looking for at bullitproof, secure job in the middle of a crisis. And how great is it really, that people only apply for jobs in the public sector during times of crisis?? Just asking...

Weekend

Weekends in general are a beautifull thing, especially if you can end the working week with success. I actually managed to synthesize my beloved compound (3'5'-(1,1,3,3-TIPDS-1,3-diyl)-2'-O-propargyluridine) and now I can continue with my other syntheses. That is if I didn't feel that horrible!
This weekend I spent in Roskilde visiting my cousin and a friend of mine learning that alcohol is NOT healthy and that I can NOT drink the same amount of it as a regular sized male. Unfortunately this lesson is still being tought to me and therefore I have planned a healthy nap into my day. :-)

Thesis

I hate when I open facebook I'm directly asked what's on my mind. First of all it's very invasive, secondly I have only one thing on my mind; my master thesis and the lack of progress concerning it.
Being a chemist I should have forseen this, it should not have suprised me, that my second synthesis poses seemingly insuperable problems. Yet, I am suprised, annoyed and of course tired. Also it is not helping that the synthesis was performed without greater diffulties by a bachelor student.
While I am waiting for the results from my latest attempt I try to convince myself that this has nothing to do with me or my talent as a chemist. Rather the reagents must be too old or contaminated. So far no luck!