I thought I would share just a couple of photos of my third child Tage from earlier this summer. These are all from the end of July, so he is about a year old here. We had a really great summer with lots of swimming.
See you around!
Hello again!
Some time has passed since I was last here. Seven years, in fact. A lot has happened in my life since then. Houses have been bought, the family has multiplied etc. More on that later hopefully. The plan is to blog a bit during my current paternity leave with Tage, upload some photos etc.
This post though is about some changes to the site itself. With the help of our new robot friends I finally gave it the overhaul it has needed for a while. The goal was to fix some things that have been pretty rough, if I’m being honest. A 4.0 so to speak.
We did a few larger changes and a lot of smaller tweaks. Here are the main ones, for the one person in the world who cares about any of this (that would be me 😀):
It has been super nice to have the time to just stay at home and get to know Astrid. Also all of the visits from family and friends, just the best! On Wednesday I’m going back to work again, but before doing that I wanted to share some more photos.
The best thing that ever happened to me.
Honey I love you, like the summer falls and the winter crawls
You’re above and beyond me
Mando Diao - You Can’t Steal My Love
This year I spent new years with Mikaela, Frida and our host Malin at Thellberg™, located just outside of Rimforsa. We had an great evening . I acted camera guy and food assistant for our six?! course menu, which was probably the best new years menu I’ve ever had.
Oh and me and Mikaela are having a child in April this year, as you might be able to tell from the photos. So expect more of that here in the future. We’re so happy and exited <3
Now I have received two out of three vintage lenses I ordered from Japan and they are awesome! I played around with the Canon FD 50mm 1:1.4 and took some photos just around the apartment. You can get some pretty spectacular pictures with such a large aperture and I wanted to share just a couple of photos.
The final lens is already an interesting story, since postnord wants me to pay 14800kr in customs duty for a lens that cost me around 500kr (just a mistake of course, but a bit funny).
When it arrives I’ll have a great set of prime lenses to play around with.
It’s been a while now. Like always when I start a project, I’m super exited and have lots of ideas at the start. Then after a while I find some other thing that I put my time into.
But now I’m back with an update. This weekend I bought a new camera and borrowed some vintage lenses from Martin Hultgren, so I wanted to share some photos I (and William) took this weekend. Mikaela celebrated her 27:th birthday at our new place in Vallastaden (oops that link was already a bit dated) and we had our families over.
I took the opportunity to take some portrait photos and now I’m probably gonna have to buy some old lenses myself. I really like some of these photos!
The title of this post is not the best or the most creative in the history of mankind, but I hope it’s at least clear. We visited San Francisco several times while my family was visiting, so this post will cover the first visit. Alright, lets move on.
Luckily for us we had some pro San Francisco guides in Ulf, Henry and Xiaolin. We started off with a nice view of basically the whole of San Francisco. You could see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Park, my favorite weird radio antenna Sutro Tower and some other landmarks that I don’t know the names of or remember. Speaking of forgetting things, I don’t remember the name of the place with the view, but it was definitely worth the visit, and a good place to start with, since you can actually see most of the city right from that spot. You had to watch your hat though, since it was pretty windy.
From that point we went towards the Golden Gate Bridge and stopped at a park southwest of it, with a nice golf court and some beautiful recreation areas. The best thing was probably the fact that you could get some good angles on the bridge. Even if the Golden Gate Bridge is impressive up close, you’ll take the most beautiful pictures from a distance.
We saved the drive over the bridge for the trip to Napa Valley and instead visited the Palace of Fine Arts nearby. I had been there before with Vidar, but it’s one of those tourist attractions you can visit twice (or more). It’s a calm and quiet place with a beautiful temple. We actually saw several people getting married in very extravagant clothes. Me and Mikaela even saw a music group filming what I assume was to be a music video. I could not blame them for their choice of location, but maybe for their taste in music.
Then Ulf wanted to show us the famous Lombard Street, which meant that Mikaela got to practice her parking skills. She did fine, but I don’t envy people applying for a drivers license in San Francisco. The inclinations of some of the streets are just crazy.
After Lombard street we headed for Chinatown for some Dim Sum (Chinese tapas I guess) at a Chinese Restaurant. Chinatowns are always fascinating and San Francisco has the biggest one outside of Asia. From one street to another it’s almost as if you travel to another world. The food at the restaurant was really nice and I got to try a whole lot of new stuff, which is always fun and interesting.
Before heading back we visited Ghirardelli Square. Ghirardelli is a chocolate brand that you see all over the place around here and they had a shop with lots of chocolate (and even free samples when you entered). They also had a café where we had coffee and ice cream. Mikaela and I shared a piece of art that was probably the best ice cream bomb I’ve ever had, and I think the others were just as happy with their orders.
Like I pointed out at the beginning of this post, we will get back to San Francisco another time, but all in good time.
A couple of weeks ago the whole big family (my parent, siblings, Mikaela and Frida’s boyfriend Simon) visited me here in the Bay Area. We had an amazing ten days with lots of different activities. We did everything (well maybe not everything, but a lot) from wine tasting at the vineyards in Napa Valley in the north to watching San José Sharks in the south.
The whole gang arrived late one Friday and picked me up in Menlo Park. It felt so good to finally meet with Mikaela (and the rest of the family as well of course) in person again. Then we took the rental car to Ulf, Xialin and Henry, a couple of super nice friends of my father with a quite spectacular house in San José. I was already grateful for the ride from the airport and the dinner my first day in California and for them lending me a bike. Thanks for that, and even more thanks for letting us stay with you guys for over a week. That was great.
Anyway, on Saturday we decided to visit Stanford. I showed the family my office, which was out of electricity and therefore also out of light due to some kind of maintenance. But at least now they have seen where I spend most of my time here, even if it was kind of dark and we all felt like burglars (not that we stole anything). We also walked around the campus and just enjoyed the sun. We visited Jamba Juice, my supervisor from Sweden’s favorite place in the world, the Stanford bookstore where you can get all kinds of Stanford merch and finished of by visiting Hoover Tower, a famous tourist attraction at campus where you get a nice view over Stanford and also over the Bay Area. Before returning to San José we visited a cool Indian fast food Restaurant and had lunch. I was impressed with the food (thank you google maps and yelp).
At the evening Ulf, Xialin and Henry wanted to treat the big family (this time including Vidar as well) for an Easter dinner. Ulf is a passionate cook (with an equal fascination for different kitchen machines) and therefore he served us lamb cooked in two different ways. My favorite was the lamb sous vide, but the pressure cooked lamb was really good too. While not being so traditional, this will definitely be an Easter I’ll remember vividly for a while to come.
I while ago a couple of us at the Geophysics Department decided to go surfing in Santa Cruz. You can rent surfing boards and wet-suits for very reasonable prices at the Stanford Outdoor Center and since a couple of us had cars it was really convenient to get there as well.
Surfing was definitely on my list of things I wanted to try while being here in California and I’m so happy that I got the chance to try it with some awesome people. Matias, a fellow Swede from Chalmers were the most experienced one in our little group, so he gave the rest of us a few hints for how to get up on the board.
The waves were pretty decent (though of course I have nothing to compare them to), but you had to wait for them for a while sometimes. Anyway, I was a great feeling to just sit in the cool water under the sun with the wet suit on and take it easy. I realize that I do sound a bit cheesy, but that’s how I felt. And to see a wave approaching and then manage to catch it was a pretty amazing feeling.
Beforehand I expected surfing to be much harder than it turned out to be. I definitely did not expect to be even close to standing on a surf board the first day I tried, but I actually managed to do just that (and I was far from the only one). Not that we became great surfers in a day or anything like that, but I’m just pointing out that it’s not as difficult as one might think. And just catching a wave and lying on the board following a wave to shore is great, even without standing on the board.
Since I completely forgot to put sunscreen on my delicate Swedish skin, I returned home with a face the color of a tomato. A few days later I woke up with a new face, but I was definitely worth it in the end. Thanks for the ride guys.
