My favorite ... in March
Travel
A friend and I planned a skiing/snowboarding retreat for our lab group to Vermont, and it was such an amazing trip. After my first lab has kind of fallen into shambles, my current advisor took me into his lab, but I’ve not quite found my footing there; the topics are significantly different from what I work on, and the meetings had conflicted with my schedule for the last year. This weekend was really the first time I’ve talked with a lot of the lab members beyond in passing, and I’m so surprised/grateful/happy to be such a genuinely warm environment. Of course, the skiing was also great - spring slush that got progressively more slushy as the hours ticked by, but the company was fantastic and it was a great bonding weekend! I was saving most of the writing for the end of the month, as I was going to be writing this from Europe. A friend and I met up in Amsterdam to have a 1-day, 2-night vacation before we parted ways, me going to Delft and her going to Tilburg, both for unrelated work trips. Since this is MIT’s spring break that I was mostly working through, I also decided to take an extra-long weekend in Copenhagen, which continues to reaffirm itself as one of my favorite cities in the world. Sometimes I am afraid of going to or revisiting cities that enamour me, for the same reason people say don’t meet your heros. But Copenhagen is one of those cities that is flawed in ways that I can accept (expensive) and near-perfect in everything else (weather - though I feel I bring luck, walkability, transport options, quality of dining, always something art-related to do, best flea markets). Having a community, a second family, in a city also feels incredible, and is likely the dominant reason of why I feel so happy here. Reflecting on this, I think Copenhagen, out of any other location in the world, might have the highest concentration and density of people I’d love to call up and see, possibly except Boulder and Taiwan (my two other homes). Socially, it feels like home to me, buoyed by the fact people here refer to it as such and keep asking me when I’ll move here. I’m honestly a bit scared to want something so much, to the extent that I had a really great time at Delft and for all logical reasons it should be a top contender (incredible faculty at TUDelft, lovely people, good infrastructure) but pales in comparison to the hold that Copenhagen has on my soul. It makes me nervous, the compromises I might be willing to make to be here (especially in my career), but then again -- we move for partners, children, family, why shouldn’t we be willing to move for our friends?
Media
No spoilers
I finished Just Kids by Patti Smith. I loved the style and pace of the memoir, which was incredibly sharp, vulnerable, and a genuine reflection of what true artists Patti and Robert are. It’s inspiring me to lean even more into a chaotic, unapologetic way of being in tune with people, something I feel drawn to and believe I am quite good at. I envy the flow of friendship she describes in her book, the impossible generosity that everyone in the world has, despite (or in spite of) having near-to-nothing. It’s inspiring me to see how I may curate these energies into my own life, a practice I have been honing -- learning how to be more patient, generous, loving. Restaurants
I spent a wonderful sunny evening at Rosforth & Rosforth, a wine bar the harbor in Christianshavn. By the glass or the bottle, the shop has an incredible selection of white, red, sparkling, and orange wine, and we must have drank about 7 bottles between the group by the time we left. Sitting on picnic tables or on the canal ledge in the setting sun, the picture-perfectness of the night is hard to describe -- even harder still to realize that many nights like these have happened, again and again, most of which occur in Copenhagen. On a trip to Malmö, a friend and I tried Kärleksgatan 3, a small intimate café serving fresh homemade ravioli in fresh, seasonal flavors. We both agree this is one of, if not the best, ravioli we’ve ever had. Not a restaurant, but the River Cafe cookbook has intruiged me; at a friend’s place for dinner, I flipped through this ex-Michelin star restaurant’s cookbook and was really drawn by their simple recipes that (unlike others) do not require you to go to three different grocery stores just to gather enough ingredients to make one meal.