In this blog post, I am going to address the issue of food security from a perspective that seems to be absent from the dominant discourse on the topic. I will suggest that bringing in the voices of local communities would make the discussion more inclusive and enable considering more diverse solutions to the global challenge of …
The art of wine tasting
As a researcher, my personal experience in tasting wines has been somewhat high jacked by the studies I have read about wine tasting. Evaluating wines is a practice done by professionals, who inform us, amateurs, about the quality of the variety of wines available in the markets. There are usually two sides in wine tasting - that …
Exploring California, Disneyland
I’m holding a two-hundred-dollar ticket in my hand, which says: “the happiest place on earth”. In the background, I hear how a TV reporter explains about an armed robbery that happened just a few blocks away from my workplace, announces Donald Trump’s budget plan, goes through the ongoing roadworks that have blocked the traffic due to flooding. Somewhere in …
Imperfect people on a perfect planet
Every time I walk to my work place, I encounter homeless people. There is this one older man, in his 70ies I would guess, who inhabits the porch of Urban Outfitters, a store selling fashionable clothing to trend-consicous consumers. During the day the man moves all his possessions on a street nearby. He is oftentimes surrounded by students asking questions …
The best and worst of settling in
For me, every place has had its own particular smell and sound landscape. I remember the smell of early mornings, or late nights on the streets of Moscow, Helsinki, New York, Washington DC, Barcelona, Madrid, and Rovaniemi - all the cities I’ve lived in so far. I can almost here the creak of snow under my feet, traffic echoing beside me, sound of water …
Oregon, the state of beer, mountains, and Nike
After spending a wonderful week at my husband’s cousin’s house in Saratoga - where we got to recover from the jet lag, take walks in the local neighbourhood and marvel its houses, and start taking care of the countless practicalities we would need to deal with in the near future - we headed up North to Oregon state. I …
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Four hours of US health care
On the next day we arrived to California, I got an eye infection. Thus, I got to test my health insurance immediately. The insurance worked perfectly, Urgent Care not so urgently. It took me four hours of waiting in order to se e a doctor for five minutes. My trip to see a doctor taught me something about …
On my way to Trumpland
“It feels like when it was 9/11. Oh wait, but it is 9/11” - Facebook post of a colleague I did not expect to be waking up to the news that I encountered that morning. Disbelief, sadness, anxiety. For the first time in a while the kids did not watch their morning cartoons, but we, the parents, …
