Lazy Saturday...

I like Saturdays, especially the lazy ones... We had to make a very difficult choice today: Christmas shopping or a walk in the middle of nowhere... 9C and sunshine made the choice easier :-) 

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Happy Birthday dr TBBE!

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Leuven

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Water in the trunk - Toyota Auris

A couple of days ago we found an "aquarium" in our trunk, about 5 cm deep, in the "bowl" where the spare wheel is located. After some internet explorations we learned that most probably it is a seal around a trunk ventilator or a seal around rare laps that let the water leak inside the boot. We decided to try fixing the problem on our own.

Thank you google and all the people who share their experiences and solutions to different problems at various fora! Although we found a lot of useful tips, I decided to write a short post and include pictures - maybe this will make someone's life easier...

Removing the trunk carpet was the first thing to do. After removing 4 screws at the bottom of the trunk, the carpets are just held by several pins (Figure 1), distributed along the carpet edge (Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

You need to pull the carpet firmly to get the pins out of their place. No worries, they must be pretty robust because we did not break even one :-)

With the carpets removed, the access to the ventilator is much easier (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Once we got to this point I "volunteered" to jump into the trunk and observe where the water was coming from while dr TBBE was pouring water on our car trunk. 

The leak was clearly visible at one side of the ventilator (Figure 4). 

 Figure 4

Sealing the ventilator around solved the problem :-)

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Who said that weather in Belgium sucks?

21 C on 22 of October? Not too bad, huh?

Several pictures from our recent bicycle trips around Mol:

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First trip to Antwerp

 

 

 

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Project Belgium - first 2 weeks in Flanders

Things are going smoothly so far:
- most of the admin stuff like: registration at the Commune, getting a new bank account or mobile SIM cards are solved already,
- all of the furniture is re-assembled again - my last year's birthday gift rules!!!
- most of the boxes are unpacked and the flat slowly starts to feel "like home".

On Friday drTBBE joined me here for a couple of weeks and he will do teleworking for the Danish employer - I love Scandinavia and their way of treating people! It looks like we could keep going like that for several next months :-) Simply great!!!

And it seems like my new job is going to be interesting... very promising so far :-)

There are still a couple of points to get used to:
a) surrounding of our house is pretty deserted (the buildings next to ours are not inhabited) and I suspect that people who developed Fallout (a video game) could have been inspired by this area,
b) every day at 5 p.m. there is a test of nuclear alarm sirens... Believe me or not, this sound doesn't make you feel comfortable...



Our new address:
Building to the right,
Middle of nothing,
Belgium

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the heavies and the biggest 21m3 ever

Viborg, 12 September:

  

 

Mol, Belgium, 14 September, 3rd floor:

 

 

 

Was that the heavies and the largest 21m3 ever? Or am I just getting older?
L. - thank you for carying our stuff up for 4 hours!


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Packing and painting...

6 days to go...

 

Do we really need all the stuff that we own?

That is a very valid question, especially when your new flat is on the 3rd floor with no elevator....

 

 

 

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Goodbye Bergen!

And so my 4 year's experience with Norway finished yesterday... At least for some time :) Great time, very nice people and a beautiful country! Definitely a very positive time, full of challenges and new things to learn :)

I hope that the challenge level will be equally high in the new job....

We start packing on Monday already! Moving to Belgium in 13 days!

 

P.S. 5.5 months after the defense I received my official PhD diploma :D right on time!

 

 

 

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Sand sculpture festival in Ringkøbing

A couple of images from our trip to Søndervig and Ringkøbing. Veeery relaxing day :-)

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Vanda in action!

After tens of hours spent on flying our octocopter (we call it Vanda) on a flight simulator and a couple of hours of real flying we traveled to Spain for the first data collection. Very busy, intense and stressful fieldwork, at least for me as a rookie RC pilot. Fortunately after several flights my leg shake (stress!!) decreased and I finally started to really enjoy flying :-) 

Maybe I will even start to think about building a smaller version of Vanda on my own...

Work can be really fun!!!

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Time is flying!!!

Amazing how the time is flying... and the next weeks will pass even faster!!!
I leave to Bergen tonight and on Monday we take our UAV for the first field trip. Destination = Huesca, Aragon, Spain :-)
The forecast says windy and rain for half of our stay there, but I sincerely hope that we will be lucky with the weather. There is simply no time for plan B in data collection.
So far the trip preparation was not easy... Shipping 3 large boxes full of equipment  from Norway to Spain, in a holiday season, can be very problematic. Even if you pay about 40 000NOK for the return trip!!! Incredible... I have received already more than 50 emails about the shipment and although the boxes are in Spain already, they are stuck at the custom office... wrrrr!!!! Anyway, no other thing to do about it than to take it easy ;-)
After I come back from Spain there are only 3 weeks of work left!!! And (hopefully) plenty of data to process....
The last days of August I will spend in Bergen again, to wrap up work, pick up my PhD diploma and say bye to everyone there.

Afterwards we have 2 weeks for packing and painting and...
Belgium here we come!


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Rugaard and Ebeltoft

Another weekend trip to see side :-) 

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