Work work work

Today I saw the inside of LBNL (the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, or just "the lab") for the first time. To be honest I wasn't sure what to expect, except yellow warning signs cautioning people about wet floors and some bureaucratic overhead before I got my pass (neither of which failed to disappoint). I guess I have been looking forward to this for quite a while and have tried to reset my expectations the last couple of days. Given how much I managed to annoy myself with the noise from the coffee room in my last office back at UmU, I probably should be a bit worried about sharing a cubicle with a printer (which I can't print to). And I'll admit, at first I was a bit, I am physically located under the printer after all (no earthquakes please :-). But after giving it some thought, I have reached the conclusion that Berkeley is all about the people. To grossly oversimplify things, one could phrase it like "in Sweden people are expensive and housing cheap, and in Berkeley it's the other way around". It's not entirely true, and full of trade-offs, of course, but Berkeley is still all about the people. The entire city is full of really cool people that dress, express themselves, live, study, and work exactly how they feel like. Earlier today I ate lunch next to a wall full of pictures of Nobel laureates, and when fetching some Chinese food for dinner I passed a woman who dressed like she just stepped off the set of Fame (the 80's movie, not the new adaption). It feels really good to be in an environment which is bubbling with ideas. Here are a couple of pictures illustrating the fact that half of the people on campus speak Chinese, the fog, the LBNL shuttle buses, and the sign in the hallway that reminds me why I'm here. :-)