Swedish Research Magazine

In October and November I has some pictures taken and an interview for the CBF annual report magazine, and it has just now been published. This magazine goes out to the stakeholders, funders, government agencies that use our research, and other research partners.  It is all in Swedish, so I have to struggle to understand it, but you can see the scan I made of it here.

It had been a long time since I had professional photographs taken; I somehow escaped getting graduation photos for UBC’s wall.  Before that it was when I was a model for a friend’s student-designer project, complete with 2 hours of makeup/hair and 4 outfit changes.  In contrast, I had zero prep time or warning for these photo shoots.  In fact, the first paragraph talks about how I don’t wear make-up.    The skiing photos were interesting, I am wearing skis borrowed from the photographer and there is almost no snow at all… the whiteness in the photos is courtesy of Photoshop.  It was a pitted, lumpy, grassy area and the photographer was really keen to get a bit of movement blur in the photo.  “Faster faster! “  I am not a skiing superstar anyway, but over lumpy frosted grass and not-my-size-and-not-waxed-since-last-year-or-longer skis was not so speedy.   This is why I am a researcher and not a model.

The rest of the article talks a little about my past and present research projects, and how I find Sweden after moving from Canada.  It has a section about racing dragonboat in the Czech republic before we came to Sweden, and a bit about how I like outdoorsy sports.  My favourite part it s the headline: Catherine likes Swedish coffee breaks (fika).  This is true, I like the social interaction and hearing about what other people are doing; it is informal but I usually learn a lot that I can apply right away or file away for later.  However, as a headline, I wonder if it´s a little unbecoming: Catherine came to Sweden for the coffee breaks and 6 weeks vacation!!