California

I just moved into a beautiful yet tiny studio one block from University Avenue in Palo Alto. The place hasn't changed much since my undergrad days, except that frozen yogurt cafes seem to have replaced rug stores as the most frequently encountered genre of commerce in the area.

I'll be based at Stanford from now on, since my adviser has moved to Stanford University and I am taking this as an excuse to high-tail it back to California. West-coast living will allow more frequent and shorter trips to SE Asia, which is good especially since it looks like we might be headed for another El Nino year. If you live in California this means rain, while my Indonesian friends will be bracing for deadly drought, and I will be prepping for some field work examining the synergistic effects of drought+oil palm on communities in my study sites!