Serenity with Nathan Fillion and Sean Maher. I liked Firefly so it was only natural that I would like the movie. Very nice fight sequences, though only a martial artist would notice that the people are deliberately going out of their way not to hurt the actors. There must have been a dozen missed opportunities for a joint break. Nonetheless, I was glad they tied up some loose ends from the series, and also frustrated that they didn't tie up ones that can now never be tied up. While watching the series I guess I never noticed how much Chinese they actually spoke, though that might be because their Chinese (I have it on authority) is terrible. My Chinese, on the other hand, is improving now that Feifei and I are watching the series while she points out the Chinese. The tones aren't as hard as I had thought, though I do find it interesting that in Chinese tones are used for denotation, forming specific words, while in Western languages they are used mainly for connotation, conveying emotion, sarcasm, etc. Anyway, Serenity rocks so much more with a Chinese translator by your side.

Spring has finally sprung here in Uppsala. A tad late on account of there being a huge blizzard at the beginning of the month that was a final farewell to snow. The days have been getting longer and longer, good in a way but also frustrating cuz I was just getting used to all the darkness. Plus, seeing the sun setting before one has done any work at all is a great academic motivator; you're finished with work by 3PM. Still, I'm very much looking forward to spring again, seeing everything green and lush and alive again. Hopefully I can go on another of those hikes I went on back in the fall, and this time not have my camera screw up.

Also, Easter vacation is coming up and I plan on using that time to go to The Old Country: Poland and Lithuania! Sure, I'll miss out on the Swedish Easter but as I hear it it's just like the Christmas food and such. Besides, I'll be getting the good, authentic, Polish stuff. I can't make it home for Easter so this is the next best thing. And I'll get to explore the country just as spring begins. I'm leaving the 7th and coming back the 18th. It'll be great!

They found more Martian bacteria in an asteroid. They say the bacteria can get all of its energy from minerals, which got me thinking: if minerals are all they need, and they were on an asteroid, given the right conditions they could evolve into space-dwelling life forms.

And now you can instant message God Himself.

Yesterday I found out my cat Molly died. Deep down I had accepted that as a possibility when I left for Sweden since there were signs she was getting sick. She was about 15 years old and we had her since she was a kitten. There were only a few years that I can remember when we didn't have her so she was basically part of my entire life.
When I thought about how I would react if I did find out she died I was never sure about how I would feel exactly. If I would find out and just not react at first, then have it hit me hours later, as sometimes happens, or if I would be angry that I wasn't there. Neither, it hit right away and I just felt sad.
She died in her sleep, as good an end as I could think of. Still, it doesn't make it hurt less.
I know in order to grow up some things from your childhood have to end, I just never realized that a part of my childhood would have to die along the way.

Not my usual blog post, but it's important to me and I felt the least I could do was mention it.

Something I learned over the weekend: rotten grapes smell like bad wine or vinegar. Makes sense, but I guess I never really thought about how similar rotting and fermentation really are.

One thing I've had difficulty with since I arrived in Sweden, but has flared up recently now I know more Swedish, is translations that are never quite accurate. That is, words that cannot be directly translated from Swedish to English or words that only cover half of a meaning in the other language. For an example of the latter, "upplevelse" and "erfarenhet" are both translated in English to "experience", but they are slightly different. Upplevelse is like life experience (i.e. life in Tucson) whereas erfarenhet is like acquired skill and knowledge through active participation (i.e. experience in aikido). This is a case where English has the upper hand; one word covers both meanings perfectly. This seems to be more an exception than a rule, though.
The example of the former is the very Swedish word "lagom"; (the Swedes practically pride themselves on the fact that this word cannot be directly translated directly into English) it means roughly "just right", "OK", "adequate". I think "just right" is the best for it but I'm told that's too good, that lagom isn't "good", it's just acceptable, but not in a bad way. It's a frustrating thing trying to understand the meaning behind a word, especially when I think the word encompasses almost mutually exclusive ideas. "Sub-par just right" is one definition I came up with in frustration that wasn't really disagreed with.
I understand of course that there are words and concepts in other languages that do not match words or concepts in English, there are overlapping and intermediate definitions of terms that perhaps facilitate a greater level of precision (the Saami and their many words for snow comes to mind) but sometimes I wonder if the Swedes are just quibbling about semantics with me. The word "mupp" means a silly or weird person ("Mupparna" is the Swedish translation for "The Muppets" if that gives you an idea). They were having difficulty finding an equivalent word in English, I suggested 'goofball' but they said that was just a bit too strong, I then offered simply 'goof' but that wasn't strong enough. So mupp is something between a goof and a goofball. It's examples like that that make me wonder if "lagom" is really so difficult to translate. Maybe it's a matter of people not realizing they're talking about the same thing, sort of like how if I tell you to think of a cup everyone will think of a different cup, even though they didn't think it incorrectly. That, or maybe lagom is just a pesky Swedish word.

Word of the Day: cavil- To find fault unnecessarily; raise trivial objections. (personally I like quibble more)

Last week we had to outline our plan for our final essay in Swedish Society and Everyday Life. Explain what we intended to do with fieldwork and what we hoped to accomplish. My thing is that I want to see how Swedish culture is created in high school. One of the premises I've based my fieldwork on is that high school is where you really become the person you are going to be for the rest of your life. Not to say younger childhood years aren't important but by and large little kids are kind of the same (i.e. no cliques or social classes). Basic knowledge and common courtesies are taught when you're younger, I'm told Swedish children are actually made to practice standing in line, how to do it "the right way."
Anyway, I told the people in my group about my outlook on when a person becomes who they will be and one girl disagreed. She thought that you become the person you will be for life in college. She cited her own life as an example; how she was such a good student in high school and didn't go out partying, and now she's a sorority girl partying it up every night and not all that worried about grades. I've seen similar things happen to people I knew from high school too, they just went wild once they hit college. But as striking a contrast as their behavior was, it didn't really come as a shock. The potential seemed there all along, just suppressed by the nature of high school and living with your parents all the time.
I thought about it some more and realized I didn't become interested in anthropology until my freshman year of college, and now it's my major. On the other hand I have been interested in archaeology/Egyptology since forever so maybe that isn't really such a big surprise. It also kind of fits with a general trend since middle school that wherever I saw myself in four years it was never where I actually ended up. And yet I can look back on all of the unplanned routes I took and come up with explanations for why they weren't really surprising.
So with plenty of my readers being college graduates and a few who are still working towards it, what do you think? Does college make you into the person you will be for the rest of your life or does it just fine tune what was made in high school? Or, is your lifelong self created even earlier?

Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. The movie seemed like a collage of a lot of other romance comedies, yet it was pleasantly distinct and didn't come across as a blatant rip-off. Some parts were a little hokey and the timeframe was definitely not believable for well-adjusted people to fall in love. But hey, willing suspension of disbelief, it was a fun movie to watch. Besides any movie with Christopher Walken and jokes about emo culture is good in my book. And indulging my curiosity, Owen Wilson has only had his nose broken twice: once in high school and again in a football game.

Yesterday was a rock gasque at V-Dala. They're only once a semester and they always attract a big crowd. Like all concerts some of the bands were kind of lame while others were pretty damn good. The food was good and served in very generous portions. It was a smörgåsbord, the first one I've had at a dinner since I came to Sweden, come to think of it. I think my Swedish is definitely improving now, I spoke a fair amount of it at the dinner and afterwards. The music was all local (well, Swedish at least) bands that were mostly indie. As a result there were a bunch of people dressed out in their indie/scene/emo party clothes. I wish I could have taken pictures of these people, truly a sight to behold. I left after Hello Saferide performed, since I didn't think the next band could possibly top them. They were the headliner band, after all. American bands had better get back on the ball, or we'll all be listening to Swedish music pretty soon.

And after a long break, more Flickr photos.

See, I'm genetically predisposed to go to Sweden.

I love how Swedish has a bunch of false cognates; there are enough similarities between the languages for them to be believable too. Svelte come from French/Italian "svelto"-to stretch out. Not the Swedish "svält"-starvation. Slim and starving, they're so close in meaning that I only have dictionary.com's word that they're not actually linked.
Same goes for "tupplor", it means nap, looks like torpor to me. Might be one of those things where both languages got it from Latin and they evolved into almost the same word independently. Though it comes from the Latin word for stiff, which doesn't really describe a nap or lethargy. Would it really have changed into an almost opposite meaning in both languages yet retain the same sound? Again, I can only trust the etymologists know what they're talking about.
My favorite is the Swedish "prick", it means a guy, fellow, chap. If a Swede said it sarcastically to someone, no one would know.


Artificial gills. We'll be living Starfish before you know it. And just in case the rifters get too powerful, mind controlled sharks.

From one of my texts- Mutation breeding: The application of chemicals or ionizing radiation to whole organisms to produce changes in their DNA (mutations) in the hope that these changes will confer beneficial traits to the organism, e.g. disease or pest resistance.
Dude, these people have read too many comic books. I didn't even know that people seriously did that.

I've pretty much given up on martial arts here in Sweden. They're either not effective (the aikido class), not practical (capoeira) or the people going there take it far too seriously (MMA). It's just not the same as back home, I don't know if it's just difficult for me to get back into the swing of it or what. My rationalization for why martial arts don't seem as good in Sweden is because there's no danger in Sweden; there are no ghettos or bad parts of town, people aren't allowed to carry any kind of weapon around and there hasn't been a war in 200 years. I figured that made the Swedes complacent and that reflected how they train. But now I think it's how Swedes view martial arts, they call it "kampsport" basically "fighting sport". It's not an art. I don't think they take it to a deeper, more spiritual level, it's just like basketball to them. The capoeira (and I cannot comment on how much is derived from the art itself) was always more about play than combat. The one on one fights seemed less like sparring or any tactical training and more like a game. I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that as long as you're aware of it, but back home even we came up with a tactical improvement exercise for playing catch. The MMA people are all really just there to train to be in a tournament, they go there and train and hit and fight as hard as they can. Which again can be all good and well, the most satisfying fight I've had was against mixed martial artists, but they lack a certain...appreciation for the whole concept. From now on, I'm going to try to refocus my efforts on my fieldwork, my social life and hopefully improving my Swedish.

Speaking of fieldwork, I went back to the school yesterday and did some more observations. Not much worth blogging about except for the fact that I do not recommend getting sick or injured in Sweden as, while the healthcare might be free and high quality, no one else will help you. Back when I visited Göteborg I was going down the main street at night when this guy came staggering down the promenade, clutching his stomach saying (in Swedish and English), "Call the police! I've been shot!" then collapsed to the ground. I and one other person stopped to help him, the rest just walked by pretending they didn't notice. The guy wasn't shot, he was off his meds or something, but it was impossible to know that when he's got a big coat on and his hand over the "wound". I was unsettled by the Swedes' behavior but figured that might just be unique to Göteborg. Yesterday, when I was walking from the school to the cafeteria (they're separate buildings and kind of far apart) I saw an old lady slip on the ice right as a group of students were walking by. They stopped and asked if she was OK but only tried to help her up after it was clear she couldn't do it herself. And even then only one helped, she couldn't lift the lady by herself so she asked her friends for help, they just sat there and I helped her pick the old lady up. Ten minutes or so later I was coming back the same way since I was still trying to find the cafeteria and the same old lady was asking passers-by for help. She was apparently deranged and had gotten out of a psychiatric ward that I had come across while I was looking for the cafeteria. Again I was the only one to help her. When I asked people where I should take the woman they didn't seem to understand what I was talking about and acted like I was trying to make small talk. At her insistence, I left her at a bus stop where I figured it would be better to have her sitting still waiting for a responsible human being to come along rather than have her wander around indefinitely.
Am I being too compassionate or something? Is it just me or do the Swedes need to learn some empathy?