Mörk dag för Sverige

Last Wednesday was the Study Abroad fair at the U of A, so naturally I volunteered to help out at the Uppsala booth. The tone of this experience can be summed up by slapping your palm against your forehead. There were supposed to be more people volunteering but many of them couldn't make it so for awhile I was the only person running the booth (Copenhagen University didn't have anybody). I thought this might be a problem since I didn't really know what I would say to people if they asked me about Uppsala. This really wasn't a factor because the booth for Oslo was manned by the study abroad advisor from Oslo University and he brought all manner of pamphlets and brochures with him. I should also mention that the universities are responsible for sending information, and Uppsala University sent us 5 total. A pair with two copies each and one lone brochure. Also, when I got there I saw a nice healthy stack of brochures for a university in Switzerland. They're the Office of Study Abroad for Pete's sake and they STILL don't know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
The Norwegian guy was really good at promoting Oslo, his booth was just more appealing, I guess. Also might have helped that there were two cute Norwegian girls working the booth too. Man, one of them could not have been any more Nordic if they tried. The thing that bugged me was that I've been to Oslo, it's not a very pretty place. The Norwegian guy even agreed with me that Uppsala was probably prettier, but everyone wanted to go to Norway instead of Sweden. The other frustrating thing was that everyone was asking about the academics about Uppsala, which I only have so much knowledge of. Nobody asked if the city was FUN.
On the plus side, I did get to talk to the Norwegians and catch up with one of the Uppsala students when they showed up. And my favorite moment from that day was this one girl who was really excited and interested about Norway and the more she learned the more interested she got. Then she said, "I have a quick question: Where is Norway?"

In other Sweden related news, Hello Saferide has some new material, including some songs in Swedish. They are still weird lyrics, but at least you don't have to worry about her funky accent.

At this rate, Geordi's parents must have gotten his VISOR at an antique shop.

Acceptance

This is a thought that’s been floating around my head for nearly a year now. There are people who regard themselves as incredibly socially liberal and have no qualms about sex, drugs, social mores and basically live as if no one else’s opinions mattered. While there is a certain admirable freedom to that kind of outlook, I find that those individuals also tend to spout out sanctimonious rhetoric, insulting and belittling more conservative mentalities and ways of life. I’ve noticed I keep running into these people and as a way of bonding we criticize Greek life, religious fundamentalists or simpletons in general. We agree that small-minded people really should lighten up and see there is more to life than their own little world with its little rules. At this point they’re golden, but almost inevitably they will make some gradually sweeping generalization that everyone who isn’t like them are intolerant, unenlightened fools.
This is the problem; people who criticize those who they identify as closed-minded are just as closed-minded themselves. Simply because they enjoy doing a lot more things than other people might not they feel this makes them somehow more evolved. They will often accuse those who find their way of life unappealing of being intolerant of other ideas and imply, or sometimes outright state, that they are accepting of so many lifestyles and beliefs. But when it comes down to actually demonstrating this universal acceptance, they reveal that they are just as repelled and baffled by the very people they accuse of being unable to understand them. Certainly extreme social conservatism leads to a lack of understanding and intolerance of other practices, but extreme social liberalism is just as bad. It’s tempting to make the analogy of conservatism=intolerance therefore liberalism=tolerance, but if one actually applies this logic the end result is a seemingly open society where no one is outright judged for behaving differently, but are incessantly pressured into conforming. Like they said in Serenity: “We’re not telling people what to think, we’re just trying to show them how.”
I think the best way to go about achieving this acceptance of other lifestyles (aside from yoga and Buddhist philosophy) is to start out from an initially socially conservative and open up your mind from there, rather than being raised to think anything goes. That way, you can then understand the mindset of those who are less open to certain ideas having been there yourself rather than just regarding them as antiquated and stuffy.

One of the interesting things I learned from my Nature of Language class is that people on the East Coast talk at a different speed from those on the West Coast. The East Coasters will speak faster and jump in immediately when someone finishes talking, this demonstrates that they are interested in the conversation. West Coasters will speak slower in general and have longer pauses in between statements. This results in East Coasters thinking West Coasters are stupid or uninterested, while East Coasters are seen as rude because they are always interrupting. Theoretically, I should be somewhere in between. I was raised in a family from the Midwest, which should be more like the East Coast but grew up in Tucson where people would be more inclined to be like West Coasters. Certainly I've experienced the problems of both; I've been talked over by people who just jump right into a conversation but also have been frustrated by people who take for bloody ever to reply to you.
This phenomenon also seems related to a discussion I had in Uppsala with a Finn. According to some study, the amount of time a lull in a conversation can last before both parties consider it to be an awkward silence is longer for Finns that for other nationalities. I wonder how the sense of timing in languages and cultures managed to diverge over time. It can't take all that long for it to happen if there is a noticeable difference between people from opposite sides of the US.

Silly Swedes and their anti-wedding ring. Not really my color anyway.
Although they do make a tasty dessert for Fat Tuesday. How I managed to forget that's what Fettisdagen means is beyond me.

El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) with Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones and Sergi López. I liked this movie quite a bit. I was actually kind of surprised with how relatively little of the fantasy world is seen in the movie, with most of it taking place during historical events. I wonder how much of a cultural subtext there is to the parallel stories in the film, aside from some of the more obvious allegories. The depiction of Franco's Spain was pretty powerful, as well; one tends to forget how brutal the regime actually was.
I liked the designs of the creatures they had in the story. Aside from the classical creatures like fauns and fairies, there was a really spooky looking thing that seemed to be inspired by Goya, survival horror video games and Aaahh!! Real Monsters.
I also got a chance to work on my Spanish listening skills, and to become reacquainted with Castillian Spanish. I like the sound a lot more than the Spanish I'm used to, though it does take a while to get used to all those thetas. I also felt pretty good about being able to spot out some of the discrepancies between the translations and what was actually said. And learning new vulgar phrases is always good.

Sometimes I wonder if Sweden is weird on purpose.

It occurred to me recently, probably due to the linguistics classes I'm taking, that there are a lot of things written in everyday life in characters that don't necessarily mean what they are supposed to mean. My example of this are stylized letters that are used by trademarks to make themselves unique, but actually are different letters entirely. For example, the O in the Monster energy drinks as a Φ. It should be Mfnster. Or the circle over the second A in Stargate, makes it more like Stargote.
In other linguistics news, I've made it through the initial nightmare of Historical Linguistics relatively unscathed. Seeing as about half of the class dropped after a few phenology lectures, I'm rather proud of myself. Those lectures were, with the exception of my Swedish placement test, the worst thing I've ever experienced academically. Everyone is using linguistic jargon like us poor anthro majors are supposed to know what it means, not even bothering to slow down to explain what the hell they are talking about. And what's worse is when the teacher illustrates her examples of sound changes. This whole process results in something to the effect of: "The polypharangealization of bilabial deaffriction indicative of Tapiman results in lenition of 'neh, nah, nyuh' to 'meh mah, myuh'." At this point, I check to see if I've lost my mind. Whenever the professor literally starts to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, I start to worry.

Time travel in the brain. now I don't feel so bad for just staring into space when I should be doing homework.