This will be my last post in Sweden. Next time you hear from me I'll be back home again. I've come a long way since I arrived Uppsala that brisk August evening. So much done yet so much that still needs to be done. I never saw the Silver Bible in Uppsala's Carolina library, or the big, pink castle Slottet in town either. I never saw Kalix, nor made it to Hammerfest. We never had a chance to go to Visby or to the big lakes in the middle of Sweden. I do not regret missing these, though; it just means I have plenty of reasons to come back. And of course when I do come back I will visit all the friends I made during my stay here. I will miss Uppsala, and Sweden, and Europe but I know I will return. Uppsala is like a second home now.
And so, I hereby bring to a close what has been the greatest chapter in my life. The End.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
June 24th. Well, it’s been powm now for one whole year. The blog was created specifically so I could chronicle my adventures in Sweden. In fact today is the (in)famous Swedish Midsummer and I should be out partying. I definitely plan to keep up the blog after I come back to the States, though. The reverse culture shock alone should be worth an entry or two.For those that don’t know (or those that have forgotten) “That’s it! Now it’s powm!” was something I used to say as a child. It is said in anger or frustration with the implication (but rarely actual use) of physical violence of some sort. Powm I believe is a reference to “Pow!” the onomatopoeia for impacts/punches. I decided it would be a good name for my blog simply because I wanted a title that would be a personal reflection of me. I thought it should be something to refer to whatever thoughts might pop into my head but the ideas for titles seemed too faux intellectual. In the end I decided on a title I can truly call my own. So yes, happy birthday blog! May there be many more posts in the future.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Out of Uppsala now, I’ll be slumming in hotels and other people’s houses for the next few blog entries.
It occurred to me the other day that the music in clubs is sometimes just downright bizarre. Specifically, I wondered at point musicians became so vain that they could sing entire songs about their own ass. My Humps and Bootylicious come to mind. Then again, it might be self-deprecating, after all who would refer to their ass as lumpy or jelly-like?
Also, My Humps is insidious; I heard it for the first time in Malmö and then it was everywhere. I even was woken up by it at 3am in a cabin in Kiruna. At first, when I heard it and remembered I was in a cabin above the Arctic Circle, kilometers away from civilization, I was really not sure if I was awake or not.
Anyway, why are songs about butts OK but you’d never be able to get a song about breasts on the radio? What’s so bad about them that aren’t bad about butts?
A final note on European music: people complain about radio everywhere but after listening to the Swedish radio the US has nothing to complain about. It's all techno, bad R&B and schlager (the genre of music that traditionally dominates Eurovision). Say what you will about KFMA or the Point, at least they're better than the stations here.
It occurred to me the other day that the music in clubs is sometimes just downright bizarre. Specifically, I wondered at point musicians became so vain that they could sing entire songs about their own ass. My Humps and Bootylicious come to mind. Then again, it might be self-deprecating, after all who would refer to their ass as lumpy or jelly-like?
Also, My Humps is insidious; I heard it for the first time in Malmö and then it was everywhere. I even was woken up by it at 3am in a cabin in Kiruna. At first, when I heard it and remembered I was in a cabin above the Arctic Circle, kilometers away from civilization, I was really not sure if I was awake or not.
Anyway, why are songs about butts OK but you’d never be able to get a song about breasts on the radio? What’s so bad about them that aren’t bad about butts?
A final note on European music: people complain about radio everywhere but after listening to the Swedish radio the US has nothing to complain about. It's all techno, bad R&B and schlager (the genre of music that traditionally dominates Eurovision). Say what you will about KFMA or the Point, at least they're better than the stations here.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
I’m now quite busy with moving and planning the last few trips in Sweden. I'm moving out of my room for good on Friday. It’s amazing how much stuff I bought while I was here that I now have to take back with me. I guess it’s not that surprising, all things considered, but when I think about how I arrived in Uppsala with literally little more than the clothes on my back, it’s astounding.
Since Uppsala is a student town, it gets really quiet during the summer months and am told can be horribly boring since everyone leaves. It’s calmed down a bit but the town is still trying to keep active. On Thursday there was this festival organized by the local radio station that filled the streets downtown. All manner of souvenirs and confections were being sold up and down the roads. Granted, Feifei and I were rather old compared to the majority of the crowd, but it was still fun. I guess the high school students can’t leave town so easily and they can’t go to clubs or nations yet. I gotta say, in terms of consistent fun times, Uppsala definitely wins over Tucson.
By now all of the Swedish high school students have finished for the year and the seniors have graduated. The Swedes graduate mid day rather than in the evening. After the ceremony they all hop in rented cars and trucks and joyride around town waving banners and honking horns. They also are all dressed in white and have these cute graduation caps. The white is supposed to symbolize innocence, though it is my belief that teenagers in Sweden are anything but innocent. I was fortunate enough to see the graduation festivities in Stockholm last week, which was a novel experience. I’m told the celebrations in Stockholm are the biggest and best and that it’s not as common in other towns. The latter turned out to be false; Uppsala’s gymnasium had similar (but naturally smaller) celebrations going on as well. Regrettably I was not able to see the festivities at Lundellska, though I did see those of their rival, Katedral skolan. After seeing the Swedish graduation traditions, no one in the US has the right to complain about people throwing beach balls or tortillas.
I also went sailing for the first time over the weekend. It’s a lot like I would have imagined in many ways and rather different in others. It’s difficult to explain, really. I wasn’t really happy the first couple of hours but once I got the hang of it I had fun. The fun is contingent on what you are expecting; that is, if you were expecting a leisurely cruise and the wind is fast or if you are expecting more action and there are hardly any waves you won’t have fun. Thankfully, we got both so I could appreciate the two sides of sailing.
And I should also mention that it is clearly now summer in Sweden. It's not a pleasant heat either, not that it approaches the spontaneous combustion inducing temperatures of Tucson, but it's pretty rough. When you're outside it's fine, but the Swedes don't believe in ventilation of any sort, so indoors is torturous. All I want is a fan of some sort, but since "fan" is Swedish for devil, they likely consider such a device to be heretical.
X-Men: The Last Stand with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. A nice entertaining movie though a bit frustrating in several ways. It definitely did have a real comic book feel to it with regard to how several of the characters were handled. I was rather frustrated by the fact that certain characters were never shown (coughGambitcough). One thing I will say though, I never liked Juggernaut until Vinnie Jones’ take on him.
Since Uppsala is a student town, it gets really quiet during the summer months and am told can be horribly boring since everyone leaves. It’s calmed down a bit but the town is still trying to keep active. On Thursday there was this festival organized by the local radio station that filled the streets downtown. All manner of souvenirs and confections were being sold up and down the roads. Granted, Feifei and I were rather old compared to the majority of the crowd, but it was still fun. I guess the high school students can’t leave town so easily and they can’t go to clubs or nations yet. I gotta say, in terms of consistent fun times, Uppsala definitely wins over Tucson.
By now all of the Swedish high school students have finished for the year and the seniors have graduated. The Swedes graduate mid day rather than in the evening. After the ceremony they all hop in rented cars and trucks and joyride around town waving banners and honking horns. They also are all dressed in white and have these cute graduation caps. The white is supposed to symbolize innocence, though it is my belief that teenagers in Sweden are anything but innocent. I was fortunate enough to see the graduation festivities in Stockholm last week, which was a novel experience. I’m told the celebrations in Stockholm are the biggest and best and that it’s not as common in other towns. The latter turned out to be false; Uppsala’s gymnasium had similar (but naturally smaller) celebrations going on as well. Regrettably I was not able to see the festivities at Lundellska, though I did see those of their rival, Katedral skolan. After seeing the Swedish graduation traditions, no one in the US has the right to complain about people throwing beach balls or tortillas.
I also went sailing for the first time over the weekend. It’s a lot like I would have imagined in many ways and rather different in others. It’s difficult to explain, really. I wasn’t really happy the first couple of hours but once I got the hang of it I had fun. The fun is contingent on what you are expecting; that is, if you were expecting a leisurely cruise and the wind is fast or if you are expecting more action and there are hardly any waves you won’t have fun. Thankfully, we got both so I could appreciate the two sides of sailing.
And I should also mention that it is clearly now summer in Sweden. It's not a pleasant heat either, not that it approaches the spontaneous combustion inducing temperatures of Tucson, but it's pretty rough. When you're outside it's fine, but the Swedes don't believe in ventilation of any sort, so indoors is torturous. All I want is a fan of some sort, but since "fan" is Swedish for devil, they likely consider such a device to be heretical.
X-Men: The Last Stand with Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart. A nice entertaining movie though a bit frustrating in several ways. It definitely did have a real comic book feel to it with regard to how several of the characters were handled. I was rather frustrated by the fact that certain characters were never shown (coughGambitcough). One thing I will say though, I never liked Juggernaut until Vinnie Jones’ take on him.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
They say that idle hands are the devil's playthings. Perhaps that's true. Now that I am free from any academic responsibilities I have now taken to indulging my strange whims. Namely, I have been looking up the pronunciation of special letters in other languages so that I might find out how to pronounce the safe word in Eurotrip. (this seemed important at the time)
The word is: FLÜGGÅeNKƠ€ČHIŒßØLSÊN
Unfortunately I could not find the character for where that lower case E is. The word is written in all capitals but the letter looks like a lowercase backwards E.
The closest pronunciation I could come up with was: Flueggo-enkerech-hi-oissirlseen
I'm pretty sure I've gotten that wrong but it's not actually meant to be said. After all they have a Vietnamese character in there and one that doesn't seem to exist. And I can only assume you don't actually say "Euro" when you read the Euro symbol.
Anyway, in case anyone else wondered about that kind of thing, now you know. Plus if even one person is saved from Club Vandersexxx then this post is totally worth it.
The word is: FLÜGGÅeNKƠ€ČHIŒßØLSÊN
Unfortunately I could not find the character for where that lower case E is. The word is written in all capitals but the letter looks like a lowercase backwards E.
The closest pronunciation I could come up with was: Flueggo-enkerech-hi-oissirlseen
I'm pretty sure I've gotten that wrong but it's not actually meant to be said. After all they have a Vietnamese character in there and one that doesn't seem to exist. And I can only assume you don't actually say "Euro" when you read the Euro symbol.
Anyway, in case anyone else wondered about that kind of thing, now you know. Plus if even one person is saved from Club Vandersexxx then this post is totally worth it.
Friday, June 02, 2006
Totally free with all of my classes. I now have one month of free time in Sweden and I plan to make the most of it. Plans include exploring Uppsala a bit more (I've been here almost a year and there are still important places I haven't seen), Stockholm, Göteborg, and Visby. Visby is this old walled city on an island off of Sweden that hosts this SCA/Ren Faire thing in late summer. I won't be there to see it but I have a feeling it's a lot more authentic than the Tucson ones. And in less than a month I'll be back in the excruciating Tucson sun. Where does the time go?
Last Saturday was the Spring Ball in Uppsala. Every nation had their own ball so there were plenty to choose from. We chose to go to Östgöta Nation instead of V-Dala cuz, well, this is the only ball I'm probably going to go to in Uppsala so we picked the nicest building (and not V-Dala, arguably the ugliest). It started out quite similar to a normal gasque except that the food was good and it arrived promptly, whether this is because it's a ball and not a gasque or because it's Östgöta and not V-Dala I could not say. It was fun seeing how another nation had formal dinners, complete with different songs. After the dinner tables were moved out the main hall became the ballroom. There was a live band playing waltzes and foxtrots for hours. Feifei and I had taken a couple of crash courses in dancing before the ball so we managed to hold our own. After Östgöta calmed down in the wee hours of the morning we made our way to V-Dala to say hi to our friends there. There's definitely a magic to Uppsala: 2AM and the sky is already brightening, the streets filled with young ladies and gentlemen dressed their finest, gazing up at the majestic Domkyrkan while funky dance music blares from the nearby Värmlands Nation. V-Dala didn't have a live band but the dancing went on until 4AM.
The Spring Ball was equated by some to the prom. Even though it's quite different in many ways, it also serves the same function. And in that regard it vastly surpasses prom.
My only gripe is the formal attire required for the occasion. It's a white tie event, which is more formal than a tuxedo. Even though a tuxedo looks fifty times better than tails. I now know that the fictional profanity "frack" on Battlestar Galactica is actually a reference to the difficulty of putting on, the discomfort of wearing and the silly appearance of the formal suit of the same name.
And I find most of these to be quite true. Mormons in Sweden, there's an exercise in futility.
Also, new month, new Flickr pics.
Last Saturday was the Spring Ball in Uppsala. Every nation had their own ball so there were plenty to choose from. We chose to go to Östgöta Nation instead of V-Dala cuz, well, this is the only ball I'm probably going to go to in Uppsala so we picked the nicest building (and not V-Dala, arguably the ugliest). It started out quite similar to a normal gasque except that the food was good and it arrived promptly, whether this is because it's a ball and not a gasque or because it's Östgöta and not V-Dala I could not say. It was fun seeing how another nation had formal dinners, complete with different songs. After the dinner tables were moved out the main hall became the ballroom. There was a live band playing waltzes and foxtrots for hours. Feifei and I had taken a couple of crash courses in dancing before the ball so we managed to hold our own. After Östgöta calmed down in the wee hours of the morning we made our way to V-Dala to say hi to our friends there. There's definitely a magic to Uppsala: 2AM and the sky is already brightening, the streets filled with young ladies and gentlemen dressed their finest, gazing up at the majestic Domkyrkan while funky dance music blares from the nearby Värmlands Nation. V-Dala didn't have a live band but the dancing went on until 4AM.
The Spring Ball was equated by some to the prom. Even though it's quite different in many ways, it also serves the same function. And in that regard it vastly surpasses prom.
My only gripe is the formal attire required for the occasion. It's a white tie event, which is more formal than a tuxedo. Even though a tuxedo looks fifty times better than tails. I now know that the fictional profanity "frack" on Battlestar Galactica is actually a reference to the difficulty of putting on, the discomfort of wearing and the silly appearance of the formal suit of the same name.
And I find most of these to be quite true. Mormons in Sweden, there's an exercise in futility.
Also, new month, new Flickr pics.
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