So the other day we’re driving to the dojo and see a license plate that says, “Be an organ donor” so we joked that we would go in and just donate a liver like one might go in and donate blood. So then here’s a weird thought: could one conceivably commit suicide by organ donation? That is, donate a vital organ, or better yet, donate all your organs. The doctors would be labeled as highly unethical, but on the other hand if the “patient” comes up to them and tells them they are suicidal and will kill themselves one way or another, it’s in the doctor’s hands whether or not the waste of life is a complete waste. All organs could be salvaged as well as marrow and all the blood. Gruesome, yes, but remember that the selfish act of suicide would be mitigated by the selflessness of offering your entire body to those in need who do want to live. Suppose each organ goes to a separate person, saving each of their lives. Would this form of suicide then be looked down upon? The only problem is finding doctors who would utterly violate the Hippocratic oath and intentionally kill and essentially gut their patients even if it was the patient’s expressed wish. They would be reviled even more than abortion doctors. But perhaps some ethical concerns might be evaded if one considers that the killing of one patient ultimately benefits many more. Consider it an expansion on the logic of triage: the patient has a low chance of survival (because he’s suicidal) while other patients who will die without treatment (an organ transplant or blood transfusion) still have a chance if the doctor administers treatment in time. In a triage scenario, the doctor administers treatment to the other patients and neglects the patient with a lower chance of survival, essentially killing him. In this way a doctor sacrifices the life of one to save the life of another, this doctor would not be considered unethical, in fact they might be praised for their cool professional approach and understanding that not everyone can be saved. In a triage situation the tradeoff of life might be one to one, but in this scenario the sacrifice of one ultimately benefits many more.
So would people opt to commit suicide in this fashion? Would the doctors be willing to go through with it? Would the general public accept it even when weighing in the benefit it would have to those on an organ waiting list? Do the needs of the many truly outweigh the needs of the few?

Hard Candy with Patrick Wilson and Ellen Page. One creepy, intense movie that really got me riled. It's certainly suited to a debate, but not for a blind right/wrong debate with absolutist, sexist arguments. My personal opinion is that the girl is in dire need of a vacation, specifically one to a certain "Hostel" in Slovakia.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now, the debate is: are the crimes committed by the man sufficiently atrocious to warrant the events in the movie? And are the events in the movie atrocious enough to warrant my suggested punishment? When dealing with this, it is important to only look at what was explicitly proven and stated in the film and not every single claim, allegation or suspicion the girl had. Now, the director is brilliant in only providing just enough solid proof to keep the plot from being completely ambiguous. All that we know about his secrets are from the reactions of a sadistic and legally insane character looking for anything that might prove her right. It's important to look at the movie in retrospect, seeing how carefully orchestrated and planned her whole scheme was and factor that into her character. But also remember that everything we learned at the end she knew for certain all along. That exonerates her only slightly, because it is inferred that she obtained all this information from the guy's friend using similar methods but operating on less than absolute certainty. He was a monster for his actions that were left unseen; she was a monster for her actions both seen and unseen. He deserved punishment, but is a monster who kills a monster any less monstrous?
And I'd also like to add that movies like this are what make being bound a borderline phobia of mine.

Returner with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Anne Suzuki. Pretty much your standard sci-fi movie complete with aliens and time travel, but with some notably cool action scenes. I remember seeing a trailer for this at the Loft a few years back and based solely on some scenes with transforming airplanes I was determined to watch it. I was a little disappointed by the plot, but such things are to be expected with foreign films. Why do the aliens have to be so damn unreasonable? One thing I thought was pretty funny is in the future "flashbacks" there are a lot of Americans. Their lines are so horrible and over the top I'm not sure if it's cuz the actors are so bad they couldn't find work in any English speaking country or if the lines were written in Japanese and translated directly into English. Or both. Lastly, the villain was pretty good too. That is, he's one of those really despicable characters, not just the "I'm a bad guy because the script says I am" types. His mannerisms are quite similar to a bad guy character in another Japanese movie Versus. I wonder if the bug-eyed, tongue flicking psycho is an archetypical Japanese character.

In a remarkable instance of serendipity, my schedule has changed enough to dramatically increase my fun time. It turns out one of the classes I took in Uppsala counts as a GenEd credit here, meaning I can drop one of the ones I'm taking now. I could either drop my first class of the day and sleep in or drop the last one and go home early. I chose the latter, Chinese Civ, since it's boring (but really interesting) and dropping it means I can go to work an hour earlier and work 8 hours every shift. Now I work Monday, Wednesday, Friday and get off work right before the dreaded closing shift. That means I can go to the dojo Tuesdays and Thursdays, just like old times plus have Saturday free for sparring. And in a remarkable coincidence, my high school drama teacher is directing a play at the U of A and an opening for a part appeared. The rehearsal times happen to match my new schedule *exactly*. There's a Swedish word for windfall, but I can't remember what it was. That's how I would best describe this series of developments. Anyway, "Southern Fried Murder", on October 20th, will mark my triumphant return to the stage!

Speaking of Swedish (yeah that's gonna keep popping up. What can I say? It's still fresh in my mind.) the customers at Beyond Bread, interestingly it's often the crabby ones, will ask for wheat bread but always put too much air into the 'wh' producing the Swedish word for 'shit'. It gets me every time, and with some customers I really wish I could give them what they asked for.

And also, after a bit of a break, I now have new Flickr pics.

I think only now am I really getting the reverse culture shock I kept bracing myself for after returning from Sweden. It's not just missing things that made life fun, like the nations (I would kill for a night at the nations, even V-Dala club nights) it's seeing things that are odd in comparison and being reminded of little quirks.
One of the things I think is really bizarre is that when I was at the U of A freshman year, I noticed there were some foreigners, mostly Asian and a few from Africa, but for the most part it was hard to find someone who wasn't American. When I went to Uppsala I was amazed by how many exchange students there were. I'm aware that as an exchange student I was in classes with other foreigners or was in other activities designed with exchange students in mind, but even putting all that aside there still seemed to be more international students than at the U of A. Now I'm back and it seems like while I was gone the number of international students increased tremendously. I'm not sure if I just wasn't actively looking before or if I'm just in the right type of classes; maybe the Theater department wasn't the most popular venue for foreigners.
Another thing I noticed while I was in Uppsala, while there were plenty of exchange students and a fair number of immigrants, the general appearance of the population was pretty homogeneous. Even fashions and hairstyles were pretty uniform, I remember being rather disenchanted with that discovery. But at the U of A there's a paradox; I see the rich ethnic diversity, blending of different peoples, countless subcultures, people of all shapes and sizes. Then I see the sorority girls, all with bug-eye sunglasses, bleach blonde hair, fake tans, and shorts with their sorority written on the ass. They're everywhere and they're all exactly the same. Even their speech and mannerisms are identical; it kinda creeped me out that it seems I see one of the sorority girls I met in Uppsala everywhere here.
I also got in touch with a couple of exchange students from Uppsala that are at the U of A. It's really fun and surreal to be able to talk about Uppsala with someone while they're in Tucson. It's funny, I asked them why they came here of all places and they said it was to get away from the cold. They couldn't imagine why I would leave Tucson to seek out icy weather in Sweden. I also can keep up my Swedish by talking to them; it's embarrassing that I've already started to forget simple words. On the other hand, as a habit for familiarizing myself with the language I would insert Swedish words or phrases in an English conversation with a Swede. I had to wean myself off that habit when I got back to the US since no one would know what the hell I was talking about. But since I met the Swedes it's been popping up every now and then. The other day at work I didn't hear what someone said and instead of saying "What?" I said, "Vad sade du?"

And not really anything new, but I think it's interesting that the English words 'ken', 'canny', 'know' and the Swedish 'känna' are all from the same Germanic word. I was kind of disappointed to not find a link between 'sense' and 'känna' though; they sound similar enough and they do have overlapping meanings.

Blogger ate my draft of this post. I'm very displeased.
Lately I've realized that there's a strange, fine line that seems to separate not being stubborn and bending to other people's views. Surely, allowing one's opinions to be influenced by others is not bad in itself, after all change is a good thing at times. The trick is when to let other people’s ideas affect your own judgment; maybe they’ve figured out something you haven't. Maybe not.
At the same time I also realized that what we believe makes us who we are and changing our way of thinking is essentially making us a slightly different person. Now, yes, every moment of every day we receive new information that alters us slightly making it impossible to have a static "you". It's like the adage of not being able to walk through the same river twice, but I'm driving more at altering the actual path of the river, not just the water flowing in it. So not only are you making a difficult decision when changing your mind on something you always took as an absolute, you’re also in effect actively changing who you are. You might also be concerned about what the new you will be like and if you want to be that new person. Now of course once you are that person all your behaviors and opinions will sound good to you–they’re part of what makes you who you are–but before you become that person, those same traits might actually seem negative.
On a related note, has anyone ever had a series of classes that seemed to address issues in your life with a timing that makes it almost seem like it was planned? It's really helpful, but kinda eerie.

And finally, I think it’s funny that last week while I was having a crummy time, I actually looked forward to going to work to get my mind off my day. Now I’m doing better and so work sucks again.

I've been so busy lately that I haven't had time to write stuff in my blog and once I do have time I can't remember it all. Like I said earlier, I don't think I'll be having much of a social life this semester. I work 4 days a week with only enough time between class and work to get ready to start working. But I'll have money. I don't know if I'm going to make many new friends this year anyway, GenEd classes are pretty bad environments for meeting new people, especially if you have no time to talk to them outside of class. Well, we'll see how it goes.

I was thinking about something the other day in my psychology class: racial scapegoating is obviously a sign of unjustified fear and ignorance, and we can condemn it because it's clear to us that the allegations against whatever group being persecuted are false. They're really not conspiring against us or contaminating our society or any of the gibberish bigots try to get us to believe. But what if there actually was a group of people that, by their very nature and not necessarily out of malicious intent, was a threat to our society or our very existence? Would racism be excused then? There's no real life example, of course, but one of the things that got me thinking was a recent episode of Stargate: Atlantis. A Wraith, the main enemy on the show, asks one of the characters if he blames his species for feeding on humans. The only form of nourishment the Wraith can consume is humans, so can the Wraith be blamed for feeding on humans if the alternative is starving to death? And what is the logical conclusion of the Atlantis team's ultimate goal of defeating the Wraith? They can't simply beat them back to a single world and have them just eat the humans there; they want to liberate everyone in the galaxy from the Wraith. So does that mean eliminate the Wraith entirely? Since they mention abiding by the Geneva Convention when dealing with captured Wraith I'm guessing they're not going to adopt a policy of genocide. But the only alternative is letting all the Wraith slowly starve to death, which is ultimately a slower, indirect genocide.
Another example is from a game called Master of Orion 3 where one of the races, the Ithkul, is actually a sentient biological weapon that was designed to fight all the other races in the galaxy. When one conquers a planet the inhabitants then become members of that empire and can actually migrate in small numbers to other planets within the empire, or randomly create their own colonies loyal to the empire that conquered them, not their actual race. The alternative, of course, is to just destroy all life on the planet and recolonize it. I opt for conquering, both because it's a developed infrastructure I'm taking over but also cuz I tend to follow my own real life moral code when playing games and it just seems wrong to exterminate a planet. My only exception is the Ithkul, because if you leave the inhabitants alive when you conquer their planets the computer will treat the population of every planet equally (as a good empire-wide intelligence should) and allow them to migrate to your other planets. Once there, they start to eat the rest of the population. You see the problem, so would genocide be justified in this case?

Sci-fi though it may be, I think they're interesting ethical questions. All this can also be related back to my post on 9/20/05. Remember even if I were content to stop from wiping out the Ithkul entirely, or in the case of the Atlantis expedition the Wraith, genocide is the extermination of a race "in whole or in part". So they're still stuck in the same moral quandry.

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder. The same author as one of my favorite books, Sophie's World, I was figuring this would be of similar caliber. Unfortunately, it's of far too similar caliber. I can't object to the story or the writing style or anything within the book itself, but it's incredibly similar to Sophie's World in plot, plot devices, characters and I think some of the names are the same too. This book was written before Sophie's World, so I suspect Gaarder just gathered up the best parts of all his previous stories and merged them into that book. I was a little bugged by the rather limp dialog between the two main characters but I suppose it fits the whole philosopher-apprentice theme that the author was going for.
I remember a review of Sophie's World calling it "the Alice in Wonderland for the 90's" but that title really lends itself more to The Solitaire Mystery, one aspect of which you could guess right from the name of the book.

Now, I know it's only the first week and my classes are almost exclusively lecture halls, but I miss how my classes were Uppsala. Everyone was so friendly there and willing to talk to strangers, now it's back to aloof, exclusive cliques. I have to admit, there is a certain irony to the idea that more people in a class makes it harder to talk to people. The classes themselves are nice; I think my NATS class is shaping up to be my favorite. Aside from the obviously interesting subject matter (astronomy, space, the Universe) the teacher is quite fun. He bears a resemblance both physically and personality-wise to my favorite character in Stargate: Atlantis, Dr. McKay. He also makes references to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so instant awesome right there.
My professor for Structure of Mind and Behavior claimed she would implant a false memory in the entire class sometime during the semester. That's slightly unsettling. What if she already has? What if it turns out I was never even in that class?

I made a saddening discovery at work yesterday. I now have a job to make money to fund activities in my social life, but I no longer really have time for a social life. Damn. Well, at least I'll be richer and have free food.

And by the time I post this, Feifei will probably be in a plane over Asia on her way to Beijing. She was telling me the other day about her uncertainty of whether or not this was a good idea to study there. Or rather, if it would be an enjoyable, worthwhile trip. She mentioned a friend who went to study in Australia for a year with the same zeal and enthusiasm I had for going to Sweden, then went there and hated it so much she left after the first semester. And I recalled a few people I had met in my travels who were quite underwhelmed with their decision to study abroad. And I realized how incredibly fortunate I was to have had such an amazing experience in Uppsala. I went there with high expectations and an unshakable feeling that this would be an experience of a lifetime, and I got just that. But, of course, not everyone will. So here's hoping that Beijing University is everything to Feifei that Uppsala University was to me. 福气 菲菲!

First day of classes today. I wasn't sure how this would be, if my time in Sweden might have changed my outlook on college life for the better. I had been more excited during my first day of classes there and wasn't sure if the lack of enthusiasm before was because I was a freshman or because it was someplace new and exciting. Turns out it's the latter. It's really a stunning contrast. The past year, including the last couple of months in Arizona, have been like a fantasy. And now the fantasy is over.
I miss so much about Uppsala all of a sudden. Like the fact that all the bikes have built in locks, the fact that I lived uphill from all of my classes so I hardly had to pedal at all. My Swedish bike also had a cover over the gears so your pants wouldn't snag in them, I am now certain that will be the death of me.
It's weird being able to walk around and catch snippets of conversation and understand them all. Or how I see people that look like people I met in Sweden except now they're sorority girls or frat boys. It's like some evil parallel universe. On the plus side, my classes are mostly in the mornings so they're over and done with right away. (God, you'd never think evening classes would be desirable, would you?) I also found out Mountain slopes downhill slightly on the way back home, so I get a bit of a break once it's time to go home.

In other news, I'm going to be working at Beyond Bread on Wednesday. And for the first time in my life (hopefully not the last) I had to turn down a job offer (from Kohl's). Beyond Bread was so eager to hire me I really wish I knew what it was I said or did that made it work. They called me in for an interview literally within ten minutes of me turning in my application. We'll see how this job goes...

And finally, I went back to Sabino today to say hi to my old drama teacher and catch up on old times. He brought me up to pace with what's going on in the lives of the old drama crew and am glad to hear that so many of them are successful with their lives and living their dreams. I'm also glad to see that my teacher is doing well and that he's settled into the role of being a dad nicely.
The best news he told me though is that my senior year English teacher, whom I hated like I have never hated any teacher before, is gone. The best part is that she evidently (this is what he told me, anyway) left because she is a big fan of vampire culture and moved to find people more like her. Where that might be, I have no idea. Transylvania? Now, in a way this is surprising and in another way, it's not surprising at all. For someone who tended to look down upon the different ways students expressed themselves or what they believed in, this is a shock. But considering I always felt like my life force was getting sucked out whenever I was in that class, this doesn't strike me as odd in the least. I was very pleased to hear this news to say the least. If I could take this perfect blend of irony and aptness (is there an antonym for irony?) and make a candy out of it I would put Willy Wonka himself to shame.

Nightwatch with Konstantin Khabensky and Mariya Poroshina. A Russian equivilant of Constantine or Underworld. I'm beginning to see why American movies are so popular around the world. This movie was definitely trying to be like Hollywood but it comes off as a grotesque imitation or perhaps a parody. The special effects were good but overdone and the camera angles really started to bother me after the first half hour. The plot was rather straightforward though they really throw in some weird convoluded info that just muddles it all up. You have to just remember the first thing they tell you and ignore everything else that will inevitably contradict it. It seemed like they had two seperate plots that had nothing to do with one another but were individually too weak to make a movie on their own. The one refreshing thing about this movie is, sorry for the spoiler, the bad guys win.

Words of the Day: eperopolis- a city covering a continent
Ecumenopolis- a city covering an entire planet (i.e. Coruscant from Star Wars)

Pulse with Haruhiko Katô and Koyuki. This is the original Japanese version and not the American remake. This film is definitely one of those perplexing, sit back and think about it kind of films. It really wasn't as scary as we had figured, at least not in the things jumping out at you and blood and gore kind of way. It's one of those subtle and creepy scary movies.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Now, one thing I do know for certain regarding this movie is that the Japanese must have a terrible fear of being alone, this is evidenced by this film and also Suicide Club. The thing is this loneliness they are so afraid of is one of those quasi-literal things. In the movie they keep saying how alone they are despite the fact that they do have people around them. But there are no extras, there are just the main characters. With that in mind I figured they meant they were alone in that no one understood them or cared about them since the people didn't seem to really bond with each other and were more linked through a mutual fear. So there's that part, but then is seems that the ghosts, who were overflowing from the realm of the dead (why our Universe is infinite but theirs is very finite is beyond me, but whatever) compel people to kill themselves by making them think they are not alone but by suicide the people doom themselves to be alone forever.
But why do they do that? They (kind of) claimed they wanted to trap other people in their own loneliness and the goal there seems to be that keeps the newly dead from coming into the already overcrowded realm of the dead and that it's a matter of self preservation (I think?). But the guy that died in the beginning ends up compelling his friends to kill themselves, it seemed like he was tricked into the same kind of thing he ended up tricking the others into, so he wasn't going to that realm of the dead anyway. So why did he do that? I don't think that was his motive and I'm guessing there was something greater to this than just: once you die you become a ghost, ghosts are evil, the end.
The only thing I can think of is that the ghosts can only be not alone when they're in their realm, so the ones on Earth are forever alone, they can't see or interact with other ghosts (I don't think) so they think they're the only ones. The ghosts then try to bring the living into their own microcosm, which of course doesn't work and only begets more lonely ghosts. This process continues over and over again until at the end of the movie there's no one left in the world.

Clerks 2 with Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson. Aside from a few superfluous scenes, I liked this movie. It adequately carries on the spirit of the original, though, as Kevin Smith tends to do, there is a moral to the story. In that regard it's not as carefree as the original, but it doesn't bog down the movie. It was also kind of odd seeing the Clerks cast aged 10 years and back in the same roles. Also, I would have liked an explanation as to why Randal hates the Transformers so much.

Hostel with Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson. This movie seemed like Eurotrip from an evil parallel universe. The similarities are uncanny: American college students going to Europe looking for sex, jokes about money belts, the uptight guy getting groped by a creepy guy on a train, ending up in Slovakia and so on. Hell, you could say Cooper’s mix up at Club Vandersexxx is an analogous, albeit lighthearted, version of the main story of this movie. As for this movie, you can pretty easily see it’s a Tarantino flick, what with it’s gruesome violence, endless gore and the obligatory stuttering psychopath. I, for one, am glad I saw this movie after having traveled to Eastern Europe by myself otherwise I might not have been so keen on it.
Which reminds me, while I was in Uppsala I had dinner with some Lithuanian friends of mine and we compared notes on Vilnius. Evidently this one park I walked through several times alone in the middle of the night is a spot where people often get mugged. It was right next to the big building that held the death metal concert I went to. I figure the people saw me come out of there and figured a Lithuanian metalhead is not someone you want to trifle with. Oh, and in Moscow some guy kept trying to get us to follow him behind the club we were waiting to get into. We thought he wanted our money or our organs but after seeing Hostel that opens up a whole new range of possibilities.

Sweden is still with me. I still occasionally read words on signs and pronounce them in my head the Swedish way. Or translate English words or names that have the same spelling as Swedish words; like Eller college, BARA or Hummer (it's the Swedish word for lobster). And now that I no longer have anyone foreign to act as a foil, the US seems really weird all of a sudden. I went to the grocery store and by the jelly section was at first delighted to see an orange colored jelly and immediately thought "hjortron sylt!" (I didn't even think "cloudberry jam") but was disappointed to find out it was just peach. Amazingly, I wanted to buy some cloudberry jam even though I hardly ever ate the stuff myself. I recommend you try some if you are ever in the position to do so. It's unique. a very blunt, sweet taste that at first reminded me of apricots but now seems like quince. As a jam, I found cloudberries didn't really go well with many things. As a cider though, mm-mmm!
Oh, hjortron cider reminds me of good ol' Swedish Midsummer.

Some pretty cool music videos (via Stephanie)

Well it's been a good month since my last post. Lots of fun stuff in that month too, I don't even know where to begin. It really was just an extension of the awesomeness in Sweden, due in no small part to the awesomeness I brought back from Sweden: the lovely Feifei. Seeing American culture after being gone for a year is weird enough, but seeing it through the eyes of someone who has never been to the US is just unreal. Endless tiny oddities that we take as mundane suddenly become magical. Like why there's Chinese written on street signs (PED XING) or what exotic fruit fresh squeezed "oy" (O.J.) comes from.
Meteor Crater and the Painted Desert were both beautiful and impressive but paled in comparison to the Grand Canyon. Feifei was absolutely blown away while I was duly impressed and rather astonished that something I saw years ago actually seems bigger upon revisiting it.
The Comicon in San Diego was pretty damn cool. We saw people dressed up as pretty much anything you could imagine: from storm troopers to Klingons, Xena to Dick Tracy. Of course, it's also the perfect opportunity for girls to show off their thigh high black vinyl boots and matching corsets and not be considered oddly dressed. Navigating through the crowd of people was quite difficult, partly because we often became separated when one of us suddenly saw something interesting and veered off without telling the other person and also because it's hard to make your way through thousands of people doing the exact same thing.
I'm now Frank's roommate at his new house, which is awesome. It's strange that even while I have to find a job, return to the U of A, declare my minor and do more and more grown up, responsible things, the adventures of this past month have made me feel like a kid again.

And I have a month's worth of pictures from my travels.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I can't tell if this Swedish course is more for kicks or if it's actually helpful.
On another note, I looked up some stuff on the Swedish language on Wikipedia and found that they evidently have a sound that does not exist in other languages. The 'sj' sound is closest to "phew!" in English but is essentially like blowing out a candle. The Norrlanders have an easier time, they just pronounce it like 'sh' but sometimes I don't think it sounds as good then. I have gotten the pronunciation pretty much figured out after 9 months though.
One thing I will never get used to or use myself is the Swedish equivalent sound for "mmhmm". They inhale quickly either through the mouth or the nose and it sometimes sounds like they just stopped themselves from burping. It the most annoying thing in the world. I think someone mentioned it to me once last semester but I forgot it and it came as a surprise to me at the beginning of this semester. Originally I thought only female Swedish teachers did it since they were the only ones I ever observed doing it. One teacher at my department made that affirmative sound literally after every single sentence. I honestly thought she had a respiratory problem, but apparently she's just the Swedish Mr. Mackey.

Also, I've been here nine months and I have yet to see an actual, dedicated Swedish restaurant. At first I was just a little frustrated that I couldn't find one, but figured that it was natural to not find ethnic food restaurants in the same region that the ethnicity hails from. But it occurred to me in Poland and Lithuania that I could find plenty of ethnic restaurants there. One can find Spanish food in Spain and British food in Britain, but no Swedish food in Sweden. It's not that Swedish food sucks, for some reason, though, the Swedes just don't like it. One Swede told me that it's because when people go out to a restaurant they don't want to eat the same stuff they have at home. Theoretically true, but I know for a fact that Swedes don't eat pickled herring at home every day, they have pasta and stuff like that. He then said Swedish restaurants would mainly cater to tourists (evidently the million immigrants in Sweden aren't a big enough market) and Sweden isn't a big tourist country. Compared to England and Spain, yes definitely, but I think there are more tourists that would rather go to Stockholm than downtown Warsaw. I think the Swedes just don't like their cultural food, for whatever reason. I don't think they could have gotten tired of it; you can only get it on holidays. It does tend to be the same thing no matter what the holiday is, though.

Also, a couple new Flickr pics.

Thankfully classes are coming to a close, it won't be long before I'm totally free and can enjoy Sweden without having that nagging feeling of being a slacker. Not that that has stopped me in the past, but still. My paper on Lundellska skolan will be done by the end of the week and hopefully it will say everything I want it to say, though given the sorry state of the weather lately I doubt I will be able to observe the Swedish spring fashions, namely the supposed Muslim girls with spaghetti strap tops and headscarves. That would be anthropological gold.
I had the chance to watch the Eurovision Song Contest last night; Feifei was quite determined that I see it, as it is such an important pan-European cultural event. For those that don't know, imagine American Idol but bigger and, though everyone can sing and perform nicely, the songs and performances themselves are so cheesy and dumb. The best word to describe it is simply "European." The Europeans take it so seriously too, while the real entertainment for me is in making fun of these people. The front pages of all the newspapers have the voting results and how terrible it was the Sweden lost to Finland, totally displacing actual important news. The real reason they won was cuz they were so different from all the other acts and they just stood out the most. My favorite, on account of just how cheeky their act was, was Lithuania: "We Are the Winners of Eurovision". Still wish Zlad had been able to perform, though. I don't think he should be disqualified on account of his country not existing. I mean, Molvania is still fictionally in Europe, yet Israel can perform and they're on the wrong continent! I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but if you have the chance to watch Eurovision, do so by all means. If not for the cultural experience then just for the sake of comedy.

Alien vs. Predator, with Sanaa Lathan and Lance Hendriksen. This movie wasn't as bad as all the critics had led me to believe. Granted, I wouldn't have wanted to go see it in a theater but it's not something unwatchable. That said, it could have been done better, but that comment hardly makes a movie bad these days. I think it should have taken place in the Aliens time period and not on modern day Earth, but maybe that's just me. They could have gotten rid of a lot of dumb little nits that way. I think if anything will bug you it's the accumulation of little dumb things, like how the girl is running around in Antarctica at night after taking her parka off and doesn't freeze to death. But then again, there aren't many scenes where you can see their breath anyway. Pretty much, if you don't mind the inconsistencies and don't pay too close attention to detail it's an enjoyable film, but nowhere near the level of either the "Aliens" or "Predator" movies.

Sex is Zero, with Ji-won Ha and Chang Jung Lim. My brother got an email from Amazon saying that since he bought Eurotrip, he might be interested in this movie too. Since he got me Eurotrip as a birthday gift I thought I'd check it out. The reviews said it was 5 times funnier than American Pie and equated it with Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Evidently this person has either never seen this film or has never seen those films, because it's totally beyond me how any rational person could make that claim. The movie definitely tries to follow that format, but goes overboard in some places, crossing the line from funny/gross to just wrong. Like a supposedly funny scene where the main character eats rat poison. The more serious elements of the movie are really dark and not appropriate for a comedy at all. I may have missed the point or am just of the wrong culture, but damn this movie sucks.

Finally done with one of my least favorite courses ever. No more People, Power and Food ever again! I should be thankful that the course involved so little work that I could (and did) do all the work at the last minute.
In other news the weather is bright and sunny and beautiful here in Uppsala. Why just the other day it reached 68F (20C). Lovely day for a stroll in the park. It's amazing seeing how the entire city changes from winter to spring. Visibly it looks like the population of Uppsala doubled since people all want to be outside now. Plus, all the trees and bushes are sprouting leaves again. The parks are filled with pretty flowers that are causing so many allergies to so many people. So I suppose I have to thank desert broom for making me resistant to Swedish pollen, who knew that plant was useful? The Swedes are now all sunbathing in the parks, on their balconies and actually outside my very window. I wore shorts for the first time in eight months today, a nice refreshing change but it's still not hot enough where I would actually need them. Contrast with the Swedes who are fanning themselves and running for ice cream to cool themselves down. Remember, 68F is hot to them. I had worried that my time in Sweden had robbed me of my ability to tolerate heat, but thankfully not. When I was in Vilnius, the kitchen was maybe 80F (26C) and everyone was fanning themselves and rolling up their sleeves and saying how horribly hot it was. And then there's me and a girl from Israel who were totally fine.

Also, Feifei and I are evidently part of an unprecedented legal case involving a screw up with online airline tickets. It's going to take a long time, naturally, but if we win we get a partial refund. Plus unprecedented legal cases look nice on a law major's resume, I'd think, so hurray for Feifei.

Valborg was on Sunday, this big holiday celebrated all over Sweden by lighting bonfires and singing songs. Except in Uppsala, where the student town goes completely nuts and everyone roams the streets from dawn till dawn drinking and partying away. I've never seen anything like this in my life; so much alcohol, so many bottles littering the streets, such hedonistic indulgence, and all of it totally sanctioned by the municipality. To give you an idea on just how much alcohol is involved here let me quote a statistic: 25% of Systembolaget's (the Swedish government run liquor monopoly) annual sales happen the week before Valborg. 25% consumed on a single day. I did not drink nearly as much as all the Swedes claimed I inevitably would, which is good cuz I really like being able to remember all the things that happened and also not ending up in one of the ambulances we heard running through town all that day.

So here's a quick rundown of how this day plays out if you really want to enjoy it all: First you wake up nice and early and head on down to the Fyrisån so you can get a good spot for the forsränningen, an event where University students construct floats/rafts out of Styrofoam and balsa wood and float them down the river and try to survive the two waterfalls, the 2nd of which is bigger and more difficult than the first. Unfortunately we didn't see the 2nd one, but we did have a rather nice view at the 1st where we saw the weaker floats get obliterated. Also, during this time, one traditionally has champagne and strawberries for breakfast, known as the champagnefrukost, but time and space restrictions made us opt out of that one.
After the float race we headed back to Feifei's place so she and her friends could change for this semiformal lunch thing where all the Swedes have to wear their high school graduation caps. These little white caps btw are the cutest things in the world; damn stylish too, if our graduation caps looked like that I'd probably wear mine more often. The lunch was all Swedish food, which was great because aside from holidays the Swedes never eat the stuff. The Swedes don't seem fond of their traditional food, which is strange cuz I like it, but I'll save that analysis for another day. The main reason for having those little caps is that the Dean of Uppsala University gives a speech at the top of the hill at the main library, the Carolina Rediviva, where immediately after the speech the students fling their hats in the air (collecting them afterwards, presumably) then running down the hill in great haste to get to a nation for the champagnegalopp.
After the lunch we went back and changed clothes again to something we didn't mind getting drenched in champagne, then proceeded to a nation, Göteborg. And just as expected there was a lot of champagne going around with people shaking it up and spraying it on one another. There were champagne puddles on the ground and the air was so humidified with it you might get tipsy just breathing there. Aside from the obvious consequence of being really sticky afterwards, being sprayed was rather refreshing since it was so hot inside the building.

We went home to change once more, and afterwards we went to a barbeque and a corridor party, as is tradition. That was really fun, and people complimented me on my Swedish, specifically my lack of an American accent. That really made my day. There was one really obnoxiously drunk Swede who didn't seem to understand any English and was a total jackass. After that we went to an after party at one of the nations, but that sucked so we ended up going home. On the way back we surveyed the damage wrought by the day. A grassy field on the way back home was totally covered in garbage, it literally looked like a landfill. Amazingly though, I biked by there late the next day and it was almost cleaned up, though it was less miraculous when I saw the small army of garbage men cleaning it all, or the fact that just beyond where the garbage men stood was still a solid field of garbage.

All said, a wonderful time was had by all and it was a great introduction to Valborg. I've got to come back some time. Hot damn.

Yesterday I went to this martial arts show in a nightclub in Uppsala, Birger Jarl, known among English speakers as Club BJ. Anyway, the show was pretty fun to watch; they had Muay Thai, jujitsu, capoeira and MMA. Aside from the fighting itself the stuff revolving around it was also pretty entertaining, from the announcer shouting, "Let's get ready to rumble!" in a Swedish accent to the fights having their own soundtracks (who hasn't wanted to fight to a good song?) to watching the girls holding the round cards get instructions before the fights. It was agreed that the jujitsu fight was by far the best; faster, harder more immediate and also just prettier than some of the other fights. And of course it's always more fun watching people if you know what techniques they're doing. Their fighting style reminded me a lot of the Ko Sho system, in fact.
The capoeira was sadly not an actual fight but a demonstration of acrobatics and coordination. Entertaining, but I really wanted to see an actual capoeira fight. The last fight was a free fight against an MMA guy and a Muay Thai guy (that rhymes!) but that wasn't very pleasant to watch. Judging from the punches to the kidneys, rabbit punches and kicking the opponent while they were down the only real rules seemed to be to stay in the ring and not kill anyone.
One thing I would have really wanted to see was a match against all these martial arts against one another. A jujitsu/capoeira match would have been just awesome. But even without it, it was still a fun time.

I learned this in class from an Australian and thought it was just worth mentioning: place a 2 liter water bottle in the water tank of your toilet. This reduces the water use for flushing from 7 to 5 liters. If you have a household of four people that in average uses the toilet 5 times per day and person this is a reduction of water use by 40 liters every day.

Words of the Day: leechate-garbage juice.
shibboleth-A word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group or class from those of another. A custom or practice that betrays one as an outsider.

So yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous spring day, the best one yet and I arrived just in time for it too. I also learned in class that on the first day of spring it's tradition that someone walks around naked in a park. See in the Eastern US the first robin is the sign of spring, in Tucson it's the first vulture and in Sweden it's the first naked man.
Also, today is 4/20 which, as any American knows, is National Pot Day. This concept is completely unknown to Europeans which is unusual considering its ubiquity back home. I recall the endless snickers I got when people learned I lived in dorm room number 420. It's refreshing that the Swedes aren't all crazy for pot, though in Vilnius I did learn of a very bizarre tradition the Russians have on 4/20. I cannot confirm or deny this but this is what I hear: since today is also Hitler's birthday, the Russians, allegedly, go on a xenophobic rampage and beat up any foreigner they can find. So Americans will chill out and smoke weed today and the Russians will go out looking for a fight. If there was ever a difference between our two cultures, that would definitely be it.

Well I'm back safe and sound from my Easter break vacation. Though I did end up leaving 10 hours later than I planned thanks to the unwavering incompetence of SAS Airlines and Arlanda airport. It saddens me to think that the last thing I will see of Sweden when I leave will be that wretched place.
But I digress; I made it to Warsaw all right and after being overcharged by a Polish mafia taxi I made it to the hostel. The hostel itself was kinda crappy, and it was in a bad part of town. I'd call it a ghetto, but y'know... My roommate in the hostel I feel is worth mentioning, as he seemed to be the physical manifestation of Warsaw. A disheveled middle-aged man with a moustache, who does not speak a lick of English, smokes heavily in a non-smoking room and drinks copious amounts of vodka. The last thing he did before going to sleep was have a cigarette and finish off his bottle of vodka. He went out like a light and the only way I knew he wasn't dead was his insufferably loud snoring. The next morning I swear the very first things he did when he woke up were light up a cigarette and open another bottle of vodka.
Warsaw was totally destroyed in WWII, absolutely nothing remained, which means that it's built for the 20th century and traveling by foot is nigh impossible. It also means that the city had to be rebuilt by the Soviets, who have a real eye for aesthetics. Really, communism leaves a stink of its presence wherever it goes, not unlike my roommate at the hostel. The Old Town in downtown Warsaw was really fun and cool I have to admit, though my appreciation for how well kept it looked was misguided since it was all recreated based on prewar photographs. Still fun to see though. Aside from that, the only other thing really worth seeing is the giant fugly skyscraper downtown that I believe is a replica of the 7 skyscrapers in Moscow.
After 2 days in Warsaw I was really worried about the quality of my heritage, then I took the train to Krakow and felt tremendous relief. Apparently Krakow is the town my ancestors are from originally, and strangely enough the city was virtually untouched by war. There was a funny feeling of seeing the Old Town and the castle just as my great great grandparents would have seen them. It's such an amazing place, full of history and culture and delicious Polish food.
I took a day trip from Krakow to Oświęcim, better known as Auschwitz. Needless to say it was rather unsettling, I felt that perhaps I hadn't gotten the scope of it all, though. But maybe it's impossible to actually grasp the magnitude of it all. One odd thing I noticed was that in all the other Polish cities I visited, all the multilingual signs had German text since it's one of the most common languages in Poland. But, perhaps fittingly, there was no German text to be found anywhere in the Auschwitz camp.
After Krakow I had planned to go up to the northeastern part of Poland where, on recommendation, I would tour the lakes up there. Unfortunately because of Easter the buses to Lithuania stopped running after the day I got there so it was either leave immediately or miss Vilnius entirely. Olstein was the name of the town, not much to see and more of a hub for destinations than a destination in itself. It was a small town yet it had the crummyness of a downtown big city. Before I arrived in Olstein I had been very pleased to see an absence of hateful political graffiti in Poland and had figured the Poles more than any other country would understand why Nazism is a bad idea. But my happiness was short lived; there were white power slogans, swastikas, anarchy signs and hammers and sickles EVERYWHERE. I'm going off on a tangent here but what the hell is wrong with these people? I'll give them the anarchy thing since after enduring two totalitarian regimes a lack of any government might seem appealing, and I'll sort of give them the communist thing since it's a good idea *in theory* but having seen its application firsthand I just don't get how any Eastern European could support it. And the swastika, did these people never go to school, watch TV, read books or even look around them? Their capital city was obliterated by the Nazis and 6 million of their citizens were brutally murdered and there are still some that support it?

OK since this whole post is so damn big I'm chopping it up into smaller sections.

My view of Poland and Poles after seeing the country for about a week was that there were two types of Polishness. One is of beautiful, clean, safe cities and friendly, intelligent, beautiful people while the other is of dodgy, run down, ugly cities and stupid, vulgar, disgusting people. After I got back to Uppsala I was discussing my impression of Poland with a Pole and she said that there are in fact two Polands; what the politicians refer to as Poland A and B, which possess the exact characteristics I observed. So it was good that the locals see the same things I do and that I'm not way off base.
But back to my travels: Vilnius itself is gorgeous and the change in architecture and overall atmosphere between the Old Town and the modern district is so amazing it feels like you're in two completely different cities. I should also mention I went to a metal concert I found in town on the grounds that Eastern European metal must be some pretty intense stuff. I was half right; the fans were some of the scariest people I had ever seen; I'd say 90% of them were about 2 meters tall and all manner of angry (the concert was delayed 3 hours so that might have contributed a bit). The music was quite sub par, I can say that with some measure of objectivity since even though metal isn't really my thing most of the other fans were pretty unimpressed as well.
The hostel I stayed at had the most awesome people ever and we had so much fun whether we were touring the city, going out on the town or just playing cards when it rained. This is my wholehearted endorsement of staying in hostels when you travel. Even if you don't meet fun people, you're very likely to meet interesting ones, case in point: I met a real life Veruca Salt. The daughter of a diplomat (a self-described and ever so apt diplobrat) this girl had a large amount of personal wealth and as such only wanted to stay in five star hotels and eat at the most expensive French restaurants. It was only at the insistence of her incredibly fun friend from Brooklyn that she went to the hostel. This girl was just unbelievable, she evidently normally has an Australian accent but while on the trip adopted an ultra high class British accent and went on about how she didn't like (insert any nationality besides the British, Germans, French and Belgians here). I could go on all day about this girl, she just put everyone off and it was just astounding how alien she was.
Fortunately her friend was more than awesome enough to make up for her. She and I visited a nearby small town with a medieval castle surrounded by lakes. An absolute blast, we even got to use the archery range in the castle.
So I think that's about it, though getting home was interesting too since I think my (expired) Russian visa makes the passport control really suspicious. And we took a propeller plane from Vilnius to Arlanda. An international flight on a propeller plane. The people all saw it and started laughing. Oh, and Feifei picked me up at the airport, so that was a nice surprise.

Naturally, I have many lovely pics from my travels.

Ice Age 2 with Ray Romano and John Leguizamo. Fun, cute movie though slightly darker than the original. The jury is still out on whether it was better than the original, IMO, but it was at least as good. I found the most interesting part of the movie was the different species, and just how much research the creators would have done to come up with weird creatures like that. Also helps to educate little kids on prehistoric creatures besides dinosaurs. They did change a few things though, apparently Sid would have been friggin' huge and would have kicked Diego's ass, maybe Manny's too. Anyway, I thought the nature of the scenes was pretty cool, there were a lot of them that could have been standalone animated shorts, particularly the ones with Scrat. It made for a refreshing change from really linear movies.

Mononoke Hime with Yôji Matsuda and Yuriko Ishida. An older movie by the same guy that made Spirited Away. I'm not much of an anime fan to begin with, so anything more positive that total disdain might be interpreted as praise. The moral of the story is pretty plain and simple, but that's about the only thing that is. That's probably just cuz of cultural differences, or the aforementioned disinterest in anime. There was a consensus that for an alleged non-hentai movie there were a lot of tentacles. I don't feel totally unqualified to judge this film since I was not the only person who thought it was really weird. Bottom line: if you like anime, watch it, if not, it's not the best introduction to it.

I was going to write something about my fieldwork at Lundellska Skolan but I'm tired and full of delicious cake and I have a busy day tomorrow. I'm off to bed and see y'all in 11 days.

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?

It's been six months since I came to Uppsala, amazing how it goes by so quickly. I had one hell of a weekend. Friday was a friend's moving in party, plenty of alcohol and good food. The music selection was also pretty odd too, again all the stuff Americans make fun of Europeans for. When Swedes get drunk they just turn absolutely crazy, acting like little kids or, in one case, flamboyantly gay. After that we ended up at one of the nations, a meat market one. We observed how around a half hour before closing it gradually turns from a dance floor to a pre-orgy. Fun times. Also, Värmlands is my nation of choice for trying out mixed drinks, that's where I tried absinthe (no hallucinations at all, what a rip-off). I also tried a Margarita, which I didn't expect they'd get exactly right so I wasn't going to hold that against the student bartender, but they line the glass with SUGAR! For Christ's sake can't they get anything Mexican right? Well, if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself, I guess.
Saturday was dumpling night at Feifei's parent's house in Stockholm. Six of her friends were there as well so it wasn't a horrible one on one dinner with them prying me for details. Not that they would have done that anyway since I made such a good impression the last time I was over with my expert handling of garlic and chopsticks. I now know how to make Chinese dumplings, now I just need to know what's in them. Speaking of ingredients in Chinese food, evidently the stereotype of Chinese eating cats, chicken feet and other unusual things only applies to Southern China, not Manchuria. As Feifei's dad commented, "Yes, the Southern Chinese will eat *anything*."Which I thought was rather amusing.
Later that night I went back to Uppsala just in time for my corridor's first corridor party. It was good fun, especially seeing all my hallmates drunk. They're quite reserved; you have to be in the kitchen together for several minutes before an obligatory conversation awkwardly starts up. I showed up and was greeted with, "HEEEEJJJJ KEVEEEN!!" A refreshing change to be sure, though I'm glad they're not always like that. The hall smelled of smoke from my Persian hallmate's hookah, which I, being the good anthropologist I am, tried. Flavored smoke tastes like what you'd imagine: smoke. No insight gained as to why people like them so much.
Sunday was the ski trip to Romme in Dalarna (the land of the Swedish Chef, though I didn't hear a single Bork) it was my first time skiing, so I ended up falling and crashing a lot. I didn't even know one could fall face forward while wearing skis. My efforts were cut short when Feifei got hurt snowboarding (she's fine); I spent the rest of the day with her. Shame, it really spoiled my plans to fall in snow for six hours. It did give me more points with her parents, to be sure. And as the Chinese proverb goes, "Making your girlfriend's parent happy is worth more than a day skiing."

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore. I went into the theater expecting the movie to be less than the sum of its parts and to be disappointing. At the moment all I can say is that it was entertaining but the jury is still out as to whether or not it was disappointing. Naturally, it was dark but I didn't think it was a very poetic dark, just creepy. If anyone denies that Wonka in this version is based on Michael Jackson they're fooling themselves. Come to think of it I think everyone was portrayed better than the 1971 film except Wonka and Charlie. Thankfully they offer a completely plausible explanation for this Wonka's freaky, messed up behavior: Count Dooku is his father. I dunno, dark is refreshing and good but only for certain stories, and I don't think this is one of those stories. I probably would have liked it so much more if it weren't for the way Wonka was portrayed. I wouldn't ever let five children near him, actually I wouldn't let five adults near him either. Aside from him, everyone in the cast was awesome, the fat German kid, especially.

It's so strange to me that so few people in Sweden know what anthropology is. I had been told that it's not a very common major outside the US and Britain, but I had assumed people would at least know what it is. It's a particular contrast to back home where largely people not only knew what it was but were all in awe like I told them I was studying to become a superhero. Then again, they might be thinking archaeology and automatically think Indiana Jones. But hey I haven't decided where I'll go with anthropology yet, so who knows? And going off on a tangent, at what point can one no longer say, "When I grow up, I want to be..."? When you graduate college? When you get that job? At a certain age? When are you too old to talk about when you grow up?

Oh, and here's something uniquely American and part of a generation's collective heritage: The Oregon Trail. Imagine your childhood without it. How else would you learn about dysentery or shooting buffalo? Or how funny your epitaph could be? The Swedes of course would have no games teaching American history, that's to be expected. But you'd think they'd at least have the Amazon Trail or maybe some Swedified version, the Leif Eriksson Trail or something. What a sad, sad childhood they must have had.

BTW, I got some message from someone on Flickr that wants to use my photo "The Source" as a cover for his album. So that's cool.

Culture Builders by Jonas Frykman and Orvar Löfgren. What a great book, so full of fun little anecdotes about Swedish cultural history and society. They compare and contrast the peasant and bourgeois classes and show how each has influenced modern Swedish culture. I'm not sure which one of the two I'd rather want to be if I had a choice, since they were both so horribly extreme. The peasants were vulgar and filthy to the point where it seems like they did it just to be gross. For example peasant women used to wipe their children's noses with their own mouths. At the other end of the spectrum, the upper class was so prudish and reserved that they rarely could call any part of the body that was covered by clothing (everything but the hands and head) by its actual name. They were allowed to say foot but weren't allowed to refer to them in the plural. I have no idea why that might be, maybe they weren't allowed to think that things came in pairs, they could say breast, but not breasts. Of course, this gets to the point where one can hardly say anything at all; one account said someone's risqué and outspoken mother referred to the rear segment of a fish as the "tail end". One possible bright side is that I imagine if a language continued to develop that way, it would be incredibly poetic since they would need to call everything by pleasant euphemisms.

I started my fieldwork at a Swedish high school, or gymnasium, this week. It's weird, some things are only slightly different and others are so crazy it makes me wonder how they even function. First off, let me just say that as much as we bitched about school food in the US, you have no idea how bad it is here. We at least had to pay for ours which ensured a modicum of quality, theirs is free and worth every penny. Blech! To offset this, there are plenty of vending machines with candy and coffee and a little vendor by the entrance too. Not up to par with the giant muffins and fresh baked cookies we got at Sabino but they make up for it in other areas. Namely, high school is voluntary in Sweden so they don't have monitors, hall passes or any of that crap. When they don't have classes, instead of study hall, they are free to sit in the halls, the lobby or in the library (which is pathetically small, even for a school of 1000 students).
As for the students themselves, they're not so different from Americans. The school was about as ethnically diverse as Sabino, so no real change there. Swedish guys have one of two hairstyles: long or bald. Only the obviously non-Swedes have something different. The girls are almost identical to American girls: bottle blonde hair, ugg boots and base tans and yet for some reason that doesn't piss me off as much as it would in the US. They just seem to pull it off better. Maybe it's because the Swedes are supposed to be blonde, uggs are practical in cold weather and Swedes will turn translucent if they don't get any sun in the winter.
A common greeting among girls is to go up and smack each other in the ass. I find this to be an unfair double standard; I believe guys should be able to greet girls in the same way. I guarantee it would eliminate the shyness the Swedes are so known for. Besides, Swedes are all about equality.

And a final thought: why is the letter R so hard to consistently pronounce throughout the world? Asians mix L's and R's, it's often dropped if it's at the end of a word, and sometimes added for no apparent reason (Warshington). The Australians are the worst offenders of this letter, I find. Adding and dropping R's whenever they want: Har ah yer during? And the infamous Aussie negation "Nar!"

I am enrolled in two courses that give me an ungodly amount of reading. One, Swedish Society and Everyday Life, I don't mind because it's interesting and the class involves fieldwork. The other is People, Power and Food, it is about as interesting as it sounds; sustainability, free market, global harmony, pretty unicorns etc. It's supposed to be an anthropology class but it's really economics. Honestly, I don't care about the population of blue fin tuna, I want to know about people and cultures. The class wants us to answer questions that are better suited to be rhetorical questions; asking us to contextualize need, define what sustainable development is and who has the right to decide what the future will be like. The discussion groups all end up agreeing that the terms are impossible to define and we end up just talking amongst ourselves for a half hour, which I suppose isn't all bad. The reading is by far the worst part of it all. I've never read so much and not learned a thing, the information repeats over and over without any solution. I guess that's an allegory for the real world bureaucracy. One thing that's kind of cool is that every week we have video conferences with universities around the world, so there's an opportunity to get global perspectives on these ever so fascinating issues. We get the best time though, one university has to get up at 4AM to talk to us, which makes me feel better about having a 1PM class. And of course I must mention one of the universities is called EARTH University, which naturally leads to: "Earth? Earth? Are you recieving our transmission? Lars I'm not picking up anything from Earth!"
The other class had me do a fieldwork at a bank, which was boring but since I had to actively observe my surroundings it was boring in an interesting way. My later fieldwork will be at a Swedish high school and I will study how Swedish culture is created in the school systems. Should be enlightening, I'm particularly excited because I was very curious about how Swedish high school functioned since I'm told the US high school movies are very different from what the Swedes are used to. Now not only will I be able to satisfy my curiousity, but I'll get credit for it too.
In one of the books I'm reading for that class, they explain origins of Swedish archetypical traits like loving nature, avoiding conflict and a solid work ethic. Some of the best gems from the book are fun little etymology lessons, for example the Swedish word for autumn, höst, means 'harvest.' The word for Saturday, lördag, means 'bath day' because the peasants only bathed once a week and only the day before church. My favorite is the word for knacker (the person who slaughters worn-out livestock): 'rackare'. The knackers were the lowest rung of society, like gypsies or prostitutes. Since the largely rural Swedes had such a connection to their cows and horses anyone whose job it was to kill them was treated as diseased. And where do I live? Rackarberget: "the knacker's hill." That might explain why the rest is so cheap and why most people I know don't live here. Lovely.

Word of the Day: etic- Of or relating to features or items analyzed without considering their role as a structural unit in a system, as in behavioral science or linguistics.

My recent project was to make Mexican food for dinner for the Swedes. This was considerably harder than I had thought (and I suspected that it would be pretty tough to begin with). I think I went to half the grocery stores in Uppsala trying to find all the stuff. Things like cheddar cheese, refried beans and enchilada sauce were minor miracles to find. No corn tortillas though, whether they were out or I just didn't look hard enough, I can't be sure. I felt rather foolish when I finally found the cheese, though, since in Europe cheddar is white. Which probably means it was in all the stores I couldn't find it in.
I went quite out of my way to ICA Maxi, the giant hub of the near monopolistic grocery chain ICA (note: you don't spell the letters out, it's pronounced "eeka"). I now love that store and I've only been there once. It's like a real supermarket, but instead of just having food they have department store items too. It's like a Target. I felt the euphoria one must have felt when big stores like that first opened: I can actually buy it all in one store! Screw Netto, (a smaller chain that sells foreign foods) they only had stuff you could get anywhere else so there isn't much point in having it as a place for foreigners to get their culture's food. Anyway, after five months without a big store like that it was so wonderful to find nearly anything I wanted. As long as they don't turn into Wal-Mart I'll be fine, but then again, the Swedes seem to have a thing for monopolies so they might not mind.
But I digress, the dinner turned out nicely, though I was a little behind schedule thanks to recipes in Swedish even the Swedes couldn't understand. It was also the first time any of them had seen, heard of or tasted refried beans, I have now corrected this culture gap. I have to say the best part of the evening was watching the Swedes try to eat a taco; once they realized that their vaunted silverware would be ineffective they began to figure out at what angle one eats tacos. But the food was good and everyone liked it, though I thought it was rather odd that a supposed vegetarian ate tacos when I had vegetarian enchiladas. I guess they're a bit more flexible than they are back home.

On an unrelated note: I don't care if it's snowing or not, I would *kill* for an eegee's right now.

The Librarian You scored 73 erudition!

Congratulations! You're well above average when it comes to your knowledge of English grammar, history, and literature. You may have missed a few questions, but if you keep your studies up and stay away from genre fiction, we'll have you ready for Stanford in no time! Who knows, we just might be reading your columns in Talk of the Town a few years from now.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 45% on erudition

Link: The Are You Truly Erudite? Test written by okellelala on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I have a feeling my regular readers will do better at this that I did, but then again most of you are older and are English majors.