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.