The season of waiting

"Advent", I'm told, originally meant "the season of waiting". From a religious standpoint, it denotes the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. It's a major secular celebration in Sweden, probably due to a desperate need for some light in the darkness. The beginning of winter has a tendency to be extremely sunless in Sweden: whether due to the overcast skies or the four hour days, or some combination of the two, it's equally dreaded by all. Trips to e.g. southern Spain are usually employed to stave of depression, but for those left at home, the adventsljusstake will have to do before Yuletide rescues them from the gloom:


To my very great surprise, I will actually end up celebrating an almost full-blown Advent this year. Not only did my church send me an adventskalender in the mail (although in all honesty, it's a little booklet of prayers, not a proper calendar), they also thoughtfully arranged to have a special Advent service this Sunday morning, complete with lighting the first candle! Granted, they've turned the traditionally box-shaped candle holder into a wreath, which is filled with spruce branches instead of moss, but they're on the right track. And when the organist played the first couple of notes of the old Swedish hymn "Bered en väg för herran", I couldn't suppress a peal of delighted laughter. The words were all wrong in the English hymnal, of course, but it did send me right back to third grade music lessons, and I gave it my tone-deaf all.

I'll also have the oppurtunity to celebrate Lucia in a few weeks. Another quaint Swedish custom - this saint's day is only celebrated in Scandinavia and few other places - that has little to do with religion these days. One of the few other full-blooded Swedes in town (there were three at least count) is hosting a Lucia get-together at her house. She did warn me about all the other attendees being thirty-something moms and their kids, but I'll be damned if that keeps me from glögg (genuine product of IKEA!) and lussekatter.

From an American perspective, the holiday season has officially started. Tasteless Christmas decorations are going up everywhere, endless jingle-bells are heard in the stores, and many people have already finished their Christmas shopping. To top it off, winter finally gave it a good go:


Apparently King Frost, whose bark has so far been worse than his bite, decided that even all this talk of global warming isn't going to delay things any more. Temperatures promptly descended to 0 Fahrenheit or so, and it's been snowing off and on lately. It doesn't seem to amount to more than a few inches at a time, but these things do add up eventually. Or blow up, rather: the wind scours the ground of snow in some places, and piles it in foot-deep drifts elsewhere. Makes for tricky biking, I can tell you that much. Sometimes it's like being up on kalfjället (above the Swedish treeline) - the wind has unhindered access to you, and while the snow isn't coming from the sky, it sure is howling horizontally straight into your face. I can see now that I'm going to be in great cardio shape by the time Spring rolls around. But every so often the wind stops, and campus turns out to be quite lovely in winter:






Of course, for Americans the holidays are kicked off by Thanksgiving, not some odd candle-lighting ceremonies. As far as I can tell, it's the American equivalent of Swedish Christmas: no real religious connection, enough food to kill a grown man, a time to see your relatives, and general conviviality in the winter darkness. This year I had the good luck and supreme pleasure of being invited to the Wards for Thanksgiving dinner. I'll be doing a rotation in Naomi's (the woman with the Tim-Tams, remember?) lab after Christmas, and she graciously invited some current and future students (me and the Russian girls) that didn't really have anyone to celebrate with. And woah Nelly, was it a nice evening! The beer was both good and plentiful, the company interesting and funny, and the food... Oh dear. As it turns out, Naomi's husband Bryce was a professional cook some years ago. This left him with an impressive (and scary!) collection of knives, a penchant for large kitchens and what can only be described as a genius for cooking. I make a point of preparing good food myself, but I couldn't have pulled that meal off under gunpoint. Just the fact that the turkey stuffing was based on four sticks of butter, ten cloves of garlic, one bottle of Merlot and a bunch of green chili peppers speaks volumes. I don't think I've eaten quite so well (or quite so much!) in months and months. I gladly work for food, and that meal alone would've paid for my services for several weeks. As I biked home in the blistering cold, pleasantly drunk, I decided that I could easily get used to this whole Thanksgiving thing. And indeed, good times were had by all:


As for the climbing season, it's pretty much over. Most of my partners labor under the misconception that you can't climb when it's freezing and snowy outside - laughably wrong, of course - and combined with yet another annoying injury (three blown-out ligaments and counting), it has me thinking about taking up snowboarding. Indeed, the last good day of the year I wasn't even going upwards:


In closing, and getting back to the theme of waiting, the semester is drawing to an end. My final exam in biochemistry is on December 14th, and if I'm not mistaken this upcoming week is the last one of classes. I'll keep fighting the good fight in the lab up through the 20th, but after that it's "Home, sweet home". I'm taking the slow plane back to Sweden (18 hours of traveling - yuck!) and some well-deserved rest. I plan to spend lots of time alternating between bed, couch, dinner table, sauna and pub. Each has its place during a visit to the Old Country, but with it being Christmas and all, I intend to favor the less stressful activities (eating and sleeping) over the more laborious ones (seeing old friends always includes getting stinking drunk). Almost there - the sound of the carols seem to drift just beyond the edge of hearing: "Nu tändas tusen juleljus/på jordens mörka rund/och tusen, tusen stråla ock/på himlens djupblå grund"...

News from the Old Country

Lately, it seems I can't turn around without running into something reminding me of my geographical past. If it's not ads in the paper saying "Call 1-800-RSVP-SWEDISH", it's people from Scandinavia or cookies from Oz. I'm beginning to think that God is trying to tell me something - possibly that I should start feeling homesick. Or He's reminding me that I still haven't bought that plane ticket to get back here after New Year's... In any case, it's enough to inspire some writing about where I've been, rather than where I am or where I'm going.

Let's start with literal news from Sweden. I don't generally follow Swedish news or politics when I'm abroad: as someone said, "Local news is for locals". Instead I try to keep up with the times around me, although this means reading about issues like water conservation or Boulderites wanting to save some species of mouse that no-one ever heard of (or would miss if it went). However, dad recently alerted me to a "political scandal" unfolding back home. Now, if we were talking about an American scandal, it might involve a shady arms deal with some banana republic or visits to houses of ill repute. The French equivalent would probably concern three young women, a top politician and his very irate wife... even if it could be argued that something along those lines wouldn't even make the news in France. In China, a high Party official would likely have swindled away millions of yuan or been responsible for building a factory that collapsed on top of the poor guys working in it. In short, it'd be something juicy and actually scandalous. But not in Sweden: it's a very quiet corner of the world. We don't go to war, we don't impact the world economy much, and our number one export is pop music. The leading moral sentiments are "Don't rock the boat" and paying taxes is "cool". Great place to raise kids, though. So when the shit hits the fan back home, it usually turns out to be neither excrement nor traveling at velocity. The outrage this time concerned the fact that several members of the cabinet had, at some point in their lives, neglected to pay the taxes associated with e.g. people cleaning their house or baby sitting. Yeeeees...? Ask yourself the following: if you ever babysat, did you demand a receipt? If you ever hired a bit of "hemhjälp", did you pay them in cash and forget about it? Jesus, people in the media, get some perspective! There are more important things to worry about, like, say, what color socks you'd like to wear tomorrow. But hey, that's part of the charm of living there: things like this is major news, because nothing really bad ever happens.

Anyway, political rants aside, the number of Scandinavians I meet per week went up 100% just recently. I finally located the mythical Norwegian student that I'd heard rumors of all semester. She turned out to be a bone fide norrbagge, complete with blonde hair and wacky-yet-wonderful modes of speech:


Of course, it's a bit hard to tell about the Norwegians sounding funny just from that picture, but just trust me on this one. They sound just as weird to us as the average Swede sounds to... anybody, I guess. It's just us and the Chinese who have that kind of sing-song language, and you're not likely to confuse the two anytime soon.
As it turned out, Ingrid is a master flutist and plays with the UW Symphony orchestra. I caught their last performance for the semester, and as always, it was pretty impressive. While the Fine Arts building is hardly Royal Albert Hall, it ain't bad:


Speaking of things I miss about places I've lived, one of my great regrets about leaving Australia is not being able to buy Tim-Tams anymore. Every culture has contributed something to the cuisine of the world: the Germans have given us great sausage, the Italians showed the world how to cook pasta and the French, well, they've pretty much supplied the rest. Downunder, they invented the Tim-Tam:


I don't know if it's obvious from the picture, but Tim-Tams are far and away the best cookies ever made. It is literally not possible to stop eating them once you start, and it's a mixed blessing that the packages are so small. On one hand, you always want more - on the other hand, you feel pretty sick after eating about a dozen. It's hard to describe how great the chocolaty, buttery goodness that is the Tim-Tam really is. Sadly the rest of the world doesn't know about them, and in most places you couldn't buy one for any amount of money. So imagine my joy when, at Friday Fika last week, professor Ward had brought two whole packages of the stuff! I couldn't believe my good fortune, and immediately executed the Tim-Tam Slam -- the best possible combination of foodstuff and beverage in the known galaxy. I haven't been so pleasantly surprised in months. She also brought some Vegemite; I stayed well away from that. Aussies make great cookies and decent beer, but trying to sell soy-flavored yeast extract as food for humans is pushing it a bit. I did get to hear the song, though, and that's way better than eating the stuff.

Finally, I ran into something at random: Swedish Fish. Now, you'd think that it'd be sill or surströmming, but it turns out that it's candy. I'm sure you'll recognize it - you can buy it at any supermarket or candy store back home. It's a bit of favorite of mine, actually, but I never imagined that us Swedes were responsible for inventing them. IKEA, sure, I'll take credit for that, but gelatinous candy? Well, why not? It's a damn sight better than most of the stuff they make here. I didn't quite believe it at first, but after checking carefully I found the little notice saying "Made under license from Leaf Sverige AB" (incidentally a major purveyor of snus). Take a close look at the package - can you spot the American addition to the advertising?

Happy Halloween!

Yes, it's that time of the year again, when pumpkins are mercilessly mutilated and children all over the country chuck up their candy-colored stomach contents. What the ancient Celts would've thought of this is anyone's guess - the Sidhe were probably scarier than six-year-olds wearing plastic fangs and and capes.

Of course, back in the Old Country, Halloween is not traditionally celebrated. Note that I say "traditionally", because it's slowly been creeping up on Sweden over the last five years or so. I went to a few Halloween parties in my undergrad days, and I have actually been trick-or-treating. Probably surprised the hell out of people opening doors, too, since I was a good two feet taller than the average customer, and about three times older. Sadly, no-one brought a camera for that one.

Since October 31st falls on a Wednesday this year, the student population of Laramie unanimously decided that the preceding Saturday would be the best time to dress up and party. I'm not sure exactly how that was organized (a hive mind of some sort?), but when Joe called me up and said he had beer, a spectacularly ugly costume and girls at his house, I decided to go with the flow. After substantial work with make-up, wigs and garter belts, we were ready to hit the town:

My choice of custome kind of back-fired, though. While I thought I was cleverly representing all that was wrong with the 80's, I failed to take into account that most of the party-goers never experienced the days of yuppies and shoulder pads. I didn't catch more than the second half of the decade myself, and for someone born in 1988 words like "perestroika", "MC Hammer" and "hair spray" have precious little meaning. I got guesses ranging from Billy Ray Cyrus to Joe Dirt. Kids these days...

Most of the girls had invested a lot of time and work in their costumes, and it generally worked out very, very well. Joe had mentioned that this was a "perfect excuse to skank it up", and as usual he was spot on. I don't think I've seen people so scantily dressed outside of the Red Light District before, and I'd bet anything that this would actually be illegal in Utah. Every stereotype was in attendance: Sexy Cop, Short-Skirt Nurse, Skanky Squaw, Catwoman, Tinkerbell, etc. etc. My personal favorite was Slutty Nun - brought me right back to Catholic school, that. And since American women typically don't do the typical pre-diabetes weight gain until after college, the contents of the packaging weren't half bad either. Halloween comes highly recommended.

I've also been out climbing, of course. The winter seems to come in bursts around here, and we're in a sunshiny period right now:

Granted, Rand doesn't look dileriously happy about it, but he's a fun guy to go climbing with. We always seem to get up to some fun/sketchy/stupid shit when we go out -- probably due to a propensity to just "climb what looks good". Yesterday that habit found us sitting atop a small spire of rock, without any clear idea of how to get off. After some thinking, we just tossed the rope down below us, and Rand kind of slid down the incline, holding onto one of my feet while I gave him a "belay" consisting of me basically sitting up real straight and hoping he wouldn't fall very far. The dense fog in the morning didn't help the route-finding either:

On an entirely different note, I had a "Word of the Day" episode recently. I can usually navigate an English-speaking society without any major problems, but sometimes "liten tuva stjälper stort lass". During my attempts to make kladdkaka I learned the difference between "baking soda" (pure sodium bicarbonate) and "baking powder" (much diluted with something acidic and some starch). The former is about 100 times as potent a rising agent as the latter, and you can imagine my surprise when the cake suddenly just started boiling. After saving what I could, and spending almost two hours cleaning the other half of the kladdkaka from the oven floor, I ended up with something that looked semi-okay but had awful taste and texture:

Note to self: stick to yeast in the future. You never know what effects outgassing can have at altitude...

I'll leave you with some pictures of my fellow international grad students. From left to right that's me, Jatinder (India), Shu (China), nameless cutie (Turkmenistan, I think), Anton (Uzbekistan) and Lada (Russia). Note especially that Jeet is wearing his "winter clothing" indoors, which speaks volumes about how well it'll hold up when the mercury really drops around here. For some people, winter will come as a harsh surprise...

A culture of convenience

After some comments from the peanut gallery, I realize I might've gone a bit overboard with the climbing narrative lately. While I find it fun to write about, I appreciate that the majority of the readership might not share my fascination with the subject. Unfortunately, not too many exciting things happen in my life that are not tied into climbing -- my existence outside of the sport isn't particularly interesting even if you're into bioinformatics. And since I don't comment on my job or co-workers, that leaves precious little to write about. Except, of course, my other major topic when I'm abroad: those crazy foreigners. Today, we'll re-visit American (and specifically Wyoming) culture.

There are many aspects of American life that are fairly puzzling to the non-native. The most pronounced one is the basic lassitude that seems to underlie almost all day-to-day decisions. It seems the watchword is "convenient", and since the other major idea is "more! of everything!", this tends to be taken way beyond the point where it stops being sane. As Joe (a Wyoming native) recently put it: "[My roommate] is an example of all that's wrong with the country. She's all 'I want it, and I want it now!'" Some examples will indubitably underscore his point:

• Driving everywhere. I know people who drive the two-block distance between the dorms and my church, and my landlord doesn't hesitate to get into the car when going to her office... which is across the street. The sidewalks are as empty as a bar in Salt Lake City, and I may just possibly be the only person (aside from a Dutch student) in Laramie who bikes through snow/wind/rain. As soon as the distance you're going becomes longer than about ten feet, or if the weather is any worse than it is indoors, any red-blooded American will immediately reach for the car keys. Needless to say, I find this as amusing as it is pitiful.

• Pre-processed food. In Sweden, this is known as "helfabrikat", and while it may have been fashionable in the fifties, it isn't exactly considered to be good for you these days. Tell people here that you baked something from scratch (i.e. from eggs, flour and fat, as opposed to "German cake mix") and they look at you with a mix of awe and disbelief. I live about one block from not less than eight drive-through fast-food places, although I seldom frequent them. The more advanced forms of this phenomenon are just plain startling when you discover them: the first time I bought "rolls in a can", I almost jumped out of my skin when I broke open the can and four breakfast rolls just about exploded out of it, ready for the oven. I continually thank God for the fact that I have a kitchen of my own and know how to use it.

• Shopping malls -- or in smaller cities like Laramie, Walmart. The tendency is to put all the stores or goods you can possibly think of under one roof, so you don't have to go anywhere else. And when I say "all", I mean absolutely everything. I just came back from Walmart, where I got a haircut, picked up some fresh milk and grabbed Swiss chocolate on the way out. If I'd been hungry, I could've had lunch in the in-store Subway. Or cured a headache at the Walmart pharmacy. Had I been feeling lonely, I could've picked up a pet -- or if I felt belligerent, bought a gun. A squeaky brake on your car can be lubed up, and if you need a pair of pants or a cellphone, those are available too. I could go on and on, but you get the idea: this leaves all similar European manifestations in the dust. Of course, you drive to the mall, and most of the food there is heavily pre-processed, so it all ties in neatly.

I also find American advertising fairly bizarre. Back home, ads tend more toward the sober or understated, or very frequently funny (Swedish TV ads may be the most entertaining in the world). US adverts are substantially more direct: huge letters, loud colors, messages for the naive consumer: "BUY NOW! GOING OUT OF STOCK! SALE! SALE! SALE!". Really, guys, all you have to do is tell me what you sell, how much you sell it for, and where I can find you. I am not five years old, nor "un peu lent", so just yelling "BUY THIS STUFF, IT'S THE BEST EVER!" at me will probably not work. This may just be an outgrowth of intellectual snobbery on my part, but the shit I get in my mailbox every day makes more angry than interested.

Wyoming culture, as opposed to American behavior in general, is of course a chapter unto itself. I can't claim to understand much of it yet, since I don't see many Wyomingites on a daily basis, but I can provide some anecdotes. For instance, the cowboys. While the man with the ten-gallon hat, flannel shirt and trusty steed might be confined to Western movies in Europe (and much of the US), he is alive and well in Wyoming. Ranching cattle (or sheep) is still a major occupation in this state, and the people who do it don't seem to have changed a lot in the last 100 years. I regularly see guys in class who're just back from driving the cows home, and the waxed mustache is as ubiquitous a fashion accessory with them as the hooded sweatshirt is with the other college kids.

Related to the cowboy is the saloon. If you look after cows for a living, what else do you do with your spare time but kick back and drink beer? Probably not much. The most typical "saloon" in Laramie is "The Buckhorn Bar". I swung by on Friday night, and, well, let's say it's not anything like one of the "nations" back in Uppsala. Imagine, if you will, the typical Western saloon you see in the movies. There's a sign with very distinctive lettering over the door, and when you come in a long bar with a mirror and plenty of whiskey bottles greets you. The mirror is cracked and warped, because a large bullet hole decorates its center. Some guy is playing steel guitar in the background, and most of the clientele looks like they came there to kick ass and drink beer (and are fast running out of beer). If Clint Eastwood came in and announced he was looking for a certain outlaw, you wouldn't be surprised for a second. Now fast-forward a century, put up some neon Budweiser signs and badly done murals of cows, and you've got the Buckhorn, complete with shot-up mirror (dating back to sometime in the seventies). This is where the less polished half of Laramie drinks, and if you want to strike up a conversation on the relative merits of the horse and the ATV for moving a herd of Black Angus, you've come to the right spot. Just the fact that Bob Scarpelli, formerly Laramie's best climber and worst drunk, used to hang out here six days a week speaks volumes. I wish I'd brought my camera, but you'll have to make do with the links.

In light of all this, I could embark on a lengthy and over-intellectualized analysis on what the effects are on Americans in general (mainly diabetes) and why all this came to be. But I won't. Partially because I just don't get it -- how did they go from the Puritan work ethic ("Idle hands do the Devil's work!") to sitting around in La-Z-Boys and eating donuts? Is this some sort of over-compensation for the presumably harsh conditions in Europe that many of their ancestors fled from? Where did it all change (or go wrong, depending on your point of view)? Cleverer people than I have wrestled with that question, and I can't claim to provide an answer. Things are the way they are, for now, and they are not likely to change because I disapprove. And I certainly don't hate every aspect of life here; quite the opposite. I think that the Americans are among the friendliest and most generous people in the world, and have an admirable self-confidence and a healthy competitive attitude. I moved back here because I enjoyed it the last time around. But as the old saw states, although you can take a swede out of Sweden, you can never take Sweden out of a swede. Even if I live out the rest of my natural life here, I will still bitch about transparent coffee, lack of public transport and the sickening amounts of sugar that permeates every foodstuff. Now, where did I put that can of surströmming? It was just getting lagom smelly...

Monday the 13th

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