Now that I have real internet, I get to watch The Daily Show again

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are now in high-def and have new sets.  If you pay attention, Jon Stewart's new desk is in the shape of a lower-case 'j'.  Looks like somebody is getting jealous of his protégé.

Jon Stewart interviewed Bill Gates last night.  As one of the richest men in the world, you would think that Bill Gates could buy a shirt that fits.  Nope.  That shirt is at least 2 sizes too large.

Swedish cold is Minnesota warm

People here are complaining that this is the coldest winter in Sweden in forever.  They brag about how it hit -25 degrees Celsius a few weeks ago.  Please. Minnesota's AVERAGE January low is -16 C (4F).  We have weeks that never get ABOVE -20 with lows dipping into the -30s.
But I'm not here to one-up the Swedes.  I'm here to help.  The problem is that people have started addressing global warming.  Sure, that's fine to keep Florida from flooding or whatever, but what about the places that would benefit from a little warming?  Now the Swedish are getting a taste of what is to come if they keep up their "responsible" and "earth friendly" lifestyle.  It's not too late!  Here are some suggestions:

1) Decrease bicycle use.  There are at least a thousand bikes parked at the train station.  If every one of those people bought a car instead, imagine the difference that could make?  There are many ways to decrease bicycle use.  Taxing, an aggressive ad campaign, even outright banning.  It may be difficult to change the public perception of bicycle use as being an environmentally responsible choice, so although I think taxing or banning bicycles will be helpful, I suggest that an appropriate ad campaign will be crucial for this to succeed.  Some ad ideas:
   - Someone is riding a bike on a street, and everything they pass is turning to ice (use the same film technique as the Ice Queen in the Chronicles of Narnia freezing cute little animals, etc.)  Babies, squirrels, and children playing jump-rope (one could be jumping in the air as they are frozen, then they fall and shatter.  That'll leave an impression!)
   - Follow-up to the previous ad: the bike rider jumps in a car and drives past the frozen landscape, thawing everything.  This could be like the Prius commercials, except instead of driving a Prius (BAD!) they are driving an old, smoke-belching semi-truck (GOOD!)
   - Someone is about to get on their old rusty bike, when their friend stops them.  "What are you doing?!  Riding a bike?  What are you, an old woman/1920's flapper/medieval stonemason?  Nobody rides bikes anymore.  You need to get one of THESE! (pointing to a sexy new hummer)"
   - (in the style of those high-fructose corn syrup commercials)
     Person 1: Hey, let's go to the park in my new SUV!
     Person 2: SUV? But I've heard that...
     Person 1: Heard what?  That they are warming our winters, providing jobs, and are kick-ass to drive?
     Person 2: I guess you're right.  I'm going to go buy an SUV and then we can BOTH drive to the park in SUV's!

2) Encourage people to leave the lights on.  This shouldn't be tough; the winter nights are like 21 hours long.  And guess when it's the coldest?  That's right...the winter.  It's like God is slapping you in the face with a huge hint. But people feel too safe.  I'm thinking that roving gangs of street urchins or young hoodlums would encourage people to feel less safe in the dark.  I'm not exactly sure how to get those started...maybe talk to some other countries for some hints.  I feel like England probably has street urchins, but for REAL gang experience, nobody can beat the US.  Or, team up with ACORN to inform pimps and hos about free housing opportunities in Sweden.

3) To encourage people to use more fuel, maybe lower the price?  12.3 Kroner/Liter works out to (according to the Google search string: "((1 gallon / 1 liter) * 12.3) SEK to USD" (btw, Google search strings are incredibly useful.  If you don't use them already, you should start)) $6.39/Gallon.  Your gasoline costs 3x more than it does in America.  No wonder you're losing the greenhouse gas race.

4) Stop being so healthy and start eating more cheap fast food.  This one may not be obvious, but it's not really that complicated:  as you eat more fast food, you start gaining weight.  The more you weigh, the bigger your vehicles have to be (and the more fuel you burn).  This is a longer term solution, but sometimes making a difference requires taking the long view.

Those are just to get you started; I'm sure you can think of more.  Good luck!

Getting my internet username and password: a 4 part play.

Scene I:
IT station in the Student Union.
Me: I need my username/password for the internet.
IT Guy: Sure, let me look that up.  Yep, your account was activated a week ago.  You should have gotten a letter.
Me: I didn't get a letter.
IT Guy: Oh, it looks like we never sent it.  We should have sent it, but we didn't.  Huh.
Me: So can I get it?
IT Guy: I can't get it.  You have to go to the main office.  Here is a map.  It's not so far, maybe a 30 minute walk.  They are open till noon tomorrow.

Scene II:
Open on me walking.  Quickly, for 45 minutes in -12 degree, snowy weather.  For a while I follow a dog carrying a large (probably 2.5 meter) branch in his mouth.  I can only imagine that he was doing some independent contracting for some beavers.  That's unrelated, but provides some comic relief.

Scene III:
"Central" IT department, which is not central to anything, except a bunch of Swedish forests.  The clock on the wall says 11:57, even though it is 11:35.
Me: I need my username and password for the internet.
IT Lady: Here you go.
Me: Thanks.

Scene IV:
Repeat Scene II in reverse, but without the dog.

Angel Colby

Because I miss my bunnies, here's a picture of Colby in an angel costume:

Street Crossing Signs

In true Swedish fashion, there are different places to cross the street depending on your exact situation:

It's a cat crossing!

Crossing for man with bag and lady crossing.

Rabbit crossing, but only if they're on a leash!

(Also, notice the beautiful cathedral in the background. I'll have more pictures of that in the future...but it's pretty amazing.)

Candy

Here's a quick post about candy:

Unfortunately, blogger.com is stupid and won't let me rotate the images. C'mon blogger.com, this is not so hard! Even Paint can do it! Anyway, just imagine it rotated 90 degrees. No, not that way! Now it's upside down! NOW you have to flip it over in your mind. Alright, close enough.

Here we have a chocolate covered banana (I know. It looks like a poop. But if it is, it's from someone who ate a whole lot of bananas.)

Next is a "mini-floppy" and "elephant."

And here we have (spiraling in):

fruits with the consistency and taste of Swedish Fish

Happy Faces (in horrible black-licorice flavor and delicious strawberry flavor)

Fizzy Sour Pop-Bottle

Fizzy Sour Mushroom (same taste, different shape)

Swedish Fish in colors other than red (eh)

Can't remember what these were called (eh)

Can't remember what this was either (eh)

Fruit Swirl (tangy and delicious)

Cola Ferrarri (if a ferrarri were ever made of cola, it would taste exactly like this)

Zoo (I swear, that's what they are called. They should be called "Swedish Fish but Shaped Like Mini-Monkeys" because that's what they are)

Cola Swirl (cola seems to be one of their favorite flavors. There are LOTS of cola flavored candies)

I got hit on by a hot Swede last night who totally wanted to sleep with me

...too bad it was a guy. But if I ever want to gay it up in Stockholm...

So I got a job as a bartender. Here's what that was like:

First, what everyone told me about how Swedish people speak English is totally, completely, almost entirely true. I only had a couple people that I couldn't understand. The trick is, when they start speaking Swedish, you say, "I'm sorry?" and they pause for a minute and then try it in English. It's especially impressive that their fluency stays pretty consistent even as they get drunk.

Notice that I said "stays consistent," not "stays good." While the overall level of English proficiency is pretty high, there are some definite exceptions. In French, if you don't have good pronunciation, your pronunciation usually gets better as you get drunk, because French words tend to trail off at the end. The more you slur your speech, the closer you get to the way the words are actually supposed to be pronounced. Not so much with English; if you start out bad, it stays bad.

Also, there is a surprising similarity between the words "bottle," "water," and "vodka." This caused a LOT of confusion until I realized what was going on. Then I would ask "waaaterrr? no? bottle of beer? ok, sweet." The Swedish word for bottle seems to be "Flask."

The bar was decent, but in my completely unbiased opinion, my bar was incredibly more functional. Sure they had all 18 different flavors of Absolut, but they didn't have Bailey's, Kahlua, amaretto, or Jager. Are you kidding me? A bar without Baileys? No Jager? Then, to make matters worse, they ran out of shot glasses, gin, plain vodka, ice, and coke. Really? You have 450 people show up at this club and only have one bottle of gin? I was serving shots in brandy snifters and rum and cokes without ice OR coke.

Swedes have a love of having things "just so"...not too much, not too little. Think of them as a nation of Goldilocks. Most of the time, this could not be further from the way I operate... "excess" is pretty much a way of life for me. However, there are some things where there is a "right way" to do it, and that's how I'm going to do it. Bartending is one example. If I'm going to serve a mint julep, it's going to have fresh crushed mint leaves in the bottom. That's why I found the situation at this bar so distressing. They didn't even have the basic materials to do things right, much less the accoutrement to really do it right.

In every place that I've worked, the bartenders split the tips from the tip jar at the end of the night, so I was expecting the same here. I wasn't expecting a lot...I'd been warned about the poor tipping practices of the Swedish...but people were still tipping a small amount through the night, so I was eager to find out how much I had made from my hard work. Then, at the very end of the night (5am, after cleaning everything including sweeping and mopping the dance floor and hauling ~15 tables and ~100 chairs from the second floor to the basement pub), the supervisor explained that all the tips are put in a fund to pay for a "staff party" at the end of the semester. Anybody who works at least 4x for the Nation (I'll explain the whole Nation concept in another post) gets invited to the staff party, which is paid for by the bartending tips.

Are you kidding me? That bull would never fly in America (I'm pretty sure there are laws against it). I worked my ass off to earn those tips. But in Socialist Sweden, I'm not surprised. And the result is that, although I will probably work there again, you can bet that I'm not going to be working nearly as hard. When I was delivering pizzas, I didn't run those pizzas to the door so my boss could have an extra cookie at the end of the year. Screw that.

And if they expect me to work there again, they better get their liquor selection figured out. I'm not telling another customer that I can't pour them a shot of Jager because the barmaster wasn't competent enough to order a bottle (also we don't have any shot glasses.)

I hate Swedish doors

When I was in undergrad, minoring in computer science, I took a class on user interface design. One of the foundational concepts in developing a good user interface is making it intuitive, and one of the best ways to make something intuitive is to embed subtle clues for what to do. The fundamental example that they used was doors. You can write "push" or "pull" on a door, but you should accompany that with a door handle that indicates whether you should push on it or pull on it.

Sweden never took that class. Architects don't seem to get the basic concept that if there is a big handle to grab onto, people will want to pull; and if there is a big panel to push on, people will want to push.

So take this quick quiz: push or pull?

The correct answers are below. (to read the text, hold your computer upside down and facing a mirror. Then look at THAT reflected off the inside of a spoon.)

1. Pull 2. Push 3. Pull 4. Pull

Notice that #1, 3, and (although you can't see it) 4 are the same on both sides and that none of the doors say either push or pull (even in Swedish).

Something you may not have noticed (but it's true!) is that in public buildings in America, the outside doors open out (in fact, all doors in the exit path must open out, must be able to be unlocked from inside without a key [ideally with one of those push-bars that automatically unlocks], must be lighted, and must have an exit sign above it.) This is to comply with OSHA regulations; if the building is going down in a blazing inferno, the stampede of people rushing out of the building must be able to exit the building safely. An inward-opening door could be blocked by the throng of people pushing to get out, trapping them all inside. (This is not a problem in residence buildings, where the concern is usually getting IN out of the cold/whatever as quickly as possible, which is why the door on your house/apartment probably opens in. Because OSHA only applies to places of employment, the desire for convenience usually wins out.)

OSHA guidelines have been very subtly affecting the way you approach doors in public buildings. It is completely subliminal...I'm sure you've never thought about it before. But that government-mandated consistency (along with helpful visual clues like push-bars) has slowly trained you to be able to open the doors you come across smoothly and without conscious thought.

That's all fine and good, until you move to a country without that same consistency. Then, all that training backfires on you. I have found myself constantly trying to do the wrong thing with doors. Half the time it works the way I expect it to, but I never notice those. The times that I notice are all the times that I try to do the wrong thing. It's like when you step on an escalator that isn't moving, or mis-time the stairs and take one-too-many steps. There is that momentary sense of disorientation as you flip your attention to something that is normally automatic.

So say what you want about Swedish bureacracy, efficiency, and design... until they get their doors figured out, I'll remain a little bit suspicious.

Karl

Karl replaced his overhead light with a green "banana sheath."

A "banana sheath" is a hard plastic case, in the shape of and slightly larger than a full size banana. It is used to take a banana to lunch without the banana getting bruised.

It is an example of a product that solves a problem that doesn't exist. No one needs a banana sheath. The banana peel does everything a banana sheath does and does it better. The peel is already included, it's disposable, and it's biodegradable. It even functions as a freshness indicator.

But even though there is no need for a banana sheath, the product exists and people buy it. It stands as an emblem for everything that Karl hates about consumerism, and every time he forgets, the banana sheath is there to remind him.

Sweden!

I arrived in Sweden at 4:00pm on Saturday. I took the train from Stockholm to Uppsala and then walked from the train to the Akademihotel housing office. 1.2 km is a lot farther when you are dragging 2 suitcases. (20 kilos and 12 kilos, per KLM maximum baggage weight restrictions. They also would have let me bring a golf bag for free.)

Along the way, I stopped to have a cigarette. I lit it backwards. It was the lucky cigarette; the first one of the pack that you flip over so that you remember to smoke it last. Because it was already dark and because I wasn't paying close attention, I accidentally grabbed that one and lit it. It didn't light easily and it tasted terrible. What happens when you have a lucky ritual and then desecrate it?

After getting my key and keycard from the Akademihotel housing office, I walked another kilometer to the dorm. The dorms in Sweden are arranged as groups of smaller buildings. Studentstaden, for example, has over 100, each housing around 12 people. Rackersgaten and Studenstaden are immediately next to each other, and not clearly distinguished on the map, which explains why I ended up trying to get in to Studentstaden #24 instead of Rackersgaten #24. I finally realized my mistake and made my way to the proper building. Mistakes are a lot more costly when you're dragging 2 suitcases. (20 kilos and 12 kilos, enough to last me for 5 months. Hopefully.)

My keycard didn't work in the new building either. I knew I was in the right place; unlike Studenstaden, there was actually a room 231 on the list by the door buzzer and at the top it said "Rackersgaten 24". But every time I swiped the card, the forbidding red light flashed, not the welcoming green light I wanted. 0 degrees Celsius is a lot colder when you're locked out of your building. Back to the housing office to get the right keycard. Unfortunately, each housing group has their own housing office. Akademihotel was only passing out keys over the weekend; to get my keycard reprogrammed I would have to go to the Rackersgaten housing office on Monday when the opened. They could call emergency maintenance to let me in to the room, but then I wouldn't be able to leave till Monday.

This is why I don't like to plan ahead. If I had plans, they would have been ruined. But because I didn't have any plans, my biggest concern was entertaining myself through a weekend of reverse house arrest. (I could leave any time I wanted, but once I left I couldn't return.)

That's not completely true. I had also planned to go shopping. Not pleasure shopping, but shopping for the stuff that didn't fit into my suitcases. Stuff like a towel, a blanket, soap, and pillows. A pile of jeans doesn't make a good pillow, especially when you're trying to sleep through a day of no tv or internet.

I did get a chance to meet my floor-mates, the four people I will be sharing a kitchen, bathroom, and shower with for the next 5 months. Carl from Sweden, Daniel from (?), (?) from Belgium, and (?) from (?). The adventure has begun!