Well, I leave tomorrow at noon to get to Stockholm in time for my connection Sunday morning. Yeah, thats right. Flights out of Umeå are somewhat limited at the best of times, and on weekends it is worse. So I could either take a 1 hr flight Saturday or take a 10 hour train ride. My flight out of Stockholm leaves at 06h00 Sunday, so there was no way I was going to be able to leave Umeå Sunday and get there on time.
Anyhow, the point of this is just to say that for practical reasons, I have decided not to bring my laptop with me. I can't really see myself getting any work done at home, and I hate giving airport security any additional reasons to harass me. So posts will be quite limited over the next couple of weeks. I will be in Vankleek Hill (home) for most of the time between the 17th Dec. and the 29th when I fly out. I will also be spending some time in Ottawa and Quebec City, so I will get around also. Anyhow, I hope to see at least some of my Loyal and Alert Readers while I'm home, and for those I won't see, happy holidays!
Next major post will come the 1st or 2nd of January - I have been invited to the New Years' party of the Swedish national javelin champion Daniel Ragnvaldsson. Daniel has his office just across the hall from mine, he is working on his Ph.D. Really great guy, and the grapevine has it that he throws amazing parties. From what I understand, a significant number of national level track athletes should be there, so it could be interesting to say the least.
So at the very least, tune back in around early January for a full party report.
"Having stoically accepted years of relentless badgering, the people of Fjuckby have finally had enough. The Swedish villagers are crossing their fingers that the National Heritage Board will see it their way and grant them a new name."
Watching your life right now is a lot like watching a train wreck.
Let me guess: The arrest warrant for abducting your own daughter is part of the vast governmental conspiracy to destroy you, following your brave and selfless whistleblowing during the Sponsorship scandal.
A nifty little article that hit the newlines yesterday out or Reuters about various stuff Swedes do to get through the dark time (an expression which always makes me think of something from the Lord of the Rings)
They talk about light therapy and St. Lucia. It is worth a read if you are interested.
Most people have no idea how the Lutheran Swedes came to celebrate the Sicilian Roman Catholic Saint Lucia when even the Sicilians don't pay her much attention. In Swedish homes, hospitals, factories and offices, Lucia comes to spread light in the deep winter darkness, usually long before dawn (which right now is just before it gets dark again). Little blonde girls, teenage blonde girls, and not-so-young-any-more Maj-Britt who works in the chromatography lab, dress up in a full length white gowns with a red ribbon around their waist and become St. Lucia. Lucia wears a wreath of lingonberry sprigs on her head and in the wreath are several lit candles (I am not making any of this up). Because only one can be Lucia, all the other less fortunate dark haired girls have to walk behind her, kind of like Lucia bridesmaids. Since Sweden is extremely egalitarian, boys (or Erik from the purchasing department) are invited to take part in the procession as Lucia's henchmen and bouncers.
This festival is typically and uniquely Swedish and the song (surprisingly and imaginatively entitled "Sankta Lucia) is sung by Lucia and her back-up band of bridesmaids and henchmen. It brings tears to everybody's eyes, as well it should.
St. Lucia where I work. St. Lucia has taken off her crown (it is in front of the singers)
I was introduced to Julmust this past weekend. It is a local soft drink that is only available in Sweden over the Christmas season and Easter and literally translated means "Christmas Concentrate." It is a bit like Coke except a bit fruitier and apparently has no caffeine (which beggars the imagination - if there is one thing Swedes love it is caffeine). Here is a nifty graph I found showing Julmust sales vs. Cola sales over the course of 2003-2004:
For non-engineers out there, over the Christmas season sales of this dinky two-bit local softdrink (which has effectively no sales during the summer months) kicks all cola brands combined asses by a ratio of about 3:2.
Apparently this drives Coca Cola absolutely bananas. However, despite decades of carpet bomb advertisements over the holidays, they are still being outsold in Sweden.
I know I did my bit. I can't remember ever buying a bottle of Coke in my entire life (cans don't count), but I have a bottle of Julmust in my fridge right now. I rather like it.
Asking anyone how much they earn is a sure-fire way to bring a conversation to an awkward conclusion. However, I have been scratching away at this question in general since arriving here in Umeå, and the fact is that wages in Sweden are lower than in Canada. However, the difference between what the lowest wage-earners and the highest wage earners is also much lower. The socialist system and strong union framework mean that even unskilled workers earn what is called a "living wage". I read a report a little while ago which showed that Swedish CEO's earn on average 4 times what the lowest paid workers in their company make. In the UK, the difference was something like 15 times, and in the US about 200 times. I will set aside the question of whether such a system encourages and rewards excellence or not.
The thing that baffled me is how people make ends meet here. Wages are lower, yet virtually all consumer staples including food are noticably more expensive. Income tax is marginally higher than in Canada (yes even in Quebec). Even with rent control, rent is comparable or even a bit more expensive than back home.
So today then I read this it didn't surprise me at all. 33% of Swedes would have to move to cheaper accommodation if their monthly disposable income dropped by about $300. Fully 75% (!) would have to move if their monthly disposable income dropped by about $750. That is cutting it pretty close, I would say. It also means a few months of unforeseen expenses (car repair, dental bill, veterinarian bill, the list goes on) would put many people under.
This illustrates what I consider to be one of the great drawbacks to socialist policy: it encourages citizens to transfer their personal responsibility to the government. You can afford to live on the brink of financial disaster because the feeling is that the government will be there to pick you up and brush you off if the worst ever does happen.
I just hope that a lot of these folks have a plan B if the government isn't there in their time of need. Things should start getting interesting in the next 10 years or so when the number of Baby Boomer pensioners outnumbers the number of people who are working.
I have observed before how amazingly similar Sweden is to Quebec.
Well, one big difference is the number of edible berries in the woods. You realize this when you are in the supermarket, because there is juice or jam available for every kind of berry.
In Canada we have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and saskatoon berries. Maybe cranberries, but nobody picks those except big companies like Ocean Spray.
Here they have all of the above (well, not saskatoon berries, I don't think) plus they have
Hortronbår, åkerbår, lingonbår, nypon and tranbår. Plus some others I can't remember.
The best products are the soppas (soups) made from these. Blåbår soppa (blueberry soup) is especially good.
So my advisor Jan invited me over to his house yesterday. He and his wife Lena have three kids, Frida (13), Rasmun (10) and Maya (6). What a great time. After a few hours of just chatting, Frida mentioned something about her guitar class or something, so I asked to see her guitar.
Right now you are wondering how the title of this has anything to do with what I am talking about. Stay with me.
This simple request on my part caused a chain reaction which ended up with me staying past 10 pm. Frida has been playing guitar for 2 years and she already kicks my ass. I couldn't believe it. She is awesome. So Jan mentions something about his guitar, which has been in storage for over 20 years. Lena didn't even know about it. He went to get it, and it is this great classic electric guitar. It needs some work, but I had it tuned in a few minutes. It turns out, Jan was in a band when he was a teenager, they used to travel around playing bars and stuff. He played all the way up in Luleå once (250 km north of here). His band even put out two albums. He played keyboards principally, but messed around on guitar as well. Amazing. Then it turns out that Lena played "a bit" also when she was younger. As soon as she had a guitar in her hands, she had to go cut her long nails in order to play properly. You know that a woman plays more than "a bit" when she goes to cut down her long nails as soon as she picks up a guitar.
Anyhow, Jan went to find a keyboard and we all jammed together all night. Mostly Beatles and Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was great. I showed them how to play Johnny B. Goode which is just a simple blues riff, and that got Jan and I to talking about how it would be appropriate to write a Blues song about the abysmal ski season we have been having over here. It was still raining yesterday. The only trail open is Nydala, the 1.8 km loop I have done over 500 times since it opened 3 Novemeber. And that, gentle readers, is where the title of this post comes from: my suggestion for the title to our as-yet-unwritten blues song about cross country skiing.
Other suggestions are warmly accepted. The Comments are open.
I have yet to meet someone my age who didn't love Fraggle Rock as a kid. It was probably the best muppet program of them all, which makes sense, because it was the last one Jim Henson put together.
Great as the show was, my favorite characters were the Doozers. They built great stuff like bridges and cranes and accepted without malice the Fraggles who would always eat their constructions (their building material was refined from radishes).
Seeing how much I loved Doozers as a 10 year old (the program debuted in 1983), it would be difficult to discount the probability that subconsciously they had an impact on my choosing to become an engineer. For that, Jim Henson, I salute you.
When earthquakes hit in other places, witnesses generally describe the experience in the following manner: "It was like a freight train." or, "It was like an 18-wheeler drove past."
Only when a quake hits northern Ontario is it described as being like
What with the 4 hour days and perpetually overcast, misty/rainy weather, we have been living in what amounts to perpetual dusk. Sometimes the streetlights are on at noon.
Observing this, I have had the nagging feeling that I have seen something similar before. Yesterday, it hit me: it is like the apocalyptic version of the surface of the Earth in The Matrix.
I think am going to start wearing a long black trenchcoat and snazzy sunglasses and occasionally mutter an oblique reference about the one.
Friday morning Christer Fugelsang will become the first Swedish astronaut to fly into space when the space shuttle Discovery lifts off. While I am sure this is a sidebar for the rest of the planet, it is a pretty big deal here, so I thought I would point it out.
This link is to Zina Kocher and David Leoni's website. They are both Olympians from the Turin Games in biathlon, and this site is really well done. If you want a peek into the life of an elite athlete, this would be a great place to start.
Since the spectacular an unexpected success of this past weekend, I have been thinking about other similar awesome experiences that have happened to me in the past. The list is pretty short, but if I had to choose, say, one week of events that I could re-live, these would definitely make the list. They are in no particular order because once you achieve a perfect experience, increments disappear. The only things they really have in common are: they were always unexpected, they were usually free or nearly so, and they often involve sports. Interesting.
1) Sils, Switzerland, March 1996: Getting convinced by a wiley sports store owner to enter a cross country ski sprint relay race with my friend Rob without really knowing anything about it. It ends up being an elite competition with thousands of spectators in the middle of the town square, with a couple dozen athletes. Most of them were racing on the World Cup or were elite Worldloppet skiers. I started beside Maurillo DeZolt, for anyone who remembers Italian skiers from the '90s. On the startline, the announcer introduced the teams in Swiss German, mentioning their latest World Cup placing or other achievements. When he got to us, there was a pause as he obviously had no clue who we were. Then in English came:
"And from Canada, Rob MacEwen and Jeff Lewis - the Crazy Canucks are here!"
I will never, ever forget that moment. Rob and I went on to get utterly destroyed, but as the race progressed (I think we did 12 loops each or something) we became the favourite underdog of the crowd. That was the first and probably the only time in my life to have thousands of people chanting "Hej-ja! Hej-ja! Hej-ja!" for me. It still gives me goose bumps.
2. Baden, Germany, March 1995. My friend Cam Moffat asked me a week before March break if I wanted to go overseas. The Canadian base in Baden Baden was closing that year, so it was the last chance we had to take advantage of military flights and accommodation in Europe. We got a flight from Trenton to Baden for $5.00 (the administration fee) then stayed in the officers mess in Baden for a week for something ridiculous like 2 dollars a day, meals included. We used Baden as a base for day trips, and every single day trip we took was charmed. Without any planning whatsoever, we stumbled across the biggest festival of the year in Basle, Switzerland, talked our way into a 5 star hotspring resort spa for free, happened to get off the train in Strasbourg without knowing anything about the town beforehand (it is incredible) and won some money at a casino. All unplanned, and the total cost of our week in Europe was about $100.
3. Rome, Italy, July 2006. Happened, by pure chance, to be in Rome the day that Italy won the World Cup of soccer. Watched the game in Circus Maximus with about 400 000 Italians, then took in the all- night festivities after they won on the final penalty kick. Plus I was with 3 great friends.
4. Paris, France, July 2003. The best group trip I have ever taken. 5 of us from CIOR Pentathlon decide to take the train from the Netherlands down to Paris basically at the last minute to watch the final stage of the 100th Tour de France and see Lance Armstrong win his 6th Tour. Awesome conversation and arguments on the endless train trip, a cheap hotel (thanks to Alex's negotiating skills), and watching Lance win in person. Then the next day, walking nearly 20 kilometers through the city and basically seeing everything there is to see of Paris. Including a foot race up the Eiffel tower that Alex still doesn't accept that I won.
5. Chilliwack, BC, June 1994. Running the Chilliwack river on airmattresses. This river is where the Canadian whitewater kayak team trains. Not the most brilliant of my ideas, as two readers who shall remain nameless will no doubt agree. This one only makes the list because nobody died.
6. St. Eugene, Ontario Summer of 1986 (approx.). Blew a 3 foot deep, 4 foot wide crater in my Mom's garden with an home-fabricated bomb. It was awesome. A geyser of dirt flew at least 30 meters into the air. When I say home fabricated, I mean I figured out the chemistry of black powder from reading old books when I was 13 years old. I made my own charcoal with a blowtorch and maple firewood, bought saltpeter at the pharmacy, and found chunks of sulphur lying on the railroad tracks behind our house. I even figured out how to build an improvised electrical detonator so I wouldn't blow myself to kingdom come. It took me about a year of tinkering with the percentages of the ingredients until I figured out the best ratios (which, later in university I found to be within about 1% of the actual recipe). Although this may seem to pale beside some of the other things on this list, I can only say that to a 13 year old boy, this was a monumental achievement. When that sucker blew, two things happened. One is that I almost crapped myself (I didn't think it would be that big an explosion). Two is that I experienced what can only be described as a moment of clarity. Time slowed down as that earth flew through the air. It was a feeling of profound satisfaction bordering on bliss that I don't think I have ever equalled. C4 is for sissies.
And of course this weekend, which I have recounted in detail in another post. If any Alert Readers think I should reconsider an event in which they may (or may not) have been involved and which should be on this list, leave a comment. I may do an update. This was fun.
I don't even know how this happened, but since getting here I have started to eat an enormous amount of oatmeal (Havre gryn in Swedish). I never even liked oatmeal before. But in Swedish grocery stores, there is an entire aisle dedicated to it. Swedes take their oatmeal very seriously. Potatos too, but we won't get into that.
Oatmeal here is a lot less refined than back home. That means you get a few husks in every bowl. Those are the hard, inedible outside bit of the oat grain. They no doubt provide a lot of fibre, but I just spit them out. It hurts my teeth to chew them.
I have discovered that you get what you pay for when it comes to oatmeal, just like everything else (airline tickets come immediately to mind). There is crap no-name oatmeal and stuff that costs twice as much, but the expensive stuff is totally worth it. Gyllenhamers is the most expensive brand I could find and it is delish. It is really creamy with a smooth but assertive finish and a few earthy undertones that nicely complement its bouquet. I highly recommend it if you have the means.
So I was out last night doing intervals at Nydala. The loop still has 1.8 km of great snow, and I was doing a full loop double poling at race pace.
On my second interval, I hear someone skiing up behind me, but fast. You can kind of tell how quickly someone is approaching just by listening, at least more-or-less. This guy was supersonic.
So I am at race pace and this dude passes me, going twice my speed. Lets say, I am doing 20 km/hr, he must be doing 40 km/hr. Easily. However, he has help. See, he was tethered to a sled dog and this dog was basically dragging him around the trail. Holy smokes, I couldn't believe it. He was skiing, I guess, but at least 90% of the propulsion is coming from that dog. It was awesome.
So I catch up with him (and his dog) at the parking lot, where they are taking a break, and start chatting with him. It turns out that skiing with dogs is a popular sport in Sweden, called drag hund. They have competitions and everything. Monday nights dogs are allowed on the trail, so that is when these guys come out to train.
I don't need to add that the dog was going absolutely bonkers. Giving these dogs the chance to pull someone seems to be as great a treat to them as offering ice cream to a toddler (or to me).
Definitely have to go check out one of those races.
in the New Yorker which nicely sums up my point of view on this film. It is written in the form of a memo giving suggestions for add-in scenes for the DVD version. One quote:
“GANGSTA” SECTION: The scene where Borat says something intentionally offensive to the inner-city black guys—where is that scene? I have been unable to find it. Here I definitely suggest a reshoot. In the attachment, I have provided a list of common racial slurs that Sacha could try out on “the brothers,” just to see what they do to him. My thought is, that seems to be the ethos of the rest of the film—i.e., Sacha saying/doing the most offensive things possible, in order to elicit a reaction—so I sense a little inconsistency here. Thoughts?
I am not a big fan of the Liberals, but I was impressed and pleased that they chose underdog Stéphane Dion as leader this past weekend. I have read some of his academic work, and he is a smart cookie. Things are looking up for this party, who have been basically rudderless since Chrétien left.
Sometime tomorrow I will pass 1000 visits to my Blog since I started it.
So, to anyone who drops by, please leave a comment and at least say who you are. I can see where I am getting visitors from, but I can't always tell who they are. So - let me know!
This past weekend was one of those times that everything just seemed to work out perfectly - far better than you could have ever imagined, in fact.
Last week, I knew that Canada had sent a team to the biathlon World Cup in Östersund, Sweden, but I didn't have any details. All my efforts to get in touch with anyone on that team failed (as it turns out, it seems that they were having some e-mail problems). I hadn't spoken to any of the athletes since last March, and I hadn't seen the coach, Geret Coyne, since basically my days as an athlete. I also had no idea about the security arrangements. I mean, we are talking about a World Cup here: not the kind of event that you can just pop in to go see somebody. You need accreditation to get further than the spectator's area. I managed to convince Håkan, one of my friends here, to go down with me and all I really expected was that we would pay the entry fee, be one of the 10 000 anonymous spectators in the stands and see the race like everyone else. At best I thought I might be able to catch the eye of one of the Canadian wax technicians a couple of hours before the start when there were fewer people around.
Our plan was to drive down Friday afternoon, stay at some friends of Håkan's Friday night, go see the races Saturday and leave Saturday afternoon. A nice weekend experience with a bit of a roadtrip thrown in. It didn't quite turn out that way.
We arrived at Hans and Helena's house at around 9 pm, and we stayed up chatting until about 10:30. I brought them a can of maple syrup, which they had heard of but never tasted. They are quite health conscious and were very interested in a totally organic sweetener. They were also very interested in the fact that maple syrup producers can only sell their product to the Quebec maple products marketing board. Hans listened to this and commented disapprovingly "it sounds like a Soviet-style planned economy", which coming from a political science professor at Östersund university, was rather interesting. I didn't mention anything about the wheat marketing board, which probably would have put him into shock. Anyhow, this is fodder for another post sometime.
Hans, Helena and their three kids
Now, back to biathlon. Saturday was the men's sprint race and it only got started at noon. So Håkan and I left around 10 in the hopes of seeing the Canadians when there weren't too many people around. when we arrived, I was first of all surprised that there was no entry fee. You can go to see World Cup races in Östersund for free. Wow, that was a nice surprise right off the bat. As we go up to the stadium, there is a security control to our left which gives access to the team rooms, wax rooms, and athlete's area. This requires the abovementioned accreditation to get in.
However, if there are two things I have learned in the Army, one is that you never know what you can get away with until you try and two is that a confident attitude and looking like you know what you are doing will get you a long way. So I told Håkan to just follow me and walked up to the security control. I pointed to my hat (An Canadian Olympic toque from Turin that I bought at the Bay) brusquely said "Canadians" and just kept walking. The guard clearly didn't quite know what to do, and so did nothing. Håkan and I were in. For the next 5 minutes we just walked around trying not to look like total tourists as we got our bearings and figured out where the Canadians were. We were surrounded by the best biathletes in the world, and some of the best cross country skiers too. Ole Einar Bjornedalen, Sven Fischer, Michael Greis, Anna Carin Olaffson, Ricco Gross, Kati Wilhelm, all just going about their business, because in this area they are not under the intense media spotlight, they are just doing what they do. I don't think it is too much to say that Håkan was star-struck. At one point he pulled on my sleeve and whispered "That is Vladimir Smirnof!" and indeed it was. One of the best cross country skiers of the 1990's is now on the IBU board and he was visiting the Kazakhstani athletes. I briefly (very briefly) considered walking up to him and saying Jag shemash, which is Borat's fake-Kazakhstani greeting, but though better of it. Vladimir is a pretty big dude, and having been doped to the ears while he was an athlete, I didn't want to risk triggering any 'roid rage flashbacks.
So eventually we found the Canadian wax room, and I just marched right in. I wish I had taken my camera out beforehand, because the expression on everyone's faces was worth a picture. Robin Clegg, Zina Kocher, Sandra Keith, Marie Pierre Parent, JP LeGuellec, David Leoni - with the exception of JP, these are folks I have known for coming up on 10 years. Plus the wax technicians were former athletes Tom Zidek and Ivan Phillion. So it was like a big reunion for me, it was great.
Me with the Canadian ladies (of course). Marie-Pierre, me, Zina and Sandra
The wax techs were a bit under the gun to get the skis prepped for the race because it was weird, rainy-icy conditions. So I offered to give them a hand and they quickly put me to work brushing and polishing.
Extolling the virtues of waxing while I brush Robin's ski. Oh, the irony
When we got things done, the team's masseuse Tracey - the only person on the team whom I hadn't met - set me up with accreditation and after that Håkan and I basically did as we pleased. We watched the race both from the stands:
and from out on the trail:
where spectators aren't ever allowed to go. I mean, we were not beside the trail, we were on the trail. We could have easily reached out to touch the athletes as they ski by.
No big surprise, Ole Einar Bjornedalen won the race. Again. Robin had a very good race, placing 32nd. It was really exciting to watch.
With the race over, I had to make a decision. Håkan and I had agreed to leave following the race. He has a wife and two kids, so obviously he had to keep his end of the bargain. However, things were going so spectacularly better than I had ever expected, I wanted to stay for the next day as well. So we decided that Håkan would drive back as planned and I would take the bus the following day.
I went back to the hotel with the Canadians and Tracey -again - made things happen and got me set up in the team's massage room. Halvard Hannevold from Norway can confirm this. Of course, with my accreditation I could also go eat with the athletes in the dining room.
A bit of an aside about Tracey: this was her first experience with biathlon, although she had worked with the Canadian downhill, freestyle and cross country ski teams. I have rarely met anyone so extroverted. When I arrived, she had been with the team for only 4 days. I kind of wondered how she was going to get around after she gave me her accreditation, but it was simple: she already knew everybody. All the security people, the hotel management, and a lot of the international athletes. Being extroverted in a room full of famous people you don't know is not without its landmines: One story she is not likely to live down is sitting next to Sven Fischer and asking if he was a coach. Sven is not only one of the most accomplished biathletes in history - 4 Olympics, multiple Olympic and World Championship medals, innumerable World Cup medals - he is also one of the most striking. Tall, very solidly built, a jaw you could etch glass with, once you have seen Sven you do NOT forget him. She also complimented Kati Wilhelm (last years World Cup champion) on her hair colour and asked if she had got it done recently. Kati has dyed her hair red for many years, and it is in fact her trademark. However, I give Tracy a solid two thumbs up for effort, and managing to get to know so many people in such a close-knit community in such a short time is nothing short of astonishing.
That evening the Canadian team did their daily yoga session, which I joined in on - although I know nothing about yoga. However, I was in good company, since Michael Greis, who won three gold medals at the Turin Olympics also decided to drop by and give it a go. So I was doing yoga for the first time in my life beside a multiple Olympic champion who - it turns out - is about as flexible as a pine board. We had some good laughs. It was also surreal.
We went out that night to a local pub and mingled with locals and world famous alike. Sunday's race was a pursuit, and only the top 60 athletes get to race, so there were many who were out looking to drown their sorrows since they had no racing scheduled until the next World Cup.
The following day's race was both exciting and predictable. Ole Einar won, again. Despite having shot 16/20 when all his competitors shot 19/20 or 20/20. On top of that, he actually increased his lead. The man is basically unbeatable for the time being. It will be interesting to see if he can maintain his form the whole season.
Ole Einar, in the lead. Again. About to win. Again. Yawn.
The women's race was also great, but for other reasons. Anna Carin Olaffson, the Swede superstar, placed 2nd after starting 11th. So the home crowd went nuts. I was naturally in the start - finish area thanks to my accreditation, and managed to fight through the television cameras to get this pic:
This photo is going to make me an object of awe at my office, where many of the researchers adore this woman. She is the female equivalent to Gretzky in Sweden.
Bus ride home was really long and boring, but entirely worth it. What an incredible weekend. I would really like to thank everyone on the Canadian team and wish them the best of luck for the rest of the season. I don't know if I will be able to get to another World Cup, but there are races in both Finland and Norway, so that could be feasible. Time will tell.
Ole Einar, in the lead. Again. About to win. Again. Yawn.
