Wednesday, January 03, 2007

God Nyt År!

Hi everyone, and welcome back. Hope you all had a great holidays. If I haven't been in touch, drop me an e-mail and lets catch up.
I spent the Christmas period at home in Vankleek Hill Ontario, but I managed to do quite a bit of travelling and made it up to Ottawa and Montreal a couple of times.
I arrived back in Umeå on the 30th, with the cunning plan of using my jet lag to its full advantage during the New Years bash the next day. Hey - midnight would feel like 6 pm! Awesome! I could act like a grown up and make it to midnight without passing out for a change.
Funny how that little thing called the Law of Unintended Consequences has the most remarkable way of rearing its ugly head.
So as I mentioned before leaving, my friend Daniel Ragnvaldsson was OIC to figure out what we were doing New Years. He is doing his Ph.D. and is the Swedish javelin champion. He has a good social network around Umeå, so I figured I was in good hands.
We started the evening at his friend Jonas' place. Jonas is a physiotherapist who works at the university. Great guy, and an amazing chef. Check this spread out:


This doesn't really do the entire thing justice, because this was just the 2nd course of 4. Jonas doesn't use recipes - he makes them up himself. This impressed me immensely.

Actually, we started the festivities at Jonas' parents place in the afternoon - they have a great sauna. Anyhow. The alcohol only started flowing during dinner, so lets start there.

By the end of dinner we were already well on our way, as this photo of Daniel will attest:



This man hurls lethal spears at high velocity for a living. Not a reassuring thought.

A photo of Jonas. Notice the excellent shirt. A man after my own sartorial taste:



Jonas spent a year on exchange in Idaho as a teenager and he is quite possibly the only Swede on the planet who not only likes Bluegrass, but who owns an MP3 of the theme to Deliverance. Yeah, the hillbilly banjo tune. Surreal.

After dinner we took a taxi to Tomas' place. Tomas is a mutual friend of Jonas and Daniel. I have no idea how they know each other, to be honest. Anyhow, Tomas was hosting the party. At midnight, the town of Umeå had a very respectable fireworks display. I was quite impressed. The party was OK, but Daniel the lightweight called it quits at 1 am. My cunning plan of taking advantage of my jet lag was working perfectly! I managed to stay up until the party was eventually shut down, and I walked back to my apartment at 5 am.

Then I slept through the entire next day, woke up a 9 pm, and realized that my internal clock was severely messed up in ways I have only ever dreamed of. Recall at this point the Law of Unintended Consequences. The fact that there is almost no daylight up here doesn't help matters. So now it is 3 days later and I am just beginning to snap out of it. I figure I should be back up to speed in a day or two.

Was it worth it? Well...

Absolutely.






posted by Jeff @ 2:18 AM

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