mäüd ölöfssön

it's time for a language-related rant.

a rant about something that i'm sure you've all come across. it concerns the difference between swedish and english in the area of vowels. as most of you are no doubt aware, there are more vowels in swedish than there are in english, more specifically the notorious triumvirate of åäö. also, in swedish we consider y to be a vowel whereas those english dudes consider it a half-vowel at best. it's a puzzling letter to be sure, but the point of this rant is å, ä and ö. you see, even though they look remarkably similar to some other vowels that exist in english (a and o, i'm looking in your general direction), they are in fact different vowels. different letters, different pronunciations, different pretty much everything. yes yes, i know that historically the å is an a with an o on it and pronounced somewhere in between, and i know that an ä is considered an a with an umlaut. but i'd still like to claim that they are separate vowels. people here don't mistake å's for a's. this is because they are different vowels. not that hard, is it? even dudes in metal bands should be able to figure this one out, right? well, i'm sure you've all heard of motörhead and mötley crüe and rolled your eyes, but this aspect of the issue seems like it's been done to death already. just check out this for some serious dot-related humour. i tried to find a picture of the tour t-shirt, but didn't in five seconds and then gave up. whilst looking, i came across a wikipedia article with the name "heavy metal umlaut", which indicates that this topic has been adequately covered already, and so i shall waste no more space on it.

in the above paragraph i hinted that dudes in metal bands were of low intelligence; i apologize for this and as we shall soon see, people in other areas do not seem to be smarter. i turn you now to a picture i took in a design store in sydney.


perhaps it is not clear on the small version of the picture, but click on it and enjoy all the glory of a "Stockhölm" teapot. to indicate that it is from scandinavia you have to put dots on at least on of the vowels, right? otherwise people might not understand that we are selling authentic scandinavian design here! because people have no idea what or where stockholm is. now, i'm not swedocentric enough to expect everyone in the world to obviously know that stockholm is the swedish capital city, but i do think it's a name strong enough to hold its own without the help of dots to indicate its scandinavian-ness. also, what is up with only putting dots on one of the o's? if you put them on one, you've already established that you don't care that they are different vowels altogether, so why not go all out with your foreign branding strategy and leave nothing to ambiguity when you name your product? with the name "Stockhölm", most people will think it's scandinavian, some people will think you are an idiot for putting dots where they don't belong and some people will be completely oblivious to all the mighty viking-ness allusions you are trying to convey in your teapot. if you instead name it "Stöckhölm" (or perhaps "STÖCKHÖLM" for slightly more viking-ness) some of the oblivious people might get the hint whereas no one would think you were even more of an idiot - a definite win-win situation.

when i buy shampoo, deodorant, soap and similar products, there are at least twenty different options that will do the job. they all look remarkably similar. they have names like "arctic", "cool", "sport" and so on, and i usually choose depending on what kind of image i want to convey for the day. if i feel sporty the day i happen to be buying shower gel, i will buy the one that says "sport" (as long as it's also cheap); if i feel arcticy, i will buy the "arctic" one. i don't want to waste my time on inconsequential things like picking a shower gel, i just want to get it over with, so i'm using this method just to have something to base a quick decision on. but once, again in sydney, the decision was easier than normal. a picture is enclosed below, enjoy the spectacular setting.


yes, it is a deodorant called "Norscä" and it has the scent "forest fresh". i don't think i have much to add, the picture pretty much speaks for itself. in a kumadude-esque manner i'd like to close off this post with yet another picture, this time of a coffee shop that also sells ice cream, also in sydney. on a side note, the coffee shop was named "coffee t", which inspired an endless number of mr. t jokes between me and rachel. anyway, picture:

are you an archetype? i'm an archetype.

this post is based on a newspaper clip in swedish, from a magazine called nöjesguiden which is the hipster guide to all things happening in the world of culture, music and partying in the skåne/öresund region, much like time out in london or the drum media in sydney. the clip in question:


this might not seem to exciting at first glance, even if you understand swedish. it's an article about (then) upcoming concerts in copenhagen and the headline is "the suffering artist 2007" and if you like gloomy singer/songwriters you will undoubtedly recognize the man in the picture as the gloomiest singer/songwriter of them all, will oldham aka bonnie prince billy aka ten other nicknames. fortunately, the interesting part has been circled, but not by me. you see, i found this clip on the notice board for environmental engineering because it is mentioned in the circled part of the article. environmental engineering students tend to put up stuff related to the program on the notice board when they find it, so everyone can see that we are getting exposure all over the world and that at least someone knows that we exist. anyway, the circled part. perhaps the image is too compressed to be able to actually read what it says, so i'm going to post a zoomed-in version as well:
now, let's discuss what it actually says. it is about a concert with damien rice in copenhagen and it says "a bonnie prince billy for the environmental engineering student who longs for japan and likes table hockey". does this remind you of anyone in particular? i bet it does! in fact, there is only one person in the whole world who fits these three criteria, and it is me. i do not know the person who wrote the article, but after searching the back corners of my brain i realize that he is the boyfriend of one of my high school friends and that i met him once or twice at one or two parties about five years ago. i remember that we talked about writing, it seems to have worked out for him since he now works for an entertainment paper. however, whereas i haven't really thought much about him, apart from seeing him in the city from time to time, i seem to have made some sort of impression on him as the archetypical damien rice fan. essentially, i am an archetype to him. i look and act like the typical bonnie prince billy/damien rice fan. mind you, this is probably true, for i like both of these guys' music, but he can't know this because i last talked to him before damien rice released his first album, and i'm fairly sure i did not listen to bonnie prince billy back then. all in all, i find this immensely funny and it makes me a little bit proud to be the signature face for a group of people, even if it is only to one person.

it also made me reflect on how little it actually takes to narrow a description down to just one person. three adjectives/labels and you've got no one but me left. granted, table hockey is an unusually obscure hobby compared to soccer, for example, and i study a program that has about 50 students in every year and didn't start until 1998, but still - it probably won't take that many labels to narrow it down to just one person, no matter who it is. this a roundabout way of saying that we are all unique.

true to the name

i realized that i haven't mentioned webcomics in a while now, which is something that this blog claims to be about. time to make up for that: check out the perry bible fellowship for some well-drawn and really nifty stuff.

second time around

tonight i will go to mejeriet ("the dairy", you might be inclined to think that they make dairy products there, but no) here in lund and see the mountain goats IN CONCERT. the mountain goats are one of the best bands known to man, and i urge you to go as well. the line below "adventure" is a a quote from one of their songs, and there's more where that came from. this is one of my favorite segments, from their song woke up new:

the first time i made coffee for just myself
i made too much of it
but i drank it all just cause you hate it
when i let things go to waste

i won't tell you what you should think or anything but seriously, YOU HAVE TO THINK THIS IS AWESOME. their songs are full of imagery like this and many of them have lyrics that just blow me away. and for the well-read peter fan, it should come as no surprise that i saw them in sydney in january and it was possibly the best concert i have ever been to. granted, rachel also being there might have had something to with it, but the mountain goats certainly did their share of being awesome. i have tried to get all too many of my friends to go tonight, but they're all going away for easter. but seriously, is there any better way to spend the ol' good friday than seeing one of the world's finest and depressing bands?

this monday i quit playing internet scrabble. i've been addicted to it for a while now, and recently i've just been unable to stop myself from playing. a lot of saying "just one more game, it only takes fifteen minutes" to myself. and i've gone up a lot in the rankings. problem is, it's been seriously cutting into the rest of my life, both study- and friendwise and that's just not a good thing. and i tried cutting down to one game a day, but it just doesn't work for me, it has to be total cold turkey or i won't be able to stick to it. i discussed it with rachel, and she said it's because if you allow yourself to play one game, one more game isn't really that much more, but if you allow yourself no games, then playing just one will result in massive amounts of guilt, and so you won't play it. it's been working so far, no games this week. not that i've necessarily gotten that much more work done anyway, but i'm going to bed earlier and generally feeling better, which is definitely A Good Thing. i still get "the urge" sometimes, but i'd much racher play in real life; trouble is, there's no scrabble action going on in this region at the moment. i've tried to get it started, but it's been tough so far. but soon! there are lots of good players around, it's just a matter of getting them to try the real deal.

i'd love to stay and chat, but i have to go to school and learn a statistics program. yes, i know it's the ol' good friday, but i really feel like i have to do something thesis-related. this week has been a horrible one in that department, i've gotten almost nothing done at all. also, i have to take a photo of something which will most likely lead to a blog post, but that is all i'm going to tell you now. who's the master of cliffhangers? (i'm pointing at myself with my thumbs now.)

i made a lot of mistakes

i had the family over for dinner this afternoon, in celebration of my birthday on the friday two weeks earlier. (i refer you to the post below for a description of the events that occurred on said friday.) i made lasagnas and a simple yet delicious salad. my main claim to fame with these lasagnas is that one of them was made from a recipe by emeril, every old lady's favorit tv chef and pork fat connoisseur. if you are a fan of futurama but do not live in north america, you may be interested in knowing that emeril was the inspiration of elzar, and he loves to kick it up a notch. more often with pork fat than with the spice weasel, though. the lasagna was a four cheese lasagna with spinach and portobello mushrooms, quite extravagant if i may say so myself. it got smashing reviews from all the critics, which means that my family liked it, or at least that they said they did.

i miss the food network, which is where i discovered emeril's daytime tv show whilst i was living in vancouver. not that i'd be able to watch it even if it did exist here, as i don't own a tv. i've considered getting one, though, and were there a food network, that might tip the scale just enough to warrant a tv purchase. but alas, there is not, and the money stays in my pocket. probably a good thing.

for birthday gifts, i mainly got what i have craved for so long: very sharp knives. i'm going to have so much fun with my new very sharp knives.

i ordered myself some cd's as a birthday present to myself, and they arrived this friday. i mention this because one of them was "avalanche" by sufjan stevens and i'm having a big sufjan period right now. i discovered him a few years ago, when i came over the "michigan" album and instantly fell for the album in general and the song "for the widows in paradise, for the fatherless in ypsilanti" in particular. it was probably the first song i ever listened to on repeat, over and over. it made me cry. when i was in school, i felt i was wasting time doing useless things when i could be home listening to the song. it still might be the song that has affected me the most, although there are other songs aspiring for the title. "avalanche" is a cd of outtakes and extras from the "illinois" album and i'm now alternating between those two cd's. they're both over 70 minutes long so it's not as repetitive as it might sound. still, lots of sufjan stevens in my life. it took me a while to enjoy the illinois album, but now i've definitely fallen in love with it. at first it seemed a bit bland and long and too similar to the michigan album, but now it's a whole different world of brilliant songs. i discover new ones every time i listen to it. the avalanche album isn't quite as good, but it's got some smashing stuff on it and i have a feeling it will grow on me as well.

in short, if you haven't listened to sufjan stevens, you should give him a go and probably start with "michigan". i like to describe music with feelings, and sufjan's music has a way of grabbing me and making me care. the word i'm looking for here is engaging. sufjan stevens makes engaging music that warrants multiple listens and is musically complex. not that i'd really know, being a musical illiterate and all, but he plays a lot of instrument and there seems to be quite a bit of orchestration going on. crescendo this and scherzo that. (i don't know if scherzo is actually a word in english. i don't even know what it means, just that it's something about music. the only reason i know it is because it's a seven-letter word that has both c and z in it, and in swedish scrabble there is only one of each. but i'm sure sufjan is all about the scherzos.)

this week has been a good week for my thesis. i've done some serious coding in matlab and made a program that grabs all the data from a spreadsheet and calculates means and standard deviations and plots everything nicely and smoothly. i'm actually a bit impressed by myself, i'm glad i got it all to work in the end. tomorrow i'm printing it all out (32 graphs) and discussing things with my supervisor. it's good, because i've been wanting to learn how to write code that quickly gets out and organizes relevant data for a while now. and it's cool, because when i look at the program, it seems really complex and i feel smart. my thesis topic has also gotten more interesting this week; instead of just doing statistics on collected data, i'm going to build a model for mass balances for clear-cut forests, and we're also going to go up to the actual test areas to collect mineralogy samples, so that means there will also be a small field component in the thesis. these things are both very good, they make the thesis both more engineery and environmenty. also, i feel it is a good thing to actually get to see the areas that i'm devoting half a year of my life to.

money in the bank

last thursday me and david went up to karlstad to arrange a table hockey tournament for an it company and some of their clients. we've done it a couple of times before so it's fairly run-of-the-mill by this point, a lot of pleasant and very little nervous. everything went smooth and the people there seemed to have lots of fun and were very appreciative of us. included in the deal for us were hotel room, free food, free travel to and from karlstad, a bit of money and free tickets to the hockey game that evening, färjestad-mora. it's a fair bit of travel for me for the money i get, but i still really like the fact that i'm earning money just by being good at table hockey. and every year, we talk about designing a package for companies for kick-off events and company promotion events and the like, how much money we could earn and how much everybody would like it, and then nothing happens. of course we've realized this, so now we also talk about how nothing happens. perhaps this is the year it all will happen, but i seriously doubt it. i suppose we get one step closer to saying "this is ridiculous! let's just put this package together, it'll take an hour!" every year, but it might still be a few years away from happening. then we'll be millionaires.

millionaires!

(sorry, black adder III moment there)

moving on, i had the trip back to lund all planned out in my head: leave karlstad early, spend the day in gothenburg sauntering around, have some coffee and possibly buy myself something nice because it was my birthday. alas, it was not to be. on the morning in karlstad, i felt nauseous, but thought it would pass once i had some breakfast. alas, it did not. instead experienced increased nausea and threw up several times on the train down. the gag reflex is one mighty reflex, that breakfast came back up at a remarkable velocity. i can't help but be a little bit impressed. needless to say, of my chillaxin' day in gothenburg became naught, instead replaced by a vomitin' day at a bookshop, where i alternated between a wooden bench and the toilet. a supremely badly timed case of getting sick, although i supposed it would have been even worse if it had happened on the train up. still, getting sick far away from home when you have two three-hour train trips ahead of you, with a six-hour sauntering stop in the middle, has got to count as bad timing. also, on my birthday! hand over the martyr points! i'm still not feeling great, but a lot better. i might get my ass to school tomorrow and continue the data structuring and graph generating.

rachel told me yesterday that there is a studio ghibli museum. a quick web search later and i located it to mitaka, a tokyo suburb that i haven't heard of before (hey - we can't all be harajuku and get our name printed on hoodies from a swedish clothing chain). i believe this might be the ULTIMATE museum. if you don't believe me just look at some of the pictures on this page. a totoro dvd player! totoro in the ticket booth! a cat bus that you can play with! a damn sweet entrance! and more! it just seems to capture the spirit and feeling of the ghibli movies so well. and since pretty much all of the movies are really, really good, by extension the museum is as well. if you are not familiar with hayao miyazaki or studio ghibli, i suggest you watch the following movies: princess mononoke, my neighbor totoro and spirited away. actually, you could go with any movie they have released, i can't think of a single one that i don't like. they are japanese anime movies and very different from 'conventional' animated movies like the ones from disney, but that doesn't mean they're difficult, pretentious or inaccessible. just that they tell very different stories and sometimes in a different way. they're not crammed with stereotypes, the only funny character is not the weird sidekick and the main character is often a young girl. i could go on, but really, you should watch a movie or two. they're extremely likable.

je t'aime the valley

after a month of slackin' around, things are finally starting to happen. i am now officially down with thesis writing. the subject is solid but unexciting: nutrient leakage from clear-cut forests. let's just say it doesn't make people jump up and down in excitement when i mention it, but it also doesn't make them fall asleep. so i've now officially entered the realms of lund university again, it's been a while now. close to two years, actually. some people are gone, most of them are still here. some of them are done with school, most are not. all in all, it's the good old student in lund life all over again. could be worse.

lars presented his thesis last friday and it gave me serious performance anxiety. i will have to find some way to accomplish really difficult things and incorporate way too advanced statistics if i'm going to match him. well, to be fair it also inspired me to do something more than just basic stuff i'm already comfortable with.

i've got my own room at the department of chemical engineering now, which is pretty cool. i'm technically sharing with a ph.d. student, but she's presenting her doctoral thesis in two weeks and is not there at all. instead of her, there are boxes with her thesis in them. and i've stolen her flat screen monitor. it will be a semester of flat screen goodness. my room is situated right next door to the fermentation lab. i feel that this is an important spatial property to point out. the are crazy about making bioethanol at the department and i will be sitting mere inches away from where the yeast is doing its thing. thankfully, there is a wall between us.

my supervisor seems like a nice and competent guy. easy to talk to and very helpful. also, he had two bandaged fingers this wednesday, and said they were from a "sledge accident". definitely a good sign. the swedish word for sledge is "pulka" and it might be one of my favorite words. i like words that have a childish good vibe to them.

on the music note, i have recently discovered xiu xiu. i remember pitchfork marking them as a future top indie act a few years back, i downloaded a few songs when i saw that but didn't like them much and that was the end of that. but then alanna put their song "i luv the valley, oh!" on the mix cd she sent me and it blew my socks off. you must check out that song, for it is the song of songs. if i had some more money, i would rush out and buy all the xiu xiu cd:s. well, i would order them online, since there isn't a single record store nearby worth jack, but you get the general idea.