Bolg

News from the world of Sydney is that we have acquired a couple of regular visitors to our balcony.  I think you will agree that they are pretty hard to resist, even when they wake us up at 7am on a Saturday morning… 

Oh, and if you are interested, sunflower seeds, apple and honey/water mix are on the menu.

Finally!!  After quite some time we are online again.  To sum up recent developments, we are now:

• In Sydney
• In our own apartment (which we have also furnished!)
• Both working (me for the Government as a research scientist at the National Measurement Institute, and Aert, as of tomorrow, as a test engineer at Silverbrook Research)! 

So all in all its been a very eventful few months, but I have to say that everything has fallen into place very nicley - better than we could have hoped for even.  The apartment is in St Leonards (North Shore), and is located more or less on the train station, which makes it ultra convienient for travel and shopping - a big bonus since we don’t (and won’t) have a car!  It’s a 1 bedroom place (although we do have a sofa bed if anyone wants to visit) and there are in-house luxuries as well: pool, spa, gym and concierge!.

In more general terms, life in Sydney is going great!  The weather has been a bit touch and go, but it’s picked up over the last week, so we may well get a bit of decent summer weather in before the slide into autumn.  City life is taking a little adjusting to (noise wise and traffic wise!) but on the flipside there is always something going on in which well makes up for the negatives. 

Anyway, thats it for now - my dinner is almost on the table!  I promise to update this more regularly now that we are connected, and to put some pics of the new place up ASAP!  Meanwhile… those of you who find yourselves in Sydney - you are more than welcome to visit!

Just over 13 months of living and working in Sweden has finally come to an end. A lot can happen in 13 months it seems; even though it sometimes felt like time was standing still. Since moving to Sweden, amongst other things I have: had over 52 different housemates (!); spent over a month working at synchrotrons; eaten fermented fish, reindeer jerky, freshly shot moose, and more than 5 different types of berries straight from the garden; spent a whopping $160 on one dinner (thats food and drink for myself only!); ridden a bike through snow, ice and temps as low as -20 °C; had days with more than 18 hours of light in summer and less than 6 in winter; and learnt to understand - but perhaps not fully appreciate - the Swedish concept of ‘lagom’.

After a few very nice farewell dinners, and a surprisingly smooth pack/toss/send effort, Aert and I left Sweden for the Netherlands on Nov 30. What will we miss most us from our year in Sweden? Its difficult to say right now. Although we didn’t fully embrace/enjoy our time in Sweden we both agree it was a valuable experience that has taught us a lot about ourselves and what we value, and some of the unexpected challenges that cultural differences can present.

I leave for Australia on the 10th of Dec, flying via Singapore (where I have a 15 hour wait) before arriving in Sydney (aboard the A380) at 7am on the 12th. From there I head to Canberra until the 18th, when I fly to Tassie for Christmas and New Year. And what of 2008? Well we shall see. Aert arrives in Sydney at 8pm on the 10th of Jan and then the fun and games start over again… looking for a place to live, looking for work and establishing ourselves in a strange city. It will be interesting to see how it goes!! Meanwhile, we are making the most of our time in the Netherlands - theres 13 months of low priced beer-drinking to catch up on after all!! Proost!

Mum sent me this link the other day, centering around this figure. Supposedly the way you see her spinning corresponds to the side of your brain that is dominant: clockwise = right brain dominant (emotions, shapes etc) and anti clockwise = left brain dominant (facts, numbers etc).

I see her rotating almost exclusively clockwise. At first I was even convinced that it wasn’t possible to see her spinning the other way, but then something in my head apparently changed and she spun the other way for a while. I can’t control it though. Apparently some people can. Anyway I thought it was pretty cool! Not really sure if the direction of spinning actually says anything about your brain dominance (I hardly see myself as a right brained brain, though it would be nice to be so) but its interesting none-the-less. Aert also sees her spinning mostly clockwise. You?

As I mentioned in my last post, the last month has probably been the most socially active so far in Sweden. A lot of this social activity has revolved rather heavily around food, resulting in Aert and I feeling both terribly spoilt and like we will need to spend the coming month at the gym every day to compensate. The highlights, in chronological order, are as follows:

Surströmming:

My surströmming experience is oddly classified as a ‘highlight’ - more accurately its the kind of thing that more daring side of you feels obliged to try, to prove how adventurous and open to new experiences you really are. A Swedish specialty from the northern coastal districts, you will either find Swedes who love the stuff, or simply can’t stand the smell of it and have never tried it. And fair enough too - surströmming is actually fermented herring, and you can smell an open can (which smells like something sulfurous and not at all appetizing) from at least a good 100 m away. If you actually make it close enough to the can, you wont be rewarded by the sight either - the fish looks slimy and altogether disgusting - see pic below.

Still with the help of Lasse, some strong onions, potato and bread to disguise the fish (both sight and taste I think) I was able to eat two sandwiches, and have to confess that the experience wasn’t half as bad as it looks and smells like its going to be. Plus when you are around the open cans for more than a few minutes you become more or less immune to the smell and don’t notice it anymore. The surströmming was a lunchtime event organised by some of my chemistry colleagues, so Aert missed out.

Gästrikland and Hälsingland (visiting Lasse’s family)

The last weekend in September was Lasse’s last weekend in Sweden, and as a final indulgence he took Aert and I up to Gävle (to visit his Mum) and then even further north to Hälsingland (to visit his Uncle). I went up a night early to watch an icehockey game (the local team Brinäs defeated Linköping 9-1!!) and Aert joined us after work on Friday. Here’s where the spoiling really began: Lasse’s Mum cooked an amazing dinner for us and two of Lasse’s other friends consisting of roasted and casseroled (that’s two separate main dishes) wild boar followed by cake for desert. The roasted wild boar was particularly divine with a sauce made from Calvados. All up it was a really great dinner, though we felt really bad because Lasse’s wonderful Mum AnnMarie (who is 75 though you would never guess it!) spent nearly the whole day cooking and then the whole night cleaning up - though she was determined not to let us help.

The following day we headed North into Hälsingland on the train. We were met by Lasse’s Uncles wife, Annika, who took us to an animal park full of Swedish animals. Finally a chance to see some local wildlife up close: Reindeer, Brown Bears, Wolves, Moose, Arctic Foxes, Wolverines and of course Lynx, as well as a host of birds. Funnily enough the reindeer blew me away the most - I found their over sized antlers (which they keep for life) such a strange an inconvenient thing - surely they must be such a hindrance in the forest!

That evening we headed to Sigge (Lasse’s Uncle) and Annika’s house for dinner. AnnMarie joined us and we were again treated to an amazing feast - this time two pheasants (shot by Sigge - one a black pheasant and the other I can’t quite remember) and Hälsingland Ostkaka (cheesecake, but not like Australian/English/American cheesecake) with fresh raspberry jam… all in all totally HEAVENLY!! I can certainly see where Lasse gets his cooking skills from!

Stadshuskällaren:

Stadshuskällaren is a gourmet restaurant located in the cellar of the Stockholm town hall. It is famous because it is responsible for providing the annual Nobel Prize dinner. Since my chemistry colleagues are connoisseurs of good food, (where good is gourmet, expensive and traditional - think French, traditional Swedish, Italian etc) I organised a group dinner here for the first Friday evening in October. The rather steep price tag turned Aert’s taste a little, so he didn’t join. The ambiance in the restaurant was, I felt, a little disappointing - aside from a Japanese couple who were having a Nobel dinner, we were the only other people in the restaurant, which I don’t think is very pleasant. Still there was enough of us, and with the encouragement of some good wine, we had a really great evening.

I had moose to start, which was quite tasty, although after a mouthful or two I couldn’t stop thinking about the young moose I had been patting the previous weekend at the zoo in Hälsingland! Other people had blue mussel and oyster cappuccino (which struck me as a highly pretentious name for soup) and the traditional option of pickled herring. For main course I had ‘Saddle and shoulder of Autumn lamb with seasonal primeurs, served with lamb gravy and Västerbotten cheese croquettes’:

As you can see from the photo above, it was a VERY gourmet affair, and although it did taste pretty good, it arrived *warmish* and didn’t really strike me as anywhere near 260 SEK ($45.20) worth of unforgettable taste experience! I decided to save some money on desert and had chocolate truffles (two for 45 SEK!!!!) with a glass of port, which, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was paying $8 for two small pieces of chocolate would have been enjoyable. At the end of the night I was 750 SEK out of pocket ($130 - for two courses + chocolate, two glasses of red wine and a port) and although the food didn’t quite live up to my expectations the company was good and the rest of the party seemed to be more than happy with their whole evening which seemed at the end to be the most important thing and make the night worthwhile!

Dinner with Charlie

The final gastronomical event came the following evening, when Aert and I headed over to Charlie’s (my ‘boss’) for dinner. In my opinion, Charlie and his lovely ’sambo’ Tula put on a spread that was far more impressive than the previous evenings fare, but then I guess its all a matter of perspective. We had a salad of figs, pomegranates, ruccola and baked chevre cheese dressed with honey and balsamic vinegar to start, a dish that I will certainly try to replicate next time I want to impress some people! Roast lamb followed with amazing mango salsa and finally homemade blueberry pie. And of course not forgetting the good flow of wine: all in all a really great evening and a perfect cap to what felt like a month of excessive eating!

Its been an action packed few weeks and the really big news is that Aert and I have decided to leave Sweden at the end of the year.  It was a tricky decision, motivated by the fact that a) we are not enjoying the Swedish lifestyle and b) I’m not enjoying working within a university research environment and I would like to look for a more applied job - something in industry or government, perhaps.  So, on the 1st of Dec we are leaving Sweden and heading to the Netherlands.  From there, I’m heading home on the 10th of Dec (and spending ~ a week in Canberra before heading to Tassie) whilst Aert will spend Christmas in the Netherlands and head to OZ sometime after that.  Then the big search for work (and some travelling) will begin again… call us crazy, but the important thing is that this feels right - another year in Sweden (particularly with the weather) would be soul crushing, we feel.

Decisions aside, September has also been pretty busy socially…

France (Montpellier)

The International Sol Gel Society Conference was held from the 3rd - 7th of September in Montpellier.  I had a poster to present, so along with the rest of the Uppsala sol gel group (Gunnar, Annika, Ulrika and Erik), I headed off to Montpellier.  The South of France certainly failed to disappoint as far as the weather was concerned: we had a wonderful, sunny week with daytime temperatures hovering around 28 C - just what the doctor ordered.  Ulrika and I shared a hotel room in le grand hotel du midi: a reasonably nice hotel bordering La Place De La Comedie right in the centre of town and only 5 minutes walk from Le Corum, the conference venue - highly convenient!  Aside from a bee-sting, mild food poisoning, extremely slow restaurant service and a rather terrible hotel breakfast (which we have since discovered was not included in the room price and was charged at 12.50 euro a pop!!!) , I really enjoyed my week in Montpellier.  It was a lively and vibrant town, (though this may have been enhanced by the rugby world cup vibe) with good shopping, lots to see and restaurants that were open well after 10pm!

The conference itself wasn’t quite my cup of tea… a little heavy on the chemistry side of things, and people seemed to be afraid of the physics (which really wasn’t much - more or less the word magnetism) on my poster, so I don’t feel I got a huge amount out of it.  Life around the conference was another story though - we had a half day excursion (in my case to some caves and a small town called St Gilhem le Desert, about 60 kms north of Montpellier) and a pretty good conference dinner complete with a live jazz band and professional swing dancers!  The conference venue was possibly the most badly designed event building I have ever been in… for those of you who ever have to organise a conference in Montpellier, keep that in mind!!

Friday saw an early end to the conference and the chance to do some sightseeing around town (Arc de Triomphe etc), and after that I met up with Laure, a French girl who did part of her masters in my group in Canberra, who is now doing her PhD in Montpellier.  It was really great to catch up with Laure again, and after a quick visit to the Mediterranean coast (which was pretty nice but typically European and touristy) and a fantastic dinner (the highlight of which was caramelized pears with dark chocolate mousse) she took me back to her small apartment just outside the city where we stayed the night before heading off to Avignon and Provence (where she grew up) on the weekend… 

Provence

The weekend with Laure was really fantastic.  On Saturday we had a whirlwind day: after a reasonably early start we headed off to Avignon, via le Pont du Gard and a small town with a traditional market, where we found, amongst other things, so very tasty matured cheese.  Avignon is a really beautiful and old city that became famous in the 1300’s when it was the seat of the Catholic Popes (who built le Palais du Papes in the centre of town).  It is located in the Rhone valley, and the Rhone meanders through the centre of town where another of its most famous landmarks -le Pont d’Avignon- is located.   The bridge was (one of?) the first to cross the Rhone, and was built in the 1100s after Saint Bénézet claimed to have received a message from God telling him to build the bridge.  Unfortunately the bridge had a very troublesome history and was heavily damaged many times.  In the 1600’s, repairs to the bridge stopped, and thus it remains today - jutting out about 1/2 of the way across the river.  it is the only bridge I have ever encountered with a chapel built within it (to commemorate Saint Bénézet).  After a busy day in Avingon, we headed off to meet Laure’s boyfriend Julien and his lovely Jack Russel Uta, and then went on to Laure’s fathers house for dinner.  And what a lovely dinner it was: marinated lamb brochettes with spaghetti zucchini and aubergine on the side, followed by cheeses and homemade chocolate tart, washed down with some red, including a very nice bottle of 1984 Bordeaux!

The following day was spent wandering the Sunday markets of Ilse sur la Sorgue - a small village that the river Sorgue literately flows all through - the Venice of Provence.  After a long and lazy Lunch, Laure and I hit the road again and made a whirlwind tour of Gourdes and Roussillon before heading back to Montpellier.  Gordes is a charming medieval town where all the houses are built from white stone.  It stands majestically on the top of a craggy hill and affords a magnificent view of the surrounding landscape which is spattered, of course, with vineyards.  Similarily, Roussillon also stands on a hill, but of quite a different nature.  The hilly ridge it stands on is made out of ocher, and accordingly the whole town is built from terracotta coloured stone.  The ochers of Russillon come in shades from white to deep red, and are characteristic of Provence and exported all over the world. 

Heather in Sweden

On the 12th of September, Heather arrived in Sweden to visit for the weekend.  Since the main sights of Uppsala can be covered in less than a day (cathedral and, thanks to Lasse, one of the student nation pubs) we took a ferry cruise over to Finland.  The ferry trips have a notorious reputation for being the place for young people to get drunk and pick up, however we found it surprisingly tame, and frequented more by the older generation.  Still cheap alcohol abounded, and we had a fun time.  We left Stockholm on Friday night, sailed through the night and landed in Helsinki for a 6 hour whirlwind tour on Saturday.  When we arrived it was pouring with rain, however by the afternoon things cleared up and it turned into a beautiful day.  Aert and I both really liked Helsinki - we found it somehow more welcoming and interesting than Stockholm with its wide avenues, friendly faces and varied architecture.  We visited the three main churches of Helsinki; Stockmans, the largest department store in Scandinavia; took a stroll past the station to see the architecture; stopped for a drink at an Aussie bar; and generally enjoyed walking around.  6 hours later we wearily returned to the boat, where we enjoyed the afternoon sun on the top deck, along with a bunch of 50 or so Japanese tourists who surpassed all of out imagined stereotypes with how many pictures they took.  After a slightly more subdued evening (probably due to the all you can eat and drink buffet) we arrived back in Stockholm on Sunday morning.  
Coming up next… Gävle and Hälsingland

A little fun for Fathers day…  Little Johnny vs Big John… ;)

For the last two weeks we have actually (more like finally perhaps?) been having nice weather here in Sweden. Yesterday and today in particular have been close to perfect… clear blue skies and a wonderful 26°C. Apparently that’s going to be all we get though. Monday’s forecast: 11°C and raining. Tuesday: 10°C. So please, all you Aussies who think you have it tough because its only 15 °C and partly cloudy in the middle of winter, spare a thought for us. We are, I might add, still officially in summer until the 22 of September, however so far the highpoint has been ~ 3 weeks of clear skies and sun, of which only 3 or 4 days have actually made it above 25 °C. It’s a right royal ripoff I tells ya!

On an entirley unrelated topic, last night Lasse took Aert and I for dinner at GH nation in Uppsala (tip: friends who can get you into a nation without a card are very valuable). The food was absolutely awesome in taste and value; 5 courses, the highlight of which was a roasted duck breast in dark chocolate sauce with pumpkin and lentils, all for only 230 SEK (that’s about 40 AUD, which is dirt cheap for this kind of food in Sweden, and possibly anywhere). Tack så mycket Lasse!

A little birdy told me my blog was boring.  Why? Because I write long stories that are mostly uninteresting to the rest of the world, except for possibly my parents, who hear first hand about the stuff I do anyway.  Well fair comment, but in my own defense it’s hard to make interesting stories about non-existing exciting adventures.  It would be fair to say that the closest I come to exciting adventures is a lab somewhere on the other side of the world where copious amounts of alcohol are consumed in sample cleaning. 

Anyway it got me to thinking that dribbling on about nothing isn’t really my thing.  If I were to sit down over a coffee with you today and you were to ask me what I’d been up to, I’d probably reply with ‘not a lot’, which would then be punctuated by an akwardish silence, giving you time to wonder exactly how you were going to sustain this particular conversation.  In the coming minutes I would then hopefully redeem myself by discussing diverse topics of daily life, punctuating them with strange, bizarre or interesting anecdotes from my own daily life and life observations.  So, in an attempt to breathe some life into my otherwise dull and boring blog, I have decided to update this blog with small stories from my own daily life that I would probably share with you if we were to meet face to face. 

So without further ado, here’s installment 1:

America intrigued me for a number of different reasons: the materialistic society; the obsession with large, fat, petrol guzzling cars; the handsome lifeguards with their well oiled muscly bodies patrolling the beach;… the list goes on.  After arriving back in Sweden however, one of the things that has stuck most solidly in my mind was an add that was broadcast very regularly on public radio.  It wasn’t an add for fast food or furniture or a movie or a local theatre production: the add that seemed to get the number one airplay on long island station x was for ‘one day rapid detox’ - the proven cure to painlessly get you off your addiction to prescription drugs, painkillers, alchol and even heroin.  How random! Are there that many stupid Americans running around with serious drug addiction that actually believe they can be cured painlessly overnight?  I should add here that I wasn’t listening to any particularly extreme station - just your average classic-hits all-American station that pumped out Sweet Home Alabama and the like, and I also wasn’t listening at strange hours of the day - usually between 3 pm and 8 pm.  So where was this deluded mass of junkies that wanted to kick their habit badly enough to keep a dodgy quick-fix company like this in business?  It scares me to think, and it is certainly a rather large social comment that speaks for itself.

Here we are half way through August.  From the 7th - 14th we had the pleasure of Aert’s parents company (pics here). It was really great to see them and spend some together - a very welcome change from the usual Uppsala monotony.  They were kind enough to bring some nice weather to Sweden with them as well, so we took the opportunity to make a day trip to the Stockholm archipelago - specifically Vaxholm, a quaint and lively island town about an hours ferry ride from Stockholm which has a very relaxed and holiday feel about it. 

Aside from island hopping and visiting key sights in Stockholm, they also  made the tour of the obligatory sights in Uppsala: Gamla Uppsala (via St Eriks trail), the cathedral, the botanical gardens and the castle.  Despite a few heavy rain-showers, a house full (there were 13 people living here during their stay) of people mostly under 30 with varying degrees of weirdness, and the trivial yet often heated discussions Aert and I like to conduct for sport, I think they had a pretty good time. :) The only downside of their trip was on the return home when they were subject to a horror 12 hour + delay that saw them stuck in Skavsta airport (possibly the worlds smallest and most boring airport, conveniently located in the middle of nowhere)  for many hours, before being rerouted to Frankfurt sometime late in the evening and eventually driven by coach across Germeny to Dusseldorf, the original intended destination of their trip! I think they finally made it home at 5:30 am - about 12 hours after they were supposed to arrive. We hope the experience hasn’t put them off travel for good!!

The 13th of August also marked Lasse’s arrival in Sweden (and Uppsala).   He spoilt, and continues to spoil us rotten - he brought with him ~2 kg of handmade truffles from Canberra (Bruno’s truffles to be exact).  We are now also the proud owners of ~1.5 kgs of cloudberry jam (!) and were treated to home cooked moose with chanterelle mushroom sauce, potatoes and spiced lingon berry jam this evening.  Tomorrow evening its cheese tasting night… argh the gastronomical excess boggles the mind… I will have to spend many hours in the gym to compensate!!!

 Next up (if I survive all the food) is a trip to Montpellier for a conference in early September, and then Heather is coming to visit.  Ah well: with the impending arrival of autumn (it actually gets dark by 9:30 pm now :’( ) it will be nice to be busy!!

V