God Jul

It’s tradition in both Sweden and Denmark to watch Donald Duck cartoons on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, or so I’m told. Christmas is celebrated here on the 24^th.

I’m off to New York tomorrow for two weeks to visit my family for the holidays. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. I'm flying through Heathrow so keep your fingers crossed that I make it through the fog.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
God Jul och Gott Nytt År!

Shortest Day of the Year

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year - with 6 hours, 3 minutes, and 40 seconds of daylight. Sunrise is at 8:45am and sunset is at 2:48pm.

The darkness really doesn't bother me that much during the week. However, it messes me up on the weekends, especially on Sundays. I have been going into Stockholm every weekend so far. I've been out most Saturday nights so I usually sleep in, have breakfast, and I don't make it out until 11 or 12 (leaving only a few hours of daylight). On Sundays, everything closes at 4pm. I get back to my apartment and make dinner (because I didn't have lunch and am hungry). Then, I start to figure out what I'm going to do before I go to bed. But, then I realize, it's only 5:30! (It only feels like 11:30.) I think this has happened every Sunday so far!

I got a DVD player (for Christmas) last weekend (country code specificity on laptops is lame!) and the movie rental store 10 min away is open until 10pm. Now, Sunday night is movie night. If you rent any good movies, let me know. If you know what the Swedish title is (or can tell me what the jacket looks like), that would help too!

Let It Snow!

Everyone around here (except for me and a handful of others who have lived in warm places) has been complaining that it doesn't feel like Christmas because there's no snow. It's been the warmest December in Stockholm, since they've been keeping records. It did finally snow today for the first time since I've been here. (Stockholm had it's first snowfall the week before I arrived.) I didn't realize it snowed today until I left work. And, no pictures because I didn't have my camera with me. Don't worry, you're not missing anything! We didn't get much. It's only about an inch deep, enough to coat the pavement and partially cover the grass. I'm sure you'll be sick of snow in Stockholm pictures by March! It's a good thing I got boots for Christmas this past weekend!

Stockholm Lights

Both Friday and Saturday nights I was at "spontaneous" parties and dinners with people from my department. Carolina and Henrick had invited a few people to their place for dinner after work, before going out Friday night. However, the invite got spread to more like a few dozen people. So, we picked up some party supplies on our way over to their apartment - and we ended up partying there, rather than going out. Fairly late on Friday night, Kathy told those of us that were left at the party that she wanted to cook dinner for all of us on Saturday. Line and Leif offered their house for the dinner. Although Kathy didn't remember her dinner plan, she, along with Line and Leif, made the dinner party happen.

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday afternoons shopping. I exchanged my broken red star (new one in the picture - you can't tell because of the flash, but it's lit up). These stars are popular Christmas decorations in Sweden. I like them so I bought two (the other one is with the first paragraph). They brighten up my apartment. I'll probably leave them up year round (or until I get tired of them). The other common decoration in Sweden is the electric candles that I have a picture of below. Every house has at least one of these (my landlady has one) and many business and our lab have these in every window. I'm told that they are displayed during Advent. In addition to these, a lot of shops and restaurants have real candles outside, on either side of their doorway (not on the crowded city streets but those off the main roads and those around my place). I'm not sure whether all of these lights/candles are for Christmas or because of the darkness. I guess I'll see in January.

Another Christmas Party

Our department's Christmas party was on Tuesday. A different group/lab organizes the festivities every year. This year's group put a lot of work into it.

The evening began at 5:30 with a "welcoming drink". Then we were divided up into teams (about a dozen teams of 10-12 people) - by picking random neuro-diseases out of a bucket and grouping with others "having the same disease". We were then sent to different competition stations. At the first one we went to, there was a plastic bag containing mouse pellets. After holding the bag, we had to guess how much the mouse chow weighed. At the second station, we were timed to see how fast we could fill in a box of yellow pipet tips. Third was the "rat race". We were each given a windup rat that we placed on a starting line. The distance of the rat that went the furthest from the starting line was recorded. (This wasn't very far since they basically went in circles.) Lastly, each person on the team blew up a balloon and stood in a line. The first person turned and hugged the second person with the balloon between them until the balloon popped. This continued down the line and they kept track of how long it took for all the balloons to pop.

Next up was the dinner, which was a Julbord, in the lunchroom. (The picture above is from the dinner.) We were seated at the tables by team. Each table had a bottle of snaps, a box of wine, and cans of beer. Additionally, there was a song booklet with the Swedish snaps songs. Since there were ~125 people in the room, the singing (and, therefore, snaps drinking) was initiated quite often. Throughout the dinner, there were other competitions. In one, we had to match a list of fun facts to the corresponding person on the party organizing committee. In another, they showed powerpoint slides of the department administrators' legs - and we had to guess who they belonged to. The last and most painful competition was held while we were eating dessert - the kareoke competition!

For the kareoke competition, each team had to get up an perform a song. My team was first and we chose Take a Chance on Me because we felt an ABBA song would be appropriate. It was horrible! It would have been hilarious had the song been 1 minute long but it was just cruel to make everyone suffer through the entire thing! I thought that it couldn't get any worse - but I was wrong! Other songs included Satisfaction, Dancing Queen, Come Fly with Me, Yellow Submarine, Viva Las Vegas, a current Swedish pop song (that's really bad but really catchy), a couple of traditional Swedish songs, and a few others that I can't remember.

The dinner and singing were finished around 10-10:30ish. A good portion of the group stayed to continue the party. I left around 1am and there was still a group going strong (including a few who were limbo-ing). I didn't make it to work until around 10am the next day. However, people were still drifting in as late as 1pm - all in time for the Lucia celebration at 3pm, of course!

I apologize for the lack of pictures from the evening. I was too involved in the competitions to stand back and take pictures in the beginning. My camera also took a nasty fall at some point, relatively early on, in the night and ended up in a few pieces. (I was able to put it -mostly- back together the next day, though.)

Sankta Lucia Fest

Today is St. Lucy's Day. I explained some of the history of this in a previous post (Typical Tuesday) so I'm not going to repeat it - especially since the story still isn't exactly clear to me.

All of the new people in the department are required to be in the Luciatorg (literally = Lucia train) which we've been practicing for weeks now. The picture to the right is the beginning of the procession, with our Lucia on the right and her maids behind her. I was also one of the maids (see pic below). In addition to Lucia and her maids, there were starboys, gingerbread men, and Santa's helpers (all can be seen in pictures below). As we processed in, we sang the Sankta Lucia song. Then we sang a "welcome song" (not only in Swedish but we repeated it in the languages of everyone in the torg - English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Italian, and I'm probably missing one or 2). After that we sang a song about gingerbread men and a serious Christmas carol. The 3 guys in the train, who are all serious singers, did another song in 3 part harmony (it was hardcore and impressive). We finished the show with a song about Santa's helpers and then exited singing the Lucia song again. All of the songs were in Swedish so the papers we're holding in the pictures are the lyrics.

I have no idea what I'm looking at. I think I was looking for my lab because I gave them my camera. Clearly, I was totally off!

These are the starboys. Yes, their cone hats are actually meeting posters! They were hilarious because 2/3 are very tall and with the cones, they couldn't go through doorways and they kept getting stuck on the ceiling.

the gingerbread man and women

While we did this, everyone else in the department enjoyed Luciabulle (saffron and raisin buns - pic below), pepperkakor (gingersnaps), and glogg (mulled wine).

The major twist to this year's Luciatorg was that most of the torg and audience was hungover from the department Christmas party last night. This is getting long and the party last night was eventful enough for it's own post. To be continued........

Science Sunday

Today has been relatively science-free for me. However, there's been a lot of science around Stockholm today. First, the Nobel Prizes are being awarded today. I did just watch the ceremony (on TV) but, aside from the introductions, it was all in Swedish - and my Swedish isn't that good! Second, many have been following the current NASA mission very closely. I don't think Swedes normally pay much attention to NASA but that all changed recently. This morning, the spaceship Discovery included astronaut Christer Fuglesang, the first Swede to be launched into space. The picture I have above I took in front of the Culture Museum today. Every newscast I've seen over the past week or two has included something about NASA, the Discovery, and/or Fuglesang. The news media was very upset when the mission was scrapped earlier in the week. They have been building up to it for so long. However, they were able to come through today with coverage of the actual launch.

Nobel Week

This week is Nobel Week. Every year, the Nobel prizes are awarded on December 10th. All of the Nobel prizes, with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize are given out in Stockholm. The Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded by a committee at the Karolinska Institute (members of which include profs in my department). So, needless to say, this is a pretty big deal here.

Andrew Fire and Craig Mello received (or will receive on Sunday) the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of siRNA. I have to admit that I'm not all that knowledgable on the topic. The groundbreaking paper only came out 8 years ago (in 1998). Small interference RNA (siRNA) is double stranded RNA that can be introduced to interfere with the transcription/translation so that DNA never becomes protein. (I'm sure Lisa will correct me on this!) In the furture, siRNA may be used to silence certain DNA sequences to prevent diseases, tumors, etc. This is a long way off, but is possible.

Okay, back to today......Most of the Nobel lectures were today. The Physiology/Medicine lectures were held two buildings away. So, with most of my lab, I lined up over an hour ahead of time to get into the lecture. Believe it or not, we were not early enough! We were about 15 people behind the last people admiitted into the lecture hall! Members of the Mello family were behind us and said something when they closed it off. People around us commented that clearly, they were family since they were American (as judged by their accents). Kathy (the other American postdoc in my lab) and I joked that we should claim to be family too. But, we didn't. Most of my lab left at that point but a few of us went to watch in another lecture hall, where the audio/video was piped in.

I have to admit that I expected a bit more - and I was looking forward to this post, all about the awesome Nobel lectures. Unfortunately, I wasn't nearly as impressed as I expected to be. [Let me precede my commentary by saying that I don't think that my opinions of the lectures should mitigate the importance of the work they performed.] The lectures started off with the president of the KI. The grad student sitting next to me was reciting the beginning of the president's intro line by line before she said it. Apparently, she's given the same EXACT intro for at least the past 3 years! The Nobel lectures themselves received mixed reviews. Andy Fire gave the first lecture, which I thought was pretty good. I thought he did a good job of giving the background to his field and the previous work leading up to the discovery - and, of course, his work. (I also thought his acknowledgements were cute. After giving all of the normal ones, he put up a slide of ~6-8 pt font, that you couldn't really read, of all of the people he felt, in some way, contributed to his successes.) Craig Mello's lecture was next and I felt his was more of a lesson of how not to give a Nobel lecture. Maybe my opinion is a bit harsh but most people in my lecture hall left in the middle of his lecture (and you can judge for yourself at www.nobelprize.org).

From my experience today, I've come up with the do NOTs -and some dos so it's not all negative- of giving a Nobel lecture (if applicable, thank me at the end of your Nobel lecture - or better yet, invite me to the ceremony and gala banquet!):
1. Don't try too hard to be funny - your effort will show more than the humor you intend.
2. Don't reference American pop culture. And, even worse, if you do, don't spend 5 minutes explaining it! Those who don't know, won't get it. Those (especially, those non-Americans) who understand the reference, will resent the explanation.
3. If you are given 45 minutes, don't talk for 75 minutes (no joke, this really happened today!). Even the scientists expecting a 45 min lecture aren't paying attention after 40 min, forget the non-scientists.
4. Make your slides simple and, more importantly, read-able.
5. Make your talk coherent, make it logical, and tell a story.
6. Know which slide is next. Don't make it look like you made the talk on the plane.
7. Focus your talk on your groundbreaking, Nobel-winning experiments.
8. If you must use a cutesy analogy, make sure it works and keep referencing it through your entire talk. Don't mention it at the beginning, with no explanation, and then refer back to it an hour later.
9. Don't reference the chemistry and physics Nobel lectures (presented earlier in the day) 2 million times because most of the audience missed them.
10. Thank your family. I saw at least 20-30 of them, spanning 3 generations, go into the lecture hall. Stockholm is very far from the US. If they took the time to travel that far, they deserve an acknowledgement.

Again, if you think my assessment is harsh or unfair, you can judge for yourself. You can get the lectures on the site I mentioned above and others. Also, people's expectations (mine included) were high, given that both lecturers are Americans (English is their native language) and they are both young - and, hello, it's the Nobel Prize.

Julbord

I just got back from Christmas party #2 (and yes, it's only 12/5!). Tonight was the spinal cord group's Christmas party. We went to a nice restaurant for a Swedish Julbord (literal translation = Christmas table). I'm assuming it's the Christmas version of the smorgasbord - because that's what it looked like.

Luckily, I was sitting near the Swedish and Finnish girls from my lab so they explained how to attack the buffet. You are suppose to take food in courses. Of course, the group is very international - so where most followed the traditional meal, it was followed pretty loosely. The order of courses is cold fish, hot fish, cold meat, hot meat, and then dessert. You can have more than one round of anything and you could combine rounds - but meat and fish aren't suppose to be on the same plate. Basically, rather than cramming a ridiculous amount of food onto one plate, you are expected to go up several times (in the newspaper today, there was an article on Julbords and it said 7 trips to the buffet is acceptable).

I didn't make 7 trips, only 4. I took my cold fish and hot fish together. The cold fish was mostly herring (there were around a dozen different sauces that the herring were marinated it), but there were also little shrimp and caviar served on hard-boiled eggs. The only hot fish they had was salmon but they had 3 or 4 different versions, in addition to cold salmon (marinated and smoked). Next, I had cold meats and veggies. Cold meats were basically cold cuts. Everything else was labeled except for the cold meats, which were most in need of signs. Aside from ham, I think I had reindeer, deer, elk, and a few mystery meats. Veggies included peas, asparagus, and carrots. My third round was the main dinner, which was, literally, meat and potatoes - which included Swedish meatballs and new potatoes, of course. The main course was good but I thought it was the least impressive part of the spread, probably because it was more ordinary. Lastly, I squeezed in some chocolate mouse and candies for dessert. Everything was great but I'm full even thinking about it.

I almost forgot......Before the dinner, we decorated the Christmas tree in our corridor. Actually, it was decorated by the time most of us got there. But, we got to admire the tree while eating gingersnaps and drinking glogg.

Scenery pictures for Mom

My mom said that she likes seeing the scenery pictures posted on my blog. So, I took some more this weekend.Yesterday, I went to Skansen with Maaike and Remco. Skansen is "an open air museum" (but I'd call it a restoration village?) and they had a traditional Swedish Christmas market there this weekend. I didn't buy anything at the market, just "window shopped". There were a bunch of booths selling smoked meats, cheeses, gingerbread, jams, and some crafts. We wandered through the restoration village and the Scandinavian section (elks, reindeer, etc). It got cold during the day so I didn't take any pictures there (my hands were cold and I was wearing big, bulky gloves). However, I was warmed up by a cup of coffee indoors after we were done at Skansen. Rather than take the bus, I walked from Skansen to the metro and took these pictures on my way.

I took this from a high point at Skansen. So, no, the hut isn't a typical Swedish apartment.

Skansen is on an island. I took this on the bridge that connects the island to downtown.

random Christmas lights

The Opera House

'Tis the season.......

......for Christmas parties. Yes, the Christmas parties have begun - already! We had our lab Christmas party on Friday. My advisor and his wife invited the lab over for a Danish/Swedish "Christmas dinner". The first course of the dinner was herring, which was put on homemade bread, with a cream-based sauce on top. Then, we had ham, potatoes, and salads for the main course. Lastly, we had cheeses with bread and crackers.

Throughout the meal, it is Swedish tradition for everyone to have a snaps glass filled in front of them at all times. A snaps glass looks like a combination of a shot glass and a cordial glass. Snaps (or aquavit) is a very strong alcohol, usually distilled from potatoes. At anytime during the dinner, someone can raise their glass and sing a Swedish drinking song - after which, everyone drinks! Luckily, only about half of the group knew Swedish drinking songs. But, they kept us drinking until the snaps was gone!After the meal, we played a gift-giving dice game. We each had to bring a gift that was a max of 20 SEK (< $3 US). So, the gifts were, um, interesting. The gift is kind of like the white elphant game so the gifts change hands many times. One of the most sought after was "the fart book". Another gift was the "cool sunglasses".
We all stuck around for a while after the dinner and gifts for some drunken conversation, some arm wrestling (I don't know how that got started!), and to sober up enough to be able to walk down several flights on a spiral staircase.