Sports week

This week is Sports Week in Stockholm (and maybe all of Sweden?). Kids have off from school to go skiing, skating, hiking, etc.

No sports for me until the weekend, unless patch clamping is a sport.

Actually, I did go to the gym today. The gym is pretty small so most people go to the classes. The music at the classes cracks me up. Today, for example, some Swedish song, followed by Big Pimpin', immediately followed by It's Gonna Be Me (NSYNC) - strange mix! Some of the aerobics classes play a lot of hip hop songs - definitely not the US radio edits. The lyrics aren't censored at all (and they aren't for the Swedish radio either). I think it's kind of funny, especially because no one else seems to notice.

Skating in Hellasgården

I tested out my new ice skates on a lake today in Hellasgården. I went with a group that ended up being all Australians and Italians (except for me, of course).

The weather today is what I thought winters in Stockholm would be like - cold (-10 to -5 degrees C), windy, and snowy. Not the type of weather that I really like to be outside in. But, if I'm going to be outside in it, I may as well be skating.

Hellasgården is really nice. They had a 3 kilometer track cleared on the ice for skating. There were also a lot of people cross-country skiing and kids being dragged on sleds. This is me skating (well holding still for the picture) on the lake.Most people were skating with Nordic long distance skates. They have thinner blades than figure skates, are much longer in the front, and don't have a toe pick. Only 5 of us ended up skating and no one else brought skates. You could only rent Nordic skates. I was a bit worried about being able to keep up with the others using my figure skates. But, I managed just fine. Here's Alison and Matteo on Nordic skates. (They were actually trying to push each other over so one would be on the ground when the picture was snapped - but neither succeeded.)
After one lap, half of the group had had enough. The rest of us continued skating for a while. We had worked up an appetite. They were selling hot dogs on stick so that you could cook your own. We warmed up by the fire while warming up our late lunch.

Fettisdagen

Today is Fettisdagen (or Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday). We had semla at our department coffee break today. That's a semla (or fettisdagbulle) in the picture. It's a rather plain bun with whipped cream and almond paste or marzipan in the middle, and sugar on top. Some people put it in a dish of warm milk. Traditionally, semla was eaten only on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. However, Sweden hasn't been Catholic for a really long time so now they eat semla every Tuesday between today and Easter. Like anything else that has been commercialized, you can buy semla starting over a month before Fettisdagen. The Swedes eat a lot of these today. They are pretty good but, in my opinion, one a week is more than enough.

Ice skates

I finally got ice skates! I originally wanted traditional white figure skates. However, they were tough to find this late in the season. Where the traditional figure skates are nice for rink skating, I decided my new "boot" skates make more sense for skating on lakes and the sea. They'll keep my feet much warmer! They are figure skates, although they more closely resemble hockey skates.

It's been above freezing since Friday so I didn't get to try my new skates out today. I'm too paranoid about falling through the ice, even if I had a "Nordic ice safety kit" (which includes 2 spikes with handles, a whistle, and a rope, all worn around one's neck). Maybe next weekend!

Mendel may be right, after all

I've been struggling with transgenic mice since after Christmas. I should have a 1 in 4 chance of getting my desired mouse, which will have a green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the cells I'm interested in. For those who this will mean anything to, I'm crossing a floxed stop GFP heterozygote with a het for my gene of interest driving cre. Right now, I can't use homozygotes to up my odds, for a variety of reasons. For those who the last two sentences were lost on, I need two different genes to be expressed at the same time to see green cells. Each gene has a 1 in 2 chance of being expressed and the genes are independently regulated, so the probability of having both is 1/4.

Anyway, the first 2 weeks I was 0 for 13 in being able to see GFP in my cells. I didn't believe it, my advisor didn't believe it, my collaborator who created the cre mouse didn't believe it - clearly, I was doing something wrong. Nope, PCR confirmed, I'm just that unlucky! (PCR is a way to amplify specific pieces of DNA. I'm using to see whether or not my genes are actually present in the DNA of each of my mice. As I said before, I need 2 genes to be present at the same time and not 1 of my 13 had both.) A guy in the lab next door overheard me talking to someone in my lab about my PCR results and he said that he was convinced that Mendel was wrong when he was starting his project. So, that became my explanation - Mendel was wrong.

This past week, my luck changed - 4 out of 8 of my mice had green cells! So, for those counting at home, that means I'm 4/21 overall, so far. You can't get much closer to 1/4 than that. So, I guess Mendel was right after all!

City Hall Reception

Tonight the City of Stockholm invited all international students and visiting researchers, who have come to Stockholm in the past year (all 1200 of us!), to a reception at Stadshuset (City Hall). For a Swedish event, it wasn't very well organized (even the Germans make fun of the rules, promptness, and organization of the Swedes) but it was a pleasant evening and really nice of the City of Stockholm.

The reception was in the Blue Hall, which is where the Nobel Prize dinner is held. The Blue Hall was never painted blue. It's all brick. Eventually, when they let us into the Blue Hall, they gave us each a glass of wine. Then, the "Lord Mayor of Stockholm" welcomed us to the city and offered a toast. Next, some seemingly random college student on university exchange from Stanford spoke (we don't know why and couldn't really hear her because there was so much talking). Then, we had a buffet dinner.

They also let us wander into the Gold Room. This is a huge hall with mosaics made with tiny gold tiles. It's super gaudy but impressive. I found a little piece of home on the wall.
Other random notes:
- I've had a bit of blogger's/writer's block lately. I guess that's because I've fallen into more of a normal routine. Everything I do and every place I go isn't new anymore. Where going to a friend's place for dinner or meeting people out at a bar is fun, it's not too interesting to read about (especially over and over again!). However, I've come up with several topics in the past few days so my blogging will pick back up again. Keep checking back.
- My parents got me a new camera for my birthday. The lens of my current camera retracts for no reason, even when the lens cap is open - it's a real pain. I did all of the model and pricing research for the new camera and went to pick it up last weekend but it was out of stock. Hopefully, I'll get it this weekend - and then there will be more pictures on the blog too!
- As of this past Monday, I am no longer able to send or receive emails from my emory.edu or learnlink accounts. I guess they have finally cut me off! I'm frantically downloading my messages off of learnlink while I can still access them (since I'm guess it won't be long before I can't log in at all). If you don't have my new address, it's the same as the old, except through gmail.

Deep Freeze

This week has been the coldest since I've been here. Highs have been between -5 and -10 Celcius (mid-teens to mid-20s Farenheit). I've even been wearing a hat and gloves. (I hate wearing hats and gloves but I hate not being able to feel my ears and fingers more.) It has been really sunny, though, which is a change from how grey it has been.

I went out walking around my neighborhood for a bit today. I went down by the water, which is finally frozen. I've been told about how, in the winter, you can walk/skate/ski on the ice to go from one island to another. However, this winter has been unusually warm. I saw a few people skating today. (I'm not sure how they decide how far they can go out and be sure it's frozen enough.) It looked like fun so I went in search of ice skates. They are on sale everywhere (for ~$30 which is ridiculously cheap by Swedish standards; a regular pair of Nike or Adidas women's sneakers costs $150-$200). I went to 4 stores and then called 3 and they only had really small and really big sizes left. Oh well. My hunt continues!

Friday Curry and Saturday Jazz and Soul

The first Friday of every month, Jesper (from my lab) organizes Friday Curry. He picks a restaurant and invites everyone that works around us. This Friday, 24 of us went to a Jamacian restaurant called Back A Yard. It was a small place that only seats 40 people so we basically took over. We were at 3 tables of 8, which was nice for conversation. We filled the tables up in the order we arrived (more or less) so I had the opportunity to talk to a few people who I don't know that well. It was nice and the food was good. I had lamb curry and banana cake with rum raisin ice cream.

Last night I went to Jazzclub Fasching with a bunch of people from my department. The jazz trio was pretty famous in Stockholm so the place was crowded. I'm not a huge jazz fan but I enjoyed the show. After the jazz show, the place converts to a club that opens at midnight. I actually went to this club when I was here in August for a conference and I know I described the club with the weird, unexpected music to many of you. It was the same music this Saturday but it made more sense this time - because I knew ahead of time that it was "50s-60s Soul Music". I wouldn't classify all of the songs played in that category but there was definitely no unz-unz-unz or techo versions of top 40 songs. Anyway, it was kinda funny to be in a club super crowded with 20- and 30-somethings dancing to songs like Heat Wave, Hit the Road Jack, Disco Inferno (which I thought was 70s disco?), Do You Love Me, Mustang Sally, etc.