Short nights

I was at a party at a friend's place last night. I took these pictures from her 4th floor balcony.

10pm last night:

3am this morning:The longest day of the year is still a month away!

Pay Day Weekend

Everyone in Sweden gets paid on the 25th of the month. I guess this makes sense since all bills, rent, etc are due by the 1st.

Since everyone gets paid on the same day, it's actually something that you have to think about when making weekend plans. Restaurants, bars, clubs, movie theaters, and so on are all much more crowded on the weekend right after pay day than any other weekend. This weekend is a pay day weekend so plans to fight the crowds to see the Pirate movie and to stand in a long line to get into a club have been scrapped - I'll be at parties at friends' apartments instead.

Local wildlife

Earlier this week, it was really swampy out - super humid, raining on and off and cool enough that the humidity made it chilly. Monday morning as I was leaving my apartment, there was a loud crunch under my foot. I looked down and there were a bunch of little snails (or pieces of little snails). Watching where I was stepping more closely, as I cut through a park to get to the trolley, I saw a really big snail with a beautiful shell. I didn't have my camera with me then. But, this is the one I saw outside of my apartment when I got home.

Then, on Wednesday, when I was coming home from work, I saw a deer in my neighbor's front yard. Now, keep in mind, I don't live in back woods Sweden, I live in the Stockholm suburbs. It would be like seeing a wild deer in any place I've lived before this (in the suburbs of NY, Boston, or Atlanta) but the houses here are on smaller plots of land and so they are closer together. There are no wooded areas around where I live so I have no idea where this deer came from. It was one of those cartoon moments where I walked right past it (it was no further than 10 feet away from me) and I had to take a few steps backwards after it registered, to see if I did see what I think I saw.

Swedish Schlager

The Swedes are big into schlager music. I would describe schlager as overdone pop songs that almost seem like they were made more for a musical than for radio. After I gave this explanation to someone, a friend laughed and pointed out that the most famous Swedish schlager group is ABBA.

Last night was the Eurovision song contest. I'll explain this in a minute but first I'm going to back up.

Leading up to last night, Sweden had Melodifestivalen. Basically, a person or group performs an original song on live television and then viewers vote for their favorites, American Idol style. Actually several of the entries were from former Swedish Idol contestants. I don't know how many entries they started with but it went on for a couple of months - with first rounds, quarter finals, semifinals, etc. I caught bits and pieces of some of these. Most of the songs were schlager - and super catchy in that you only need to hear the chorus once or twice and it's stuck in your head. The ones that made the final round are also continuously played on the radio, in commericals, in shopping malls, everywhere. I could sing the chorus to at least a dozen of these (and parts of verses of some of the ones in English) right now, if I had to. The winner of the Swedish Melodifestivalen was a song called "The Worrying Kind" by The Ark. Here's a YouTube video of it, if you're interested.

This song was Sweden's entry into Eurovision. I think there are somewhere around 50 countries that have entries. Over the past week this has been cut down to 24 finalists, which performed last night. This is huge here - it's the longest running tv show (over 50 years) and it draws the largest tv audience (excluding sporting events) in Europe. Previous winners include ABBA (Sweden; mid-70s) and Celine Dion (Switzerland; late 80s). It was interesting to watch. Some the acts were just horrible - whether it be lack of talent or really cheese factor. Others were entertaining. Sweden was picked to be a favorite but ended up finishing in 18th place. Serbia won - and, in my opinion, deserved to. The Ukranian song came in 2nd and it was one of the most entertaining, in a weird sort of way.

Science Update

I've been a posting slacker again but I've had an eventful two weeks lab/science-wise so that's kept me pretty busy.

Last week, I did a ton of experiments. My transgenic mice haven't really been cooperating for the past few months (see Mendel was wrong post). However, last week 7 out of 9 of my mice had the genes I need. The odds are 1 in 4 so Mendel was wrong, again, but at least it was in my favor this time! The electrophys was also going really well so I got a lot of nice recordings.

This past week, I've been analyzing data and processing tissue. I had filled the cells I was recording from so that I could see their morphology. A few of them came out very well and were beautiful. I'd post a picture of mine if I could but the scopes I was using this week didn't have cameras on them. (The pic above isn't mine. I think it's actually a hippocampal neuron.)

To top off the past two weeks, on Friday, I found out that I got my grant! This means, among other things, that I'll be in Stockholm through the summer of 2009. Also, I'll be in San Diego in November for the conference, where I hope to catch up with most of the Atlanta neuro crowd.

Valborg

Yesterday was Valborg. But, like all Swedish holidays, the celebration was the night before. Valborg night is celebrated in a bunch of different European countries. It's named after a saint but the Swedish traditions all relate to the pagan celebrations. It celebrates the beginning of spring and getting rid of evil (witches, in particular).

We had a barbecue with leftovers from Kathy's party on Monday. It was really cold out - about 5 Celsius (which is low 40s F) - but we grilled outside anyway. Here are some of the girls (freezing!).After the barbecue, a large group of us went to a bonfire in a park (see picture above). There were choirs singing songs and a guy telling traditional stories. We were warming ourselves by the fire.Yesterday was Labor Day in Sweden. I think every political party (there are 8 or 9 of them) has a rally and/or parade. I didn't check any of these out. I had labwork to do and it was too cold out to spend the entire afternoon outside.

Weekend Parties

Kathy, the other American postdoc in my lab, is leaving Sweden this week to start a new postdoc in Chicago. She threw herself a big going away party Friday night. She had it in the lunchroom at work so the location was really convenient. The weather was nice so she barbecued at the area right outside the lunchroom. There were probably about 50-60 people there. It was great time.

I stayed at the party until the end and then helped put things away. I ended up getting home around 5:30am (well after sunrise). I haven’t done that in a long time and I did pay the next day! I wish I had party pictures but I forgot to bring my camera. One of Kathy’s friends set up a video camera so that people could leave her messages throughout the evening. I’m sure it’s hilarious! And I’ll post clips, if possible.

I had another party to go to on Saturday. I woke up sometime mid-afternoon on Saturday and felt pretty lame and useless. However, I did tell Chus that I’d go to his party so I went. Chus’ party was smaller but I think everyone there was at Kathy’s the night before. He came around offering drinks as we were arriving. Just about everyone took water or Coke. So, I wasn’t the only person feeling old and lame. And, we had a good time laughing at how pathetic we all are.

Back to Kathy’s party…I was eating lunch with Kathy and a few others yesterday and one of the professors came up to Kathy to thank her for the party and to tell her that it was a great night that ended horribly. Why ended horribly? Well, apparently, he went to his office to take a nap (or pass out as he was last seen doing tequila shots and demonstrating the Finnish tango). He woke up and went to the bathroom, however, he left his wallet with his ID card in his office. [Note: Every corridor in our building locks down on both sides. The bathrooms (and stairs/elevators) are between corridors.] There was a couch in on of the lobbies upstairs that he slept for a few hours on. When he woke up at 7am, he decided that he needed to go home. So, he took his socks off (I guess his shoes were in his office) and walked home (how far? I don’t know). We’ve been laughing about that since we heard the story.