The Earth is Hiring

Karlskrona, Sweden

"You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring.  The earth couldn't afford to send recruiters or limos to your school.  It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating.  Take the hint.  And here's the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is no possible in the time requires.  Don't be put off by the people who know what is not possible.  Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done." - Paul Hawken, American ennvironmentalist, 2009 Commencement Address

Last week I attended the World Student Environmental Summit in Karlskrona, Sweden.  It's about 6 hours by train south of Uppsala, and I had the amazing opportunity to represent UBC at this conference. 

Hosted at the Blekinge Institute of Technology, it was five days jam-packed with activities, speakers, workshops, discussions, and awesome people.  The theme of this year's summit was "Conserve, Create, and Collaborate."  Each day we focused on one specific theme.  We even went to an organic farm and did some composting and planting.  There were just about 100 delegates from just about every continent, which made the experience even more valuable.  Hearing from students who are being directly affected by climate change in India, while speaking with students in European countries on their current sustainability projects happening at their schools, was pretty cool.  

Though the topics were kept fairly general and broad, we had the chance to have good discussions on subjects such as climate change adaptation, sustainable product design, and social media.  One topic that caught my eye (and ears) was media and the news. First of all, I had no idea that the word "news" is derived from North, East, West, and South! Secondly, I had never considered so much the role of the government in controlling what is leaked by the media.  In this workshop we discussed the importance of recurrent headlines and how they stack up to real world problems. For example, the death of Michael Jackson versus the death of victims of Afghanistan bombings.  They were touchy topics, but what was really interesting was when our speaker said that she believes that the main decisive factor influencing what is announced in the newspaper and what is not basically comes down to the colour of the skin and the race (and perhaps affluence).

In some ways, I can agree, since we were pointed to the fact that we rarely hear about the deaths of malnourished children in African countries, but if there were children dying in Canada, we would probably hear about it straight away.  However, I think it's unfair to point race out as the single decisive factor.

We also delved into how quickly people are willing to believe the news, depending on the source and person. For example, we were told by Obama that bin Laden is dead.  So the whole world (well a lot of the world) believes him.  But as one student from Pakistan pointed out, the leader in Pakistan announced the death of bin Laden four years ago, though no one even blinked an eye at that time.  

Additionally, we talked about how in news, the media may not necessarily be lying to the public, but may be hiding the truth (two different things).  According to our speaker, this is because of government-controlled media.  If the government sponsors and funds the newspaper, then it has every right to dictate what the newspaper writes and what it leaves out.  

There was a panel of speakers on the last day, featuring various environmental experts from various backgrounds and countries (Canada, Bangladesh, India, Sweden, Holland, etc).  The topic was "Creating sustainable futures: fighting a losing battle?"  Starting off rather pessimistically, we looked at how the world is failing to feed an increasing world population, how people in all corners of the world are losing their homes, starving to death, and not getting the aid they need from the international community.  We talked about how we have become such a consumer society, relying on Iphones and the latest gadgets in order to make us happy. Honestly, it was probably the most depressing discussion I'd heard in a while.

But then, we turned the discussion around. One student asked if there are any projects that are successful in the world.  The speakers then discussed the promising future that holds for us.  It turns out that it's not completely hopeless, and that we've got some great things happening at the moment, and even better things to come.  

And finally, a student asked for word of advice from each panel speaker.  Here's what they said:

Try to do good where you are.  Instead of worrying about going somewhere else, focus on where you are and the help that your area needs first.

Have a goal.

Be aware of the future that you want to have

Think forward! How should the future look?  Then, create the present.

If the environment is hostile to us, we should be flexible and versatile, ready to work with it.

Don't worry about predictions, just start and do - and in fast, small steps.

Build the world!

Karl-Henrik Robert, a leading cancer scientist in Sweden and amazing motivational speaker on sustainability, told us this:

Boundaries and limits simply feed innovation.  Don't be afraid if you feel stuck or limited. This only encourages creativity and you will find a way to get around it all.  Believe in yourself, and good things will happen.

So there is hope!  I left this talk and the conference with such positive thinking.  Sometimes it's daunting when you consider all the problems happening in this world, and how helpless it feels to be just one person and seemingly incapable of making chance.  But this summit re-energized me, and reminded me why I chose the field that I'm in.  

In all, a great five days in sunny Southern Sweden, and somehow those short days made me feel more ready than ever for what's to come in the future.  After all, the Earth is hiring, and we'd better be ready for new tasks at hand.

Swenglish and funny names

Last week, I was asked what the Swedish accent sounds like to a non-Swedish person.  An interesting question..

The majority of Swedes have very good English.  It's so good that sometimes you forget you're even Sweden and not somewhere like the U.K.  But as with any country where English is not its first language, there's often more than one opportunity to smile when speaking with the Swedes.

Swenglish.   Swedish English.  Swenglish.  Svengelska?

Swedish is a musical language.  There are many intonations, and lots of ups and downs when Swedes speak.    For example, I would simple say "sofa," placing a slight more emphasis on "so."  But when you hear this same words spoken by a Swede, it's like "so-oh-fa!"  There's more of an up and down movement of the sound, and just sounds funny and happy.  Seriously, even the most boring lecturer in class, so long as he or she has a heavy-ish accent, will make your day. I promise.  It's like the Ikea commercial guy, but a bit less dramatic (and probably less annoying).

Then there's the choice of words.  The trouble comes when Swedes try to translate from Swedish directly to English. This will often work, but not always.

"I went to a party at the union last night; it was so funny"  In Swedish, fun and funny use the same word (roligt)

"Katina, I'm going to learn you Swedish."  The words "learn" and "teach" use the same word in Swedish, so you hear this a lot.  "I'll learn you!"  Somehow, there's a bit of a charm when hearing this, so I prefer to not correct this mistake.

Finally, pronunciation.  In Swedish, "k" is often pronounced as "shhh."  And in spelling, k in Swedish becomes c in English (for instance, korridor becomes corridor, Kanada becomes Canada).  So often you'll hear them say, "Yes, the candles from Ikea were so sheep," or, "I love shocolate eggs!"  or, "There were only tree of us at school today."

I also wanted to share what I've learned about names in Sweden.  They choose no-frills surnames, these Swedes.  Andersson, Pettersson, Mikaelsson, Johansson.  Sons of Anders, Petter, and Mikael, Johan.  No wonder there are so many "ssons."  A long time ago, girls were called "dotter" instead of "sson."  Last names are also nature words.  Ström is a stream, Berg is mountain, and Lund is grove.  Now think back to all of your favourite NHL players:  Lindström, Forsberg ("River Mountain"), Naslund.  Imagine if I were Swedish; my name could be Katina Stansson.

There is a significant population of people of Swedish ancestry, due to a massive immigration, 1.3 million, in the 19th and 20th centuries (yes, I wikipedia'd this).  And all that happened to their surnames were slight changes, including changing the double s to a single s.  So if you know anyone called Anderson, Peterson, Michaelson, Johnson, they're probably of Swedish ancestry. But if it's Andersen or Olsen (e instead of o), then it's Danish.

I hope you found that informative.  Or at least interesting.  Also, I only have one month left here.  Time flies when you're having fun, right?

Honey, Honey

As my final 30 days in this country are quickly approaching, Sverige is just getting better and better.  For one thing, the weather has been perfect.  The sun has been shining nearly all week, it's 22 degrees, and with the lake just 20 minutes bike ride away (with ice cream conveniently located on the way), life is pretty good.

Rosebergs Slott

Gigantic Viking stone!

Last weekend, a group of us rented cars and toured around Lake Mälaren.  A large handful of castles are scattered throughout the countryside, all overlooking the water.  We ended up seeing three castles, and touring one of them (Skokloster Slott).  It was kind of cool to visit the castles, which all basically resembled large mansions or chateaux.  Skokloster had some interesting history to it and houses many unique artifacts, including North American Native Indian pieces/weapons.  We also managed to find a giant ancient Viking rune stone in the middle of some nature reserve near Eskilstuna (note the beheaded person in the stone's drawing).

Just me and my bumblebee

This week, has been positively buzzing with excitement and new adventures.  I'm taking an awesome course on bees and pollination.  It only runs during the month of May, so every day we are jam-packed with lectures, lab exercises, and excursions.  So far, we've spent a large chunk of our time outside - no complaints from my end.  

Bees are something amazing. They're the only insect that produces food for human consumption, and I've quickly developed a huge amount of respect for them.  This course focuses a lot on identification of bee species, anatomy and genetics, and practical experience with honeybees.  SLU has its own apiary just across the road from campus, and this is called "Bigården" (Bee Garden).  The school bought a few colonies of honeybees for us to observe and learn from.  On our first day at the apiary, I was totally amazed at how close we were to the bees, and how brilliants these insects really are.

Here's a quick lowdown of honeybees:  there exist three types of honeybees.  There is the queen bee, whose sole job is to mate and produce thousands of eggs every day.  Then there's the drone, the male bees, whose jobs are to mate and provide sperm for the queen bee.  Finally, there are the workers, the females, who literally work (clean the cells in the comb, perform construction work, search for food).  Females are the only bees with stingers.

BZZZZ!!!

It's a sad life for a bee. For one, the queen bee just lays eggs until she dies or is replaced by a new queen.  The drones die in a sad way; since they don't perform any work, they are deemed "worthless" by the rest of the colony and are kicked out of the colony as winter approaches.  For the workers, it's a waste of resources to feed drones that don't contribute to the colony's well-being.  My instructor has even seen drones trying to hide from the workers' view, only to be dragged away and out of the colony!  If they don't die in this fashion, they'll die upon mating with the queen bee.  When the drone enters the queen, she twists her body and so the drone's penis breaks off and the he dies.  The next drone comes, pulls out the broken penis from her body, and repeats.  And as for the workers, they literally work to death. Sometimes they die mid-flight, trying to bring food back to the colony.  Nice life as a bee, huh?

The queen bee is pretty terrifying. Once she is born, she looks for other potential queen bee cells (unborn), finds them, and then kills them with her stinger before they can hatch.  

Bees have some cool ways of communicating.  Honeybees dance - seriously!  They have a bunch of different dances that serve various purposes.  The waggle dance is done when a worker wants to tell the other workers about a source of food that she believes they should collect nectar and pollen from.  She then points her body in a specific direction (based on the direction of the sun and the line of gravity).  

mmmmm...!

In the apiary, we got to see how the bees are working, and also identify the workers from the drones, and the queen bee from all of the other honeybees.  We also got taste sticky, drippy, warm, and oh-so-sweet honey fresh from the comb (my favourite part).  A few days ago, we gave a try at queen bee rearing.  Essentially, we wanted to initiate the development of a new queen bee.  So what we had to do was remove all combs from the colony that contained worker (female) larvae, and also remove the present queen bee.  We move the present queen bee to a new colony.  So now, we had a colony with no more female cells and no more queen.  This disrupted the colony and you could actually see, within minutes, the bees acting agitated and trying to figure out what was happening; they could sense that the queen bee was missing.  And without a queen bee to lay eggs, the colony is in big trouble!

Scooping out the larve. Can't have shaky hands here!

Don't freak out, though. It was our turn, us students, to "create" our own queen bee.  We did this by forming our own wax cells on the comb, and then scooping out worker larvae and transferring them to the wax cells. The larvae are tiny and very delicate, so I think I killed a few with my extremely shaky hands (at least now I know for sure I could never be a surgeon).  We then placed this comb back into the colony.  Again, within minutes, the honeybees were changing their behaviour; now, they were waving their wings and acting "happy" again.  Yay! 

Bee hunters

Woohoo, new bee species!  It doesn't take much to excite us.

We also went bee hunting with an entomologist, trudging through campus and also to other parts of Uppsala to find various species of bumblebees.  It's amazing that there are so many different colours and sizes and types of bees that I've never noticed until now.  There's even one with a red spot on the body, called "Hemorrhoid Bee." Haha.

I could probably write even more about bees cause they're just so so so cool little buggers.  But I think it's time to finish this post since it's quite late and it's time for some shut eye!

We Are All Canucks

Playoff news travels quickly, especially in the birth country of the Sedins, Samuelsson, and Edler.  While shopping at the supermarket last week, I heard the radio announcer talk about "Vancouver," "Daniel Sedin," and "Henrik Sedin."  Unfortunately, I was the only one in the store who seemed to care about the latest hockey news from "america."

I usually talk to Anton about the latest hockey news, since he seems like one of the only corridor mates who keeps up with the NHL.  Mostly I tell him how great the Sedins are doing, the latest game day results, etc.  Today, though, I happened to mention to him how hockey fever has caught on back home, and how it's generally accepted as everyday fashion to wear one's Canucks jersey to school or to town.  I told him how I brought my jersey with me in the suitcase, thinking that I'd wear it here at least one time (which so far hasn't happened).  He just smiled and shook his head, "That would never work here.  That's crossing the line, being so superficial."  

I think that's where Canadian and Swedish cultures do differ; to us in Vancouver (or Calgary or Toronto or Montreal), we take pride in our "team," our country, or anything that makes us feel as if we belong or gives us confidence and self-esteem.  We proudly wear our #1, #14, and #17 jerseys when we go shopping, paint our faces green and blue, and immediately update our statuses after the latest game.  When my corridor mate mentioned the word superficial, I can understand why.

The way I understand it, for Swedes, the thought of showing off one's pride and loyalty to a team is too much.  Isn't it enough to cheer on the team without having to mention it on facebook, wearing the team colours - just to prove that you've been keeping up with the games, that you're a "true fan"? 

This leads me to introduce Jantelagen to you.  The Jante Law can perhaps define the attitude and behaviours found in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.  

1. Don't think you're anything special.
2. Don't think you're as good as us.
3. Don't think you're smarter than us.
4. Don't convince yourself that you're better than us.
5. Don't think you know more than us.
6. Don't think you are more important than us.
7. Don't think you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think anyone cares about you.
10. Don't think you can teach us anything.

Perhaps this law seems a bit excessive, but this also helps us to understand how to behave when conversing with Swedes.  Less outward bragging and showing off; it won't impress them!

At the end of the day, I won't be shy in proclaiming my love for the boys.  I'll still wear my earrings religiously on every game day, but maybe I'll keep my jersey in the closet ;)

Sleepless in Sweden

I've had to re-write the first sentence in this posting about ten times, because I honestly don't know where to start and what to write about. So much stuff has happened for the past few weeks.  Here's what's been happening lately:

Easter dress-up, and perhaps Le Tigre?

The week before Easter holidays we had an Easter egg hunt + dinner with the corridor.  In Sweden, kids dress up as witches and go door-to-door, asking for chocolate/candy.  Sounds like another holiday that happens in October..so, Elvira (dressed full out as a witch) and I organized an Easter egg hunt for my buddies, which sent them running all over campus and alongside the river.  It was a good workout, followed by a chocolate binge.  

Feathery centrepieces + Sarka's lovely eggs

Then, my corridor invited all of our friends for a traditional dinner, which was disappointingly the exact same as Christmas julbord (though perhaps there were more boiled eggs than normal).  Sarka brought over lovely hand-crafted decorated eggs, which added decoration to our very Swedish centrepiece (bright feathers and twigs).  My friends got to try pickled herring for their first time - and most likely for their last time, judging by their reactions.

Eastern Europe - not too shabby

I had 10 days of Easter break, which led Christina, Kim and I on a Baltic tour - with hit up Riga, Tallinn, Helsinki, and St. Petersburg.  Riga and Tallinn were equally impressive; old cobblestone streets, damaged buildings from Soviet times, and views of Old Town from the top of fabulous churches.  Helsinki was probably the least exciting of these four places, aside from our visit to Suomenlinna Fortress, and island about 15 minutes from the city centre.   Throughout our time in the Baltics, we walked through streets that took us back to historical times, in ways that walking the streets of Vancouver will never do.  All I can say, after 10 days on this trip, is that Eastern Europe is really, really cool.

Deliciousness

And the food - oh, the food!  My tastebuds have been revived (without breaking the wallet) thanks to this tour.  I had fried dumplings, cheese ice cream, and rustic breads in Riga, a giant Estonian pancake in Tallinn, gravlax in Helsinki, and the most amazing cabbage pies (piroshky) in St. Petersburg - so good that we ate these pies everyday.  Other foods worth mentioning were pig knuckle and borscht.  Chili vodka in Russia was surprisingly good.  It was a bit depressing in a culinary sense, returning to the land of boiled potatoes and sausage and meatballs.

I've been trying to motivate myself to focus in my final period of studies here, with the Biology and Production of Agricultural Plants.  I didn't read the syllabus carefully enough to realize that this course focuses on genetic production of plants, not actual agricultural practices.  I suppose in a way this is a good way for me to discover where my true interests lie, and now I know it's definitely not plant genetics.  Also, a few weeks ago, I mailed in my application for special voting ballot, but haven't received anything back in the mail yet.  This upsets me a bit since I've been preaching to so many others about the importance of voicing one's opinion and voting, but now it looks like I won't be very active at the polls this time round.

Craziness and chaos at Ekonomikum

I finally caught up on my sleep last Thursday, but before I could have a real rest, it was time to gear up for Valborg!  

Valborg is a spring festival in Sweden, celebrated on the last day of April and probably the biggest party in Uppsala of the year. Think of UBC block party + a summer music festival, times 10.  I've been told that Uppsala hosts the biggest celebration is Sweden.  Friday marked Kvalborg - the day before Valborg.  We had a bbq at Gälbo, and somehow, rather spontaneously, our corridor ended up having our first korridor party of the year.  It was interesting for me and my friends, since we were the only non-Swedes at the party.  So it was my first Swedish corridor party.  I've learned over this year that intoxicated Swedes are friendly ones, and that these parties involve a lot of skol and singing Eurovision-type Swedish songs.  In the end, our party wasn't bad at all.

Champagne and strawberries to kick off Valborg day

Valborg day was a bit of a blur.  I woke up at 7:30 in the morning to bike over to Racka and meet Jan, Christina, Kim, and her cousin Danielle.  We followed Swedish Valborg tradition by having a champagnefrukost, a breakfast of champagne and strawberries.  You already get tipsy in the early morning.  

Cool boats

Then at 10 we watched the amazing boat race, which I guess you could consider to be the Storm the Wall event in Uppsala.  Teams of four are given a semi-sturdy "boat" (foamy plank that doesn't sink in water) and they build the rest of the boat and decorate it.  The teams race (or more show off their boats and fall/jump into the water) along the Fyris River in town.  In the afternoon, we headed to Ekonomikum Park, close to Racka.  Pretty much everyone goes here for a picnic or bbq lunch and drinks more.  At 3 pm, the Champagne Race happens.  Everyone gathers at Carolina Rediviva, which is Uppsala University's library.  Students or alumni wave their sailor-like hats that they receive when they graduate, and sing a song that they all seem to know.  The champagne race happens when students go down the hill to the student nations, where they pop open champagne bottles and spray each other - I didn't do this, though.

Visit with Jacq!

The rest of the day is more drinking, hanging out at Ekonomikum, then bbq at night, and parties in corridors or at the nations.  Jacq from U21 2010 came to Uppsala for the day so to took a Valborg break (and a break from the chilly wind) and catch up over a nice fika at Cafe Linne.  At night I ended up staying in Racka with Jan and Christina, and their corridor mates.  This morning I woke up to the sounds of a giant truck cleaning the broken glass-strewn streets. 

Today is May 1st.  May Day.  I have just over a month left here in Sweden, which kind of scares me.