Small world... but you wouldn't want to paint it.

Update: False alarm. I sent her some pics of Sammy and turns out he's not her cousin. Still wierd, though, as it means there are two people with almost exactly the same life stories... Maybe something to do with the CIA, eh K??

I just bought a TV, and what's the first thing I see when I turn it on? A travel doco about Queensland. All the accents sounded really wierd, like caricatures of Aussie accents. I haven't been gone that long! They were Queeeenslaanders, I guess.

I Went to a club last night to give the booty a long-overdue shake. Feeling a bit optional now.

The club was called X3M. This little piece of alphanumeric trickery works in Swedish because 3 is pronounced "tree", so you get "XTREEM". It also works in English if you have a speech impediment.

I met a girl there from Vasa, Finland, who was in Umeå just for the weekend. She has a cousin who lived in Sydney until recently, but has headed back to Finland for army service, who is really into scuba diving, whose name is Sammy.

Either our beloved dive-club president has some kind of doppleganger, or I just had one of those head-spinning fluke small-world dealos. Either way, it's pretty freaky. And either way, I have a new friend in Finland.

My first real night out on the town in a small town in Sweden, and I meet the cousin of a buddy from Australia. What are the odds?

Sammy joins me in Sweden in a few weeks, en route to Finland. Plundera mate!

Sammy, El Presidente and political prisoner, dreams of freedom.
Behind him, Gay Dodgy Steve looks to the heavens, dreaming of a different kind of freedom.

Say hello to Mr Angry.

Everyone currently in Europe, I recommend this website. Basically, it scans all the airlines for cheap flights all over the place, and shows you a graph of when they are.

Now, look at this pic. Then look at it again from across the room.
Mr Angry and Miss Calm should change places.



A practical lesson in high and low pass spatial filters!

This one, however, stays angry from all distances:

Cold blooded with a mechanical heart, standin like the tinman

So, something about my work here. Basically, the plan is to transform myself into some kind of marvellous mechanical man, and kathunk around the the countryside with my robotic minions conquering evil and seducing women.

This will be my left arm:





This will be my right arm:





This is an early prototype of my mechanical leg:



Prototype eye:


And, just to keep my information theorists foes perplexed, I will have inverted pendulum mounted on my head:



But this is no ordinary inverted pendulum, it's a rotary inverted pendulum!
(in fact, in that picture it's not even inverted.)

p.s. I honestly don't know whose foot it was in that picture. It's not mine, because I can be seen clearly in the background. Cok or B? Westside?

Christmas Trees! Enough for Everyone!

UPDATE: I just spoke to my mum & dad with skype. Absolutely perfect quality! And completely free! I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up.



There's certainly been a quick change in the Umeå scenery over the last couple of days. It's been hovering around -1 to -6 degrees mostly, with snow descending as it pleases. Boots and tires alike are slipping and sliding over ice-glazed asphalt. Speaking of which, I got myself some chunk-arse winter boots, feel's like I'm wearing downhill ski boots.

Unfortunately later this week it's supposed to go back up to +8 or 9 and start raining :(

p.s. whenever I chat to Guro on MSN, there's a little line up the top saying:
Guro may not respond because her status is 'out to lunch'
Damn, that's one perceptive computer program!

By popular demand

for blog posts featuring sexier men, I propose a new game show called "Whose foot is that??"

First contestant: Tim Bear!



(Doesn't the impression that he's just about to pour a bowl of Bundy just top off the perfect photo?)

And here's a pic of the chocolate bar I got from my secret admirer yesterday. At least, I think it's chocolate??



Jeepers Creepers. Some people are never satisfied! Here's Toby:



Go Moron is slowly transitioning into some sort of erotic picture request service, and I'm not sure I like it. (I'm not sure I don't like it, either.)

So sunday sat in the saturday sun.

UPDATE: Oooh oooh, somebody left a chocky bar in my mailbox! Nobody else had one in theirs, I think I have a secret admirer!

On the downside, my department is 90% male, and most of the remainder are older married women. But I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth!

The unholy trinity
Guro, Sølvi and Yours Truly in Jervis Bay.
Happy times in warmer climes.

Just Chatted to both G&S, aswell as Øyvind, on MSN. Looks like Guro is indeed coming northside for Christmas/NYE. As suspected, my Christmas will be in Bergen, with a surrogate family provided by Sølvi, then hook up with Guro and Kjetil for NYE.

Kjetil (on the right) with a Northwest Island local.

Øyvind is going to a swedish ski resort with a bunch of his chums. When I chatted with him he was very hungover, so perhaps this is a good picture of him:

Other possibilities for NYE would be Oslo, or Guro's 16 bedroom mountain cabin in Rondane:

Guro also solved the tissue mystery. Well, not so much solved, as added to. Apparently to get tissues you have to go to a pharmacy. Why?
"Oh, we're not into THOSE tissues, actually. More like...... napkins"
Yer... crazy Norwegians.

At least I know where to buy them now.

Not much else happening here, except that I'm working long hours on weekends again learning about my new job, and finishing journal papers from PhD stuff.

p.s., the previous promised post about what I'm actually working on here will come soon. (An entire planet exhales a sigh of relief.)

ORANGE JUICE, MAN! AWESOME!

More update: a few pix from today.
Sunset and car-light trails, looking down towards Umeå town from the university
and
No books yet, so what else to do with a bookshelf?
and
View out my window Friday morn. The little white splotches are snow!

Update: Well, it's officially cold here. I woke up this morning and looked out the window, and it was snowing! YAY! It's not even winter. In fact it's more than a month until winter!

Also, brett has trumped my carton with this doozy from Canada:



Its only fault is the absence of cocktail flags

This post is about domestic life in Sweden. The next will be about work life.

Clearly, the best orange juice in Sweden:



Confusingly, "apelsin" seems to mean orange.

Much to my relief, I've found a supermarket near my apartment that sells fresh coriander and basil leaves. I still haven't tracked down lemongrass, galangal or kaffir lime leaves though, so I'm glad I smuggled some of those through customs from England. This supermarket also sells little swedish cocktail flags (as seen in the pic). I've bought about 200 of them, and started putting them all around my apartment.

Swedes have really climbed on-board the kebab bandwagon as a tasty way to fill the belly. But it's all pretty optional, it's Ali-Baba-esque, not the Arax/Erciyes/Fatimas level of quality that Sydney-siders enjoy. It's all shaved from the mysterious cylindrical kebab-animal, no succulant chunks of lamb grilled on a shish. And they don't seem to have homous or tabouli, just lettuce tomato onion and some bland sauce.

There's got to be a market for authentic kebebs! They don't know what they're missing! Perhaps if I still go to Pakistan next year (the area we were going to go to has been fairly levelled by recent earth rumblings) I can pick up a few techniques and bring em back to wide acclaim.

Also, not to sound too racist here, but there's something inherently hilarious about Turks and Lebs* with Swedish accents. "Floopy floopy floopy falafel!".

* - can't say wogs, cuz that's really offensive in England, and actually means black people.

Now here's a mystery, which perhaps one of my Norwegian readers can help clear up (I know you're out there). It seems to be impossible to buy tissues in Sweden, I can't find them anywhere in the supermarket! Furthermore, none of the locals ever seem to blow their noses, but mine's going gangbusters. I'm using napkins and paper towels, and it's starting to chafe. Do all Nordic babies undergo a ritual nose-ectomy of some sort shortly after birth? Do I just have a weak girly nose? It's only October fer chrissakes! Maybe once my entire face freezes solid there'll be no more mucus flow. I'll keep you posted.

I should mention that the picture above is slightly doctored from the one below:



Although "God Morgon" is in fact the correct spelling of the phrase pronounced "Go Moron" so I don't feel that guilty about it (the 'd' and 'g' are silent). Also, I'm a doctor now, so I should be able to doctor all the images I like.

Also, perhaps I'll mention that the post title is in reference to an American fitness freak we saw in Israel who had just jogged to the top of Masada and back down again, and was thrilled to bits to see the orange juice stand at the bottom.

Mysterious hydraulic overdrip Mars administer

I'm now a legitimate human being in the eyes of the Swedes. Yesterday, after a long struggle, hostilities finally ended between my forces (aka the forces of good) and the various embassies, consulates, and migration departments that I was up against (aka the forces of evil). My demands have been met, I now have work and residence permits.

This meant a trip back to London. In the few days I'd been away, Jo had doubled the guard on the perimeter and rebuilt most of the outer walls. But I lay in wait with 27 of my most trusted men, watching the ducks and sparrows til their flown arcs spell'd victory, then stormed the battlements and retook the castle keep. It was from this base that the final blow was dealt to the withering Swedish forces who still stood against me.

Two major battles won, I coffee'd with KT, but to write here what we discussed there would be so circular and self-referential that it could be damaging to the logic circuits in any computers used to read it. Afterwards I went to the Tate Modern, which was by turns enjoyable and perplexing. Best was Pollock's Summertime 9A (a glimpse is shown above). They had little headset things and, along with various rediculously inane bits of commentary, you could listen to some jazz from JP's personal collection while sitting in front of it. Quite the shiznit! I guess Chia, at least, would love it.

Now back in Umeå, all is jubbly.

Some entertainment c/o Jo:
XTREME to tha XTREME, this is hardcore: Speed climbing without a rope.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that guy has since climbed his way to heaven, or fallen his way to hell, I don't know enough about his ethical life to say for sure which.
But he ain't with us.

Need to get a bear out of a tree, and all you've got is a tranquilizer gun and a trampoline? We've all been there, here's how to fix it.

Umeå

Umeå, Sweden, is a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down)






As mentioned before, more pix in the gallery.

Key Facts about Umeå:

• Beaches to Birches: From Sydney, the city of beaches, to Umeå, known as "the city of birches", having more 3000 of these noble silvery trees lining its every street. Did you know: For a brief period in the late 19th century, it was also known as "the city of devastating city-wide infernos"!
• Young at heart: There are 100,000 residents of Umeå, including 30,000 university students. The average age is 37. It is said that there are enough pubs in Umeå that a quarter of its population could go to the pub simultaneously and have somewhere to sit.
• Egalitarian: Strangely, every key in the department is the same. So, for example, my key opens the Director's office. All the offices have those little whiteboards out the front for people to leave messages. I enjoy writing such messages as "The tests came back positive, why won't you return my calls?"
• Yummy: Swedes are very conscious of the benefits of insulation, and there seems to be a policy here of fattening everyone up before winter. That means: lots of free cakes at office morning teas!
• Multicultural: Whilst Sweden as a whole (and even Umeå) is nowhere near as multicultural as Sydney, the control group here has two Swedes, two Russians, a Bolivian, and a German, and now an Aussie!
  

Anyway, that's enough of that. Everyone here is very friendly, and I'm settling in quite nicely. Umeå actually reminds me quite a lot of Princeton (lived there with the fam for a year when I was about 12-13). Small leafy university town, big wooden houses, cold weather (tho it will get much colder here than it did there). It's a lot more like Princeton than Sydney, anyway.

The Bolivian took me out on the town last night, he's a kool dude, and he seems to have the whole town wrapped around his little finger. He has kerazy friends, including two Swedes with perfect English accents, one London, and one Liverpool. The father of the first is actually a Londoner, but the faux-liverpudlian seems to have derived his english entirely from Beatles records, and he worships John Lennon.

True to the scandinavian way, we had a couple of beers (not aquavits) at a guy's house before heading out, as a cheap and dirty beer will cost about 10 aussie bucks at a pub. The german was supposed to join us, but called us up, and this was on speakerphone, and said (thick bouncy german accent):

I do not think I can come. I am now lying on ze bed, it is because I ate so much and now I cannot move.

I am not making that up!

Just spoke to Soelvi and Kjetil on the electronic telephone machine. Looks like I will spend Christmas with Soelvi's family in Bergen, on the west coast of Norway:

and then we might have a sort of Aussie/Norwegian reunion somewhere for NYE, with S, Kjetil, Guro and Ingvild (if they come up this way) and the Divin' Eivins (at least Oyvind, maybe not Eivind as he lives in BF Idaho). Awesome!
There's a big music festival on in Trondheim at the moment, which I might try to duck over for a bit of, depending on various factors.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to London to grab my work and residence permits (finally!!) then its all official, and I can get bank accounts and blah de blah.

That's all for now!
xo

Stockholm

UPDATE: Some Umeå pix in the gallery now. The fellas here are taking me out on the town tonight, so if I survive that there'll be more to say tomorrow.

Lots of images in this post. For the full cinematic experience, see larger copies at the pix link ----->
Or click on the smaller images in this blog entry.

Here's the view from the plane as I left London:




I counted three different layers of clouds as we ascended. This, like three-ply toilet paper, provides the galanouranophobic* Londoners with the comfort and safety they desire.

(*- a word I just invented meaning "fear of blue skies")

Just two hours later I caught my first glimpse of Sweden. It's very rural! Here is a view out the same window taken just a couple minutes before we touched down in Stockholm:




In my many travels, I've seen many different "Welcome to X, enjoy your stay" type signs, but this is by far the best:




(Note the faint writing at the bottom: Easy to find, easy to use, easy to choose)
Sweet!

Having a couple of hours to kill in Stockholm before my flight to Umeå, I headed for the harbour/old city area. It's a very pretty city, here's some pix from around town:









The next is of The Svenska Akademien, which is (I think) where the Nobel prizes are given out. Note the picture of an early Yahoo Serious impersonator out the front. I should have gone inside, maybe they've got something about (shameless name-dropping time) our family friend Jo



A square near the akademien



A chinese restaurant with the loudest coloured chairs I've ever seen. I'm sure people who eat there are constantly saying "Sorry, say again... I can't hear you over this furniture!"



Anyway, time to head back to the airport. Here's the little propeller plane that took me to my new home, Umeå:



What I found when I arrived will be the subject of the next enticing post on the internationally acclaimed travelogue journal Go Moron!

Let's just say this: I'm so completely surrounded by beautiful women that I'm starting to get bored by it all!

Wait, bored isn't the word I'm looking for... aroused! That's it!

End of Part One: "The Journey".

Well, I'm finally here. Sitting in my new office, after my first night's sleep in my new apartment, after my first morning tea with my new boss.

Admittedly, I don't actually have a work permit yet, I'm here on a tourist entry. Although it has been approved (Murphy's Law was in action, it was approved just hours after I flew out of London) so I will have to pop back to London next week some time to grab it. I've developed a very strong love/hate relationship with pointless beurocracy, except without the love part.

Time to conclude my London story. Where was I?

Oh yeah, boat ride up the Thames with Katie and Jo. We saw some restored 15th century play equipment at the tower of london:



Jo and I climbed the three hundred and something steps of the monument to the great fire, Katie was feeling a bit lazy and sat at the bottom. Actually, Katie's a real doctor now, and has been working night shift at a pediatrics hospital in London, and was more jetlagged than me.

The steps:



Jo and me at the top (what is it with english girls and blinking on camera?)



More pix of tower bridge, and st pauls, etc at my photo site.

On Sunday Jo and James took me rock climbing in Sussex (beautiful rolling hills and little villages, all very english looking). Twas lots of fun, and I got to show off my Xtreme ozzie climbing skillz.

Here's a pic of one of Jo's friends, who I believe was also called James:


Met up with Hal for a beer that night. He's getting right into the London life, seeing lots of bands, and he's got all sorts of plans and ideas in mind. I think he'll be here a while!

Monday I went to the National Gallery, Lovely Jubbly, and that night I cooked dinner for Jo&James.

For the past few years I've assisted Chai and Prince and Uncle in cooking various meals, and I think something has rubbed off on me! The doctor gave me some topical cream, though, and asked me not to stand so close to him.

Anyway, back to the dinner. I cooked a Tom Yum Goong, and a Pla Rad Prik (my attempt at the famous In Chan fish dish). I think they came off pretty well. Not quite In Chan, or even Chai, but pretty good! Although I confused the hell out of the woman at Tesco (Brit equivalent of Franklins, they don't have asian grocery stores there) asking for galangal and kaffir lime leaves. "Never even heard of 'em, love", she said in a voice straight out of Eastenders.

Speaking of Thai food, that reminds me: this is funny, and it mentions Tom Yum! (from Welcher and Welcher, i.e. Shaun Micallef):
So You've Been Sentenced to Life in a Thai Prison?
(Jo, you should really get your chambers to set up a site like that one!)

Anyway, next morning, bright and early, spring in my step, I set off for Sweden, from whence I am typing. Look out for a new post coming soon with my first impressions of this beautiful country, but for now, here's a one-word preview: phwoar!

Fun Ahoy!

That's what the sign at the Cutty Sark said, and Arrgh, she was right!

Went for a big walking tour of London yesterday with Jo and Katie H. (The sisters we toured Egypt and Jordan with). They're exactly the same. It's amazing how quickly you can slot back into a mind-frame you haven't been in for years. We could have been climbing Mt Sinai, or exploring Petra. Same little lightly barbed comments flying every-which-way! Twas very nice.

We started at Greenwich, a short walk from Katie's apartment. Here we are at the cutty sark:



And Jo&Katie about time climb the hill to the old observatory (where the prime meridian is):



View of Greenwich from the observatory:



Then we took a boat ride up the Thames to Tower Bridge. A strange little german kid took a very strong liking to Jo, clearly preferring her to his own mother. He kept offering her leaves he'd found on the ground (awww):



Hmm, this post is to be continued. I'm off to meet Hal D. for a beer.

Tweeds and Wellies

UPDATE: Flight to Sweden postponed til Tuesday. Hopefully everything will be done by then! Think I might head to the National Gallery today, and then probe the embassy some more in the arvo.

Further update: Just heard from one of my contacts at Umea uni. She's going to call the immigration board there and see if they can hurry things up a bit. Apparently they had a big weekend planned for me, which I'm going to miss! :-(

Even Further update: You have to laugh, really. The secretary of my department in Sweden just called the migration board. The woman who is handling my application is on holiday at the moment. The guy who has taken on her work while she's away is also away today, for some reason.

As an aussie, I can enter Sweden for up to 3 months as a tourist, but then when my work/residence permits are approved, I will have to come back to London to collect them!

To keep a happy face on things, here's some tasteful humour from The Onion:
America's Obese: A Food Source For America's Even More Obese?

Actually, on the upside, I found out that I'm already being payed, just to hang around in London. That is, once my work permits are approved, I'll be back-payed to 1st of October. Which means I was actually being payed to be at Dickman's wedding!


Dinner and pub with Katie T, Jo H, and her boyo James last night. Chinese, twas v. nice, and not too pricey if you forget to convert from pounds to dollars.

Also, general street-walking looking for Englishy things.

Kt makes a very English phone call:

(note the friendly welcoming eyebrows)

I do some very English mailing:



(In case you can't read the sign, it says "FIRST CLASS AND ABROAD". How did they know I'd be standing there when they put in the post box???)

Jo and Katie gesture wildly at me and a very Swedish sign, expertly framed by James.



After seeing KT to her bus stop, J,J and I (JJ) walked back to our tube station via some english night sites, e.g. Buckingham Palace, Flag's up so Liz is home:



We were going to invite ourselves in for dessert, and query Liz as to why I, who still look up to her as a head of state, am forced into the "other" line in customs, whereas anyone from the EU gets special treatment. We ultimately chose not to drop in, although the logic why escapes me at the moment.

Shortly after that photo was taken, we saw something hilarious. Still has me chuckling. I fear, however, that it may be the kind of thing that is comic gold if you were there, but not so funny if you just read about it. So, dear readers, you'll have to concentrate your imagination and picture it as though you were there. Those of you without any imagination just trust me, it was gold - truly champagne comedy.

As I said, just around the corner from Liz's house, walking up past Charles' house and where Liz's mum used to live, we saw two small-but-expertly-groomed dogs tearing around the corner like greyhounds, yapping and yapping, dragging unhanded leads behind them, and zooming up the street. Jo and I thought they were corgies, james thought terriers. 2 out of 3 wins. Moments after this, a posh old man in full-body tweeds and knee-high wellies came around the corner doing that walk people do when they want to get somewhere quickly, but don't want to look like they're hurrying, sorta like the walking at the olympics but with less obvious elbow thrusting. I said to him "They went thataway!" indicating roughly the corgies' trajectories, and he said "Oh, I know, I know" in the poshest voice I've heard since I last watched To The Manor Born, and that's longer than you may think. Tweed-man was clearly humiliated beyond belief, and to have such cheek from an antipodean must have made his blood boil.

Oh how we laughed!

My gallery

This will be the home for photos from my trip:
http://www.pbase.com/ianm_esquire

So far: dick's wedding, some from the plane, and some from London around the Swedish Embassy (near Baker St).

Lots more soon!

Some pix.

UPDATED UPDATE: Ba Bow (price is right rejection sound). Visa is not ready yet, so flight to Sweden will have to be delayed. I'm starting to get the shits with all this, but on the upside, I get to spend more time with Jo, and Kt, and also Egypt Katie, who I should be able to see this weekend.

Update: I've just been delt a lesson in the dangers of assumption-making!
I called the Swedish Embassy this morning, in order to sort out my work permit business so I can actually go to Sweden on Friday as planned. There was a recorded message providing some basic information and saying if you want to check on an application, call back during office hours, between 2 and 3pm.

Pretty short office hours, I thought, but hey, why not go to the embassy at 2 when it opens, and maybe I can get it all sorted, and get the actual visa all in one hit.

Turns out, 2-3pm is phone office hours. In person office hours are 9:00-12:30. After lunch, the entire visa department staff go across the road to a different office (which must be locked with one of those time-delay seals they use on servo safes) where they answer phones. It's absolutely impossible for me to go over and actually talk to one of them.

I called them from a payphone nearby, and the girl I spoke to couldn't access my file because the application was from a different location, so I have to call back later this arvo.

Well kids, I'm now at Jo's house in Canada Water, in London. She's just run off to court in the wig and superhero cape, and left me alone with an internet connection (the fool!).

So, what better to do than to upload some pix from the wedding and flight?
(it's a rhetorical question)

B-Roq: our plane passed almost over Krakow at about 1 am this morning. I thought to myself: somewhere down there, Barry's painting the town red. Either that, or partying in a debaucherous fashion.

For followers of my inflight drama: the vegan moved seats after Singapore, which left me with the drunk spitter. Thankfully, after singing along to a few songs on the in-flight entertainment system, he went to sleep, and so did I.

Anyway, pix time.

Me and Dick, the groom:


Fro's new modelling career is really going well!
Dean, mandy, alex, fro and duke. (More your style, sjc?)


Richard and Anita, the happy couple:
pete, gus, lex, fro, mandy, dean. Hanging out at the penthouse pad between wedding and reception

next day, hanging with gus and liz at st kilda

Some clouds I recently flew over:


Sunset, just before the stopover in singapore

My first dawn in the northern hemisphere. (Well, apart from all the other times I've been here). A very grey English cloudy dawn, on the distinctly above-ground London Underground.