It’s been snowing here in Gothenburg pretty much non-stop since November, more than making up for the snowless winters of previous years. I woke up this morning to discover that my balcony was nearly filled up with snow, and this left me wondering if I should be worried about a possible collapse. All the trains coming in and out of Gothenburg have stopped. I’m not sure what it’s like in the city center but up here on Hisingen we’re getting pretty close to snowed in. Here are a few pictures taken earlier this afternoon:
The storm started yesterday and by late last night my balcony had accumulated quite a lot of snow:
By this morning my balcony was nearly filled in and the mushroom of snow on the table had doubled in height:
This is caused by the snow accumulating on the roof until the wind and the force of gravity causes it to fall:
A picnic table and a bench, almost buried:
A gazebo also nearly filled in with snow:
Here’s a short video I took of how fast the snow is coming down:
You have some time today, I see.
Your teacher’s canceled Chemistry.
My class won’t start till three-thirty.
And would it okay with me,
Since there’s some place you’d rather be,
You ask, I hope, facetiously,
Whether I would mind terribly,
If you skipped my class and left early.
I try not to take it personally,
But it’s very plain for me to see,
You don’t care about the class or me,
But I know you want me to agree,
And so I do, but quite sadly.
I keep hearing from my American friends and family how much it sucks to live in America right now and how horrible President Obama is, but I just wanted to make it clear that it’s so much worse over here.
Tomorrow I’ll have to go and see my neurologist and it will be cost me a bloody fortune: about $40. My medication runs a ridiculous $30 for a four-month supply. I just don’t know how I manage this nightmare. However, this is not just happening to me. My friend Mark recently had his very own hellish experience with the Swedish health care system, and he barely got through it alive and financially intact.
If only I were back in the US where I’d be paying thousands of dollars for the same treatment. The fact that no American insurance company will offer me coverage due to my pre-existing medical condition is just better all around. Those companies need to make money and someone like me is a huge liability. In fact, it would be much more convenient for them if I just died. What the hell is Obama thinking trying to pass a health care reform bill? Doesn’t he know that Americans care more about money than they do about peoples’ lives?
At the moment I’m lying in bed with a box of lotion Kleenex and my laptop toplap. Under normal circumstances I’d be at work, but I’m taking a few days off due to an annoyingly bad headcold. My sinuses are all congested, making both breathing and thinking somewhat difficult and painful. Still I figured I have some time to kill and it’s been nearly two months since I last updated this thing. Sorry, not much excuse for it. Lately I’ve been in a combination state of too busy and too lazy, which is admittedly a bit of a contradiction…
Anyhow, during the last two weeks of 2009 my boyfriend and I were in California visiting my family for the holidays, an experience that was stressful but mostly relaxing and fun. The main contributor to the stress factor was the fact that my suitcase was delayed for almost a week. Actually both of our suitcases didn’t show up when we arrived at LAX. I’ve traveled a great deal and my bags have been lost many times, so one might think I’d be used to it, but it’s always a sinking feeling with the carousel stops turning and your bags aren’t there, “Oh crap.” This means that the fate of your bags is now totally out of your control. After filing a report with the extremely slow-moving and unsympathetic baggage services clerk, we went straight to an In n Out Burger where two Animal Style Double Doubles helped us temporarily forget our baggage woes.
Previously, whenever my bags failed to show up on the carousel, they’d always arrive first thing in the morning or sometimes that same evening on the very next flight. Not this time, however. They couldn’t even locate our bags, let alone tell us when they’d be arriving. They could be in Siberia for all they knew (and probably were).
After checking the lost baggage website several times a day and talking to about a dozen different people on the phone, they located my boyfriend’s suitcase and delivered it on Christmas morning three days after we arrived. As momentous as this was, my bag still hadn’t been located. Just when I was beginning to think I’d never see it again, it was located and summarily delivered on Monday the 28th, six days after we first arrived.
Now that was a super-sized relief. When I handed my suitcase over to be checked onto our flight heading back to Sweden, I momentary thought, “hmm…will I ever see this bag again?” However, both our bags made with us when we arrived. Hooray for baggage claim.
Monty Python was satirical in a timeless way, which is why their Crackpot Religions sketch is (unfortunately) just as true now, if not more so, as it was back then. Now of course we have Scientology, and I cannot help but wonder what Crackpot team would have to say about that:
“We at the Church of Scientology believe that giving all of our money the church will save our souls from being scooped up and thrown into a giant volcano by the evil alien overlord Xenu.”
My curiosity having been piqued by President Obama becoming the latest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, I turned to my beloved Wikipedia to find out how many other U.S. presidents have won this prestigious award. Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 for his diplomatic work, but only two other sitting presidents have won the Peace Prize: Teddy Roosevelt in 1909 for helping to end the Russo-Japanese War, and Woodrow Wilson in 1919 for establishing the League of Nations.
While reading up about Carter, I found this great photo of all five living presidents taken in early January of 2009 before Obama’s inauguration. It reminds me of a school club photo:
The first thing I noticed is that Obama, Clinton, and Carter all look genuinely happy, while the Bushes are barely able to contain their disappointment. The photographer seems to have positioned everyone oddly. Carter is standing off to one side and looks like a dwarf compared to the rest of them. Not only does Bush the Younger have that “take the goddamn picture” look on his face, he seems to be physically repelled by Clinton. He’s also doing an “aw shucks” school boy gesture with his feet, as well as slightly upstaging Obama.
This may seem extremely undignified behavior for cat, but what we have here is an example of a cat using its cuteness powers to achieve the goal of obtaining food. Careful examination of the background indicates that this scene takes place in Japan, as evidenced by tatami mats and the small Japanese fridge: the very same size and model of fridge that I had when I lived in Japan.
The Power of Cute is especially irresistible in the Land of the Rising Sun. The cat is undoubtedly aware of this and its behavior (however humiliating) is a reflection of it.
It’s also incomprehensible. The following article discusses how many Swedish young men (aka: morons) consider becoming infected with chlamydia to be a badge of honor and an affirmation of their manhood:
Chlamydia helps young men feel more ‘manly’: Swedish study
Young men who contract sexually transmitted diseases often view their afflictions as an affirmation of their manhood, a new Swedish study shows.
Upon learning they’ve been infected with a sexually transmitted disease, some young people simply see themselves as unlucky, while others undergo a maturation process which leads them to be more careful in their sexual habits, according to midwife and University of Skövde researcher Kina Hammarlund.
But members of a third group – consisting entirely of young men – succeed in transforming their diseases into a sign of their manhood.
With other male friends slapping on the shoulders and offering encouraging comments about “success with the ladies”, young men who contract diseases such as chlamydia or genital warts can come to view their infection as a badge of honour, rather than a serious health problem.
If catching something as mild and easily treatable as the clap makes these idiots feel more like real men, then one can only imagine how contracting something lifelong and incurable (i.e.: herpes) would make them feel…
After nearly four years of living in Sweden, I’ve got that Golden Ticket: a permanent (fast lön) full-time job. I’ve heard countless times that the key to getting a permanent job in Sweden is networking and Swedish. This I can definitely confirm. Don’t even bother applying for full-time work if you can’t speak a word of Swedish and know no one. I’ve had plenty of part-time jobs since I’ve been living in Sweden, but it took me this long to learn enough Swedish and build up my network of contacts in order to be considered for permanent full-time work.
The school that hired me was one at which I’d previously applied and interviewed. This was back in ‘07, and they were a bit wary about my foreign qualifications. They weren’t sure whether I could teach anything else besides English, so that meant a full-time position was out of the question. In the end they did offer me couple of English classes – basically a 30% teaching position – so I ended up turning it down and taking a position with E4K. This time however, I was much more attractive to them as a potential employee. In the two years since I’d previously applied, I’d had my American university education evaluated by Sweden’s Higher Education Authority (Högskoleverket). This took about five months to be processed, but it was well worth it because it definitively proved that I was fully-qualified to teach not only English, but a number of other subjects as well.
Monday was my first day at the International IT College of Sweden, (called INIT College for short). I can tell right away that this is going to be challenging and interesting. It’s called a “college” but it’s not a college in the American sense of the word. It’s an upper-secondary school, which is sort of a high school and junior college combined. The Swedish word for this level of study is “gymnasium,” but it has nothing to do with working out. To add to the confusion there is something in Sweden called “högskola” (high school) but that is the Swedish word for university.
So (to recap) in Sweden:
Gymnasium = high school
High School = college/university
INIT college is a small private international school that emphasizes IT and English, but they offer the standard gymnasium curriculum. There are about 200 students and about a dozen teachers. They have most of the course syllabi already written, so that should save me a lot of work, but next week’s going to be really busy. On Monday and Tuesday is the first planning conference of the year. We have to be there bright-eyed and ready to go at 8:00 in the morning. I have no idea how I’m going to stay awake. Conferences aren’t the most stimulating events and Miss Kitten is not a morning person.
