This is why I'm glad I'm still on the med school listserve

I got this email the other day and can't stop laughing about it.


------------------
Hi guys,

Somehow the pigs feet got left in the fridge instead of the freezer in the green academy.  When you open the fridge the smell is extremely strong disgusting.  I emailed Dana Zink about this and the janitors know, but I don't know when it will be cleaned up.

Please don't open the fridges (I know the pigs feet are in the fridge on the left, I don't know about the right).

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True story.

Is it possible to sprain both ankles in a single fall?

Yes, yes it is.

I had a really unlucky fall while bouldering last night.  C thinks that since I went through the first 25 years of my life without a single injury, I am merely making up for lost time.

Getting carried around everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) and having everything served to me whilst I lie in bed has been great (for the first 5 minutes) don't get me wrong, but by 3:30PM today I was googling how long it will take before I can escort myself to the bathroom.

Funny thing is, not many people sprain both ankles in a single fall...in fact I found a thread asking whether or not it was even possible to do so.  There was only one answer posted:

Not unless you are Chuck Norris.

More windows, less shopping :0)

Swedish Stores

We have...weather

Weekday - a store that I think has gotten better over the years, or at least better organized.  Really nice clothes.  Would love to work here just for the employee discount.

Monki- really nice displays where the clothes are hung in a large circle tilted on a diagonal. Very dramatic and nice to browse through which makes the online pictures quite underwhelming.

H and M - I seem to have less luck with this store than others, but my sister and one of my good friends here in Sweden always look super polished and stylish in H and M.  There is an intersection in Stockoholm where there is a multistory H and M on each of the four corners of the street.

Hasbeens - shoes especially these pairs

If I had money to burn:

Linen dress with mesh
Asymmetric studio top
Open back jumpsuit
V back dress
Lace dress
Shirt skirt dress
Another lace dress
Sheer maxi

What. I had to see what the coconut ones looked like...in my kitchen

Lobster claw

Lobster claw!!

I am nothing if not a thorough researcher.  I believe in the merits of large sample size and precision.  When necessary, I play the dual role of both principle investigator and test subject.  Here I present to you the preliminary data:

Ms.Ö's homemade: strong coconut notes

Espresso House: large and in charge! super chocolatey. vegan!

Wayne's Coffee: a bit dry, but still a welcome treat to split with a girl friend (note: as a rule 

                             I don't split them but I really really really like this friend)

Jacob's Coffee: crunchy, but not dry...hint of nuts? 'homemade'

These tastings were all done before I even knew what these balls are made of.  

Oatmeal...verkligen (really) ?!!?!  I thought they seemed more like large truffles than anything.

Ok, there is also butter, sugar, cocoa, vanilla sugar (no one uses extract here), and a few drops of coffee.  But I was really taken aback by the oatmeal.  Also, they are a no-bake treat in case you were wondering how addiction would affect your electric bill.

M had been taunting me about her chokolade balls being the bäst (it is what it sounds like), so after our walk around the lake last night, I reminded her that actions speak louder than words.

This picture is of the above mentioned lake,
but it was taken back in 2005 when I had a polaroid attached at the hip

These were the smallest ones I have ever eaten, but super fresh pure and simple.
Just combine:
-100 g butter
-1.5 dl sugar
-3 dl raw oatmeal
-3 tablespoons cocoa powder
-2 tablespoons vanilla sugar (you can obvi use extract instead my dear compatriots)
-splash of coffee or just a scoop of instant coffee powder
-coconut or pearl sugar in which to roll the balls you will theoretically form should you not elect to eat straight out of the bowl


That is to say if you still have hands after your kitchen partner plugs in the mixer with the switch turned on while you are dicing butter into the bowl.

This is when I removed my sweater and realized that M and I not only spontaneously made chokolade balls, but also spontaneously dressed like them.  

Chokolade ball revisited

Camera phone

The pro to the camera phone is that I photograph far more than I would without it.  The con is, if I don't go back and reshoot properly...all I am left with are poor images.  I need to go back and reshoot.

The worst thing about Sweden

...is the lack of not only good Mexican food, but any Mexican food.  This puts a lot of pressure on me to represent.  I'm going to need more hot sauce.

5 AM

I previously associated the early morning with outrageous amounts of anxiety.  If I was watching the sun come up, it was either because I was still trying to cram before that morning's exam (always a bad sign) or because I thought that the money I would save by booking that budget flight no one else one wants to take would be worth the inconvenience (it's not).*

This was taken at 5AM, but honestly the rest of the day also looked like this.
It was far less depressing than it looks, I promise.

A few days ago, I found myself awake before 5AM.  Once I realized that I did not have to be, it dawned on me how calm and cozy it felt.  So instead of going back to sleep, I crept out of bed and into the kitchen where I baked some bread while it snowed and then rained and then stopped.




*Or it was one of the two and a half times a year where I don't come home until 5AM.  But that is neither here nor there since crawling into bed at 5AM is obviously superior to crawling out.

La Casa Hagsätra Tapas

Don't know if you heard about this great new little tapas place that just opened in our neighborhood: my house.  This week called for a grand celebration so we called some of our closest friends over to eat:

Homemade bread

Bacon wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese

Note the watermelon moustache couple

Prosciutto wrapped melon

Toasted goat cheese on watermelon drizzled with honey

Tortilla espanola

Olives

Sundried tomatos

Meat pierogies wrapped in butter dough

M's super easy berry pie

-Buy frozen berries, line a pie pan with them

-Mix 100 g butter, 150 g flour, 150 g sugar, 100 g oats for crust

-Top berries with an evenly with large chunks of crust

-Bake for 20 min at 200C

Chocolate orange icecream (sounds weird, but it's totally amazing)

Paired with Gnarly Head old vine zin, Relax riesling, beer, and cider.

Definitely a night to remember.

SMAM

SMAM stands for SuperMegaAwesomeM which still does not adequately describe what I think about her.  That picture is of when M and first met a few years ago at C's birthday.  You can see quite clearly that my attention has shifted dramatically from the attractive male on my left to the amazing girl on my more left.

Assessing the tall, strawberry blonde, and effortlessly cool Swede, I knew we had to be friends.  Well, maybe she didn't feel like she had to do anything...which is why I so nonchalantly made my way over to her chair.

Heyletstakeapicturewanttobemyfriend? 

I said something funny.  Really funny. 

BAM! 

Friends.

M is obviously going to serve as the Swedish ambassador of cool for this blog.  

Here are some gems she and I have spent time doing/cooking/eating/windowshopping/rolling around the floor laughing:

Söder

louie louie - a SUPER tasty cafe where I ate the best goat cheese and chicken salad in my life...my fork ran into a passionfruit!?  a stockholmer described it to me as a sort of new york diner 1950s diner, which i can see elements of, but it is very much its own thing.

beyond retro - a vintage store that seemed to be on the pulse with what is fashionable right now

acne - one of my favorite stores here.  steep, steep prices, but beautiful to look at and imitate nonetheless.

Internet

The Sleep Talking Man

While his sleep talking ramblings can be very decorated with unseemly words, these are a few that are not but are still quite funny.

Jesus wave hands

Get out of my puddle

On three

Don't shoot the goat

TV

Good Christian Bitches 

Game of Thrones

Lilyhammer (its about an ex-mafioso from nyc who goes into witness protection in Lilyhammer, Norway and his experiences there expose many traditional Scandinavian values and behaviors.  really funny regardless of your familiarity with Nordic culture)

Music

First Aid Kit

Food deserves its own post.

The parable of the climbing shoes

The fit is very important, obviously, so you try on a million different shoes which each only come in a single color. You want a pair of red climbing shoes?  Too bad.  You'll probably end up with end up with grey ones because all the other models self-eliminate by not fitting your tiny heel or gigantic toes.  So it caught me off guard when someone asked if we had done this on purpose:

As if!

It seems to me lately that the less one tries to conform one's foot to a certain color climbing shoe, the more one allows for beautiful yet unexpected coincidences to arise from the color scheme.

California-----------Sweden

              

 Apparently it is not so rare that a Californian will relocate to cohabit with their Swedish partner.


A few weeks before arriving in Stockholm, I learned that one of my dear girl friend's cousin had moved to Malmö to cohabit with his Swedish girlfriend only a few months before.  He, like myself, is a Californian.


Innocent coincidence.


Yesterday, I began chatting with the girl helping C pick out a pair of rock climbing shoes. As it turns out, I learn that her boyfriend is from California and is about to move to Sweden.


MIGRATIONSVERKET!  I exclaimed in a sudden burst of camaraderie.  The exhausted smile on her face confirmed that she is all too familiar with the pleasure of dealing with the paperwork and headache that comes with establishing a residency permit for her partner.  


C and I parted ways after leaving the store as I had a meeting on the other side of town with an alumna I had discovered through my undergraduate college's online directory.  I knew nothing about her prior to meeting aside from the degree she earned at school and her current residence in Stockholm.  A half-hour into our conversation, she revealed to me that not only is she from California (our school was not in California) but also that she moved to Stockholm 9 years ago to live with her Swedish partner.


So what exactly is going on here?


Are Californians and Swedes disproportionately attracted to one another?
If so, is it due to their common liberal values or merely the average of their hours spent in sunlight?
By what magic do Swedes persuade Californians to so readily trade their sunny, happy, produce-yielding microclimate for the notorious 9 months of the year when Sweden is not exactly...how you say...warm? 
Why don't sun-seeking Swedes use above mentioned magic to secure a charmed life of 25C plus?


I can't be sure.


Probably because you'd have a snowball's chance in hell of US immigration allowing international couples to live happily ever after...in sin.
  
Unless you decide to get married, I do not see how it would be feasible for Swedes to relocate to the States to live and work while cohabiting with their American partners.  It is very, very, very difficult to obtain a work visa or permanent residency otherwise.  I suppose that a student visa would be the easiest prenuptial route except that I'm not sure I would trust a Swede who voluntarily enters educational debt and relinquishes highly subsidized healthcare.

Of course, there are significant pros and cons to living in either country.


But all this still does not account for the California----Sweden love connection.


This, however, might. 






  

Tak Tack

Think about how many times you say "Yes" or respond with affirmative sounds when someone is talking to you.

Yes, of course, uh huh, right, exactly, yeah, mmhm, I agree.

Probably just as often as you say "Thanks." 

Thanks, thank you, thanks so much, no thank you, thnx.

Try not to let this blow your mind, but "tak" is Polish for the former and "tack" is Swedish for the latter.

The difference in their pronunciation is negligible.

The worst thing that can happen when lost in translation?

Swedes exhibit an exceptional level of agreeability and Poles express extreme thanks for it.

Basically everything I burn for: public health, women's issues, plastic surgery, art...and cake

Genital mutilation cake

Plastic surgery demand increases

These are both in the news today.  I don't want to comment too much on them except to say:

-The cake is provocative.  I think it may be of importance to mention that Swedish culture seems to deal with race in a different way than American culture does.  For a particularly liberal minded and socially advanced society as Sweden (which accepts and aids an exceptional number of refugees and asylum seekers globally) it surprised me to learn that the former name of the national and personal favorite Chokladbolls was commonly used as recently as decade ago.  Historically, there has never been a large population of black people living in Sweden, unlike in the US.

-While I appreciate the considered nature of this vagina cake, I would also appreciate a cake of a man with an uncircumcised penis which I could slice the tip of in order to comment on the importance of the role circumcision may play in reducing the spread of HIV.  I remember eating a few homemade penis cakes at the all-girl Catholic high school I once attended.  Now I see them as strong performance art pieces; the breeding of radical feminists; the complete rebranding of eating cock.  Back then, I saw them as hilarious, but most of all delicious.  Cake is powerful.  Cake talks.  Go ahead a bake a cake for public health's sake.  Just make sure we get a taste of both sexes.  

-There are now a handful of studies conducted in both Scandinavia and North America that suggest that the population of women who have undergone elective plastic surgery displays a higher risk of suicide than the general female population.  In particular, women who have had elective breast augmentation have a three-fold increase risk compared to the general population and a higher risk than the cohort of women who have had other types of plastic surgery.  By no means does the data imply a direct causal relationship between breast augmentation and suicide, but it does speak to the increased psychiatric morbidity of the population of women who elect to have the procedures.  Given that the most popular procedure in both the US and Sweden is breast augmentation, I find this to be an increasingly relevant issue and am interested in whether patients can be more effectively triaged to appropriate mental health professionals prior to surgery.

I should probably make a cake about this.  

Converse: a personal, socioeconomic, politically-fashioned, historical commentary

A pair of hot pink high tops at 6, 'frappe' low tops at 16, and some close encounters with my sister's pair of the classic black low tops somewhere in between.

And now...

Before I left for Sverige, another recent American transplant to Sverige informed me that these are wildly, wildly popular here.  Especially the white pair for girls.  Really?  I guess I'm due for the next decade's pair soon...oh and they cost $100 in Sweden?  OH OK.  Despite having absolutely no room in my suitcases and a carryon that already secretly weighed 50 lbs, I tossed $39 onto the nearest mall shoe store countertop and wondered if TSA would make me remove them in the security screening out of principle since they would be tied securely to my hands.*

Last week I was strolling through the city with a girl friend and I exclaimed how funny it is to see nearly everyone in Stockholm walking around with the same shoes, not because they had to (communism) but because they wanted to (fashionism).

-But doesn't everyone also wear summer shoes in the States?
-Haha, yes... but they are not all the same white sneakers!
-But you have trends, yeah?
-Yeah, of course.  But usually by the time the whole city is wearing them, it's over.  I mean, I was worried that in the time it took me to board and change plans that they would no longer be popular.  I'm surprised because despite everyone wearing them, they continue to be so popular.  And when I think about how each person paid over 600kr for them...it's not a casual purchase!

It's not really that unbelievable that imported items are double the price they would be back home---but Converse have always seemed relatively non-commital, inexpensive, and positively Americana.  Maybe it's their popularity that surprises me despite the growing domestic and international sentiments of disillusion in social, political, and economic spheres...I know that may sound cliche, but I'm writing it less as a profound accusation and more as a quiet, well-precedented acknowledgement.  Perhaps my surprise comes from recent immersion into social climate where being like everyone else is considered not only normal, but ideal.  Where striving for individualism is considered more of a threat to society than an asset.

Ergo, trends last longer here.




*So why not put them on my feet?  Because I was already wearing a pair of high heels tucked into running shoes tucked into winter boots.  Speaking of layering...

Funny lama

Funny lama and I were first acquainted a year or so ago when C sent me a picture of it on his morning commute.  I found more funny lama not too far away from this one last summer.  I have actually planned my running route around it as a guarantee that I will see it often.  I'll let you know when it stops making me laugh.

The background image of this blog reminds me of Histology slides

which I always thought looked more like abstract paintings than anything we were supposed to identify

How can I best describe what it's like to hang out with C and his friends?

Bromance
<3<3<3

It's beautiful.

Stadsbiblioteket

Stockholm's main public library would be a really great place to study Swedish, but there are a lot of students there and I get so distracted when they toggle back and forth between Swedish and perfect English.  Each time it happens my eyes glance over and I want to say, "Hey!  I heard you speaking English...I speak English!"  But then I remember that nearly everyone speaks English here and slowly lower my eyes back down to my elementary Swedish text.

Sonically Svenska

There may be some overlap with what's floating around in the States, but it's hard to remember which.  Probably only the second song.

Some Die Young- Laleh

We Are Young-Fun

Somebody That I Used To Know-Gotye

Why Start A Fire-Lisa Miskovsky

Swedish Stereotypes

I would say that I have more than a few friends who imagine that all Swedes are beautiful creatures who walk around outfitted in blue and white striped shirts.

This is all completely true.

The other night C and I went over to another couple's house for an impromptu hang out.  I was already wearing a pink and white striped top when I realized we had plans and didn't think much of it when C changed out of work clothes and into a blue and white striped t-shirt that we had actually bought together in the States.  


Fine.  


Then we get to our friends' house and over an hour into hanging out we moved from the kitchen to the couch where suddenly I saw it so clearly: all three of them were lined up in a row wearing blue and white stripes.  Yes, they were different garments (t-shirt, tunic, polo) with slightly different shades of blue and varying widths of stripes, but that just made it all the more hilarious to me.  At this point, I realized that I should probably say something about the red wine I've spilled on the sleeve of my pink and white striped top.  Our friend offered me one of her tops while we applied stain remover to mine.  When we pulled out her shirt drawer, there it was: a long sleeved blue and white striped shirt sitting staring squarely at me from the top of the pile.

So we spent the rest of the evening like that.  Just four twenty-something year olds hanging out together on a Sunday night in Sweden, all casually wearing different versions of the same blue and white striped motif.  


No big deal...but I'm pretty sure it was a rite of passage.  

The weather is really not so bad right now

It gets terribly dark here

Between 0-15C on any given day with either bright sun or light snow or rain.  But it's not very dark here at all.

Regardless, I'm playing this song all the time.  Initially because I thought it was hilarious and now because I'm totally in love with it.

Everything in its right place

The Vagabond-Air

Of course, there is something incredibly frightening about challenging the very foundation on which you have built your identity.  Many gracious people have told me that it takes a lot of courage to change course, to question, to reconsider.  I understand what they mean and take comfort.  Nevertheless, it is difficult, uncertain, and----at the end of the day---solitary to break free from expectation and create something of your own design.  Everyone does this at some point in their lives on some level.  It's apparently a part of growing up or at least that's what someone recently told me.


Every human being develops their own currency: some skill or knowledge that gives you agency and leverage.  Mine was certain, concrete, and validated by the social and academic spheres in which I have invested the past seven years.  Valuable, but heavy.  Well-mapped, but excruciatingly prescribed.  For the moment, I have decided to suspend mine.  A temporary bankruptcy, if you will.  Perhaps I will choose to reclaim it once the marks of its weight have faded, but for now I allow myself not to think about it.


Yes. There is something frightening about all of this, but I have been fortunate enough in the past three months to experience more relief than fear, more balance than unsteadiness.  Having finally tied up my loose ends in Providence, I arrived in Stockholm last week.


It is not my first time in Sverige.  I have been coming to Stockholm every few years since I was eighteen. There are a lot of other firsts, however, that I expect will make this time around feel as exciting and interesting as I first remember it.

I have no expectations for this blog except to create a space where I can record things that I come across that inspire me or at least make me laugh.  Raised by an immigrant father,  I consider stumbling upon cultural differences and getting lost in translation to be one of my greatest and most familiar pleasures.  I look forward to entertaining the Swedes with my apparently very American mannerisms...whatever that means.  (Ha).


You are correct in thinking 'das moustache' is German, not Swedish.  That didn't stop this conversation from happening the other night:


"So what kind of moustache are you guys going to grow for prostate awareness month?"
"Handle-bar."
"Snidely Whiplash." (Dali for those of you unfamiliar with Rocky and Bullwinkle)
"Whatever I can grow in time."
"Postage stamp---no, just kidding.  It sucks that Hitler had to ruin that one for everyone.  What is the real name for that style?"
---pause---
"Das moustache."
"HAHAHA, OMG imagine what would happen if you tried to ride das metro with das moustache!"
"Someone would probably push you in front of das train."
"You would das die."
"Das too bad..."
"Das life!"




As for tjogofem...
Tjogofem is Swedish for 25.  
It is also pronounced nothing like anything you can conjure from the spelling.  
It is also the first Swedish word that I can pronounce without a trace of an American accent.  
It is also my age.  
It is also guaranteed to be relevant in conversation once a month.  And once every hour and minute if you happen to be very specific about telling time.  
So basically I'm fluent is what I'm saying.


And on that note, I return to studying Swedish.