Filed under: Lifestyle
It’s called a spöka in Swedish. It’s inspired by Jehhal’s favorite movie, Casper. It’s shaped like Aaron’s incredibly enormous genitalia (which is ironic, considering in year’s past Aaron has had the tendency to “dick” people with his gifts). It will make you feel safe at night when nightmares about said genitalia invade your thoughts. And your pants. It also includes bonus gifts.
Definitely didn’t find too many punks in the Mormonville, USA. Or mormons for that matter, so maybe that statement is unfair. The second day at Snowbird, right after a couple inches of snowfall on the 24th that made a 20 mile drive last an hour and a half, was a great Christmas present. Unfortunately, all the fresh powder tempted me to wander off path a little bit too often and i ended up getting stuck in the woods on a cliff once. Or twice.
My Christmas lunch consisted of a cup of chili while I was watching Juno over the shoulder of some lady. It made me smile. Unfortunately, nobody really ever snowboards with me. The one time that I followed my parents down the mountain, I decided to record a video of my mother falling and stumbling. She was upset. The one time that two other family friends followed me down, one of them lost their pole and the other crashed into an invisible snowmobile. Strange.
Large asian family gatherings tend to consist of hot pot, asian card games, and questions about if I had a girlfriend. Then things got a little racist and homophobic. Not too big a fan of that type of conversation. Oh well. At least I have my health.
Oslo in the wintertime: where everybody can fall asleep and nobody stares at the window from their beds; where at 3 pm the sun is down and sea birds and crows all disappear; the streets are (not so) strangely quiet because everyone is smart enough to stay inside, while I am the only one on holiday. I know, clever huh? By the way, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is a great album.
Unfortunately I didn’t really think about this too much when my Canadian hombre Joey and I set out at three in the morning on our last day of classes, as we had to be in Stansted for a 6:30 am flight just to conserve daylight. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, with a GDP per capita through the roof, Oslo is really just an ugly city. Maybe it’s just the harsh, harsh Norwegian winters. Maybe it’s the disgusting statues everywhere.
After a great dinner at the only place that didn’t charge about 250 NOK for a meal, we set out to explore the town only to find it very quiet and empty. Granted, it was below freezing outside, but these Norwegians should be used to it. We wandered into a bar that advertised karaoke and figured there was nothing wrong with watching Scandinavians try hopelessly to sing awful songs from the 1970s. However, after some deep thinking – the oddly high number of guys, the two affectionate males handling the karaoke machine, and the black guy in the cowboy hat (really, in Oslo?) at the bar made us think that we had accidentally wandered into uncharted territory. After all, Let’s Go tends to advertise a very specific type of nightlife.
Norwegian art is a tricky, ugly thing as we went to the statue garden the next morning and could only think of dirty dead baby jokes and couldn’t figure out why naked males body-slamming little girls was appealing in any way. We walked around and went to the other side of the city while Joey educated me about this Norwegian who so desperately wanted to prove that South Americans populated the islands in the South Pacific that he decided to set out on a small raft just to prove his theory. Well, he succeeded. And he now has a museum. Norwegian art and accomplishments, in a nutshell.
After a night bus we arrived at Stockholm and stayed at one of their fine “Boatels,” basically a hotel on a boat. Which sounds cool, until you realize the bastards were too cheap to spare warm water (the warm water taps in the sink were twisted off completely) and the shower would keep going cold. Which would be fine, except it was about -5 degrees outside. But Stockholm is beautiful, and we watched as hordes and hordes of little kids (on a field trip, maybe?) swarmed the middle island and fought to see who could win the giant candy bars that they were giving away.
Things you learn about Stockholm: in the bathroom at McDonald’s, you can fine more beautiful blonde women than you could find in PiPhi (ah, if only I was a foot taller); if you try to go out on Monday night, everything will be closed (sad but true, their Monday is our Sunday); if you’re planning to walk the streets, wear warm clothing; finally, no matter where you go you can always find classy, ultramodern furniture. All in all, this was probably the best time I’ve ever had in Scandinavia.
Filed under: Lifestyle | Tags: dj decryption, duke basketball, europe, juno
I spent a lot of time coming back from Stockholm. The bus to Vasteras. The flight to Stansted. The easyBus to Baker St. The 205 to Mile End. Dinner at 2am and further packing. The walk down my five story flat with 25 kg bags in each arm. The District to Victoria with those same bags. The Gatwick Express. The flight to Charlotte. The fact that my flight got “rescheduled” and it was impossible to get the direct flight to San Diego. The flight to Vegas. The flight to San Diego. Stupid US Airways. At least they didn’t lose my bag.
On the way to Charlotte I met this guy sitting next to me who was struggling to fall asleep on the plane as well. Right before he landed he introduced himself and I found out that not only was he a Marshall Scholar working on his PhD, he also found spare time to produce music. He described himself as a cross between Chali2na from Jurassic 5 (whom he met as an undergraduate at Wake) and Sage Francis. Yep, broke the don’t compare white people and black people rule. Whoops.
There are elements of San Diego food that I have missed, especially now that I don’t feel nearly as poor. Korean food, Santana’s, In-n-Out, not to mention a good home cooked meal for once. Of course, it’s the conversations that make the meals: my nice, quiet high school friends now have stories of what it’s like to live surrounded by drug dealers or share their experiences of trying absinthe after Thanksgiving and why you really should be careful if you’re taking a flaming shot so you don’t burn your face or the nearby table. Also, you realize how important it is to watch what you drink because even boys can be roofie’d when they venture into a gay bar. Oh, and World of Warcraft. I hate World of Warcraft, so much.
We watched the Duke game the other day, and I skipped the first half of the second half because we were up by so much, only to find out that the score was tied. I thought Henderson was incredibly clutch, slashing twice for easy buckets and then again for an assisted three to Singler during crunch time. A good sign for our team. Of course, Scheyer was pretty much the opposite of clutch and despite conflicting reports from TBL and TBZ, I still feel like Scheyer’s taken a huge step backward since last year and really needs to shoot to pull his weight because he really has no other discernible skills. I’d rather have King out there for his size and his touch from outside than Scheyer’s bricks. Blah. Our athletic intensity really carried over to the soccer field the next day, and despite our horrible conditioning we were stride for stride with UCLA crew boys. I know, so intense. Don’t laugh, I’m really sore today.
Finally, I really couldn’t wait to see Juno. It was easily the cutest movie I’ve seen in a long time. That’s a compliment, even if I shouldn’t use the word “cutest” to describe a great movie. Despite an awkward beginning that tried too hard to be “wizard” and some narration from Ellen Page that didn’t actually fit that well, I thought it was great. The soundtrack fit the movie perfectly and the trailer didn’t give away any of Michael Cera’s best moments in the movie. Babies are swell, especially ones named Panda.
I’ll be in Snowbird the next couple of days, and I’ll try to make sure I know how to get a job in the upcoming semester as well as finish my work. To sum up my semester, I went an entire 12 weeks without a problem set and only spent two total hours taking exams (half an hour of that was an oral exam too). I met great people from England, from Europe, and even one from Africa. I went through ten countries, eight European capitals. My favorite city was Vienna, which is beautiful. My favorite experience was Madrid, which lasts all night. I managed to get as far South as Casablanca, as far North as Oslo, as far West as Tangier, as far East as Stockholm. And everywhere in between.
Things that I will not miss:
- The word “yeah” at the end of every sentence. Wow, how can people actually talk like that yeah? Don’t they get annoyed, yeah? I thought I would have gotten used to it yeah, but no, yeah, no. I have decided that because I can’t stand the way some people talk around here, I guess the “slang” part, I will not pretend to do an English accent. Ever.
- Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani “bruvs.” Seriously where do these people come from and when did they think they were such thugs? I get a little depressed every time I overhear a conversation or listen to them ask a question. Not a single one of any of the friends I have made here want to be friends with one of these people
- The terrible way that my flat is designed. Who thought it would be a good idea to build a flat that is actually just a long hallway with rooms. Why are the lights in the hallway motion sensing? Why are there four freezers in the kitchen, but no refrigerator? It also makes me miss simple things like a toaster oven. Very sad sometimes.
- The Hammersmith & City Line. Particularly dodgy. Despite being the best public transportation system in the world, I hate the tube on Sunday’s. It is impossible to get to Mile End on any line but the District Line, which unfortunately is the slowest line in the city.
- How socially acceptable it is for Europeans to smoke everywhere. How my hallway always smells like cigarettes. How my roommates find a way to always have an empty nutella jar used as an ash tray every time I come back. Particularly, it was upsetting when my roommates figured out that the smoke detectors weren’t actually smoke detectors, just heat sensors.
- How I have to plan ahead thirty minutes to go out anywhere in the middle of London. I hate the East End. So much. Though I hear because of the 2012 Olympics the road that is adjacent to campus is actually going to be closed off to cars and completely renovated. So maybe if I came here in… 2011, this would have been an awesome area. Unfortunately, the Olympic related highlight has been a fire at the Olympic site that cause the sky to darken.
- How the sun sets at around 3:30 in the wintertime. How it rains every other day intermittently. The lack of daylight makes the days seem so much shorter. I stopped running a while ago, because I hated running in the sketchy east end when it was all dark. Though, this did give Ray an excuse to run with his shirt off so “bikers could see him better.” It’s fun being white, innit?
- How difficult it is to cross a street. Instead of crossing once, you generally have to cross three times just to make it all the way across a main street. That’s ridiculous. It also doesn’t really have any good pattern or anything, but I guess in any street you just cross when there are no cars and don’t care what cars think. Too bad those cars driving in the city already pay an 8 pound congestion fee. Ouch.
- The crash of the US dollar. Nominally, everything is the same price. However, in actual money everything costs twice as much as it does. Because of this I feel even more poor than I ought to, but it’s misleading because you don’t feel that bad paying some prices. Especially because there is no sales tax and the prices aren’t misleading. But paying $4 for a load of laundry? (Just the washer mind you). Kind of depressing. Purchasing power parity my ass.
- Ah, who am I kidding. I really am going to miss living in one of the world’s most incredible, convenient, culturally diverse, and totally awesome cities. A lot. Not to mention it’s a springboard to the rest of Europe. Oh well, back to Durhole I go.
HiBAiSHi 