Experience and competence

Recently, I have started a new job as a waiter at the Uppsala Castle. The reason that Uppsala has a Castle has nothing to do with the town having been an actual capitol once or a certain strategic value. It is pure politics and power struggles. Long story short, Gustaf Vasa, the Swedish king who ordered the castle to be built, wanted to be more independent from the Pope and separated the Swedish church from Rome. Needless to say, the Archbishop was not too happy with that and started condemning the King. The latter responded in moving to Uppsala, building a small fortress withing cannon fire distance from the Uppsala Cathedral and acquiring a residence door to door (or backyard to backyard to be more exact) with the Archbishop. This had the desired effect and the Church stopped poking its nose in the state matters. Or at least it did it with more subtlety.

Today, the King once again lives in Stockholm, but the Uppsala Castle, together with the Church and the University, is one of the city's symboles. It has suffered at least two fires and several architects, plus some really appalling paint jobs and the cannons still point in the direction of the Cathedral. One can never know, I guess. A couple of museums are stationed in the different halls. Every December 13th, the Nobel prize winners have a traditional lunch in the Throne Hall.
Yesterday, I was working on a dinner for the municipal seniors. In the same Throne Hall as the Nobelists. The purpose of the dinner is to award medals to the most prominent senior workers, those that have been in service for more than twenty-five years. These are people that have dealt with the problems and joys, ups and downs of Uppsala for at least quarter of a century. As it turned out, this has nothing to do with their actual competence.

The date, time and place of the occasion are known months in advance. The Hall is booked, a menu is prepared, waiters are recruited according to how many guests are expected. A band is hired, one of the most talented "nyckelharpa" (that is the Swedish national instrument) players. People are ringing in about allergies, special desires, table placing and all minor details that have to be discussed in order to make a perfect evening. And couple of days before yesterday, a guy rings and asks: "But.. where the hell is that castle?"

I'll let silence speak for itself.

Frustrated muttering

Looks like winter forgot to turn off the stove and moved out after only two or three days of snow. Autumn is back with all its glory, i.e. a whole day of calming, wetting, unstoppable rain. The temperatures are up to 5-10 degrees Celsius, which for Swedish November is like a sauna. Hm... it does not look like I have something interesting to say today. Oh, there is one:

My cousin pursues a master degree in Computer sciences. Well, not exactly Master of Science, because Swedish degree system is something of a hybrid between the normal Bachelor and Master degrees. Usually, you become a Bachelor after three years of full-time studies and a Master of Science after two more years, or five years in total. Swedes become "Magister" after four years of study and in English that is translated as... Master of Science. So, the guy is going after a "Magister " degree, but that is still a Master in the rest of the world. Not a normal Master but still a Master. Like.. ah, forget it. In his studies he learns about all kinds of strange logic constructs, higher mathematics, protocols, computer languages and so on. Right now he has to do a paper on something called IPv6.. I think that is the correct spelling. From what I could understand from his frustrated muttering, this is a broadly used Internet access and/or security protocol. The whole Uppsala university uses it. No, not the whole. ONE department has not yet upgraded to the v6 protocol and uses older versions. Who is that, you will ask. Simple: the Department of Internet Technologies. Figures. Furthermore, they are the only department that has hard-copy course evaluation forms only. All the other faculties and departments have switched to web-based evaluation forms - much easier to process. The irony is... well.. iron.

I have to go back to studying now. Microbial genetics is very interesting, but the course book is a lethal weapon - 500 pages in hardcover. Moreover, I am starting a literature project which is going to be a secret now but I promise I will let you on some sneak peeks later on. Toodle-pip!

Winter stubbornness enhancements

The winter is officially here. The first snow has come and has brought a couple of friends: Wind and Chill.. together they are playing Blizzard. A twirling windblow greeted me as soon as I opened the door, covering me with a myriad of snowflakes. I shivered, put on my gloves and started towards my bicycle. The poor pedal-driven transportation device was so covered in snow that I was not sure if it was really a bicycle or some strange prehistoric beast, frozen in time. I decided against cycling today and was off to the bus station. The wind seemed to blow in every direction and the snowflakes danced and swivelled and twirled. Then they saw me and rushed cheerfully towards me, blinding my eyes, filling my neck despite the scarf, and attaching themselves to every surface of my body and apparel. The air currents themselves wanted to greet me and blew constantly against my face, whether I switched direction or not. I saw a lone crow flying backwars and then sideways, trying desperately to free itself from the minitornado around it rush to a shelter. I thought "That's not so bad, I should have taken my bike".

And then I came out of the neatly organised neighbourhood, with identical rows of identical houses on identical streets with identical cul-de-sacs in their ends... into the open field that is the major part of Sweden. The wind blow was so strong that I staggered for a moment, then pulled myself together and crawled towards the bus stop. The snowflakes no longer greeted me happily. Each and every one of them became a tiny frozen whip, stinging my exposed skin with ice-hot blows. My ears were so cold that I though they would fall off and shatter on the ground. Even the crows were gone. All that was left was me, the snowy road, and the wind.

In the not-so-long past days when I did Taekwon-do, my coach used to say: "Do not blink when you are sparring! That can cost you the fight". Everybody's natural reflex is to close their eyes when they see an object coming towars their face. If you do that in a fight however, you lose critical input data for your opponents stance, distance and performance. Sure, there are masters that have honed their other senses so well that they can fight without the need of vision. Well, I am not among them, I need my visual perception. So the blizzard turned to be an excellent exercise in willpower. Or stubbornness. The thing is, if you manage to keep your eyes opened in a snow storm with the wind delivering thousands of miniature hits towars your face, than keeping them open when a single pair of fists is flying around should be a child's play. As soon as I decided to try this exercise however, all the snowflakes decided that my beautiful brown eyes are the best spot in the world for landing and melting. Those that could not come into my eyes lodged themselves into my eyelashes. Thus, I invented the cheapest and simplest mascara ever! Go me!

Now my blogging time is up and I have to go to the Genetics lab and see if my experiment with bacteriophages was successful. One other thing before I go: agar stinks! This rich, full-bodied stench is going to haunt my dreams. And to think I am going to keep doing this for the rest of my life.... science is indeed a cruel mistress.