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.