So many wonderful things have happened, and my time pretty well spent up, that I haven’t had time to update. Sailing in the archipelago with Per, then in Umeå meeting so many people that I am in awe of, forming a little “clique” with a few classmates who I’ve been spending almost all my time with – all impressive, passionate, amazing people…I couldn’t imagine how different it would be if I had arrived and not met any of my classmates, how alone I could have felt instead.

Touring the school was surreal… The building is beautiful, situated beside the river with huge windows into our workroom. Our workroom! (Though when winter rolls around it could only be 4 hours of sunlight in a day.) I couldn’t believe what good luck I have to be here.

The residents of Umeå completely break the stereotype of “shy, reserved Swedes”, as I’ve met astoundingly friendly and outgoing people. I have NEVER met someone on the street (technically, a former design student, who happened to be in front of our school) who struck up a conversation with us and then joined for lunch. This is just one example of many moments that have felt so amazing.

I say this too often, but I will have to write more later since it’s after midnight now.

Leaving grandma’s house on my way to my parents’ house, I suddenly imagined myself on the way to an exciting new life, only to be be struck and killed in a car accident on the way to the airport. “How tragic,” people would say. Why I imagined such a terrible scenerio – is that it just seems too good to be true. A few years ago I wouldn’t have believed someone if they said I would move to another country, study at one of the top industrial design universities there, and have a hunky, blonde Swedish boyfriend who cooks! I’m still nervous as to whether I have what it takes to succeed. And that there’ll be jobs for me, that I’ll be able to make a living. And for how long will I go without an income from this point on? People keep asking me those same questions that I dread trying to answer, because I don’t have an answer. But I’m not too worried. I’ll be tackling it day by day.

I think I’m getting very, very annoyed with life and people here… Especially reading these recent news stories in the Edmonton Journal.

A woman who was a passenger in the car of a drunk driver is suing the driver and the bars and bartenders that served him for causing her “irreversible brain damage” after crashing the car. His blood alcohol level was DOUBLE the legal limit! (Legal limit in Canada is 0.08%. In Sweden it is 0.02%)

“Shannon Paige Prosser is suing Lux Steakhouse&Bar, Fluid Lounge and the bartenders… claiming they continued to serve drinks to the driver, “when it was clear, or ought to have been clear, that (he) was inebriated.”

What about her responsibility?!?? She could have stopped him from driving, called the police, OR not got into the car herself. How is it no one else’s fault but her own? I might have felt a little bad for her until now. It’s lucky he didn’t kill anyone! I really hope this one is thrown out of the courts, at least for the bar and bartenders.

And this… Article about the deep-fried chocolate bars at the Taste of Edmonton food festival downtown.

“In the old days, the only way to store food was to eat it and store it on your body as fat,” said Power, a researcher at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “To facilitate that, our brains developed systems to reward us for picking foods that converted easily, such as fats and sugars.”

No shit?!!?? We like eating fatty and sugary foods? Who doesn’t know that? But this is the funniest part of the article:

“In other words, it’s not your fault.”

“They’re giving us deep-fried Mars bars because that’s what we want. Unfortunately, they’re not making us climb 15 flights of stairs to get them.”

So it’s no one’s fault they’re fat – all those excessive calories forced down their throats were not their doing! And they should MAKE you climb 15 flights of stairs?? Isn’t it our own responsibility to climb those stairs ourselves to balance the calories we consume??

This total lack of personal responsibility really burns me up! I see it everywhere, including at my workplace. I won’t comment much more about my workplace here, but I will say it’s a rather commonplace problem and attitude in the workforce. I feel that’s the problem with Canadian society – I can’t comment on other societies – is that people don’t take responsibility of their own actions and life. Unhappy and unfulfilled at your job? It’s your boss’s fault! Your wife’s fault! Definitely not your own fault, that you didn’t think through and plan a career that you might actually enjoy while being a beneficial person of society, that you got into debt to buy a lifestyle and things you can’t afford…

I think it’s a good thing that I’m leaving this country, at least for awhile!

I got into all four industrial design schools I applied for! Including my first choice in Umea, Sweden! Feels good knowing that other people see some potential in me, and that I’m not completely out to lunch. Handed in my resignation at work, and I received a whole range of responses from extremely supportive and excited for me, to baffled, to downright negative. There are a few things I can conclude:

1. Most North Americans don’t know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland! I know they start with the same 2 letters and they’re both neutral countries, but I am really shocked that this many (mostly educated) people don’t know the difference.

2. If I plan to do anything that deviates from the norm, it really is best to keep it to myself until it’s underway, as there are a lot of negative people who will rain all over your parade.

The responses upon hearing that I’m studying industrial design in Sweden: “You speak French?” “Uhh…?.” “Or what do they speak there?” “Swedish” “They have their own language?”

“Won’t it be more expensive?” “Some things are more expensive, but some things” “What do they use there, the Euro?” “No.” “Oh, the (US) dollar then!”

“But why would you want to do that?!” As according to some, I already have a degree and a good paying job, so why would I want to do anything else even if I found the work boring? Fun is what your hobbies are for!

“Don’t you have to be creative to do that?” And how do they know I’m not? Because the job I’m in right now, I don’t get to express any iota of creativity perhaps?

“Isn’t it competitive?” Implying that it’s not because I got in?? Pretty insulting.

“Well, what are you going to do after you graduate? Will you be able to find a job in Sweden afterwards?” Wow… so I need to have the next 25 years mapped out like they do? Get job, work at same company until retirement, then die?

But I did get some positive words from a few people, such as, “good on you for going after what you really want!”

Per just left today, so it’s been a busy but amazing month of travel in western Canada which I’ll have to update on later. In the meantime, I have so much to prepare before I move! Per posted some great photos of our western Canada travels on his blog here (including his stopover in New York):

http://www.resdagboken.se/Default.aspx?documentId=81&userId=197319&section=myimagegalleries&journeyId=358519

Starting from my first international trip (to Japan in 2003), I became aware of how fashion differs country to country. TN made a spot on comment about our “bland, Canadian clothes” compared to Japanese girls. Being in the country awhile, you become used to what everyone around you is wearing, and your own tastes start to shift a bit due to your surroundings. By the end of our 3 weeks in Japan, I wanted to buy leg warmers, but didn’t, thankfully; returning home, I realized I wouldn’t have anywhere to wear them and would stick out like a sore thumb.

This happens to me on every trip. In Bangladesh, surrounded by a sea of pastel colours that look great against dark skin, I narrowly missed buying a salwaar kameez in a horrible “nurse scrubs” colour. Brought back super frilly clothing I bought and wore in Hong Kong, that at home I couldn’t get the guts to wear because I’d look like Sailor Moon. Sometimes my fashion taste changes and sticks with me, like loving the super short shorts I saw in Singapore on all the girls. I can’t think of a more flattering trend to adopt as an Asian girl with long-ish legs with not much boobage.

In Sweden I just couldn’t get on board with a lot of their fashion. Scarves are ubiquitous, on women AND  men, and in my opinion they look… Horrible. Not flattering at all. Emo and ridiculous.

Googling for images to show you what I mean, apparently I’m not “hip” because I guess it’s not unique to just Sweden, but also American celebrities, the UK, and elsewhere in Europe. However, I stand by avoiding fashion trends that do nothing to flatter the figure.

This is what the scarves look like:

The classic “emo” look that a lot of young Swedish people have:

I don’t understand how this is supposed to look good… On girls, it covers up your chest. On men, it’s not exactly masculine. It’s not particularly practical either as the fabric is thin and worn indoors (and I would guess worn in summer too).

I associate these neck scarves, or bandanas with pets! Seriously! I used to do this to my cat.

On pets, cute… On people, not so much.

Just returned from grocery shopping and am completely drained. I absolutely hate grocery shopping in Canada. I see how and why, that the more choices we have, the more unhappy and dissatisfied we are. (To learn more about this, watch Barry Schwartz’s talk on the paradox of choice.)

I am convinced that the big grocery stores here are designed to keep us as long as possible in their stores, which is why I dread going there and put it off as long as possible (except for my weekly stops into the local Safeway to pick up fresh produce and milk, which is shopping on a smaller scale). So my fridge is almost empty and am then forced to go grocery shopping. I try to eat something before shopping, but of course I always end up ravenous while shopping in the cavernous stores. Then I get grumpy and on edge, and the stress of shopping there makes me want to give up on healthy eating and gorge on whatever junk food catches my eye at the last minute.

Today, I made my way to Superstore only to find out they’re closed for renovations, so then had to drive to the nearby almost as gigantic Save-on-foods (which takes driving twice the actual physical distance, due to the direction of the roads to handle high volume traffic). After my sister’s comment that there are prices per 100g on all products for comparison shopping, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for them and confirmed that this is not true of every grocery store. Now, I go into the store with a list of things I want to buy, and don’t wander willy-nilly, but still I end up with several unplanned purchases, such as several bags of my favorite fair trade coffee because it’s 30% off. And walking through the huge store, I start to get hungry, and decide on impulse to pick up some bread and cheese. For something as simple as cheese, the cheese is divided into 2 groups (what I assume are supposed to be “everyday value” cheeses near the milk, and “premium” cheeses in the deli) and these are at opposite ends to each other in the store. Even within each grouping, it takes me some mental gymnastics to determine the best value brand cheese taking into consideration what’s on sale, and then by the time I get to the other end of the store, I can’t remember if the one I picked up was better priced or not. Then for bread, I spend a good 5 minutes trying to pick out a loaf of bread out of the over 20 varieties available, based on nutrition, price and freshness.

After finally making it to the cashier, I glance at a sign that advertises that tomorrow being the first Tuesday of the month, all purchases are 15% off! I don’t have the energy to put back half my stuff and come back again tomorrow. Ugh. After all that mental energy expended on the dozens of decisions made in the last hour, I end up regretting that on the whole, I fared pretty poorly this evening.

If there’s one upside, it’s that I discovered that Save-on-Foods carries really good artisan breads, though a bit pricey. My dinner of pate and jalapeno havarti cheese was fantastic on the type of dense bread you might find in Europe, with lots of seeds, 5g of protein and 2g of fibre per slice of bread. I’ll have to save my rant against the general crappiness of Canadian breads for another day.

A photo I posted of myself holding a mushroom in the Swedish forest garnered a lot of comments from my friends. Could I actually EAT the mushroom I was holding? Per found it really amusing – because why would I be picking it in the first place? But I might have asked the same thing myself a few months ago.  I was amazed that Per’s family gathers their yearly mushroom supply from walks in the forest! Per grows a lot of his own food, compared to me, where I don’t even know how to water houseplants properly, let alone grow my own food.

When I travelled, I was amazed and impressed by rural people’s relationship with the land, particularly in Bangladesh’s and India’s remote hilltribes. It’s hard to put into words what I am amazed at – everything they needed, the land provided for them. And they treated the land with respect, because it was their source of life. They consumed very little (from outside their village), and produced very little waste. I associated this with relatively poor, undeveloped countries and people, most of who would never have the chance to leave and see much of anything outside of the area immediately around their home.

But in Sweden, they also have a close relationship with the land.  The food they consume is based on what time of the year it is, their food is harvested and enjoyed at particular times of the year. Their celebrations and traditions show this: crayfish parties in August; preseved lutefisk at Christmas; herring, new potatoes and spring onion in spring (of course); and Per’s yearly strawberry harvest which includes making preserves and freezing the excess.  Now I see the possibility of becoming more self sufficient in my own food production, and I see the value in learning the lay of the land.

Now I’m finally going to blog about the overnight survival “course” Per took me on! The setting: southern Swedish forest, in the dead of winter (end of December). The rules: no tent, no matches/lighter, no firewood or kindling brought from home. The task: survive one night outside.

Most important thing to surviving outside is managing heat loss. The ground is really good conductor in losing heat. Therefore, insulate yourself from the ground as much as possible!

Scoped out a spot for our bed on a flat area, under a tree where we could hang the tarp to shelter us from the possibility of rain or snow. Using a knife, we cut and gathered armfuls of evergreen (fir? I don’t remember the species…) tree branches. Stuck the cut end of each branch into the ground, each branch stuck into the ground close to the next (about 3″ away). You’re aiming to create a springy “mattress” that will lift your body completely off the ground when you’re lying on it. The more branches the better! The branches insulate the air underneath your body, and act as a cushion and spring for your body. If you think you have more than enough, you probably don’t, as we made the mistake of making the bed too narrow for the 2 of us, and our thermarests shifted out from under us during the night.

Testing out whether the “mattress” would keep my body lifted off the ground – success!

The morning after – you can see that the “mattress” wasn’t wide enough to keep the thermarests from shifting

Next task was to start a fire!I was at least allowed to have a carbon steel stick and a knife to create a spark to start the fire, but it’s not always easy to start a fire that way. Gather lots of kindling and firewood, including dry birch bark, fir trees, and deadfall, before attempting to start the fire.You want to gather more than enough firewood and kindling on the first try, because if the fire doesn’t sustain itself and goes out, you’ll be cursing that all the work you did in gathering the wood that went to waste.

Peel dry birch bark from trees, taking care to keep it as dry as possible  – I collected it in a plastic bag. It makes excellent kindling, as it will easily catch fire from a small spark, though it will burn out very quickly. Fir tree branches, excluding the needles, will come next in the fire, as it will spark and burn long enough to start the main fire. For the main fire, assuming you only have a knife and no axe and aren’t chopping down trees, gather plenty of branches, sticks and deadfall. Break and cut the wood into small pieces with the knife as necessary. Again, you’ll want wood that is as dry as possible. Once the fire is going, you can dry out any damp pieces around the fire. Throwing wet firewood  on could potentially smother the fire!

Once all the kindling and firewood was collected, we found a spot that was open enough that we didn’t burn down the forest above us. Piled and lined up the wood in the order I would need them – bag of birch bark, small to large piles of fir branches, and small and larger pieces of firewood.

Used a flat piece of dry firewood as my surface to start the fire – put a few handfuls of birch bark on top, held my carbon steel stick with the end braced down into the pile, and pressed down hard with the blunt end of my knife at a 45 degree angle to the steel, trying to create a spark that would catch in the bark. Once I saw  small flames, I threw the small fir branches on, as they spark and burn for a long time. As the pile sparked and smoked, I threw more and more fir branches on, Once the fir branches were burning well, I then put on more and successively larger pieces of wood…Once the fire starts growing, it’s important to keep adding the wood quickly to keep the momentum going.

Shortly after getting the fire started (ignore the bag of firewood, which we brought from home as a backup – I didn’t need it!)

I was lucky enough to get the fire started on the first try! Success was mostly due to collecting enough wood to get the fire going on the first try. And believe me, it was a lot of work gathering the wood.

Enjoying dinner. Again, you can see that ground insulation is important to preserving heat loss.

Fire is good for your well being

You actually don’t need a very big fire to cook food. Actually, we started with a much smaller fire for cooking dinner and still ended up burning the sausages. Mostly, the fire is good for your morale and well being, especially given that it was the dead of winter and snowing lightly at times. Plus it looks cool!

Another tip: before slipping into bed, we skipped back and forth (high knees!) to raise our body temperature.  If, during the night, you get really cold, get up and run around some more again. It’s surprising how much warmer it can make you.

I had 2 sleeping bags, one inside the other, to keep me warm during the night. I was getting so fed up with the slipperiness of the 2 bags, plus the thermarests, and slipping off the too narrow bed of branches, that I tried to close everything up as tight as possible. I woke up in the middle of the night almost in a panic attack because I thought I was trapped in the now too hot sleeping bags and didn’t want to wake Per up to loosen the strings on my bag, and I would overheat to death. But he did wake up from my squirming around, and managed to reassure me. Somehow later I managed to close up the bag too tightly again when I got cold during the night after the first ordeal.

Morning. Don’t do this – condensation builds up inside the bag, and wet stuff is bad news

Nutella and freshly made bread

Per made bread and oatmeal on the portable gas stove, as the temperature is much easier to regulate when cooking. It’s too easy (and fun) to make big, overkill campfires.

Portable gas stove

Lakeside campfire. Good thing about winter camping is absence of bugs!

I just discovered that apparently, it’s considered poor form to brag about yourself, or to imply that you’re better than someone else in some way (in Swedish culture)… Quite the opposite from North America (particularly the US), where it’s all about shameless self promotion. Most critical component to success is in North America probably the ability to B.S. Hell, I live every day thinking about how much more intelligent and better I am than the average schmo. Seriously – people are dumb! I have little faith in our education system when I see kids these days! * shakes fist *

Could you imagine the disastrous results that could come of not realizing that about Sweden? Me, showing up for a job interview, talking non-stop about how great I am, only to wonder why I never get a phone back?

On the flip side, Swedes could get into a lot of trouble here in Canada too. Continuing on with the “everyone is equal” idea, students in Sweden call their professors by their FIRST NAME! (So if Per studied here, he could really get himself out of favour with the professors very quickly.) One way to make your Swedish university professor uncomfortable is to address them by their title, as one of my classmates from my Swedish class attested that his professor freaked out, telling him NOT to call him “Dr. Svensson (or whatever)” and instead by his first name.

Per doesn’t even bother to learn his teachers’ names! He received an email from a teacher, and Per complained that the teacher didn’t identify what course he was writing about in his email. Me, “But you’ve been sitting in his class for months now – don’t you know all your teachers’ names?” “Why would I do that?” Huh? But it’s basic courtesy and respect, to learn someone’s name! Especially, to show respect to the person who decides whether you pass! At least measuring by my experience, which I should have realized after uncovering many, many differences, is not the same as Swedish experience. Perhaps it’s due to our egos (relative to Sweden I mean) that our names are so important to us. Heck, half the male Swedes are probably named “Johan”, so having a unique name probably doesn’t matter!

And apparently, if you’re pregnant and get on a bus in Sweden, people will not give up a seat for you. I read blogs online of people complaining about the “rudeness” of Swedes and wasn’t sure if I should take it at face value, and asked Per about it. “Why should a woman automatically get a seat just because she’s pregnant?” I was speechless. For me, giving a pregnant woman a seat is such common sense, that for me to try to reframe it in Swedish thinking… It goes against one of the most ingrained beliefs I hold! But I’m trying, with much difficulty, to accept that others hold different beliefs that aren’t necessarily wrong just because it differs from mine.

Again, I mention how huge the gap seems at times. And I repeat again, that so much of what we believe to be true is simply due to being a product of your environment, or country. The cultural misunderstandings continue…

Imagine a Canadian university having this on their website (translated from Swedish using Google Translator):

Question: What do you do in your spare time in Hällefors?

Answer: Eg go to the movies, sports, play bowling, practice on the Health House (J: I think this translates to exercising, gym?), visit the bath in Fillipestad, associations, etc. You can also interact with other students in the municipality, ex. the student union building in Grythyttan (Örebro University), Hällefors Folkhögskola (J: adult continuing education). Do you like nature, with healthy walks, fishing, canoe trips, etc.? Yes, there is much to do!

Exercising, going to the movies, bowling, and walking outside? That is lots to do? I kind of get the opposite impression when they promote such simple things that available just about anywhere, that there must not really be much to do! Of course this is due to my bias of living in a city where there are far more events going on than I know about. I can just hear the Swedish IKEA guy asking, “Do you like nature?” (listen here for hilarious commercial)

And another:

When you get to Lunnevad, near Linköping, and Mjölby, will you also to the Stergötland’s cultural landscape where it is as beautiful, just in the border area between forest and plains. A lush environment that invites physical runs or long walks and who gives silence when you need studier.

My reaction to this is just to laugh! But when Per read the exact same thing, he thought, “ah, how nice! Sounds like a wonderful place!” I think Canadians don’t exactly have “access to nature” as a criteria when looking for schools, which is why no Canadian school would even think to have something like this on their website. Could you even imagine?

Per sent me photos of Linkoping a few weeks ago, and I was shocked to see how green, lush, and full of bloom it is there. Wildflowers everywhere. Asparagus and rhubarb coming up in Per’s backyard. Grape leaves forming on the vine. Compared to here, where we’re just coming out of brown grass still. And flowers? Do they even grow wild here? Never seen one in the city that wasn’t planted by someone.

I finally understand why Swedes live for summer, having experienced grey, dreary, monotonous November / December skies, and extremely short daylight hours – hours that were usually grey still. Once a week Linkoping would be blessed with a day of blue skies, and I reacted just like most Swedes – rushing outside desperately trying to take in the sun while I could. Seeing the dramatic transformation into spring, I see more and more, how important the seasons and nature are to Swedes. And why when summer comes, everyone goes nuts! I heard it several times, how important nature is to Swedes, but until I saw it with my own eyes, I didn’t completely understand it.

Now that all my friends are in relationships, my Saturdays are starting to consist of reading or watching documentaries or opinion pieces about various issues in Canada, North America, or the world, followed by writing letters to politicians.

Yesterday night was spent watching a documentary Dewey posted, called “The World According to Monsanto”. I didn’t get very far because every 5 minutes I would pause the documentary. with different questions popping into my head, and want to look up an answer to it. I wrote a letter to a few MPs and our Prime Minister indicating my support for Bill C-353, which would ban Terminator Technology in Canada. I’ve also made the decision to eliminate, as much as possible, corn, soy, and canola from my diet, as they make up the majority of GMO crops in North America. Not only that, I’m sure my body will thank me, as they’re not exactly the food of champions. Cotton, another major GMO crop in North America, is a difficult one to eliminate from my wardrobe, though I would think most of my clothing isn’t North American produced anyway. (Link: How to avoid GMO foods in Canada.)

I am alarmed at how we’ve allowed ourselves to get to this point – the proliferation of low nutrition foods and money driven culture leading to our obesity and poor health, the irreversible pollution which is slowly poisoning and killing us, of letting corporations dictate our laws, and the general apathy of Canadians towards all of this. The more I read, the more pissed off I got.

The labelling of GMO (genetically modified organisms) in foods is mandatory in the European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand… and China?! (Side note: a bit skeptical about how effective China’s labelling is, given the amount of counterfeit products there.)  I wondered about GMO labelling in Canada, and found that a Bill was presented last year about mandatory GMO labelling, and guess what? My MP, all of Alberta (100% Conservative seats), and practically all of the Conservatives voted “No”. No?!? What do you mean “No”?!? I have a serious beef against “my” MP (that I didn’t vote for), and wonder what was his reasoning? (Aside from always voting with his Party…) Now I seriously want to question Laurie Hawn and find out why he voted the way he did. If he saw two identical foods in the grocery store, one labelled GMO and one not, which one would he purchase? I have an extremely difficult time seeing how anyone could think any differently than I do. I can’t fathom what runs through the minds of Conservatives. I want to – so that maybe there is some way to reason with them. But then my head blows up.

I don’t understand the apathy and even backlash held by Canadians to caring about anything outside of money, judging by even the people around me, who are more educated than the norm. Again, I repeat myself by agreeing with Dewey that social studies in school did a horrible job of making politics and the world seem relevant and interesting. But now, I feel extremely lacking in knowledge that I wish I knew more about. Is it a conspiracy – the dumbing down of Canadians? In some ways, I almost feel that it’s too late – I’m sure a huge proportion of my body is made up of plastics and chemicals, from the food we eat, the chemicals that we use, the water that we drink… But doing something feels a lot better than doing nothing.