Ten things I've done that you probably haven't

Wow. How many strange things people have done! (Funny that Sweden is mentioned five times in the comment section, given that it's a country with a population of 9 millions I think it gets lots of attention.) I rarely care about memes, but I want to try this too. Given enough time everyone will experience some weirdness, and so have I. (But I sure know people who have experienced way weirder things than i have!)

So, here are ten things I have done that you probably haven't:

1) Visited the geographical South Pole.

2) Been filmed in a ruin, wearing a cape and mask, for a death metal music video. (Hmm. Well. It was fun, actually.)

3) Collected people to a cuddling pile on a street corner. Or whatever you might want to call it. I'm talking about a lot of people laying and leaning more or less on top of eachother, just to talk and relax. This was during the Falun Folkmusik Festival in 1993 or 1994.

4) Now that I think of it, most people have not done this: defended a PhD thesis in particle physics.

5) Worked in a cleanroom 2000 meters underground.

6) Arranged a science fiction convention nearly alone (70 members, 2 guests, one conrunner on the brink of total insanity). At least I had gophers, and people helping out with some of the practical aspects.

7) Tried to teach math to 30 13-year-olds who instead climbed out on the roof of the school.

8) Visited several student bars wearing a baby on my chest. (No, of course I didn't drink!)

9) Made a catalogue of a collection of thousands of fanzines (which was later donated to a library).

10) Looked very scientific, filling and shaking test tubes dressed in cleanroom gear, as a backdrop to some special founding announcement.

The last item was added today. Our local lab has a cleanroom with transparent walls at the back, and we were asked to go in there and work and show what science looks like (hmm, well, or something...). It could almost have been fun if I had not felt like a fish in a bowl, or a monkey at the zoo. I helped our radiochemist with preparation of some samples, I haven't done anything like that since I was still in school (that is, before I went to university). Very scientific! But all the time people were pointing cameras at us, and talking importantly in front of us. (And when I tried to ignore it I forgot that it was a show going on and talked too loud so that the listeners outside the cleanroom walls could hear it, which gave me a very angry look from one of the organizers.)