Canadian house decorations (and politics)

Apparently Canadian politics is entertaining right now. Actually, this morning I passed an apartment building where someone had posted "GO COALITION!" in huge letters across three or four windows. That made me smile, because I like when people are enthusiastic about things.

Some of the more extreme Christmas decorations also make me smile. It was very windy on Monday, and I passed a house where an inflatable Joseph was beating the inflatable child with his staff, while the inflatable Mary struggled to stand up. That's one of the weirdest things I've seen.

Zombies and vampires

Horror fiction is not exactly my thing, usually. There is so little fantastic fiction published in Swedish that I have actually read some things John Ajvide Lindqvist anyway just because it was there. And now the movie based on his first book, Låt den rätte komma in gets a really good review at SciFi.com. And it's going to come to a movie theatre here in Kingston on December 12. I want to go!

And once again I ask myself why there is any need for a remake in English. Having grown up with subtitled movies and television, I really cannot understand why people could not just see the original. I guess it's just a matter of perspective, and what you are used to.

Sometimes I feel bad for being listed in blogrolls for physics blogs, when I have long periods when I don't write anything about physics. I like to relax with thinking about other things, like science fiction and stuff like that. Anyway, just because John Ajvide Lindqvist also wrote a good zombie novel (yes, it was good, despite the zombies), I'll post a link to Better Zombies Through Physics at Tor.com, where we see yet another example of how the gedankenexperiment by Schrödinger about the cat in the box inspires popular culture. I'm not sure it actually ever teaches anyone anything much about quantum physics, but it's one of the things that make people in general aware that such thought experiments exists. Physics is part of our culture too, sometimes very much so, and the separation of the two cultures is perhaps not always so wide.

(It's Friday night and want to go home, but I promised a student to test some analysis code first. It's taking forever to execute. Good that it's weekend now.)

IKEA expert!

This post is just some rambling, IKEA-related thoughts.

I still haven't visited IKEA in Canada. People ask me things: "So, do you actually have IKEA in Sweden, or is it just something you are exporting?" or "Do those names on the things really mean something? What is "Poang" for example?" (Yes, no, yes, and "point" -- it's Poäng, actually.)

People also assure me that IKEA has "all kinds of Swedish food". I wonder. Will they carry kaviar (the pink cod roe bread spread) or tunnbröd (really thin, flat, white bread)? At some point I will have to go and investigate. Now that I actually have a driver's license it will probably be easier.

Anyway, I found the study mentioned here (end of the post) interesting: it says that people tend to like things more if they invest some effort in them. Like assembling the furniture after taking it home from the store. I'm not surprised, but it's interesting to get a confirmation that this is how humans work. If it's too easy to get, it's not worth as much to you.

It reminds me of the first science fiction story I ever tried to write (I was about 14), where there was a youth sub culture where it was high status to wear and use only things you had made yourself. Lots of time invested, and definitely unique -- more cred than anything mass produced. It's actually a little bit like that in many LARP circles. Of course, assembling IKEA furniture does not take any craft skills whatsoever, and you don't show off the results to brag, but it's interesting to see that people value their own possessions not only after how much money they put in them, but also how much work (even if it's as little as assembling an IKEA bed).

Sweden from outside

Reading Beijing Confidential made me think about what Sweden might be like seen from the outside. Via a webpage of a friend I rediscovered this funny list of "Things That Are Different in Sweden". Some of the things I don't recognize or understand (Front doors on the back of houses shaped like barns?), and some are very specific (not all apartments have two doors), but in general it's exactly the kind things you would notice if you go there. For us it's funny, because we don't notice those things when we are at home, but after a year abroad it's easy to see that it might seem a bit different.

For the more serious, go to the CIA World Factbook.

Canada and Sweden (links all over)

Yesterday was Canada day. We went to see the fireworks. It also made me think of Canada, and Sweden, how things are in general in these countries.

I recently found this plot of the general values of different countries, the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World:



I have seen similar maps before, and always Sweden is kind of extreme in one corner.

In the recent novel Shelter by Susan Palwick Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands are the first western countries to give citizenship to artificial intelligences. I assume these three countries have solid reputations of being liberal and progressive. If you only judge from distances on these maps there are several countries closer to Sweden i values than Canada, but from my own experience I would say the countries are fairly similar.

Right now I don't know what to think about my home country on the other side of the Atlantic. Things are so strange lately, I would never have guessed that we would get a law that allows surveillance of private communication. I'm disappointed. There are also strange discussions going on in the European Union about registration and regulation of blogs. And now, the last thing seems to be the possibility that we lose the right to remove our own samples from the tissue records that are kept for medical research (and there is talk about releasing the DNA information to the police...)

On a completely different note I found an interview with William Gibson where he talks about Canada, among other things:

Canada is set up to run on steady immigration. It feels like a twenty first century country to me because it's not interested in power. It negotiates and does business. It gets along with other countries. The power part is very nineteenth century. 99 percent of ideology we have today is very nineteenth century. The twentieth century was about technology, and the nineteenth was ideology.

I haven't lived long enough in Canada to say anything about the state of the country or about the national identity or anything, but I think it's interesting to hear what other's say.

My next post is going to be another interview, this time with Peggy Kolm from Biology in Science Fiction blog.

I'm sorry, I don't speak French

It's funny how people here usually assume that my accent is French. I don't know how many times people here in Ontario have asked me if I'm French, if the language I speak to my daughter is French, or even if I'm from Quebec. Canada is such a multicultural country that you might think that people have heard several accents, but somehow they all make the same assumption about a strange accent or a foreign language.

Actually, I don't speak French at all. I don't even understand many words. By several months of exposure to bilingual food packaging I have picked up some useful phrases like "sans gras trans" (no trans fat) or "farine de blé complet" (whole wheat flour), but I don't know how to pronounce them.

Last week I was in Quebec, for a conference. In case you don't know, Quebec is a French-speaking province. One funny thing I noticed was that my own accent got worse when I had another language around me all the time. It has happened before, but it feels very strange. I also experienced the following funny situation:

***

[The scene is a café at lunchtime. I have successfully ordered a sandwich from a young man, and now I'm looking undecidedly at the bottles in the fridge behind the counter, and another young man waits for my order.]

Me: Umm... Apple juice, please.

Cashier: I speak English, if that helps.

Me, very confused: Well, so do I actually!

[Confused pause.]

Me: OK, so can I order an apple juice?

Cashier: Was that all?

Me: Actually, the juice is for my daughter. For myself... I'll just have a glass of water, please.

[I get my sandwich, and a glass of water, and pay the sum I'm asked for. There is something missing on my tray.]

Me: So, what happened to the apple juice?

Cashier: Did you want apple juice?

***

After this I felt slightly humiliated. Is my English so bad that people mistake it for tourist French? And is it so difficult to understand it when I say "apple juice"?

Blowing fuses, blowing snow

This week I worked three days in the lab. This involves lifting and carrying water cubes (20 litre water filled soft plastic bottles in cardboard boxes), climbing up and down the detector structure, reaching inside the structure to connect sensors to the detectors, and so on. Very physical work. I love it.

But of course there is also the inevitable frustrations involved in working with hardware. Short circuits, missing parts, leaks, and the usual delays. And did we leave the valve closed or open? I hate it when I notice that I could have avoided or prevented these things if I had thought about everything in advance. I want to do things right! Ah, well, I have to learn to deal with it.

At least we were lucky to get out on the roads when the latest snow storm had already passed and the roads had been cleared. No problems at all. Not like that time when it took us 12 hours to get there (instead of the usual 7 or so). Every trip is a little adventure!

Just before I left I had a massive attack of home sickness. I miss my friends and family in Sweden. I spent some time in the car thinking about my situation here on the wrong side of the Atlantic. At least I have husband and child with me, it could be worse. I'm really quite happy here, the only bad thing is the distance to the people I most want to be with. Should I go back after completing one year, or should I stay here?

---
What the water cubes are for? Neutron shielding of course. See my post here, where I talked about neutron contamination in the context of another experiment.

Happy New Year!

As a celebration of the new year 2008 I post what is probably one of the best music videos from 2007, and I'm not biased ;-) Elias and the Wizzkids, with a song about coming out of depression:



It's even science fiction: there are rockets, and it ends in the future.

Lucia

Today I feel far from home. Lucia day, the festival of lights.

One good thing about moving about 15 degrees south (and over the ocean) is that we get real winter but still lots of daylight. In Uppsala the sun rises at 8:40 am on December 13. It sets at 14:48. Here in southern Ontario I don't experience the winter darkness, and I'm still slightly surprised every day when I have breakfast and it's already dawn.

In the Nordic darkness we eagerly await the return of the light. Lucia is the first celebration of this. I might have some historical details wrong, but according to my understanding before the calendar reform December 13 was the morning after the longest night of the year. Therefore it has a special significance in folk lore, as we might expect. The day has the name of the Saint Lucia from Syracuse, but the celebrations and the light queen have almost nothing to do with her -- it's just a coincidence of the calendar.

In my world, a proper Lucia celebration is to stay up all night and bake saffron buns (they are yellow and shaped as symbols for the sun, heavy symbolism here) and ginger cookies, and maybe watch some movies with friends. In the early morning it's time to dress up in white gowns and carry candles and go wake people up with singing. Of course I haven't done it this way for many years, but as recently as two years ago I woke up hearing a Lucia procession in the building. They stopped on every floor and sang a couple of songs. I opened the door to my apartment and they gave me ginger snaps.

In Sweden the Lucia celebration is an almost entirely secular thing, if not outright pagan, with some small Christian decorations since it's also a celebration of the promise of Christmas coming soon. Here in a foreign country I have actually participated in a Canadian interpretation or adaptation of Lucia, which was very different. I was involved as an expert or consultant since I know the traditional song and could sing it. The rest of the ceremony was nothing like anything I have seen at home.

There was a story teller, who told a child-friendly version of the story of Saint Lucia (with most of the violence edited out). We learned that she was very brave and generous, and that here husband hated her for giving all her things to the poor and therfore turned her in to the evil emperor. Then entered the Lucia, looking just as they do at home in a white gown with a red sash and crown with candles. While I was singing she lit some candles and lanterns, and then she sang a song that is attributed to the Saint when she was in prison. Then there was a prayer for people in prison and for light in our lives. After this we moved to another room and had a "traditional Lucia breakfast". (They had no saffron in their buns, and they ate them with cheese and jam...)

The Sankta Lucia song in English and German translation.

Isaac Asimov, rider

I had this conversation at lunch the other day:

-I'm not sure I would have wanted to meet the young Isaac Asimov. He must have been a strange kind of person.

-Yeah, but he's a rider, so what would you expect?

-He's what?

-A rider. You know, an author.

-What? Oh. A writer.

See also A Tale of Two Geddies from Tenser, said the tensor.

I have also noticed problems with understanding the other way. Perhaps not so strange, since I'm the one with the strong foreign accent. Anyway, if I pronounce my name the way I do at home people won't understand what i say. My name is not that strange, but if the intonation is Swedish most people just can not make out the syllables. I have not entirely given up, but found some compromise that still sounds about right to me -- I would feel silly to pronounce my own name in some fake Canadian English.

Update: to clarify: I have no problems with other people pronouncing my name in a way that fits into the rest of their speech. The problem is that I know what my name is and feel silly to make up another way to say it (and yes, when I lived in Jämtland, up north, I still insisted in pronouncing my middle name in the Uppsala way).

Canadian conventions

Today I have not crossed the continent to go to VCon in Vancouver. Montreal is actually within reach, but last weekend I nevertheless stayed in Kingston and did not attend Con*Cept.

I downloaded the Con*Cept pocket program PDF and looked it through. Immediately I felt the effect of being on several concoms through the years, and could not help critically evaluating the schedule. Are people really going to show up at opening ceremonies at 9 in the morning? (Maybe a cultural difference, at home I wouldn't dream of starting the programming that early.) Is it really a good idea to have Tanya Huff on two consecutive panels? But more important: what topics could I reuse or adapt for another convention? I am really thoroughly indoctrinated to think about these things.

But I think these conventions are about an order of magnitude larger than those I've been involved in organizing. Swedish conventions outside of Stockholm rarely have over 150 members. On the other hand they tend to be more focused on literature, perhaps with a gaming corner and a film room but not with much happening except the panels and talks and fannish games and those things. Not much gaming (you go to a gaming convention instead, where noone has heard of fandom -- i like those too) and very little costuming or filk. (But there are lots of important things happening in the bar of course, where people meet and make grand plans for the future (or just have a good time).)

Anyway. When will I go to a Canadian convention? Perhaps at the end of March, to Ad Astra in Toronto. The web page is ugly and has some navigation problems, and is probably not going to attract anyone who does not know about conventions from other places. It works well for the purpose of informing someone like me, which is probably the intention of it anyway, so I should not complain too much. But this is strange:

If there is a Panel you wish to see please go to the Panel Suggestion Page.

Note: Anything submitted after January 5th, 2007,
may not make it into the panels for 2008.

It has to be a typo, or they will not get any suggestions at all -- and then they could just remove the option to leave suggestions.

Well well. Keycon has a much more attractive web page, and I would be tempted to put it higher on my priority list if it was not located in Winnipeg. Far away. Sort of. Not as far away as Vancouver and VCon, but far enough to scare me a bit even though I'm not sure what it means in money or time. Canada is enormous, in case you didn't know. The distance from Kingston to Winnipeg is 2245 km -- the length of Sweden from north to South is 1572 km.

If I'm going to a convention far away I have my old dream of visiting Readercon, which could be possible now that I'm on the right continent -- this is clearly a higher priority than Keycon.

Moving here has been incredibly expensive, even after being reimbursed for the actual travel costs. As a postdoc I'm better payed than ever in my life, but I'm not yet really sure what that means in practice (with a family to feed and everything). I'll have to start saving soon, and hope that I can afford some travel next year! (I have good hopes for Ad Astra at least.)

Rhyming

Every day I'm frustrated that I cannot express myself as well in English as in Swedish. Sometimes I sound really stupid, like when I try to talk about bikes. How could I know all the names of the parts on a bike? But I wouldn't blame anyone from just assuming that I don't know what I'm talking about at all.

But it's also stimulating to be totally immersed in an environment of a language which I know this well. I note little things here and there, funny things which I like. Like how it says on the vending machine that it takes loonies and toonies -- that took me about ten seconds to figure out. That's the one dollar and two dollar coins!

And I think people here are very fond of rhyming. "My ride, my guide" (time table for buses), "Hot eats, cool treats" (some restaurant), "Turn the knob to Bob" (ad for a radio show), "Stoop and scoop" (clean up after your dog!), "Pay and display" (parking meter), and so on... Little phrases that dance inside my head, very catchy this rhyming thing.

I was never good at wordplay based on the sound of words, even in Swedish. Rhyming is difficult. But I do have an ear for it.

Fearless Fantasy

I've been trying to visit all of the bookstores I've found so far. In one of them there was a sign posted on the counter that said that there was a fantasy book group meeting at the library. I asked the girl in the store -- it seems to be her initiative. Great!

Yesterday I was at my first meeting with this group. It's not big, only five persons including me. They seem to know nothing about fandom, but they are exactly the right reader types. I know (proto)fans when I see them. I found them! I already feel much more at home in Kingston. There are some people to discuss books with (and I might try to force them to read my fanzines).

For next time we are going to read A Wrinkle in Time, a book people have been talking about since the author passed away recently. A good thing about books for children is that they are usually quick reads -- so I'll have time for more books!

I informed the others about the Judith Merrill collection in Toronto and about the Worldcon in Montreal 2009. Nice to be able to contribute with interesting information. Fandom is a great network for resources of the fantastic (fandom actually is the Resource -- without it, no Worldcon).

Kingston, Ontario

Well. I'm here. I haven't had internet access all the time, and there are lots of things to do.

I've found an apartment for me and my family. I've met some people, and got a social insurance number, and a health insurance, and a cell phone, and keys to the department and my temporary office.

We have started to check out the book stores. We have found out where gamers hang out. I have read a strange novel I want to review when I'm not so tired.

And the Worldcon 2009 will be in Montreal. Maybe I should stay for another year? Too early to decide yet -- but I confess that it would be fun to be here for the Canadian Worldcon. We simply don't have a convention centre that can be used for something like that in Sweden, so I doubt that the Worldcon will ever be in Scandinavia (but I hear that the Swedish-Norwegian parties have a good reputation at the Worldcon!).

Over the ocean...

In two weeks. Yes. In two weeks I will be in Canada, with family and all. And before that, I'm packing my home in boxes to be stored for a year. (And I'm foolishly trying to get a fanzine out at the same time.) I have the tickets, passports, and lots of important papers with stamps and signatures all over.

I like it! Something new is happening! Hard work and new experiences are waiting, and probably lots of fun.

I hope our friends will find lots of money, and come and visit us abroad.

What's going on in Canada?

I'm waiting for my work permit. Hopefully it will arrive in three weeks or so. And then -- off we go!

Meanwhile, I found this strange thing from a Swedish web book shop (thank you Thomas), something with the title Quest for Chtulhu that looks like a map of Canada:



What will I find in the deep mines in Sudbury?

Going abroad

OK. I haven't updated for a while. There are other things on my mind, and I also need to visit all relatives before leaving the country for a year. I submitted my work permit the week before last, and hope that it's only a matter of shuffling it through the standard treatment. This means that I'm planning on leaving Uppsala at the end of August.

I'm also writing things. I still hope there will be a Swedish GUFF losers fanzine, and I'm working on my own Landet Annien (available only in Swedish). And some sciency stuff as well.

I made some initial investigations into fandom in Canada. We'll se what I can find.

One thing that I certainly intend to do when I'm on the right continent is to go to Readercon next summer (July 17-20, 2008). I've heard so much good about it, I think I'll feel at home!

Today I went to see a play by the local Harry Potter fans, Uppsala Slug Club. It was nice!

Cosplay now and then

Today I saw two girls who were probably on their way to a costume party. They were wearing some kind of colourful pirate costumes, very well made, and just passed the cash machine at the town square. The funny thing was that some japanese tourists stopped them and wanted their picture taken together with these tall pirate girls. My first reaction was that they surely have cosplayers at home, and don't need to go to Sweden to take their picture with a pirate. But then again, why not?

This makes me think of this piece by Forrest Ackerman were he tells us, among other things, about the origins of costuming at science fiction conventions. I'm not especially enthusiastic about costuming, but I always admire people who make things (like the Steampunk Workshop). And I remember a photo I've seen in an old Swedish fanzine, with a young Sam J. Lundwall dressed as a Martian. It can be kind of fun and good for the atmosphere at a convention, in small doses. (Never more costumes than interesting literary discussions!)

This old photo in turn makes me think of things I started. Now maybe I'll have time to take up my old fanhistory project. A couple of years ago I put together an anthology of Swedish convention reports, from the 50's until now (then). I want to continue this project, and make as much as possible of it available on the web. And maybe write an article about the joys of working with a fanzine archive... there's so much I want to do!

The owls are not what they seem

Just outside the Ångström lab, where my department is, there is a small patch of forest called Kronparken. It actually continues on the other side of the big road, but i seldom go there. Between the lab and the road they keep sheep in the summer, and there are lots of song birds. There is also wild blueberries and rasberries in late summer, and wood anemones and other flowers in spring. I take a short walk there almost every day.

I just went out for some fresh air. (Yes, I'm working on Saturday night. Because I took the morning off.) We have had hot and sunny weather for a week, and the evenings are wonderful.

Now in a small tree close to the path I saw four owls! They looked very calm, and one of them scratched itself in a way that made it look a little like a monkey. I think they were tawny owls, they are the most common owls in Sweden. Wow! It must be ten years since I was so close to an owl the last time!

Gender bending

I like the kind of situations that feel like the pictures where you stare at seemingly random dots and suddenly a 3D image appears. It happens in real life when you make some assumptions or guesses which turn out to be wrong, and in a sudden shift of vision it all looks very different. It always reminds me that the world is more complex than it may seem, and that I actually have preconceptions and hidden assumptions. I also like to see it from the other side, for example when I'm asked for ID in a bar and the bartender suddenly sees that I'm ten years older than he thought. (I think it's because I'm so short. Unconciously people tend to judge age after size also in the case of adults.)

So. Recently I realised that on the Internet I might as well be a man. Why not? As long as it's only about exchanging links and ideas, sex shouldn't matter at all. I like it.

It also makes me think about gender, but I don't know if I have any conclusions other than that of course it is more likely to meet a physicist and science fiction fan who is a man than one who is a woman. I often think that I live in a world with about 10 percent women.

Anyway, here is a picture of me that I wanted to post just to show that I've been to a Worldcon:



This is me at Interaction, the world science fiction convention in Glasgow 2005 (photo from this page, published here with permission). The picture was taken at the Swedish room party, where I'm giving people some "punch" in plastic cups (a Swedish liqueur based on arrak and lemon, very sweet). I didn't drink any myself, because I was seven months pregnant (it's not so visible on the picture, but with some imagination you can see it).