Swedish girl

I think I know Sweden an Swedes enough now to write this little post. After one year and a half spent here (yeah, Jönköping + Lund...), I met a lot of different people, trying to understand them and their culture and their habits etc... I guess I am sometimes disappointed. Especially by Swedish girls... Explanations.

It is not a secret for anyone, I like women. When I first got here, Sweden was like Heaven, I have to admit. I was in a class of 26 students, only 4 boys, and only one french frog. I got in touch with most of them, getting into close relationship sometimes. And through my different experiences here and there, I met some others, building a friends network quite important. Okay, I've been heartbroken, I broke some hearts, but this is life, it is everywhere the same I guess, so no blaming to swedish girls for that.
But why am I disappointed?

Okay, here is the average swedish girl I know:
- they tell you they'll call back. Never trust that, coz they never do.
- If they make a promise, tell them to write it on a paper and sign it, because they never keep it.
- don't worry if you receive the answer from a SMS only 15 days after you sent it, it doesn't mean they don't care about you, it's just their way to say they love you and they care.
- Don't plan vacation with them, they usually cancell a week or two before.
- If you start talking and flirting with a swedish girl in a bar, you have to stay focus on your work a 100%. Don't go to the bathroom, don't talk to someone else, just keep her eyes on you, because in ten seconds, she is able to be kissing another guy(s). (well, being french sometimes help to avoid that)
- Be careful when you start talking to a swedish girl. The first question you should ask is: 'do you have a boyfriend', because what a kick in the ass when after one hour talking, almost kissing, the boyfriend shows up.
- If they tell you yes for a coffee or a dinner, call them back the day after, because they'll never accept afterwards, or they will forget about it.
- If you don't have a father who is rich, your chances to just talk to a swedish girl living in Stockholm are... Well, unless you're fu..ing lucky ;)

Well, all of the above are based on real experiences, and it doesn't mean that every swedish girls are like this, and I'd like to say also that my dear Vivianne has not been taken in consideration to the creation of this 'average swedish girl' ;)
Of course, they have also very good points, but you all figured it out already. I guess this post is more made for guys... Sorry girls.

Finally, I just wanna say that even if they are rude sometimes, I like them. Certainly a melancolic ex-heartbroken who is writting now. Cheers.

Christmas pause

Well, we have no more studies this year… A lot of our classmates left Lund for their homes, to spend Christmas with their families, or for holiday travels, or both. They don’t have time or topics to post to this blog as much as before. Lund stays quiet… It cried a lot the last week, for all the merry students parting (not partying this time!) from it until the next year… or leaving for good. But now Lund tries to stay cool… Very cool, actually, I would even call it cold. It tries to smile its cold sad smile with brief moments of winter sun shining through crystal-clear air on freezing cats sitting a top of the laundries’ thermal vents… and on a guy who stops to caress those cats and to talk to them in Russian.

Lund also stays hopeful. Because many students will return the new year, and some new students will come too. All our classmates (but one, and we wish Odushka a lot of success in Stockholm and we’ll see her here the next September, hopefully!) will be back in Lund in the beginning of January. Those, who stay here, plan to organize LUMES Christmas celebration, we’ll have a big beautiful apartment to chase Santa around, all at our disposal, yahoo! I bet it will be as lovely as my dream of it here. I miss my friends, both those in and out of Lund, and I want and hope to see them all soon!.. Merry Christmas, everyone (let’s think it’s a cultural event, not simply a religious holiday, ok? ;-)), and A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR of us all together!!!

Contemporary Culture and Environmentalism

So, inspired partially by Mike’s Making Change Happen project, Laurent’s culture post, Yo’s IQ post and Turaj’s Van Morrison song (I still think it was more about emotional enlightenment rather than Smith and Rousseau), I decided to delve into the murky world of politically-charged songs and message music... In general, popular music has struggled to combine political issues with universal themes that can appeal directly to the human heart. Furthermore, in a liberal democracy, it is generally assumed that there are two sides to every story, and it can be easy to alienate half your audience if you “pick a side”...

However, “The Pioneers” by Bloc Party seems to be an exception that proves the rule. This song works because it picks a theme – human hubris and the rational detachment from society and evironment inherent to enlightenment scientific attitudes – that doesn’t attack any one person, nationality or social class in particular. And as we all know, the concern it expresses for the implications of these attitudes is very contemporary.

Here are the lyrics - I think they are pretty self-explanatory after Turaj’s course:

If it can be broke then it can be fixed,
if it can be fused then it can be split
It's all under control
If it can be lost then it can be won,
if it can be touched then it can be turned
All you need is time

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?

A sense of purpose and a sense of skill, a sense of function but a disregard
We will not be the first, we won't
You said you were going to conquer new frontiers,
Go stick your bloody head in the jaws of the beast

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?
Breathe in, breathe out

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe,
It's a language I can't understand
Ambition, tearing out the heart of you
Carving lines into you
Dripping down the sides of you

We will not be the last.

The lyrical structure is a subtle progression from absolute certainty in scientific methodology in the first verse, to increasing self-reflection on the dynamics of a competitive system of knowledge in the second, and ultimately despair and confusion once the limits of human capacity have been acknowledged in the third.

Beyond the message, what makes this song particularly striking is the use of the singer’s voice to convey urgency through the short, sharp, staccato phrasing of every sentence. This urgency is also conveyed in the gradual build up of instruments. The first verse commences with sparse, angular riffs from two electric guitars before a martial drum-beat kicks in on “all you need is time”. Eventually, the bass-line appears as the first verse is repeated. In addition, the repetition of the scientific mantras “it’s under control”, “all you need is time”, and “we will not be the last” reinforces the irony of the statements themselves as the urgency of the vocal delivery undermines the listener’s faith in the “pioneers’” certitude. It sounds like the singer is reassuring himself, and not doing a good job of it. Indeed, the song can be read as an endorsement of “strong ecological modernization” or fundamental structural reform as it implicitly asserts the futility in trying to “solve problems with the thinking that created them”.

Anyway, if you are crazy enough to have read this far, you might want to listen to the song on youtube. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8N_n5npm7I

But be warned, music that tries to convey tension and confusion is not necessarily easy on the ear the first time you listen to it. But it rewards multiple listens. And I am sure you will agree that the video explores several interesting interrelated themes in the space of three minutes...

Aah, only 139 days to the concert… just around the corner... the anticipation!!!

XMas!

My dear friends,
I won't give you any special quotations tonight, i'm just curious to know how you celebrate Christmas in your own culture/country/family (if you do celebrate Xmas of course), what it means to you, and what your plans are for the coming one!!!
I propose tou to use the comments to answer, otherwise it will turn messy if everyone writes a complete post on that!
Lots of Xmas Love to everyone!
Marie

oh yes, nevermind, some favourite Xmas quotations!
"last Christmas i gave you my heart..."
"i'm dreaming of a white Christmas...."
"let it snow let it snow let it snooooooooooooooooooooow"

héhéhé

Precious lessons
Ok, I can’t stop writing anymore. I’m not going to tell you how I have ended up here because remembering those days still bothers me somehow, but I want to tell you how happy I am for being here. First let me confess that coming back to university after two years working wasn’t so easy that I thought before.

I remember after finishing the first course at LUMES, how much I was angry about the course and the exam. I was complaining about timetable, lectures and the exam’s format. But one my lumesy friend said to me: “Hey, you knew the rules of game before, if you are not satisfied, go back home, otherwise stop complaining and work harder”. Actually I didn’t know the rules completely before, and in that time, which I didn’t have a place, I didn’t have my student card and in short I was under a lot of pressure, I needed something more sympathetic rather than that sentence. But I thought to myself “yes, she is 100% right”. I really needed a punch to find myself! And fortunately I did! Getting B in the second course wasn’t just a mark for me; I proved a lot of things to myself. I really appreciate my friend’s comment.

I would say even the conflicts might be useful to learn. Last week, I started a debate based on a scientific article, but unfortunately it ended up with “shame on people who don’t want to pay 10 SEK for xmas present!”. First I was a little bit disappointed of how subject changed. I received some impressive emails, and the attitude of some students was so offensive. I didn’t understand why they took it personal. At the end, only 13 voted for carbon emission credit among about 60 students, but as they were more in comparison with other groups, most students including me, just paid their 10SEK to get rid of the junk emails. But it was interesting for me to see different reactions, bad or good both were interesting for me. I became happy that most of my friends have realized what the subject was really about.

All in all, I have to say, these four months were full of new things to learn, from different friends, from different parts of the world. I think this is wonderful. There are a few ambiences in which you can learn a lot in a short period of time, in addition to go to the party almost every week! I’m really happy about it. I really believe we can do a lot of things after our graduation because we are learning and experiencing several new things. I love you my lumesy friends :x

-Maryam

Becoming a LUMESian in 4 quotes

At my university, I was struck by how many of the other environmental students had had transformative, almost quasi-religious, experiences in nature when they were younger. I've been wondering if this was unique to my culture or more universal. I really want to know Why do we all care? Why are we all spending two years of our lives here in Lund trying to figure out how to change the world? Because maybe if we knew why us, we could spread whatever pushed us here to others.

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no child-hood in it..."
--Georg Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)

This is why I became an environmentalist. I would never have loved the earth this much if it weren't for the idle times as a child climbing trees, building snow forts, racing margarine cups down the rivuleting floods of spring, jumping into leaf piles and floating in the ocean. I would not have loved this earth so much if I had not spent so many hours wandering the woods with my mom, as she asked me, What do you think that is? Why do you think it does that? Where is it going? Where does it live? The woods seemed full of stories and magic, and in the end, I loved the earth.

"Knowing what I do, there would be no future peace for me if I kept silent."
-- Rachel Carson (on why she wrote Silent Spring)

I started out as one of those serious kids who hears about the rainforests being cut down and the whales being endangered in school and demands it all to just stop! When I started taking classes on "environmental issues" and it all became so much more complicated, I felt like Carson, that I couldn't look away.

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds."
-- Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac)

So often it seems like it would be easier to look away, to not know the things they're telling us about global warming and desertification and poverty and biodiversity loss and on and on - to be able to have the future peace Carson knows she can't have because she knows so much. This, ultimately, is how I think I ended up here in Lund with y'all: to not live alone with this. To not become one of the burned-out American activists who are stuck and given up with the world. Sometimes it means so much just to see you all in class each day.

This brings me to another of my favorite quotes:

"To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts unexpressed, that can make this life a garden."
-- Goethe

Not to get completely mushy on y'all, but I think it means you are all flowers.

My two favorite quotes

Hmm, may I share not just one but two of my most favorite quotes: one short and one very long? As you probably already know, I’m a big fan of ‘all things Apple’, like fruits, trees, orchards, Apple Macintosh, and many others… And both favorite quotations of mine are somehow related to this passion.

The first comes from a girl whose words from her high school essay were used for one of the Greenpeace International Annual Reports:

“even if I knew the world was coming to an end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree”

I think it’s one of the most beautiful lines of text I’ve ever come across…

And the second quote inspires me very much as well, it comes from my favorite author Kim Stanley Robinson and his wonderful book ‘The Years of Rice and Salt’:

“We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more qadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more clans, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are.”