Time again

So now it is time for my last practice period at an upper secondary high school. I’m of course a bit nervous but it is not comparable with the first English period I had.

Anyway I hope it will be alright and I will keep you updated during these 7 weeks. I know I know some of you may doubt that I will update the blogg more than I time but I will prove you wrong.

Birthday party

The long awaited birthday party took place last weekend and it was a big success. The hall, were it all happened is not exactly brand new but it has a certain atmosphere, is very spacious and most importantly it is for free. Anyway I started the preparations for the party the day before and it all intensified on Saturday. It felt like I almost moved half of my room down to the hall and I was rather stressed but we (My girlfriend was extremely helpful) managed to pull it all off before the honoured quests started to arrive.

The last party I arranged had very popular quiz which one of my friends arranged (although it contained some strange questions about trees…) so I had prepared a quiz myself containing eight questions. The guests were, in an ingenious way, arranged in different teams. Co-op is the key to success and the quiz contained some hard questions. Especially one question got criticised…it was about a robber’s name in the very famous film about a girl called Ronja who is a daughter to the leader of a band of robbers, Matis. The questions might seem tricky at first glance but it is important to pay attention to details since the robber’s name is presented at the end of the film. The teams also got some texts that belonged to the team name. One text was about a very huggable little animal called dronk. It is also fair to point about that the animal itself was present and received its fair share of admiration and attention from my guests. Anyhow, the winning team scored five out of eight which is a decent result. The worst team only managed to get one point which is a bit too low, but daily reading of a DN (a highly regarded newspaper in Sweden) would probably lead to a vast improvement until next time.

We were supposed to be out of the hall at 10 o clock but the party just carried on until half past one in the middle of the night, and that is a good review to me. The rhythm on the dance floor was awesome. I actually got some use for my vastly improved dancing skills (I have taken a jitterbug course) sevens lesson and a more than moderate amount of alcohol did the trick.

All in all, all the preparations paid of and we all had a great time. This actually opens the door for another beer night happening. But it is by no mean official yet so you can only hope.

Complaining

You may already know that the teacher program is of superb quality and you very seldom find anything to complain about... This is important since it by far is the most important educational program in our country, the future of our civilization depends on how well we, as teachers, succeed in our mission to educate our pupils. This requires that the teaching program is one of a kind and that improvement is the obvious goal. I, as a hard working student, will not tolerate any miss conditions and I was therefore sort of forced to go to go to the social science institution and complain about a course we had last semester.

I was rather worked up (and nervous, lets say over 100 in pulse) before the meeting with the teacher. Anyhow I had, for the sake of a giving discussion, left the hammer at home…well it is also fair to point out that I’m not a conflict person and the conversation that took place was calm and accepting. It is always important to listen to what other people has to say but I kind of missed the ability to extort a pure apology from her (in other word I was lacking the hammer…). Instead I got some lame “don’t blame me” excuse and I did what the instructions said and it was my first time I had your program and I won’t have it again. Bah, how hard can it be to say “hey I’m sorry, it was my mistake and I understand that you are unhappy with the course I was responsible for?

I’m not sure if my complaint made any difference but the goal is clear, to improve the most important university program in Sweden.

The best hamburger ever

This is a topic which apparently has an ever lasting debate attached to it. So which is the best hamburger or rather which hamburger chain makes the best burgers?

My view in this matter is of course objective, there is of course always a risk of getting emotional and thus give in to a subjective verdict but this wont be the case here. I have selected two contenders for this silly but still important challenge, Max (a local Swedish hamburger chain which originates from the northern part of Sweden and has then infested the rest of the country) and Mc Donald’s of course which is a firm committed to produce grand tasting burgers for an affordable price for consumers all around the world. I don’t have space and time to account for all different burgers so I have chosen to give my verdict without you having to read about the selection process.

And the winner is Bic Mac, with its well preserved dressing recipe and unique combination of lettuce onion and cheese. I have chosen to set aside all the moral issues like dubious employment policy and the effect on the environment the company has and only concentrated on the mouth watering taste. So the choice is obvious don’t chose a max burger you could have made yourself chose something different chose Big Mac.

An empirical case study on global warming

Problem Global warming is here, no one can deny it, just look out of the window and see the blasted rain ruin the white winter landscape.

Purpose: I will try to find out why is it warmer outside than it should be and also investigate why it can rain for three days in a row.This work will lead to something completely new and groundbreaking just as it should be when you are investigating something.

Theory: Today’s theories are unfortunately too simple for this research project so I’ll have to comply my own and I will mainly base my theory on years of newspaper reading. The increase in temperature is mainly due to the earth’s inner thermal activity. This is proven by Dr Humbugus’ famous formula for unexplained phenomena which can’t be explained with normal science. The equation goes as follows: XXXXXX=Y2 = 40. I’ll use my empirical data together with the equation to find the definite truth. The truth and nothing but the truth.

Method: I have checked the weather for at least three days and also gathered temperature data during that time. It will then be possible to se a pattern and draw a sound scientific conclusion. The method is called “the collector’s method” and was surprisingly unheard of for a long time and the source of origin is unfortunately not known.

I have now fulfilled All the requirements of a scientific study and I’m armed and ready to start the research.

Seriously

I read a very interesting text about tiredness in Sweden’s biggest and by far best newspaper, DN. Sleep is as you all know of great importance and there are disturbing facts that we not are sleeping long enough. Mankind or humankind, which is more politically correct, originates from the equator and we are “programmed” to sleep from 20:00 to 04:00 in the morning. Okay I know who would go to bed at that time when there is so much to see on TV, but the fact is that we tend to spend less time in bed when we must cram in more to do into the few hours we have to our disposal.
I don’t see myself as a guardian of morals but there is something important here. The scary and final conclusion is that the lack of sleep eventually will manifest itself. I know that there is a high oomph in today’s society and it is hard to step back when you really get things going for you but it could be worth bearing in mind that there are some seriously damaging effects if you don’t get the precious time in your comfortable bed.

Feedback

I will start to thank my important readers for the feedback I got on my latest texts. I can’t say it was the most positive reviews I got but I guess it is better than nothing… But I think it is only fair to give some response back since you actually took your time and gave something back.

First of all, I’d like to state that I’m a law abiding person and I would never dream of doing something illegal. Well not paying the licence fee doesn’t look good but you’ll have to remember that I’m a poor student and I do intend to start paying the fee when I’ve got a decent job as a teacher somewhere in Sweden. I might even earn so much money that I’m will be able to pay the whole sum back to the noble company SVT. I’m sure that you as fellow student can understand my situations and besides I don’t watch that much TV anyway.

Now I was particularly satisfied with my Christmas text, I sort of managed to give you an X-mass message and that the calendar is a great way to travel back in time and reminiscing old times when Christmas was something magic and you thought the days moved awfully slowly towards the 24th. Some of my readers have obviously not given it a chance which is a pity but it is never too late to change your mind, so bee childish and watch the calendar.

A real X-mass

I lost the magic Christmas feeling a long time ago. Okay, I’m always looking forward to it but it has more to do with things such as school holiday, food indulgence and family time. This year I think I have found a tiny link to that special feeling you had when you were much younger. No it is not religion…it is the Christmas calendar that is showing on SVT every day until the 24th of December. I wont go into any details but it must be something extra with when it motivates me to go up and watch the program 7:15 every morning. You should definitely watch it, maybe not in the morning but later in the evening. The darkness and the cold winter weather have swept their long arms around us…so ask yourself if it wouldn’t be nice to light a candle and tune in SVT 1 and enjoy some pure and classic TV entertainment and get some of the well deserved Christmas feeling.

I’m looking forward to a new exciting week at the University (something new everyday ehh?) even if the dreadful Umeå weather tries to spoil everything with slippery footpaths and dullness. We are gonna hold a presentation later during the day and we are armed with a powerful power point and well prepared facts, the others won’t stand a chance…

Yes, positive thinking is the motto of the week, more motivating texts later during the week.
Bye for now

The return of the blogg

The blogg has been down for too long and I can understand if my dear readers have lost interest in my small Internet space. Something clearly went wrong with the “old” blogg and I will therefore try to change the way of writing. The text will from now on be much shorter (I know most students to be very busy with their lives so reading my blogg wont cost you more than just a minute of your precious time); you could see them as small bite sizes of information it could for example be something I’ve seen or heard at the university or a specific thought that I like to share with my readers.

Something I thought I didn’t like is karaoke. I went to a friends place last weekend and the only rule he had was that you should (must) sing karaoke during the evening. I cursed in silence since I do know my own limitations in this silly activity. Anyway, a few beers later and some spectacular performances (I have never heard that interpretation of Elouise before…) it was time for me to grab the mike and pull of an ear deafening show together with my brother. A friend of mine showed me the video today and I’m glad that the phone’s poor microphone couldn’t record my voice’s whole register.

The Umeå Weather

The blogg has been sort of inactivated during the summer even if I intended to write... Anyway, I am back and my blogg will continue to provide my readers with insightful reflections of a would be teacher student life.

Umeå is in many ways a nice city, the student life is rich and it has a great mixture of students. I could go on like this but I would like to point out something which, according to me, is a big fat minus. The darn wind, I haven’t done any calculations but it feels like the good-forsaken winds never leave this city alone. You start to wonder if some evil power is controlling the wind since you always have a head-wind in your face. Today statutes a perfect example on how the Umeå weather really can spoil the tiny bit of enthusiasm you manage to muster a Monday morning before going to school. A grand combination of piercing winds which made the rain feel like it was below the freezing point, agonized me on my way to school. I was wet cold and annoyed when I arrived to school and it took me at least two cups of (expensive) coffee to thaw. I have now eased my urge to complain but would most definitely like to hear from my dear readers what you think about this matter.

Summertime

I thought about closing down the blog during summer or actually change language to Swedish since quite a lot of people have complained about how hard it is to read. It is of course something you have to take into consideration since you want as many people to read the blog, I have however, decided to continue with English since it gives me, theoretically, the opportunity to reach out to the whole world. So this blog will still have a international touch but will still be a about a teacher student in Umeå, all this means that I will keep my regional profile but with a global window.

Anyway it is summer which means that I’m home in Nävekvarn. I don’t think I have mentioned the place before so it definitely deserves a comment. I’m, at this very moment, sitting on the veranda looking at the summer-landscape and thinking of how important it is to have some touch with mother nature. Sure it might be more convenient to live in a city and that is what most of the worlds people do but to have the opportunity to go for a walk in the surrounding forests or take the boat out in the archipelago during summer is for me pure life quality.

This might be the most unstructured blog text so far but it is summer time and I must grab the opportunity when I feel motivated enough to write. You know, if you are a frequent reader of this blog, that I went on a cruise to Estonia this Easter and now it is time again. Me and three more people are going on a cruise to Helsinki the capital of Finland. You could regard this as a teaser since I definitely will write what I have been up to the boat. The only thing I know is that it will be a wet cruise…and fun.

At last I hope all of you out there are enjoying the summer wherever you are!

King of Beer

The long awaited beer night finally took place last weekend in one of Ålidhem’s local residence halls. The main purpose with the evening was (apart from having a great time) to give the guests something they hadn't experienced before, good tasting (and expensive) beer. I had, to make the experience even better, prepared something to eat to every beer. The highlight in the food department must have been the meatballs and I’m glad that they went down well considering the hard labouring hours behind the carefully handmade delicacies. It wasn’t exactly a four course meal, but there were plenty to eat so even my hungry brother could satisfy his empty stomach.

Three out of four were ale and they were really appreciated among the guest, I hade also bought a normal lager beer which has a can that titillates itself as world champion 17 years ago…anyway it was interesting to compare the different types of beer and also detect how they smelled even if it was hard to distinguish the faint and subtle smell of coffee from one of the beer’s.

This wasn’t only an opportunity to enjoy good tasting beer and food together with good friends it was also a cultural event since I had set out to cultivate my guests regarding the history of the beer and also give them interesting facts about the golden liquid that were served. It wasn’t exactly a history lesson but my enlightened guests can now impress other people when they tell them about the legend of the hobgoblin, how the prohibition in America affected the breweries and also that people has been brewing beer for more than 12 000 years.

One of my friends had prepared a quiz competition with 9 cunning questions, I teamed up with my brother and we managed to get 7 out of 9 which is quite impressive but we failed to nail the last tie-breaking question…”how many birches are there in Umeå?” his girlfriend got it perfectly right with 3 000 threes. (I’m not a big fan of conspiracy theories but is it just a coincidence that he choose a tree question when his girlfriend is…a tree expert…? I don’t know if the truth ever will be told but the candy bar that she and her competitor won looked damn tasty…)

I do think that the beer night was appreciated and that it was worth the 60 kr you had to pay for good tasting beer and food.

9 km of pain

I have never been very keen on running; the “magic” flow people are talking about has never helped me…

Anyway, I have during April and the first half of May been preparing for a charity race around Umeå’s only lake. One thing which is of crucial importance when you are to run 9 km is preparation. I did prepare, I have for example done some swimming and cycling at the gym and two football matchers can be added to the list. But hey…weren’t you supposed to run a race shouldn’t you have done some running too? Of course, it was top priority for more than a month but I couldn’t find (in some strange way) time for it until it was two days before the race. Smart move Markus, I was cursing my unwise decision when I, on the race day, was walking on legs full of aches towards the lake.

Anyhow, I teamed up with my brother during more than half of the race but he must have taken some painkillers before the race as he seemed untroubled with the more than real pain. I was, in the end beaten with 25 seconds and I’m not looking forward to see the photographs of the finish since I must have looked like a person who had lost his ability to walk and run for that matter and also someone who performed the least graceful finish ever.

I must mention that the race when it comes to arrangement was a huge success, all cred to the people involved in it!

Global warming

I have recently finished a course called teaching for sustainable development. This course dealt, among other things, with how we humans are using the earth’s recourses and the big gap between the richest countries in the world and the poorest. It definitely made me realize that we can’t go on like this forever, we are consuming far too much and the impact on the environment is huge. One of the main messages with the course is that you as a consumer and individual can make a difference, we can try to cut down on waste and also try to buy more food witch are locally produced.

I and a friend have been intensively discussing global warming during these five weeks. I do think that we humans are contributing by letting out huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere whereas he thinks it also could have something to do with natural variations. We saw Al Gore’s film “an inconvenient truth” the last lesson and it is a pretty strong message in it, but it is also important to be aware about the fact that the movie is biased and some facts have been left out. I have also seen another movie called “The great global warming swindle” and it is, as you can hear, claiming that global warming is a myth. It is interesting to observe how you can come up with two totally different conclusions based on party the same facts. I mention this only because there is a general view that global warming is an unquestioned truth and that all scientists see it as a universal fact but that is not the case. I got annoyed when I saw it but it definitely made an impact and I can’t wave it aside as humbug. Anyway, be as it may with that it is still of vital importance that we find a way out of our fossil fuel need and face the truth that the consumer society of today is not the society of the future.

The arrival of the Wii

At last it is here, the long awaited game console. My brother and I ordered ages ago in the beginning of January. (Together…? But you two don’t live in the same house, well we have worked out a great way of solving that, the wii will be moved around and I have the honour to have it the first month) I haven’t tried it out yet so I won’t be able to give you a hand to hand experience, but it will come later.

I have talked a lot about this gaming console with my friends and I have tried to put forward all the positive aspects like motion sensor controls which give the player more freedom than before. There are still some scepticism but they wiill be won over to the right side.

All this may sound a bit geeky but it is actually a console that everyone can enjoy, even those who haven’t played TV games before.

Cruise

Ah sometimes you just need to get frustration out of the system and that is exactly what I used the blogg for that in my previous text (I have also used my brother and two friends). It feels better now which means that I can write about what I intended in first place, my Easter brake. So what have I been up to? Well, the male part of the Wassing family went on a cruise to Tallinn, in other words my brother, I and our father. The whole adventure got a shaky start since it turned out (we were on the motorway towards Stockholm) that no one did know from which harbour the boat was about to depart from. Dad (Tuve) took the blame since he is well dad and must be seen as the person who should take the blame when something like this happens…anyway Tuve phoned mum (she is sometimes regarded as the all knowing oracle in our family) and we got a perfect road description from her and were able to find the harbour without delay.

The cruise itself was as pleasant as I had expected a delicious buffet (I’m not sure if that way of dinning suits me since I ate a little bit too much…) a nice 6 hours stroll in Tallinn and sauna with a could beer at the boat’s spa. The only disappointment was the lack of party it would not have been a problem to find people to dance with if I hade been 50 years older). Anyway, we had a good time and that is the most important thing.

university standard...

Mackos blogg has been inactive for quite a long time now, and the explanation behind that fact is not that I haven’t got anything to write about it just that I been neglecting the blogg. I’m now in Umeå again and I feel that the Easter break was good for me. I intended to do some studding but I gave up my ambitions rather quickly. One thing I did prepare for though was a presentation about environmental goals. I was about to present four goals, and each goal would take approximately 5 minutes, which means that the presentation should be around about 20 minutes. I don’t like to make things half-finished so I was well prepared for the seminar with a couple of OH colour (!) figures and a written script. So how went the presentation?? Well, we had only to present one of our four goals (at least some of us) which basically meant that you could sit and read from the basic material that were handed out to us the week before Easter and that was exactly what some people did. Okay this was not a huge assignment and yes I could have spent half amount of the time preparing but I do think there should be a co-variation between performance and grade. As far as I’m concerned everyone in the room passed, hardly university standard.

pain

I just want to give you a general advice (yes Macko’s blog is full of useful tips). Don’t eat a sandwich for lunch together with two cups of coffee and dinner three hour after. That alone is far from satisfying especially for a person like me who need to eat more than four times per day. Anyway I stayed at school for another two hours and was completely drained of energy when I came back (thank god that no one was in the corridor when I came back since I’m not the most sociable creature when I’m hungry…). I had a big plate of pasta salad and I started to feel a soaring pain in my stomach shortly after 5 minutes of frenetic munching. My stomach was obviously fed up with my way of treating it “-coffee and virtually no food what the hell were you thinking?!” I had to pay the price and I was forced to go home from the pre-party I went to after dinner. I felt miserable since I didn’t like the thought of going to Umeå Open (a concert) with an agonising pain in my stomach. I phoned home and my father answered. He managed to calm me down since he was convinced that the pain would go away soon and he also managed to give a biological explanation. The pain subsided a few minutes after our conversation and I was able to go to the concert and have a really good time.

Downhill skiing

Frequent readers of this blog know that I have tried downhill skiing before in a small slope outside Umeå. I am back from a four days experience in Kitellfjäll. It is situated in the 400 km north west of Umeå and it is a part of Skanderna which is a very old mountain chain. I’m not a very experienced skier so I started with a smaller slope and yes I had fairly good control over the icy surface. I can’t say that I wanted to try the bigger slopes but you don’t pay 2 000 kr to spend four days in a beginners slope. So it was time to turn up the heat, to take the big lift up to the highest slope. I have to admit that I’m a little afraid of heights and I felt weak even if the view was breathtaking. My brother and his two friends started descending one of the slopes and waited for me before it started to go sheer down. I said to myself “fine I can do this I know how to break and I can always do that if I’m going too fast...-I’m approaching the others and it is time to slow down but nothing happens (!) panic, I have to stop my velocity at all cost so I decide to go for the only thing I can think of, to fall. The problem with that breaking technique is that you have very little control over where you’re going. I tumbled straight into one of Erik’s friends and knocked him over and continued for another 10 meters. Too experience such a fall during the first day is not good for your ability to sky and I lost everything I had learnt so far. I wished myself back in my student room in Umeå but I was still on that damn mountain and I had to get down somehow. I was too afraid to ski down so my kind and helpful brother and I walked town that slope and it took us almost half an hour. This might sound like a total disaster but the trip to Kittelfjäl turned out to be great. I’m still a pretty lousy skier but I learnt a lot and mountains mixed with good company is a combination I really can recommend.