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.