The Agrinautica

   I'll be leaving for Orange County within the hour to chair the International Legal Committee at the CalMUN Anaheim conference. Hooray for eight hours of driving alone with no music!

   Finally got the internet working on my new computer, which is provisionally named Sparky 2. If the life of Sparky 1 is any indication, it will not get a better name. But then again if it takes after Sparky 1 overly much, it will have its first crash after about nine months and will proceed to quickly become insane and loopy.

   Having the Swedes around earlier in the week was awesome. I haven't drank so constantly since the dorms man. Also I went to the bars for the fourth and fifth times of my life. On Monday Tobias said he saw the G Street Pub bouncers kick out an off-duty Davis police officer who was too drunk. On Tuesday when we arrived there were four cop cars there and the police had taken the bouncer aside for a talking-to -- no reason for the police to be there was evident. Sounds exciting but lest I commit rumourmongering I must say this is just wild speculation.
   Wednesday evening Kristy and I took the Swedes to SF. Driving in that town is insane. The Swedes departed from the greyhound station there.


   The ASUCD Supreme Court is down to four active members. We need five to make quorum. There's nine positions total. Tell your friends to apply. We had 40 something people rush the pre-law frat; why are people so eager to spend six weeks jumping through hoops to join our pre-law society but so reluctant to fill out an application for the Court? I mean, who doesn't want to have "Justice" on their resume? Maybe if we introduced hazing on the Court people would start lining up?

   Continuing the Emosnail Prehistory series...

   I spent what would have been my sophomore year of high school in Sweden -- summer 1998 to summer 1999. I stayed with the family of Tony Bjuhr, the Swedish exchange student who had stayed with my family for the previous year. They lived in Kristinehamn, a small town of 25,000 on the northeastern corner of Sweden's largest lake (fig.1).
   Kristinehamn (literally, Port Kristine) was known for most of its history as "Bro" ("Bridge." The town was named Bridge. Wtf) until someone finally decided it needed a real name. It was used for loading iron on to boats on Lake Vanern. Now its main industry is production of turbines -- ship propellors and hydroelectric turbines.
   About an hour away from Kristinehamn is Karlstad ("Car-shta" to those in the know, Charleswood for those with a penchant for literal translation. It has 80,000 people, at least four McDonaldses, and an airport. When I arrived I came in on a Fokker 50 (yeah Fokker, the German WWII manufacturer) turboprop from Stockholm.
   Also of note is the small town of Bjorneborg ("Byee-orna-bor-E," or Bear Castle) about 8km to the where several of my friends lived. There we'd hang out in a small cafe, in which anyone can work for an hour or two for a free meal. The church in Kristinehamn had two tours, normally churchs have one tower and anything with two is a cathedral, apparently, but the second tower was actually the Bjorneborg tower, making it not a cathedral. Or so I was told.

   That year I attended Brogardsgymnasiet ("Bridgeyard (a yard in this sense is like a neighbourhood I think, a subsection of a city) High School" I was disappointed to learn it wasn't named after someone named Brogard, cause thats a tight name). My class's head teacher was named Erling (teachers go by first names there). He had also been my host-father's teacher! The school's headmaster looked exactly like Santa Claus, and in contrast to the Kilkenny College headmaster, was jolly and amiable. I think his name was even Niklas. I'm pretty sure that when not involved in his christmas duties, Santa Claus is the headmaster of Brogardsgymnasiet.
   Now thanks to the miracles of socialism, the school had an overly inflated budget (did you know not only is college free in Sweden, but students receive a stipend to attend... they get paid to go to school!). Unfortunately, when you take money out of the hands of the people and put it into huge bureucracies, it gets spent less efficiently. Thus, though Brogardsgymnasiet probably had a bigger budget than MVHS, it lacked the fancy things MVHS has like a video productions department and fancy auditorium and suchforth, but instead the walls were repainted every year and the floors cleaned EVERY DAY, among other things. Also there were couches in the hallways. MVHS in contrast looks a little like a prison. No walls are painted, no floors are cleaned...
   Best of all though, whereas at MVHS they start lowering your grade after the third time you're late, and incarcerate you if you miss a class, in Sweden its your own loss if you miss class or are particularly late, and presumably will be reflected on your tests if its really a problem. (In Ireland they incarcerate you if you don't turn in your homework)
   In Sweden all the girls are named Erika. The most common boys name is Daniel, but there are also a lot of Stefans. The funniest name that is common there I think was Pontis. Pontis is a fairly common name there. Pontis!

   Tony has four brothers. Andreas, the second oldest, was an exhange student in Costa Rica for the first half of my stay. Stefan was my age, we were in the same class. He managed to graduate two years later than me though. Ola was about 11 and already a ladiesman. Eric was five and taught me Swedish.
   Really. 70% of Swedes can speak english, so a lot of people resorted to speaking english to me when swedish didn't work. Eric couldn't speak english and never gave up trying to speak swedish to me, so I think he really is significantly responsible for teaching me Swedish. Once he pounded on my door saying he wanted to hang out with me, but I was busy. But I didn't know how to say "busy." So when he asked why I couldn't hang out with him instead I said (in Swedish) "I can't I'm... eating spiders!" to which he said "I want to eat spiders also!" ("jag vill ata spindlerna ocka!" I think the conversation is funnier in Swedish) so I had to say "but... the spiders are all gone" ("spindlerna are slut" ("sloot")).
   On that note, I was shocked the first day I walked into the school cafeteria to see the sign next to the plate dispenser flashing "slut" as people walked by. "Slut," pronounced "sloot," means gone or empty. Also on the subject, lunch was free in the cafeteria.
   Tony's father Sven-Goran was the head of the "Erection Department" at Kvaerner Turbine, the local hydroelectric turbine plant. His mother was a nurse.

   More Swedish adventures later. Now I'm gonna pack for the weekend in Santa Cruz.


Previously on Emosnail
   Two Years Ago Today: Getting Screwed By The Man II - and another beach bonfire and Taco Loco with Shasta
   Year Ago Today: Kristy is Coming to Visit!! - Kristy suprises me with a suprise visit. It was the strongest sauce. Also I rescue bees from the pool.
   Previously on the Prehistory Series: Freshman Year - 1997-98
   Next on the Prehistory Series: Sweden II - Angsty Situations - 1998-1999