Banding Golden Plovers

Yet again, some observations about swedish culture: swedes absolutely never give "the look" ;-) to people they find attractive. They pretend they are not interested. Anything else is seen as being too desperate. The swedish word for desperate is "desperat", and may as well be synonymous with "kanadensisk".

Speaking of which, there are tons of canadians in Lund. Much more than Americans, which is significant, considering that there are 10 x as many yanks as canucks, so you'd expect a similar proportion of exchange students here. On the contrary, we outnumber them around 5 times. Why? Sweden is held in very high regards in Canada, a socialist beckon in a nightmarish capitalist world. Canada could be like Sweden, have its sort of economy and generous welfare state, if only the continent could split along the 49th parallel, and leave the USA Axis of Evil behind (and yes, screw you southern ontario).

Anyway, for the last couple of weekends, I've been going out banding European golden plovers just north of Lund. Its great to handle shorebirds again, reminds me of the similar species in Alaska that I worked with.

Tonight, I'm going indoor climbing.

First snow and electrofishing

And now, some observations about swedish culture: Swedes like to dress up and have theme party's. "Welcome to the eighties". Men like to touch each other.

Yesterday was the first snow fall.
But we'd be so lucky in Skåne to actually have a snowy winter. Usually it rains. I love snow: I love the sonic-texture of the wind blowing over a snowy forest flow; "crisp"; I love the trails of animals since passed, and bloody remains of predation in action; I love skiing.

Snow also helps to brighten the dark winter landscape. Speaking of which, its sundown at 4:00pm here in southern sweden. And it only gets worse. So, imagine how funny it is to get a call: "we set up mist nets tonight, just before sundown" and that means 3:30 pm.

Check this out: fish can be induced to have a electrical potential difference, and be "attracted" to an Anode. Its called electrofishing--highly efficient and highly illegal, aside from biological surveys of swedish waterways. Last week, I got to try my skills at it. Its non-lethal, so doesn't pique my vegatarian principles. This week, I also get to do some illegal trawling, and gill netting, which means messily dismembering dead fish to free them from nets. But at least I know where and how fish are caught. If most people knew how our oceans are being systematically raped...

Fisheries Ecology

2nd Course in my MSc of Marine Biology

Flounders experiments and singing swedes

A marathon run of flounder happenings: Fanny and I do an experiment on flounder cryptic colouration and patchiness to finish marine biology. It always fun to work with animals: trying to sight their freakish eyes peaking through the sand, catch them as they wiggle n' splash about, watch them change colour...and release them! Not publishable research, but always good to have experience designing and analyzing an experiment, as I hope this is what I'll do for the rest of my life. Not on flatfish of course.

To top off the conclusion of the course, there was a marine biologist "sättning". No equivalent in Canada, basically a bunch of dollied up swedes getting hammered in a heavily regimented manner consisting of a good meal and obligatory hymn list. The swedes like to sing and I like it!

Now, I'll begin Fisheries ecology. Not looking forward to it too much as I'm not too into teleosts (or cartilaginous creatures).

Ontarioans are idiots

Ontarios recently voted down a proposal to modernize their archiac first-past-the-post sham electoral system to proportional representation. You'd think that slogans like "your vote = my vote" or "each person, one vote!" would get them thinking about just how people come to power in Canada. But the political commentators have spoken, they just didn't get it, they didn't know what  "mixed member" meant, so instead of investigating their voting rights, they conservatively did away with the nusance notion that something is deadly wrong with their democracy.

Canada will not be able to deal with a changing world. So long as a party can only enter parliament by scoring a majority in any one riding, smaller movements with broad national support, but who are fatally diffused, like the Greens (10%) or Feminists, will never contribute to the progressive coalition parliaments that the rest of the democratic world enjoys (except the UK and USA, the two other hold-outs on the question of proportional representation). We will have to wait until the old-farts in the old-parties retire, until new good ideas and unconventional threats can be dealt with by the new blood of the much saner younger generations.

Ontario, you suck.

All you need is politcal will, from a small, but power-tipping party. In Sweden, the Greens, hovering between 5 - 8 % of seats, and were pinnacle in the once ruling Social Democracts centre-left coalition.  So, Sweden greened, not because people here are ecological messiahs, but because there was a green party with teeth.

To me, this is the most important issue in Canada.

Anyway, I bought a guitar this weekend! Now come the dark days of the Nordic winter, and the vit. D deficiency induced ballads of darkness and dejection. The leaves yellow, the shadows chill the bone, and its dark by six o'clock.  Hopefully, I'll be able to find a nice project in the southern hemisphere for two months come January.

September 2007: one down 23 to go!

Happy Birthday Mom. Grand 57!

I’ve been busy since I arrived in Sweden, and therefore silent. Sorry! I'm now
studying marine biology in Helsingborg, and trying to be outdoors as much as possible. We have just one course at a time here, so its really intense, which is one of the reasons I came for graduate studies (unlike the psychophrenic canadian timetable). A consequence of being expected in only one place all day long is that the school can haul you away for week long field studies. We were just at a luxurious field station on the swedish west coast, 400 km north of helsingborg and its baltic influx. It was a relief to be by the sea everyday, its harsh granite outcroppings, wind scoured shorepines, and the explosion of alien colours, strange creatures and abyssmal depths beneath the water. Nearly everyday we were out boating, snorkeling, sweeting in saunas, and late night bleary-eyed socializing. Such a course would run up to perhaps $500 in Canada.  

Besides school, I’ve got a nice situation. Nice apartment with good people. Slowly meeting people, new and from my 2005 time. Lund is Lund, full of students, old looking, and loud. I don’t really have any hobbies yet, I’m basically outside as much as possible, enjoying unlimited transportation around the entire southern county called Skåne, and trying to catch the autumn bird migration. Some notable and beautiful places I’ve been recently are Kullen, Falsterbo, and the Bjarre pennisula (the infamous wildnerness where I was nearly harpooned by a wild boar -- I have pictures of the cave that I had to hide and sleep in, back in 2005 -- this time, I actually finished the hike!) 

At the moment I'm frantically trying to find something to do jan/feb, like a tropical internship. And I'm filling in forms to try and get some social assistance from the swedish government (i.e., money!), made possible by my generous visa. If I get it, I swear I'll stop importing cheap goods from north america, and buy more organic food.

Lysekil Excursion