Saket Vora

I would normally be in Swedish Language course now, but class was cancelled. On Friday we have our Final Exam, and my second course of the semester will have come to an end. I signed up for a 7am laundry slot for this morning, but that was incredibly dumb cause I overslept and missed the time slot. I signed for another one tomorrow at 11am, which should work.

I have spent today watching the Panther’s football game that my parents send and a West Wing episode. I also cut my hair (myself) and had a cup of espresso+milk with Pablo. The remainder of this evening will be spend studying Swedish for the test on Friday, and possibly watching another West Wing episode…or two.

During the past weekend I ended up working a lot on my essays and got one of them about 70% complete. I’ll work on that too tonight as well. On Sunday I went with Christian, Laure, and Marion to the Lund Giants hockey game. It was awesome. We paid 30 kr for the ticket (like $5) and we were right there against the class. Great seats, and it was exciting! The Lund Giants won of course. I compiled a video of it that you can see here: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~srvora/pics/hockey2.wmv (right click this link and select ’save link as’).

Yesterday I picked up a care package that my mom and dad sent, and there was sooo much food! Chuckree, chevdro, laddu, spices, and lots of instant-gravy for all sorts of meals. They also put in DVDs of the NC State and Carolina Panther football games. Mom and Dad: You are AWESOME.

Today was really stormy…high winds and overcast skies. It will rain tonight I think as well. Alright, back to work. Swedish language awaits!

I took my digital communications final on Monday, and I think it went ok. I felt pretty good on all the problems except the last one, which seemed to come out of nowhere. If I get 2 points out of 10 on that one, I’d be happy. The exam consisted of 5 questions with 2 or 3 parts each, and we had 5 hours to take it. I finished in about 4 hours. We could use calculators and even the textbook. To pass the class, you need to score at least 20 points out of 50 possible points (10 points per question). Sounds like pretty low standards, right? I think the other exchanges did fine too. Judging from when last year’s exam was graded, the grades will be posted around mid-November.

Most of the leaves are on teh ground already, and winter is coming pretty quickly. The autumn was beautiful while it lasted — the trees turned nice golds, reds, yellows, and oranges. Wow I might be repeating some of this. Not all the leaves have colored at the same time though, there are still some green ones left.

I’ve been on a West Wing episode binge here…it’s not healthy. I need to really stop and get cracking on some of these essays I need to write. The Swedish language course is coming to a close at the end of October, so I’ve got that test soon. I want to try finishing up my essays for Scandinavian Culture class before I leave for Norway, cause soon after I return (like, 2 days) the presentations will begin. I’ll be doing a paper on the history of science in Sweden, and luckily I found a nice resource published by the Royal Academy of Science titled “Science in Sweden”. Heh.

What else is going on? Lots of stuff going down politically back home. Wilma is bearing down on Florida. Sapana is going to King’s College in England in the spring, and our paths might cross in transit. Sachi is off in Charlotte doing a project for Hunger Lunch. I registered for courses yesterday, didn’t get one I wanted but I might later. Oh, and Jessica sent me a delightfully unexpected and lovely care package! I’m feelin’ great. :) Thanks Jessica.

Whew. Man. Long time no post, eh? I apologize to all of those regularly checking this journal. The past two weeks has been a mixture of a lot happening and…not so much. I’ll start with the present now - I just finished dinner and writing this blog. Next to me is a practice final exam that I’m working on. On Monday afternoon, from 2 to 7, I have my final exam for digital communications class. 5 hours, 5 questions, and we can use the book. So I’m in an unprecedented spot (for me, anyway, I have never had an open book exam before). I want to study and be prepared, but yet we have so much time and have the entire book. Doing the previous exams has been an equally ambivalent experience. In one question, during the first step you ignore one of the given conditions, but in the second step you include the given condition. In another, you have to know that one variable goes to infinity to properly answer the question, but again, no clear way to know that. Oh well. I’m more prepared than the other exchange students. We’ll see what happens on Monday.

Earlier today after a lot of studying I went and played frisbee with Frieder, Christian, Paul, Marion, and Lishuang. It was great fun to finally play some frisbee, except my hands got cold by the end of it. The last point was made when Paul recovered a deflection from Marion at the gold line and flipped it to me.

We’ve been playing some more poker here, Texas Hold’Em style. Frieder has a really nice poker set. I won one night, but have lost the other two. Yesterday Christian brought in his Powerbook and got some lounge music going. I’m getting better at the game. Good times.

As for my other classes, in Swedish Language we are picking up the pace now that we have under 2 weeks to go. The exam is on October 27 or 28. I have found my essay topic for Scandinavian Culture class: Science in Scandinavia. I want to examine some of the key figures in Swedish, Norweigan, and Danish science. I found a book in the library titled “Science in Sweden: A history” so it seems like a good start. I think the other essay will be on Alfred Nobel and his affect on Sweden’s standing in the world now. Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict class is going good. Our professor is quite engaging, though his English isn’t the best. Last lecture was on Judaism, and he brought Matzah, a type of unleavened bread they eat, prayer shawls, and other items used in ritual. Last week it was on the eve of Rosh Hanah and he brought a plate of apple slices with honey, because you normally eat something sweet on that day to welcome the new year.

Autumn has fully arrived with slightly colder days. The best part are the leaves turning color. A wonderful array of golds, yellows, reds, and oranges are sprinkled among the trees. They all are not turning at the same time, so it’s very pretty here. The skies this whole last week were completely cloudless, which is causing Swedes here to start wondering what the heck is going on. They are really surprised at this weather; we are loving it.

I heard yesterday that Sapana was accepted to King’s College in England for the spring. Congrats sapana! You have to stop by here in Lund for a day or two before going to jolly ‘ol England. Our kitchen’s new counter-tops looks really fancy, and Dad out of the blue bought $300 worth of golf clubs one weekend. Looks like he’s getting geared up for retirement! Hehe.

Random cultural observations:

1)People that know a bit about America say that while my accent is certainly American, if they were to guess they would say I come from the Northeast, like Pennsylvania. They are surprised to learn that I have never lived above North Carolina in my life.

2) Some people went down to Oktoberfest in Munich two weekends ago. They started drinking at 9am and went until 1am. Some even smuggled out the 1 liter glass mugs.

3) In Christian’s European Union law class, they had to give their final presentations last week. Two Americans did their presentation on the Patriot Act, terrorism laws in the US and in the European Union. They started by describing some rights given in the US Constitution. The two they named as examples were “the freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms”. The entire class broke into laughter. The Americans stumbled a bit, wondering why all these Europeans were laughing at an American placing such importance on the right to bear arms. Out of the entire bill or rights, there are far more important rights worth mentioning than the 2nd amendment. I’ve gone on several rants about the current state of governance back home, so my corridor mates know where I stand. I asked them if they have met an American that supports Bush, and all of them said no. Hmmm.

4) Lishuang and Wenyuan told me that in China, KFC is more popular than McDonalds, because in China they say it’s healthier to eat animals that move around more. So chicken wings are considered better than cows.

5) When we were playing frisbee, Christian went running hard to grab a frisbee that went off course. He yelled ‘nein!’ as he couldn’t get to it. That instantly made me remember a Birbal story I read when I was a kid. Birbal is this advisor to King Akhbar, and they had a series of comic books that describe how Birbal solves mysteries or problems or sorts out complicated affairs for the king. Anyway, this polyglot comes to the King’s ourt and challenges them to figure out where he comes from. The court people quiz him in all eight languages he knows, but the man is so fluent in all of them and speaks with no accent. Finally Birbal follows the man to his home, and instructs a boy to wait outside his window and to throw cold water on him in the morning. The boy does and the polyglot wakes up suddenly in surprise and yells. The boy tells Birbal what he heard and Birbal knew the mother tongue of the man. When people are surprised or have to react on instinct, they will fall back their mother tongue, and Christian did exactly that.

6) Speaking of accents, the Germans have all sorts of accents and overall speak English quite good, but as a whole not as good as the Swedes. The people of the Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian) have a harder time with English, and nearly all retain an accent, especially the French. It’s interesting.

Sorry for the delayed post. Let me start from last Wednesday. The excursion around the sound turned out pretty good. It only rained for maybe 30 minutes the whole day. It took around 30 minutes north by train to go to Helsinborg, and we then took a very large and rather decadent ferry (3 stories, 3 star restaurant, fancy lobby, etc.) across the sound to the Danish town of Helsinore. Andreas, one of our professors, brought his little 18 month old daughter, Hedvig, along for day. She was instantly the center of attention of the 60 or so people in our group, particularly (and expectedly) the girls. We first saw the famous Kronberg Castle from the ferry. The first thing you see when getting off the ferry is a large liquor store. Some Swedes ride the ferry across, buy their alcohol, then board the same ferry before it leaves. Bo, our other professor, told us about another store in Copenhagen which would be better for us to use on the way back to Lund. (Bo was a student at Lund too, many many years ago). We first stopped by a church which was an example of the architectural style of the Hanseatic League, then walked on to the castle. The Kronberg was not designed as a luxurious castle; it was positioned strategically at the narrowest point between what is now Sweden and Denmark (until 1653 it was all part of Denmark).Ships entering the sound to conduct trade had to pay toll. It is an imposing looking castle, though not jaw droppingly immense. We took a brief tour of the castle rooms and even the casemates where the castle’s soldiers stayed. It was almost completely dark with low ceilings and many turns and passages. Being a soldier down there must have been terrible. We then walked back to the train station (after most of the class stopped by what is called the most famous ice cream shop in Scandinavia) and on the way back Andreas and I talked about the Freemasons in Sweden (his current research is the Freemason movement in Sweden). It’s pretty cool; just the last two days he was in Stockholm looking at documents in the Masonic lodge of Stockholm.

The next stop was a very small town on the coast called Rungstad. This is where the Danish author Karen Blixen (in the States known as Isac Dineson) of Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa fame was born and lived. This part got quickly boring because we already heard almost everything about her life in class, and there is not much to see. They was a nice bird/nature sanctuary behind the estate. But we ended up staying there for nearly 3 or 4 hours. So long that we had a shortened time in Copenhagen. We split up there, Bo taking a group to the art museum and Andreas taking people on a tour of downtown Copenhagen. I’ve already seen Copenhagen so I went with Bo. The city art museum has a very modern architecture, with very expansive openings and clean lines. The art was pretty good too, mostly all Danish painters. In one area of the art musuem they had two dozen bean bags, very large pillows, tables serving beer and wine, and a small electronica/trance band. Thirty or so college students were sprawled out, just chilling out in the museum. Thought it was a neat idea. They had a modern art wing which to me was just dumb, as you can see below:
Afterward myself, Tim, Nancy, and Frank headed into Copenhagen and stopped by a pizzeria to eat. They said they would accept Swedish kronors but we had to literally teach them how the conversion works. Pretty silly. The food was ok.

The rest of the weak went fairly uneventful. Friday was pretty chill because I didn’t have any class, so I played Kubb with Frieder, Paul, and Frieder’s girlfield Mika. Afterward we played around 2 hours of poker. I’m still rubbish at the game, but I’m getting better. Frieder has this very professional feeling poker chip set. His parents came into town that evening as well. I also started catching up on the Firefly series. It’s not bad. I think I’ll see the movie when it comes out over here. I also did some more studying for my digital communications class. The exam is in 13 days. I talked to Frederick the TA this morning, and he said to pass the course we just need to answer 2 of the questions correctly on the final exam (you have 5 questions, and 5 hours to do it). That’s pretty good, and if you can take a crack at all five questions you should be able to get enough partial credit to eek out a passing grade. I have three previous final exams and I’m going to set aside a five-hour block and see what it’s like doing the final. It should give me an idea of the level I’m at. Judging from the other exchange students I’ve encountered so far, I think I’m more ahead than they are.

On Sunday I made another Indian dish that has cauliflower and peas. I followed what my mom told me and it actually turned out really really good. And it wasn’t even that hard. Tomorrow I’m going to try making vegetarian Swedish dumplings, called palt.

I saw the Panthers won last night, which makes me happy. We’re still just 2-2 in the NFC South, and the Bucs are 4-0 and the Falcons are 3-1. I still think we’re the better team…we just need more consistency.