Saket Vora

This morning was the hardest I’ve had in Lund, more difficult that when I had my digital communications final. This morning I had to say goodbye to my corridor mates, who have ascended to my dearest and closest circle of friends over the past five months. This was a morning where I could feel the seconds ticking away. Christian and Frieder saw me to the bus station and Pablo, Marion, and Helene gave me a wonderful sendoff from the balcony. My mind is not ready to let go yet, so I will have more to write later.

After a mad dash to the 7-Eleven to buy pepparkakor and julmust for my sisters to try, I boarded the train to Copenhagen. The airport is a good airport – airy, clean. It was extremely busy when I arrived, with a very long line stretching out from the SAS check-in desks. This was the first airport I’ve seen were they show you which ticket counters you can go to for your particular flight. After trying one of the computer kiosks, I was resigned to wait in line, but it was surprisingly efficient. After only 30 or 35 minutes I was at the front and the check-in went smoothly with no problems. After security, one fines many many shops and tax-free shopping. They had a lego store too which I thought was a nice touch for the kids. As I boarded the plane I picked up a complimentary copy of the International Herald Tribune to complement the latest issue of The Economist that I had bought back in Lund. Flight was fine, with a group of middle school girls cheering when the plane touched down to the amusement of the adults and more seasoned travelers in the front. If I thought CPH was nice, the Schipol Amsterdam airport is quite a sight to see. It is easily the best airport I have been to in Europe. There are enormous, easy to read instruction signs everywhere with English as the primary language. The airport is never feels crowded, looks sleek and clean, and offers well laid out and spacious shops. The area above the trains is enormous…difficult to describe. There is also a full fledged grocery store there too. I checked up on which receiving area my sister’s EasyJet flight would be arriving so I camped out near the entrance.

Sachi and Sapana’s plane arrived a bit earlier and I finally met up with them right as they were coming out of the doors clearing customs. It was nice to finally see them again. Sapana’s bag was ridiculously heavy and unlike Sachi’s, did not roll. I hoisted it on my shoulder while Sapana took my rolling back. We talked about their morning at London and Luton and how Sapana’s first impression of the residence hall was. While Amsterdam’s Schipol airport is spectacular, it’s city train system definitely leaves something to be desired. I found it a bit confusing and not as well run as the airport is. Kind of curious. We got off at the Centraal Station and first located a map of the city. We quickly saw that the metro doesn’t serve our part of town, which would have to be only accessed by trams. We walked over and after some hunting around find the right tram number. The trams here at 1.60 euros and they are valid for 1 hour. So you can go someplace, check it out, then take another tram ride in under an hour. We got to the Leidseplein, a big, bright, active square with lots of restaurants and shops. The nice tram driver repeatedly said ‘Vondelpark’ for us to inform us that it our stop. Oh yes, while we were looking around for the trams a lady saw us and asked if we needed any help, then she did. It was kind of weird to see that. The optimist in me was happy to see such a nice person, the cynic in me thought she was a distraction for some pickpocketers. Anyway, we made it to the hotel fine. We checked in and went up to the room. The room is kind of small but entirely functional. It’s better than a hostel room, let’s put it that way. We did some unpacking and I had some debhra that Mom packed with Sapana and they had some pepparkakor and julmust. They realized what I meant when I said how pepparkakor goes by really really quickly. They also couldn’t wait to see Klovvika so I showed them the movie too. Great reactions, especially to the DVD. Sachi loved Yuko’s screaming after she got possessed. We then watched the outtakes, and they had a good laugh. We wanted to do something so we got dressed and walked over to the Leisdseplein. We decided to have a bite of falafel so we walked down this street (a little shady, yes) and went into this store. A nice looking cat sitting on the stool and an elderly person took our order. They had their own system and manner of doing it. He carefully cut the tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, then slowly made each falafel. They weren’t the ‘burrito’ style you find in Lund, but they were filling. We got them to go and went back to the hotel to eat. As we got into the lounge, they were showing the Indianapolis Colts vs. the San Diego Chargers on TV. I was excited cause it was the first time I got to see NFL football live since leaving the US and it was the Colts at that, who are undefeated. And guess what. They LOST. Poor Peyton Manning. Anyway, we finished the falafel and went to bed. I forgot my pajama pants in Lund on accident so I will have to go buy some here or in Brussels. I haven’t find a suitable store yet. Maybe on Tuesday.

Well, it’s time for the European trip. Today was wonderful. I did some packing and then went to Malmo with Frieder, Christian, Paul, Marion, Helene, Yuko, Masao, and one of Yuko’s friends from Scotland. We played laser-tag! It was great fun. We stopped at an indian fast food restaurant named Ganesh and Christian, me, Helene, and Marion had a bite to each. Marion and Helene were having a tiny bit of trouble with the spicyness, but it really wasn’t bad! Heh, they just have to train more.

After coming back we chilled for a bit then went outside to burn the Christmas goat! It is of course a Swedish tradition! Frieder found this Swedish song, and outside once we finally got the straw goat to start burning, we locked arms in a circle around it and started dancing and singing this silly Swedish song. Ahh, these crazy Swedes.

Afterward I went into the lounge to spend time with people, and the French girls were having a pre-party. We talked a bit, and then Amalia came in and we said goodbye, because I won’t see her tomorrow morning. After everyone else left for the nation parties, Frieder and I had a long talk first reminiscing about our experience here then to a wide range of more serious topics….the aftermath of WWII in Germany, war in general, the middle east, etc. I will really miss talks like this.

I leave for Amsterdam in 12 hours. I’ll head to the train station at around 11am tomorrow, then catch a train to Copenhagen airport. Sapana and Sachi are in-flight now towards London.

Though some ‘goodbyes’ have started, I’m NOT ready to say goodbye yet! It’s going to be hard.

There will likely be no real updates on this site until January 1st or 2nd. I will be writing my notes each day of my European trip then I will upload them all to this website with pictures once I arrive back in Lund. See you all soon!

I woke up late today on accident. I got some pictures ready for Laure, then later biked out to the hill to watch the sunset over Lund. Nice spot for reflection.

I’m going to finally finish this term paper of mine. I finished off the ‘Religion for the Palestinians’ section yesterday, and now have the ‘Religion as a Means to Peace’ section left.

My working title is “Pslams and Suras, Shields and Swords in the Holy Land”. It’s kind of long, but I like the alliteration. However, it says something about my state of mind regarding this topic when I just KNOW that someone is going get offended by the parallelism in that title. I mean, I’m instantly conscious about these kinds of things now.

I’ll add more later.

Lots of stuff happening. But first let me backtrack a bit. On Friday, the day after the Klovvika premiere, I went along with Christian, Nora, and Laure to the Franz Ferdinand concert in Copenhagen. We went there early though, to visit the Tivoli amusement park. This park is located right in the heart of Copenhagen, and while it doesn’t have the huge rides that an American theme park would have, it has a nice atmosphere. We walked around there with Helene, Marion, and Kahina until it was time for the concert. We discovered upon boarding the bus that our train ticket is valid for the bus, so that was a rather useful and expense-saving revelation. (randomly running into Paul as well). We arrived at the KB Hallen, which was actually more of a small sports stadium. A lot of younger students mulling around. We went inside and gave our backpacks and jackets to the garderobe and went inside. The website claimed it was a sell-out crowd but that wasn’t the case. We found a spot in the center and tried our best to hold on to it, but as always in concerts people think they can push and shove their way to any spot. One Danish guy rudely pushed his way past and stood literally right in front of Laure. This guy was maybe 6’5” and Laure is around 5’7”. Fortunately he left after the opening the act, which was a young UK band named the Arctic Monkeys. They would be wise to learn from tips on how to work a crowd from Franz Ferdinand, because the Monkeys came on stage, started playing, said “thank you”, played a few more songs, then left. In fact, if Franz Ferdinand hadn’t said some nice things about them during their show, I would never have even known who the opening band was, for it wasn’t printed on our tickets. At around 9pm Franz Ferdinand took the stage and the whole crowd started going crazy. Now, Franz Ferdinand isn’t really the kind of music I normally listen to. I was aware of one or two songs by the band, and I knew they were energetic, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the near-constant jumping up and down that the crowd started doing. The only thing you can do is to go along, or else you’ll get swept aside. Halfway through a jump I actually caught a glimpse of Yuko sitting in the stands. She and Masao had come along because Masao’s corridor was making a joint trip to the concert. The concert was good, the band did a fine job at interacting with the crowd, and later played a five song encore. As we were leaving Christian wanted to buy a shirt but the poor guy was virtually invisible to the salesman. Christian had to stand there, right in front of the guy for nearly 15 minutes before getting his order. We took the bus back to the train station and then boarded the train back to Lund. On the last stop before Malmo, the train was stopped for an unusually long amount of time. I got to talking with one of Masao’s Swedish corridor mates, and this was helpful because he translated what the conductor announced: the police were on their way! Later, looking out the window, I caught a glimpse of what looked to be someone getting arrested. Strange. We finally made it back to the Lund then biked back up to Delphi.

I woke up late on Saturday and rather than actually lengthening my essay, I spent the time doing even more reading for it. The sad part is that while I’m current on other literature for the essay, I don’t remember in much detail what is in the book we’re supposed to reference in our essay; namely because unlike the rest of the class, I finished it nearly 3 months ago. But on Sunday I reached the halfway mark of my essay so I’m pretty pleased with. That night we also watched Pirates of the Carribbean.

On Monday we had our last class of Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict. We were to discuss our essays so I went out at 2pm to the E-huset computer labs to print out what I had. One hour later, I had nothing. In two rooms, some jerks were holding up the printer printing out a whole BOOK, in the other Windows room none of the open terminals were working, and the printer in the UNIX room was disabled. After one of the guys had left, I discovered he left the printer out of paper, and there were no extra reams or a sysadmin to restock it. An extremely irritating experience. Oh, print.ncsu.edu, I could have used you! The class was nice. Dr. Åberg brought these St. Lucia cakes, pepparkakor, Julmust, tea and coffee for us to enjoy. We discussed our papers in small groups, and it was a nice discussion. Most people haven’t even started theirs yet, and Vaibhav actually finished his and submitted it the day before because he’s leaving for Stockholm/Kiruna on Wednesday. He read maybe five chapters of the book then sat down and 7 hours later had his essay. Clicked sent w/o any proofreading. Heh. Afterward we watched this late 80s film about an Israeli soldier who gets captured by a Palestinian guerilla group and they eventually find a common bond through their love of football. Neat story, but absolutely dreadful execution. All I could think about while watching it was how much BETTER Frieder and I did with our movie. The movie had terrible keyboard synthesizer music that never matched the mood of the scene, the dialogue could have been much more revealing, and the pacing was bad. Oh well.

I’m happy to say that as of 6:20am this morning, Klovvika has ‘gone gold’! The DVD is finished and now we just have to start burning them. I went to bed at 7am and woke up at 10:15am, because I thought I had my laundry time at 11am. Turned out it was at 3pm. So I got ready, had a small lunch then biked down to the city center to look for the DVDs. After visiting several stores, I found one that sold the DVD+jewel case for 10kr a piece, came back to Delphi, and now I’m writing this entry.

Tonight at 6pm a group of us is going to the St. Lucia choir concert at the Allehegona Kyrkan, which should be nice. I will also work on getting Christian’s Lund map ready for his student guide project, and work on my essay a bit more. Busy night, will check back later.

Wow. What a day. I headed down to the AF-building to check in with my advisor, but she wasn’t there. I returned two Lund University t-shirts cause they were the wrong size but didn’t replace them cause they did not have the right styles. Will check back next week. At 1pm I met Christian and Frieder at the electronics store and we picked up the projector. We rode the bus back to Lund.

See, today was the big premiere for Klovvika, the movie we filmed in Norway. And of course when Frieder, Christian, and I set out to do something, we’re going to do it right. Which means renting a projector and setting up Christian’s speakers in the lounge so as to have a movie screen 12 feet across. It was pretty awesome. We were playing hockey and FIFA on it and such during the afternoon. It was very funny to see people come in the lounge, say hello, then as they turn their heads to look at the seating area, their eyes widen and jaw drops as they see the huge screen. Frieder and I had finished the DVD late last night. Adobe Encore DVD has been the MOST frustrating program to use. It does not feel or act like any of the other Adobe programs, and we found out later that Adobe had bought the program from another company. There were so many bugs that Frieder had to overcome. The last one was that for each subtitle track we had, Encore would add in a 2 second delay between menu transistions. Why it would do this is incomprehensible. But Frieder was brilliant in fixing it. So we had our DVD (though still not finished completely…the French and Japanese subtitles are coming soon).

We also started to cook, because it was going to be a big dinner. The whole dinner started out to be a good-bye dinner for LiShuang, who will be leaving tomorrow for some European travels. However, the scale and quality of the dinner increased by the hour, so we elevated its status to be one of the big official good-bye dinners. LiShuang asked that I make pizza, and I happily obliged here. The dough was troublesome though — I added too much yeast (I hate the American system of cooking measurements…it’s so inconsistent!) and so it was like working with inflatable dough.It was crazy. But what was truly amazing is how everyone came today to contribute something. Never before, out of the five months we’ve been here, has the kitchen been so full of activity! In every inch of the counter dishes were being prepared. LiShuang and Wenyuan were cooking Chinese food for their professors, because whenever these professors come to Shanghai, they dine at the home professor’s house. So LiShuang wanted to do the same. They later came in an cooked Chinese chicken with mushroom and some cucumber and eggs for me. I was tossing and kneading my pizza crusts on various pans while Laure was making a ham and onion dish. Christian was baking his wonderful Red Wine Cake, while next to him Yuko and Masao were assembling an elaborate Japanese sushi dish, with seawood rolls, Japanese rice, salmon and tuna and these interesting tofu like pouches. Marion mixing together a French quiche and by the stove Amalia was stirring a traditional Greek soup made with lentils (I recognized them from a dal my mom makes), tomato, onion, garlic, and spices. Next to her Judith was coring apples for a festive looking (and great tasting) Apfel dessert, served warm with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. Eddy came in and carefully made a French rolle cake, and Frieder was able to find some stove space to make his German Milk rice. Pablo and Pepe came in and made a Spanish potato dish with cream and ketchup and some toast with potato-salad like topping for appetizers. As all the dishes were nearing completion and everyone’s mouth was watering, some desks and tables were brought in from the rooms and a long banquet table was created. Candles, flasks of cider, and a running picture slideshow from our Norway trip projected on the wall perfectly accentuated what was turning out to be an impressive show.

The movie premiere was special so many of the girls dressed up and were all looking radiant. Eddy wore a sharp blazer and I took the opportunity to actually use the nice set of clothes I had brought.

As the elected President of the Corridor (that’s a whole other story I should tell) I happily announced the opening of the buffet and everyone began. It was a great dinner, with many different types of foods. I was happy that my pizzas came out ok despite the trouble I was having with the dough. Amalia’s soup was excellent and the sushi was remarkably good. Despite everyone feeling full, we then brought out the desserts. Judith and Christian started to warm up the apples and top them with ice cream and we passed them around the room. At this point it was around 10:15pm, past our scheduled premiere time of 10pm. More and more people were coming at this point for the premiere, but it was ok because they got to have some dessert. Nancy from digital communications came and brought some friends, and Franz from the hockey team was there too.

As dessert was winding down, we began to clear away the the tables and start getting the room in order for the premiere. The projector was a little strange in that it would tilt naturally upward, so we had to keep it quite low in order for it to fit on the wall properly. Couple this with 40 people crammed into the room, and we had some problems. Christian, Frieder, and I worked up a solution using Christian’s large law books (rather, tomes) and we were in business. Our great DVD menu was on the screen and before starting Frieder and I addressed the crowd to say a few words. As we navigated through the menu to turn on the partial English subtitles, the crowd oohed and awed. The movie then began with a raucous applaud. Frieder and I stood in the back with Christian to watch it, though we were more watching the crowd. The three of us, along with of course Paul, had spent a great deal of time watching over the movie. It helped that the crowd was comprised of friends of all the actors, so there were cheers when they got to see their friend’s on the screen. They responded perfectly to the budding romance between Paul and Marion, and exclaimed when they saw our top effect shot — the Frieder mirror scene. As the credits rolled we got a huge applause, and afterword we navigated to the outtakes reel Frieder and I put together and everyone had a great laugh watching all the mistakes people made.

As the lights came up the reaction was positive. Eddy said some great words for Frieder and I and we got a nice applause. My thanks and admiration goes out to everyone who was part of the movie, cause we all helped make it a success. We used the opportunity to take cast photos that we might be able to use for an eventual DVD cover. Afterward people mingled with the ‘actors’, and came up to us and said encouraging words. A word I heard often that gave me great satisfaction was ‘professional’. I learned a lot while working on this movie (indeed, it was like my fifth class here!) and had a blast doing it.

I had to tend to some things in my room, and the French left to go to Malmo nation for a party. I came back later to the lounge and felt bad I had missed out on the starting of the clean-up. We tidied up the kitchen to the tune of a Strauss Waltz, and after the floor was dry Judith and Frieder did a waltz for us. Some called it a night, but we still had the project until 1pm the next day, so the rest of us decided to watch a movie. We picked The Fellowship of the Ring, and in the beginning I asked to see the German dub. The voices are pretty good, though I’m so used to the originals it’s a little weird hearing something else. I also found out that some names are changed, which was funny to hear. Also, it’s not as distracting as one might think of hearing German though the actors are speaking English. After the movie ended, it was 4:20am and I was quite sleepy. I learned later that Frieder stayed up the entire night and watched all the extended editions back-to-back. I came in the lounge in the morning at around 11:45am, and the final battle at the Black Gate was underway.

In about an hour I’ll be going with Christian and Laure to Copenhagen. We will visit Tivoli (the amusement park) for a while then go to the Franz Ferdinand concert at 8pm. So far I had done pretty well at spending my money. But now I’m seeing my spending accelerating. The football game last Sunday, the projector, Tivoli, concert, and of course shopping for back home. And this is all before I leave for the European trip! Heh, I had better keep an eye on it. :)

Today was a great day, despite the difficulty I had sleeping in the early morning. A party started up in full swing at 4:00am and woke me up. It was bad…I felt I had been lying in bed for 12 hours between 1am and 6am. Then, the sleep I got between 7am and 10am was bliss. Oh, two days ago some Swedes hurled a TV out of the 4th floor balcony onto the main pathway before. Yeah. They do that here.

Christian and I have developed a plausible explanation for this Swedish college custom, though some might call it a ‘conspiracy theory’. IKEA (which as a design center right here in Lund, so it KNOWs college students) develops cheap affordable furniture that is easy to assemble (and thus, disassemble) and has a lot of stores everywhere in Sweden. The state-run alcohol system, Systembolaget, restricts the sale of alcohol so instead of it being mainstream and normal, Swedes go crazy with alcohol. They thus drink a lot at one sitting, becoming very very drunk. Combine drunken I.Q.-lowering group behavior with cheap furniture in a student dorm area, and the natural outcome is the wanton destruction of said furniture, often with flames involved. So much of Sweden is forested, so wood is not a problem. Efficient Swedish recycling returns the wood to the soil, and the cycle begins again. It’s a rather ingenious scheme for a self-sustaining economy.

Anyway, today was a good day. We went to Copenhagen and saw the FC Copenhagen vs. Viborg football game.

More pictures can be seen at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~srvora/pics/fc_copenhagen
It was good. Copenhagen demolished the other team 3-1. Me, Christian, his friend Jorge, Frieder, Laure, and her boyfriend Laurent (who had flown in from London) was there. Afterward we met up with Paul at the central train station and Laure and Laurent went back to Lund. We walked over to the pedestrian district and stumbled across an Indian restaurant. The Germans were up for it so we went in. I had baigan burtha (though the Chana Masala was tempting..but I can make a reasonable chana masala at home), Christian had Lamb Sabzi, Frieder at Chicken sabzi, and at my recommendation Jorge had butter chicken. I ordered mine spicy but it really came out spicy. The food was fairly authentic, the naan too not like that Indian restaurant in Lund. I ate very well (see Mom, I’m eating here!), and for $26 for myself it was ridiculously expensive but good. I mean…$26. Whew.

Yesterday I busted out close to 3-4 pages of my essay, and I’m just getting started. Hehe. The topic is endlessly fascinating. Everyone should read “From Beirut to Jerusalem” by Thomas Friedman. By this Friday I aim to finish it, a good ten days from the due date. We have our last class tomorrow evening. I am also going to check in with my advisor about my course transcript, mail back a package with some things I want to send home (like my souvenier and rather realistic fake plastic gun), buy a Lunds Universitet hoodie, and prepare for the Europe trip in more detail. Oh. And cut my hair. It’s atrocious now. Oh, and a Franz Ferdinand concert in Copenhagen on Friday! Ahhhhhh. :)
On Thursday we are having a goodbye dinner for Lishuang, then at 10pm we are having the premiere for our movie. After that Frieder and I will finish up the DVD production and start burning copies. Whew. Busy week ahead! Bye.

I just had a really great lecture in my Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict course. It was about the history of the peace process negotiations in the last 20 years. It was fascinating and I learned a lot that I never knew before. The lecturer was a guest named Karen Agathon, who is the new head of Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies here in Lund. She did her Ph.D thesis on the Israeli-Palestinian peace progress during the 1990s and also spent a year with the TIPH (Temporary International Presence in Hebron), which are international monitors for conditions in Hebron. Things in Hebron, which is a predominating Palestinian town in the West Bank, got very hot after an American doctor who emigrated to Israel as a follower of Meir Kahane and in 1994 entered the Mosque of Ibrahim in Hebron and opened fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 before being killed by the remaining worshippers. There are approximately 450 Jewish settlers living in the heart of Hebron, and these represent probably the most extreme hardline Jewish fundamentalist movement. They are in Hebron because that is where the Cave of the Patriarchs is located, a burial site for the four fathers and mothers of the Jewish people (I believe). It is said that when the Messiah comes, he will first arrive at the Cave of the Patriachs and rise up the ‘sleeping fathers’. In contrast, there used to be 40,000 Palestinians living in Hebron, but the hardship in living in this place in light of constant harrassment has made all but maybe 5,000 to 6,000 leave. But I digress. Heavily.

Anyway, it was a very interesting and informative lecture. Nothing though that makes me convinced that peace is just around the corner though.

Yesterday was busy. I went to the Christmas market at Kulturen with Frieder, then bought some mittens at Stadium and then went to the Lund Giants hockey game. To our delight, Franz got 5 to 7 minutes of ice time and even had a few good chances to score. The Giants won, but it was humorous to see the other team’s goalie pissed off. The Giants onced scored off a face-off with a slow puck! Anyway, due to part of the rink getting damaged we got out of the game a bit late and then met up with Christian, Norra, and Lishuang for dinner at a Chinese restaurant. We then met Laure at Filmstaden at 9pm to watch the Harry Potter movie. Funny thing about Swedish movie theaters: You first reserve your seats well in advance, then go to the theater to pick up your tickets. The theater itself is nicely furnished, but I thought the sound was certainly deficient compared to theaters back home. Only stereo sound from the front. There were Swedish subtitles. First impression of the film? Rushed. They were really anxious to get through the plot points. I wanted to see more time spent on the champions from the other nations. But the graveyard scene was done well.

I’ve also discovered that my entire approach to winter wear has been totally wrong. All this 100% cotton stuff isn’t actually the best, even though it’s more layers. I think I’m going to go shopping tomorrow and actually spend (gasp!) some money. I think honestly I’ve done fairly ok since coming to Sweden. I’ve bought a pair of mittens, two knit caps though I lost my good one in Norway :(, a Lund t-shirt. I also want to buy one of the cool Lunds Universitet hoodies i’ve seen, and another t-shirt and sweatshirt for gifts back home.

Anyway, some more movie and reading work to do tonight. Bye.

The past few days have been good. I’ve entered into a abnormal sleeping cycle, which was precipitated by staying awake until 4am one day because I couldn’t sleep. This, combined with no classes to go to resulted in a shift in my sleeping period from the usual 1-2am -> 8-9am to something close to 5-6am –> 12-1pm. I don’t like it very much and will try to end it tonight.

On Wednesday morning Eddy, Helene, and Marion left for their one week trip to Russia. They are going first to Stockholm, then a ferry across the sea. The corridor has been more quiet because of their absence. On the other hand, the rest of us are doing more things together, just a bit. Pablo had his family visit and Amalia went to Barcelona and Madrid for a few days with her boyfriend. The best part of their trip? The sun. :)

On Friday night I watched Sleepy Hollow with Frieder and Christian. In my mind I thought it was better, but now it seemed over-the-top in too many places. Tomorrow we will go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the cinema. It will be a busy day: Frieder and I will go visit the Christmas Market at Kulturen, then from there go to the Lund Giants hockey match against Astorp, then we’ll meet Laure, Lishuang, and Christian for dinner, then see the movie. Busy, but a welcome change.

I also haven’t been eating much these past few days, but together with the help of Mom I made vegetable biriyani. It does the body good to have some familiar spices and food in you, and it was the most filling meal I’ve had in a few days. Christian is a remarkable chef, and made some Rötwein Kuche, or Red Wine Cake. He used the shape of a bundt cake, and it came out truly extraordinary. Not overly sweet, with a hint of cinnamom and hazelnut. And made with 1/8 litre of red wine, of course. I have the recipe, don’t worry.

It snowed here yesterday, and while the snow was not heavy it continued to fall for many hours. Today the ground was still white. In two days time it will likely disappear. The AF-Bostader (the care-taker for Delphi) also put up a large Christmas tree in the central courtyard and put white lights on it. It adds a very pleasing touch to the area. At one point, I saw the tree shaking violently and discovered that some drunk people were trying to topple it over. Frieder and I ran out to the balcony but when we got there they were already running away.

Progress has been made on the movie, though it has been slow. The key trouble has been the opening title sequence. It seems easy, but we’ve had great difficulty getting it to a point where we feel satisfied. Eventually we decided to re-cut it and insert some more footage, and I rendered what should be the final version earlier. Frieder also noticed that movie studios also have a logo animation that plays before the film starts. On a whim, we did a Google search for images relating to ‘Delphi’ (the name of the studios and the housing complex where we live), and found a picture of a three columned structure at the real Delphi site in Greece. Add a 15 minute dash of Photoshop and we got this: Not too bad! Much time has been spent now in finding a nice logo animation.
The big things still left with the movie is 1) the sound mix; that is, balancing the dialogue, source audio, added sound effects, and musical score 2) the subtitles; which still need the Japanese from Yuko and proper syncing 3) the DVD production of it.

We’re targeting the 2nd week of December as the premiere.

That’s mostly it for now. Oh — next Sunday Frieder, Christian, his friend, me, Laure, and her boyfriend will be going to the FC København vs. Viborg football match! I’ll post about that later.

On Friday we threw a birthday party for Christian, even though his birthday happened 2 weeks ago. We did it then because he was back in Germany for his birthday and then most of the corridor went to Norway. I think it went well. I spent much of the day making the four pizzas for it. In the beginning it was relaxing with just our corridor and some close friends, but then later it got more crowded. Before the party started, Christian and Frieder were quite active in an impromptu game of football in the corridor…with a bouncy rubber ball 1 inch in diameter. They were getting quite into it! For gifts we got Christian two tickets to the FC Copenhagen vs. Viborg football match, and a Lund Universitet hoodie. Later on in the party alot of people left to go to a nation’s party and Christian went to his room with some friends and they talked. Amalia, her boyfriend, Frieder, and I began to clean up the kitchen. Amalia’s boyfriend is from Turkey, and I learned about the history of that country and the challenges it faces as it tries to join the EU. At the end of the night, the kitchen was nice and clean (one of the benefits of having a party). Christian came back after his friends left and he, Frieder, and I stayed in the kitchen talking about music. They showed me their love for Die Ärtze (The Doctors), whom they consider to be the greatest band in the world (at least from Germany, anyway). Christian and I continued to talk about what makes music great and our experiences with it. It was good.

On Saturday I went to the city center and bought a new toaster for the corridor. Earlier that week, I had forgotten to pop the toast three times, causing smoke to fill the kitchen and forcing us to spend a few minutes flapping towels around clearing it out the windows. (Our smoke detector clearly doesn’t work). Frieder and I also worked quite a bit on the movie today, working really late into the night. He cut together a great looking trailer, and I polished off a special effect that I’m quite proud of. The movie is set for release in the first week of December.

On Sunday I woke up rather late, and went to the lounge for some coffee. At the same time, our corridor elections were being held! Earlier that week, in response to one of Christian’s chickens being stolen from the fridge, Christian and Frieder wrote up a constitution for the corridor. It quickly snowballed into a rather intricate affair, and we were having elections for the various positions, like representatives of the people’s chamber, judge of the state, president, foreign affairs minister, party minister, etc. Frieder set up quite an elaborate voting station up, with registration via photo ID, a voting booth and ballot box. After many dubious voting irregulaties (I’m going to stage a revolution), the results were in: Christian, Frieder, and I make up the people’s chamber. Eddy is the president, and he appointed Yuko as foreign affairs minister and Helene (of course) as party minister. Marion is the judge of the state.

Later that day Frieder and I went to see another hockey match at the Ishall. It was a good game, with the #1 and #2 teams playing. It was tied 0-0 until the last 56 seconds, when the other team scored a goal. The Lund Giants lost 0-1. The worst part of the night was actually our fingers. They were freezing. We’re talking like the you-can’t-get-it-out-your-mind pain on the bike ride back up to Delphi. It was crazy. If fingers could cry, mine certainly were.

Since my last update I’ve also been watching the show Arrested Development. I never got around to watching this show while it was on, and decided to give it a try. And I’m glad I did. This is the best live-action comedy I’ve seen since Seinfeld, and it’s better than Seinfeld. This show is top notch, with brilliant writing and great characters. And wouldn’t you know it, Fox CANCELLED it. Sigh. So far just seven more episodes to go. Seriously everyone: watch this show. Start with Season 1, because one of the greatest parts is that the show builds upon itself. Watching episodes knowing the earlier episodes makes them so much more enjoyable.

Anyway, it’s about 4:40am, and I had better get to sleep. Our plane tickets for the December trip are booked, and my two essays for SAS 116 are finished. I will email them to Bo and Andreas tomorrow. Gute nacht.

Wow. That was pretty interesting. Christian invited me to the kitchen for some Glühwein, which I happily accepted. That was around 8pm. I got back from the kitchen at 1:15am. We had the Glühwein, which is a warm beverage served at Christmas markets throughout Germany, then started talking. Marion, Helene, and Eddy were there but had to leave for finish their papers. I was happy; Marion got a ‘VG’ (Very Good) on her final paper for her environmental class, she was very appreciatative that I had helped her with the English. Helene asked for me to give me a read-through on her paper as well. So it was ultimately just Frieder, Christian, and I. At around 9:30pm I was feeling hungry so I started to cut vegetables. I made dinner, watched a little of Men in Black with Christian, then Frieder came back and tightened the screws on the chairs. Then Christian came back and we just kept talking. About all sorts of things. It was nice.

Tomorrow we are having a birthday party for Christian, though admittedly rather belated. I will be making pizza so I will have to make the crusts tomorrow morning. AND work on my Harry Martinson essay! Didn’t get much done today that’s for sure.

On Wednesday we were presenting our papers for Scandinavian Culture, and one girl completely butchered Niels Bohr. She said the play Copenhagen was a musical! Ahhhh, my eyes were burning. It was also hilarious to see how no one understood what it meant to give a five minute summary of their paper. They would ramble on for two minutes, then announce “my paper has five parts” and proceed to list all five. The professor had to cut off so many people and we wasted time asking people if they could do it in five minutes or not. Sheesh.

For the third time this week I burned toast in our dysfunctional toaster and caused smoke to fill the room. So tomorrow I will go to the Lund city center and buy a new toaster for the corridor.

This Sunday Frieder and I will go to another hockey game. Later.

Wow, long time no post. But I have sort of a legitimate reason. I think. From November 2nd to November 9th I was in Norway with my corridor mates and friends, and I figured I would late until returning to make some new posts.

Norway was incredible. For natural landscapes, it is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever visited. It fit what mental picture I had of Scandinavia when I saw the Norwegian landscape.We had a large entourage. From our corridor, we had me, Frieder, Eddy, Helene, Marion, Judith, and Yuko (the last two came later). Eddy’s friends Geoffrey and Yahia came, and Frieder’s friend Paul came too. Paul and Eddy drove us all the way up from Lund to the house where we stayed, a good 7 hour drive. Helene had found a secluded house that was about 45 minutes northwest of Oslo. The house blew away any expectations we had. It was actually two houses, a large one and small one. Each were completely furnished with full fledged kitchen, spacious living areas, comfortable rooms, and house stereo, tv, dvd player, everything. It was located just 5 meters from the Tyrifjord/lake. They had boats and canoes and we could use all the equipment. It really was amazing, and all for an extremely affordable price because we were there during the off season.
It was mostly a time of relaxation for everyone, and relax we did. Woke up and had coffee while gazing out over the fjord with its fog shrouded mountain ridges. Went out onto the lake with the boats and admired the Norwegian landscape.
Watched movies and played games at night. One day we took a day trip north of the house to explore more of the country-side and do some hiking. Another day we went to Oslo to see the town. It’s a modest unassuming capital. Another huge thing we did was to film a scary movie. Frieder and I thought of the idea before leaving, and we worked out loosely the story we’d tell. And during the stay there, we used everyone and did a lot of filming. It was a little tricky to manage it at times, because it was supposed to be a vacation but doing the movie does take work to do. We filmed everything there and currently we are working on finishing the movie. It so far runs at around 21.5 minutes. We’re going to eventually make a DVD of it. But we also had a lot of fun while filming it too. It was great fun. Back here in Lund the weather has finally turned wintry. It has been overcast/rainy with heavy winds. It is getting dark here too very early like it did in Norway. At around 4:30pm it is completely night. I have to write an essay in the next few days for my Scandinavian Culture class, which is ending in about two weeks. I am presenting the essay I finished before Norway on Wednesday. I also need to start working on the final essay for the Role of Religion in the Middle East Conflict class. That will be about 10 pages long, but there is a lot of material for it.

Last Thursday Frieder, Paul, and I went to another Lund Giants hockey game. It ended in a tie, but I got a game puck that flipped out of the rink after being deflected off the goalie’s pad. It is a great souvenier. Poor Franz didn’t get any ice time, but we’re hoping he’ll play next game. Lishuang is off traveling through Germany, Austria, and Italy. Eddy, Helene, and Marion are heading to Russia and Estonia next week. We are having a birthday party for Christian next friday. Today was very strange. I woke up at around 11am or so after going to bed at 3am. I felt ok, but fell asleep again. I woke up next at almost 3pm! It was crazy…really heavy intense REM sleep. I really haven’t been dreaming much while I sleep over here, but I guess today my brain just said enough is enough and did a LOT. Really weird…

Anyway, make sure you check out my Norway pictures here: http://www.saketvora.com/photos/norway/index.html and email with how you are doing. Leave comments!

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.