God Jul to you all

Just saying Merry Christmas or whichever variant of seasons greetings you want to take, over the holidays.

I have spent my Christmas at home, spending lots of hours on Skype ringing people, and preparing for my 2 week holiday - one week up here with my Japanese host sister who is coming over, and then a week in Italy. I cooked myself a roast lamb dinner, and today on Christmas day will do the usual partying at Cleo Nightclub, after having a few traditional pre-going-out whiskeys at someone's home.

Here is just a bit of mucking around with a glass of chartreuse and a candle. Next time I'll need to carefully wash the glass.

Thredbo Pt 2 & Melb. Misc.

Observant readers of this blog (if there are any such people) may notice back in September there was an entry titled Thredbo Pt 1, but no part 2. Well here it is. These are pics mostly from Dad's camera, and a few misc shots from my time in the snow in Thredbo and in Melbourne.

Setting up the shot

A quick 'disco nap' before hitting the slopes

A quick 'disco nap' on the slopes...

No Paul, your *other* right foot!

After +10-17o days, most runs were running out of snow

Some much needed apreski

Dinner at the Curry Club Cafe

Doktoral Debutant 2

Congratulations to Dr. Johanne Mouzon, the 2nd PhD student to complete his disputation in our division this year.

Pre-show nerves

The opponent Prof. Mats Nygren. Inventor of spark plasma sintering.

The french have only one thing on their mind...

Johanne the patriot produly wearing his Lulehockey shirt

Singing some Swedish and French songs

Out comes the dragspel

Kent Albinz Jazz Orkester

A breakaway unit from Luhrarne is Kent Albinz and the Mama's (one of our alternate names). Consisting of horn blowers Kent and Albin, and the Luhrarne rhythm section (Mark, Mattias, Mattias, and Martin). We could also be considered 'Luhrarne Lite' - the small group that plays light dinner music before we bring in the 26 member big-guns.

Here are some pics from the Geolusset dinner.

"Fixing" the bass player's g-string...

On stage, minus Kent, but plus Erika.

Mattias and Albin

Jake & Elwood, aka Martin och Mattias

Luhrarne

At Jazzomat, a new jazz club in town. We did a 2 hour saturday jazz gig, playing everything we knew, and then got encores. We've been invited back, which is nice, but need to work up some new songs. And start demanding better pay and conditions - a full 3 course meal and 2 beers, this time!



We play some of the real book standards (Autumn leaves, Watermelon Man, and have talked about Mercy Mercy Mercy and Chameleon), we do a ska/reggae version of Well You Needn't (hats off to the Monash Big Band crew with whom I first did that at the end of 2004). Some Benny Gohlson tunes, It Don't Mean a Thing..., Bluesette, and Ruskatoonies Macaroonies (swedish) are also in the bag.

And I only dropped a stick once during the concert, and not during a solo - a big achievement for me! I'm still not used to not using the club-like grip that we could use on the thick japanese drumsticks.

"Laaaaa"

Look carefully and you can see me poking out under Kent's armpit

Band Camp in Gästrikland

When snow melts, floaties are compulsory safety equipment

So I play drums in Luhrarne, the uni big band, and a couple of months ago we went to a small bands festival (a small festival for uni bands, not a festival for small bands) in Gävle, which is the capital of the Gastrikland region, whose name never ceases to amuse me. Come to our fine restaurants! Recover in our world class hospitals!

The band uniform is the green lab coats. Under which overalls can be worn, and generally the more prylar or crap attached, the better. We actually placed ourselves in mortal danger by standing here, because a bus went out of control and drove through it before crashing into a concrete barrier on the Sunday. A few hours later. In the square next to this one.

I couldn't quite get the right angle to make this look dodgier than it is... but some surreptitious drinking in public places is being done.

Almost Leunig-esque. I like the touch of the ciggie and the paper. Actually, Gävle is probaly most famous for the Christmas Goat, a massive straw julbock that gets erected in the town every year, and more than half the time has been burnt down or vandalised. This year, on the 40th anniversary of the goat tradition, the town invested a lot of effort into impregnating it so that it could not be burnt. It seemed like they were issuing a challenge actually. And one attempt was made to set it on fire, but was unsuccessful. The only time they ever caught someone for burning it down was an American tourist, who thought it was an official tradition, and didn't run after setting a match to it but stood there watching it burn!

If you look down the list in the Wikipedia link above, you'll see that 'hillbillies' were involved in crashing into it one year. These raggare are basically bogans in souped up Volvos. I haven't noticed any fluffy dice, but that's because the windows are all tinted.

Not a strange initiation ceremony. Just some emergency reindeer surgery

Reinholt, our reindeer gift to the festival organizers. Its teats dispense whiskey, and reaching up its ass up to your elbows you hit... 'chocolate' (quotes not needed, it is real chocolate). Albin, our fearless leader, suckled at its teats to get his hit of highest kvality German whiskey (yes), with 'whiskey colourant added'. Classy stuff.

Not an inspiring building to have a class in. (For you swedes out there, frigg in aussie would be something typ fan or djävla).

Opera singers getting... boned? Oy.

The blåa burk (blue tin can), the new arts center

Litheblås from Linköping Uni. A big, energetic brass band, with a fantastic drummer somewhere in the middle there. And a dancing crew. Here in Sweden, and especially up north, pair dancing (foxtrot and a kind of swing dancing called bugg) are very popular, so guys really need to know how to dance.


Whacky entertainment is the order of the day. Our band plays classics like the Gummy Bears Theme, Batman, Greased Lightining, the CanCan (for our dancers), and then usual swing stuff. Just dont ask about why I, in the seconds before starting, could forget the simple drumbeat to I'm So Excited, on stage, two concerts in a row...