Midnight Sun

A shy Midnight Sun at Pullinki

Hej hej! Again, time has run away from me and blogging hasn't happened as much as it should, so it is time to catch up on what and where I've been over the last approx. 6 weeks.

Yesterday was the summer solstice - the shortest day of the year. Sunset was officially around 11.43pm, and sunrise at at 1.23am. Today is midsommar afton - the day before the official midsummer holiday and effectively holiday itself which basically means I am the only person at the university. Why arent I taking the day off, picking 7 sorts of flowers, grilling and dancing around the sommarstånget singing songs about elephants with swaying tails? Well i just got back from a holiday in Norway, and with my time here running out and massive amounts of work to do... I am sitting here typing in my blog instead. More about Lofoten in a future post.

In the meantime I've been in the US, UK, Linköping for work and play, Finland and the Tornedalen, had our last ever KAJO gig, and schwenkt like I've never schwenkt before. So now to the pics and detials.

BTW let me know if this page takes forever to load - I forgot to shrink the pic size before uploading...

In early May there was a snap decision to go to the US for a week to talk with my colleagues about my data analysis issues that were getting too deep and intricate to discuss via email. It was a very hard week, spending 12-18hrs a day mostly trying to do some decent background subtraction. But useful, and at the end we got to a point where I could go home and generate some useful results.


The US trip was basically all work no play, though I did get in some outlet mall shopping (suits, new laptop, and almost a digital SLR). 3 things have always struck me about the landscape around Chicago that I thought I would mention: a) the flatness, b) the water towers (above) that pop up at every township, and c) the uniform signage on shops. Although some shops stick out, most dont as the average strip mall around the lab area has a standard look: brown brick buildings with red lettering in the signage. I didn't get a photo, but a typical downloaded image is below, though the bricks tend to be a darker shade (and always the same shade).

I dont know why the shops dont try to be more individual, but do remember that my dad said Mobil spent a lot of money getting consultants in to make the 'o' in Mobil red, as it is eye catching. It is used for fast food also. But if everyone goes red, surely this defeats the whole theory.

I then flew back over a thursday night and had 50mins at the airport to get my luggage and get onto a train to Linköping, to make it in time for a gig with the band Lurhrarne. The US trip clashed of course with the one event pencilled in my diary three months in advance: SOF2007 (studentorkesterförening), a 4 day national univerisity bands festival. It took a bit of wrangling schedules to make it back in time for half of that, but I am glad I did as it was a good way to end off the year of drumming. We played some great funky stuff like the theme from Shaft, and Brass Machine, which flips between funk and latin. Some misguided souls seemed to think my drumming in Shaft was good and I heard people in the audience shouting out for a drum solo, which was flattering, but also a sign of mental instability amongst our public!

SOF is the biggest party in Linköping, happens every 2 years, and the Swedish drinking mentality of "get as drunk as possible every time you drink" was definitely on display. It was a bit of a pity we couldn't always play Brass Machine because the trumpet section were often too packad or full or berusad to handle it. I would have thought a bit of control before a gig would be in order, but then again, with several gigs a day over 4 days and beer always present, it would be hard to resist. Maybe 10 years ago I would have done the same... yes, I would have.

I heard a few bands, and quality varied alot. The final concert with Lurharne was mostly the best we have ever played, and also contained the worst we have everl played- one underrehearsed shlager song sung by a band member who struggled at the best of times, but after 4 days of alcohol could barely grunt out the lyrics. It was probably the most painful thing I have ever been a part of on stage.

Part of the festival is a big cortege, which is a parade through the streets of all the bands and various Linköping uni clubs not necessarily associated with bands. This year's theme was USA, and various floats included the spa bath of Uncle Sam's, "Spring break" which had a bunch of surfer types on a flatbed truck with sand and bubbles jumping up and down to Blink 182, a Michael Jackson handing out lollies to kids, fat cops eating donuts, and planes flying into skyskrapers. Oooh, controversial! People lined the streets all they back to Folkets Park and the walk and play took over an hour. That is a long time to be playing 3 simple tunes (Tequila, When the Saints go Marching In, and St. Thomas). Especially after 3 days of drinking and festival and without any rehearsal to plan to make it more interesting (take turns etc). By the end of the walk the band was pretty tired and not playing much, which made crowd members try to convince us to keep going.

Not my pic. Not my band.

The other farewell gig we had was with the sextet Kent Albinz Jazz Orkester, at Jazzomat. It was the first time I had ever played drums in bright sunshine! The gig was good, a hat was passed around and we got enough for a beer each. There is a bit of audio and video recorded - I will see if I can get it posted on the web somwhere sometime.

One of my memorable moments here in Sweden was playing a few songs to advertise our February concert one lunchtime, pressed up against the glass windows with snow falling outside. These things I will miss when I leave... oh no, the nostalgia is starting already... better get back to the past...


After SOF I stayed on in Linköping for some more microscopy work. We had a few probs with equipment and politics which made the week 'interesting'.

Then it was back to Luleå, and after a couple of days we had a weeklong visit from my PhD supervisor from Monash, Yibing Cheng.

On the weekend Yibing's main aim was to drive a car on the wrong side of the road (for the first time) and go up to the polar circle, possibly with some midnight suntanning. So we did a day trip up along the coast from Luleå to Haparanda/Torneå at the border, then up along the Finnish side of the border and across to Övertorneå, as indicated on the map below.

Seskarö camping site. The water looks inviting, but... this is the Baltic Sea and it hadnt warmed up enough yet. Yes, you can swim there in summer, even though you need icebreakers in winter.

Up north the main industry is timber.

Ikea Haparanda. As said in a previous post, the biggest thing to hit Haparanda since, well, ever. The flags represent the main target markets - Russia, Finland, Sweden, the Sami flag (with the red, green, yellow, blue and black circle), and Norway failing in the breeze.

Apparently Sunday is the best day to shop there, it being the quietest. Why would this weekend day be quietest? Not because everyone is in church or obeying shabbat, but because the finnish alcohol store Alko on the Torneå side is closed, and most Swedes prefer to combine a trip to Ikea with a trip across the border for spirit buying due to the lower taxes. Hence, few Swedes on Sundays. Likewise with the Norwegians, who pay even more for their alcohol.

With Yibing in Tornio

Christina in a macho(?) pose, up along the Torneå river at Kukkolankoski

The rapids at Kukkolankoski. They move much quicker than the photo suggests. Being the end of spring, the water flow was quite high due to the recent islössing - melting of the ice.

View from the tower at Aavasaksanvaara, near Yltornio. (Don't you just love the Finnish names?), looking across to the Swedish side. I have read about the water issues in Australia, and Yibing was constantly amazed at how green and wet everything was up here. Water is definitely not an issue here - never have I heard about water conservation or been required to think about it. Except for when I have to have the hot water run for 5 mins to get it hot up to the 4th floor, which is a waste.

Finland. It was actually amazing for me to see this area in the summertime - I had been up here several times, but only the in dark of winter.

The lodge built specifically for a stay by Russian Duke who heard about the natural beauty of this area, but in the end never came. Apparently visits to this region became very fashionable in the 1800's due to the beauty and the novelty of it being basically on the polar circle; stories of various expeditions up north were very popular at the time.

A monument to the French expedition to determine whether the earth is flatter at the poles by measuring an arc of meridian in 1736. It is. I think the experiments involved pendulums and measurement of the length of line required to give the same period of oscillation at various places around the earth. The mass at the poles 'weighed' more, which meant a longer string was required to give the same period, therefore the distance to the centre of the earth was less at the poles than at the equator, ergo the earth is not a perfect sphere. Consideration of the effect of higher centrifugal force at the equator also leads to the conclusion that it should be bulging more there.

Across the river to Övertorneå, and the pretty church. Although we were able to have Swedish fika for lunch at Ikea (yes, meatballs and bad coffee), we were resigned to probably having no choice but to eat pizza in small towns at 9:30, which we did. After trying all the chinese he could in Luleå, Yibing was disappointed and also resigned to eating pizza. Remember that in Melbourne we are blessed with many great, authentic food options, and in most chinese or thai restaurants up here they specialise in pizza! (One thing I have still never done is order pizza from a chinese place, on principal). In fact one restaurant we went to had a chinese woman warn Yibing from the start not to expect aything authentic.

Further up north to the Polar Circle at Juoksengi. There is actually world-class restaurant up here called Kattilakoski that was last year's Swedish restaurant of the year and gets 3 hats in the White guide. Unfortunately we couldnt get in at the last minute.






We drove up a bit to Pullinki to take the picture at the start of this post, of the midnight sun. Yibing also got to see reindeer by the side of the road, and it was also my first time to see 2 moose by the roads. Fortunately not on the road. But they were shy and didn't hang around for photos.

All in all a successful day up north. I must admit, sitting in the passenger seat while Yibing drove meant that I was constantly trying to twist my body away towards the left - yes, like me when I first started he tended to drive too, too, close to the right. One overtake was a near miss by mere millimeters. Now I know how Magnus and Peter felt when we first went to the US...

Hornless & uninterested in car horns