A planet lost

It is weird sometimes, how the perception of the world (and in this specific case; the universe) changes dramatically without you really noticing it. But I can inform you that yesterday, our solar system lost a planet. Pluto is no longer with us in the form of a planet, but is now regarded as a dwarf planet along with 'Ceres' and '2003 UB313'. So hereforth we must realise that our solar system consists of eight planets, not nine.

I wonder how much time will pass until this redefinition makes a mark in the text books and what is beeing taught in the schools. Some teachers still teach that absolutely no new nerve cells are born in our brains after our birth. This notion was opposed already in mid 1960's by the two brilliant neuroscientists Altman and Das. That is more than 40 years ago, and still I know I was taught less than 10 years ago that the brain is fixed, and no new neurons are born. The rubbish that is being put into our heads. And all this information (crap or good) you can handle, maybe because of new neruons being born in your brain everyday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_redefinition_of_planet

Swede-austrian porno

Now, for some of you stopping by, this picture might not be as hilarious as I think it is. But I swear, this can only be because you don't know swedish then. This container, or whatever you should call it, was placed near a construction site in Vienna. All over were signs saying 'Porr', and 'www.porr.at'.

'Porr' in swedish means porno.

So now look at the picture again. You are innocently walking the Viennan streets, when you acciently come by this metal box, and inside you see two men enjoying what seems to be their lunch. But you can of course wonder what is really going on in there. Especially if you're a swede. Especially if you are an imaginative swede like myself.

Intra-austrian sources let me know that Porr is an austrian construction company. But who cares. All that is important is that it means 'porno'. And what you imagination lets you expect to find on www.porr.at

Arty farty

Now. Having found paradoxes all over the place, I suddenly felt an urge to take an active part in producing one. I am sure it can be sold as modern art. A photo of a sign saying 'no photography', that's deep.

Man, that modern art museum in Vienna sure messed me up.

Weird destinations

Has anyone ever heard of the place, one from the bottom, Kangerlussuaq. What the hell is that? Apparently though, planes fly there from Copenhagen, so if you ever feel like going there, it is possible!

Straws, ye be warned

And she catches it!!

It wasn't like it was an attempt to entrap my boyfriend or anything. Like a passive-aggressive way to make him propose to me, or put any pressure on him. It was a pure act of competitiveness.

It was at the magical wonderful wedding in Vienna, and it had come time for the bride to throw the bouquet. Lots of girls gathered round, and were ready to catch that thing flying by, promising them a soon upcoming marriage. And there was me. I had my comfy new sandals on. And a lot of spontaneous competitive adrenalin going. And I knew immediately that I had a good chance catching the bouquet. The others were mainly sporting semi- to very high heals, and I was convinced they wouldn't dare jump. So I placed myself in the very front of the crowd, and got ready. And when it came flying I jumped like a deer, and caught the freaking thing!


I was so happy, and everybody applauded me. Apart from the other girls that didn't catch it. They gave me askew glances, and came up with a theory that bride (as some gesture of thanks for the dress) had conspired with me to let me catch the bouquet. I say nonsense. And wohoo, I won!

No posting!

Either on my blog while I've been in Austria, and apparently not even allowed on this Vienna-wall (plakatieren verboten means 'No posting').

The particular rule of 'No posting' was probably also law even before the sign was put up, so how can you be permitted to put this poster up, no matter what its message is. And paradoxically, how do you post a poster saying 'No posting'. And more practical, is this wall so much prettier now, with fewer other posters, but an ugly and slightly tilting sign screaming 'No posting'?

Just a few tired 'I-just-got-back-from-my-holiday'-thoughts.

No comment

In my tiredness, I enter some kind of drunken-like state, and do some "serious" philosophy.

I just thought about the phrase so commonly used "no comment". Isn't using that phrase a comment per se, and therefore quite the paradox?

Evolutionary pressure

I have been thinking, what could really be the evolutionary pressure to develop a mechanism that whenever one feels like "I have something very important tomorrow, I need to get a good nights sleep" or "I won't have many hours to sleep tonight, I better go to sleep asap". And instead of falling asleep, you lay and twist and turn, think about every stupid thing you don't want to think about (including the necessary "I really need to fall asleep now!!").

I can't see how even hunters would have benefited from that. Maybe if they were worried their area of current habitation was full of predators, so they didn't fall so deep asleep. But still, they would have fallen asleep! Otherwise the predators would have gotten to them sooner or later, when they would fall asleep on a stone during the hunting. Or also fall asleep next to the evening fire, putting their hair on fire or something. That wouldn't be too good either, right?

I am really into evolution at the moment, sorry for that. And also, apparently, not getting any sleep tonight.

I really should have...

...saved all my money for my upcoming vacation in Vienna, but instead I got these really cool shoes to wear on the Austrian streets! The wedding (feat. the dress I've sown) will be on sunday, so when I come back I can finally blog how nice and pretty the dress got. Today, I again resisted buying the 1 kg box of belgian chocolates, I feel so good about that. But instead, as I said, I bought the shoes, also 5 new pocket books, and a new skirt. In my defence, the skirt was on sale. The shoes were totally cool. And the books will entertain me a long time!

Just that I used the phrase "in my defence" lets me know that I feel really guilty for my expenses today. It'll pass. It is only money. One gets new all the time it seems.

Oh, how I wish...

...that I didn't have family-members, boyfriend and my own mental barrier telling me not to buy all the chocolate at the chocolate store in Lund. How evil to put the store on the street I always pass when I need to go to the train station. The 1000 g Guylian seafruits in chocolate/nougat is just sitting there (top left), calling out to me.

Buy us, eat us!

I resisted the temptation today, again.

Mutant pin

I am sure you all know of them, but I just don't know the word in english for them. They are these sticky rolling pins you can use on clothes to remove dust and hairs from your clothes. Like a sticky rolling pin for clothes, hereafter referred to as 'sticky pin'.

I am letting my boyfriend use me as a hairdresser, since I love to cut hair, and since I am getting pretty good at it by now (having cut him a few times, and also my dad's scanty hairs since forever). Last time I cut sweet boyfriend's hair was 3 weeks ago. I let it be a bit longer this time, to try something new. Due to hair growing fast in general, and especially when sunny, it was today again time to cut the hair.

We sat outside to minimize the hair spread. As a result, hairs spread very little indoors, but due to head wind, all the mini-hairs being cut off flew straigt onto me and my clothes in general. When the hair dressing was finished, we both took a shower to remove all these little evil hairs that you get absolutely everywhere after having cut someone's hair, or have gotten your own hair cut. Despite the shower, I still had small hairs on me, stinging me all over my torso. I was getting annoyed, and found one of these sticky pins on a shelf.

It looked a bit weird, a bit more transparent and yellowish than the one I have at home. But I thought it would work fine nonetheless to remove my embarrasing torso hair growth. I put it straight onto my left breast... and it stuck hard. It was like someone had put on some serious mutant, crazy efficient Eastern Europe glue that had been banned from the market a decade or so. I am sure it wasn't, or I hope so at least. But this was what sprung to my mind, as I rolled the thing off my breast, feeling like my nipple would be ripped straight off my body.

I put the sticky pin down where I found it, and walked away making a mental note.

Wasp attack

The average temperature throughout entire July (day and night) in Lund has been measured to 21.7 C. The only July ever warmer than that was in 1901, gobsmacking right!? I am very pleased with the summer. Excellent stabile warm and sunny weather, nice pool in the garden, and flowers growing like crazy. But as you know, every coin has two sides (at least). Nasty things happen as a concomitant of a heat wave; e.g. people whine, and bugs multiply exponentially and eat my plants. The nasty wasps are also shacking up and having babies, that are shaking up and having more babies, and so on and so forth. Disguisting, evil, and promiscuous!

I have been dreading the day, that finally arrived today. My very cutest Cute Cat was stung by one of the evil wasps. He was sitting all innocently, enjoying the view from my in-laws' house, when a wasp decides to bug =) the cutest of cats. I wasn't around when the actual thing went down, so all this with Cute Cat being innocent is all retroactively made up, but still unbiasedly the event most likely to have taken place. He is so sweet, and would never harm a living thing.

Anyway... My sweet boyfriend come running telling me that Cute Cat was stung on the paw. I try to get hold of Cute Cat, for a damage control, but he just runs away. I finally catch up with him in the basement, where I find him with a chin and cheek looking like he had eaten a small ping-pong ball. I quickly come to the conclusion that he'd actually been stung on the chin, take him by the neck and sit down with him in a firm grip on my lap. I am able to quickly remove the sting (with accompanying parts of wasp intestine), and let cute cat go again. I get all worked up with worry, and monitor him closely for a few hours to see if he'll develop any respiratory issues. But nothing out of the ordinary happens, the swelling subsides (I can still see it in the picture (will be blogged tomorrow!), but others probably won't). Today the swelling was nowhere to be seen, and I was allowed to pet both his chin and cheeks again. Close call!

Having stung such a cute cat should be punishable by a painful death! Which I assume was actually the last thing the wasp experienced.

This is...

...how absolutely cute he was today.

Constructive sleeping

What I miss most about my current PhD position is to get the daily feeling of having helped or contributed in a more direct sense. However valuable and good medical research might seem, it is obviously a very long-term investment. You won't see any immediate applications on a daily, weekly or even yearly basis. And perhaps (not too unlikely), what you do might never change anything at all. I love the scientific thinking, and planning of projects, but I rarely get the feeling of having made "something". Something real and meaningful.

Having read a few chapters in my "The moral animal"-book, and turned out the lights twice this evening, trying to go to sleep, I still couldn't get a break. I lay there turning and twisting, not finding the perfect relaxing position, and no peace of mind. I just realized the above section, that this lack of getting the feeling of having done something concrete is what I miss the most, I started to brainstorm about what I could do about that.

I thought that I would never really have to work full time at the laboratory during my PhD, not even when I am fully free of symptoms and able to work full time. I can always get by on 75% of the rather low, but still sufficient, PhD salary. I can do something in addition to my PhD. Getting the best of the two worlds; being able to continue thinking and working scientifically, and still doing something more concrete helpful. I thought about the people you sometimes see on the streets with the money-boxes, collecting coins for some good and needed means. I just had to wake up properly, put on my glasses and start my computer. I sent an e-mail to both the Redcross and a local organisation called Individuell Människohjälp (individual humanitary aid) , offering to work non-profit a few hours of my spare time each weak. I also saw there were two positions needed at two different locations, motivating and creating a fun playful environment for homeless kids and kids in a criminally loaded area of Malmö, respectively. I have no idea if I would be qualified, or even able, to do this, but I applied asking for more information about it, because it didn't seem at all impossible.

Now, how constructive wasn't these last two hours, also being the first two hours of this 10th of august. I feel relieved only having sent those two e-mails.

Career advice

I have for a while, or maybe more or less all the time, been wondering if my education and later if my PhD-thingy was the "right" thing for me to do. I guess all, or at least most, people do this - go over their decisions to make sure they have been made correctly, be it work, wife, lifestyle, house etc. Most of the time my question of education, and then later PhD, has come back with a positive answer, that it is all fine. When I fell ill, 2 years ago now, I questioned everything - all answers were first "I don't care at all", and then a while later when I had recovered a tad, the answers were negative. This was obviously due to the depression. One after one all the answers were starting to get semi- to fully positive answers, I liked my apartment, I loved my family and friends, I liked living in general, etc.

My PhD/work is the only thing I have questionned, that so far is still kept active, but of which I am not at all certain is what I want to do. Now, I am not sure it is the right thing, but obviously I am not sure it is the wrong thing either. I just don't know.

As I see it, there is a spectrum from:
* my uncertanty could be solely rooted in the depression, i.e. the depression caused/causes the uncertanty. It is hard to go back to work after such a severe state, no matter what the work is. It takes time, and probably a lot of doubt is involved along the way.

...to
* my working environment (with or w/o a personal factor) caused (entirely or partially) the depression, hence I am now unsure this specific working environment (with its stress, pressure, unstability, unstructure etc.) is a wise place for me to strive to come back to. And also, maybe partially or entirely what makes it so hard to come back to work.

Hence, maybe it is all the depression causing the doubt in me about my job, and when it finally receedes fully, I will love my work again. But since I am still doubting, still 2 years after the outbreak, eventhough most other things have sorted themselves out, and I am feeling much better, I think it is in place to start to think about what else I could do but a PhD in neuroscience.

I went to the city library today, and the guidance center. I looked through some brochures of gardening, garden center work, flower growing, garden planning etc., and was inspired and felt a sense of lust, albeit vague. I collected all form of courage and greeted the woman at the reception. She told me to sit down and asked me a couple of questions, like what I had done before. I felt unstable, and like crying. She explained that she had no qualifications in helping me make the most of my undergraduate education, but if I wanted to get into something completely different, she could assist me. We scheduled a time next thursday at 1 pm for a meeting. But she said my institution should have some guidance, how I had put so much time/money into my undergraduate education to just throw it away. I felt my eyes welling up. She asked me if something had happened at my work place, why I didn't like it. I welled up even more, and felt my nose start dripping. I sniffled something about how it was stressful and how I wasn't sure if I enjoyed it as much as maybe necessary. She repeated the time we had decided, and I quickly rounded up my stuff and left crying. Quickly searching my bag, I found my sunglasses, put them on, and laid down on the lawn in the park outside crying. It is too emotional for me to talk about, I am too fragile right now. I fear I will skip the set meeting, being afraid to start crying again, not being able to talk about it for a complete hour, not having been able to sit down talking about it for even 3 minutes today.

Cat spoiling

I ran to the gym (7-8 min), I worked out for 2 h, I ran back home again, had a shower, and was building up a serious need for energy. I went into my kitchen and made myself two sandwiches, all the while cute cat beeing quite annoying, meowing really loud wanting to go outside. It was even more annyoing because of my sugar deficit. My bread was on the cusp being too old, but I put on some really nice breadspread to compensate. Also cute cat loves this breadspread, and I ended up giving him half of the breadspread, having to eat much of my snack pretty dry and dull. I have such a hard time saying no to cute cat. He gets to do whatever he wants. And when he looks at me with his cute face, of course he'll get half of my spread!

My orchids!

A couple of years back I got my first orchid from a friend for my birthday. It was a white pretty orchid, and it had its flowers for a few months. When they fell off, I was hoping for new flowers to arrive, but they didn't. At least not within the frames of my patience, so I bought a new one, and a new one, and so on. Today I own 6 orchids belonging to the phalaenopsis (bride orchid) family, and 2 other new ones that I know very little about. More then that they are extremely pretty at the moment. The pink one I know the swedish name of (pensé-orkidé) but the green/brown skinny one I don't know the name of. So if you do, please feel free to share.

Otherwise, just enjoy the pretty flowers!

I am seriously thinking about finding out what branches of work you can have in the flower/plant/garden industry, something that I could do, working hands on the flowers. Flowers makes me so calm, and my hope is that working with them everyday would make me feel calm and good about myself. Of course, the opposite fear exists, that maybe working with them stresses me out, because it is "work", and thereafter, whenever I see a flower, I will feel stressed instead of relaxed. I really need some occupational guidance, I wonder where I can find it.