Carter’s blog: Svenska dagen 2010-07-25

Blog 7:

Aloha to you all, after a short break I’m back to a somewhat rainy Sweden. A lot has gone on since I last blogged. Firstly I have moved house. I am now living in Solna which is much closer to central Stockholm but not actually Stockholm (think about the difference between Tower Hill and the Barratt estate or Withington and Didsbury and you get the idea). I’m essentially living on the Karolinska campus and it’s much closer to civilisation than Sticksten was. I have a McDonalds within 250m, a supermarket within a 15 minute walk and most importantly a Systembolaget (off license) within a mile! After a customary Carter clean the new apartment is in a satisfactory condition. At the moment I’m sharing the apartment with an Indian bloke (Sukumar) who will be here until the end of August then someone new will move in.

Currently I’m experiencing severe jet-lag, my body is still on Hawaii time and I’m typing this at 3:30am wide awake (without any stimulants!). I’m back in work tomorrow and that’s going to be an interesting experience because I have been mostly sleeping during the day since I returned. Hawaii was a great experience in spite of all the travelling and jet-lag. The purpose of the trip was to attend a conference to be educated and to educate. The conference side of the trip was slightly disappointing to be honest and I didn’t get too much interest in my own research. Outside of the conference though was a different story. I was based in Honolulu and although I didn’t get to see very much of Honolulu what I did see was good; Waikiki beach and Pearl Harbour. After the conference was finished I had 5 days holiday and decided to go to another island, Maui was the choice. One of my Karolinska colleagues, Eric, came with me. We hired a condo for four nights which was quite nice (a bit dated though with its 1980/90s styling). The grounds around the condos were immaculate though and we were only 5 mins from a very nice beach. While we were there we squeezed in a night out and a couple of drives (having hired a very nice Lincoln MKZ). One drive was along a very mountainous winding road to Hana the other was to the top of a volcano (Haleakala) along another winding road. The peak of the volcano was at over 3km the highest altitude I’ve ever been outside of a plane. Overall I was very impressed with Hawaii and would happily go back (Sarah start saving your pennies) and would highly recommend it to anybody who can put up with 3 long flights.

A couple of weeks before I went to Hawaii I was back in England for the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. The festival was really good and I rather enjoyed it, perhaps a little bit too much. A lot of my friends claimed it was the best Glastonbury ever. I don’t subscribe to that opinion however. I have only been three times so far and it wasn’t my best Glastonbury. Controversial? Maybe, but just in terms of the line-up and weather, yes I know it was a scorcher but I am not a sun worshipper, other years have been better (the photo is of me stood in the only shade at Glastonbury, I really liked that ditch). I think that for a festival to have real kudos you need to wear waterproofs and wellies! Also the only band I really wanted to see were put in a tent that was far too small so we couldn’t get into the tent or even hear them for that matter which put a big downer on my Friday night (it’s lucky I’ve now got tickets to hear them in Manchester, I say hear because the seats are essentially in the sky so I still might not see them! Thanks for passing these on Rachel ;-) ). I have now caught up with most of the acts I missed at Glasto (Mumford & Sons, Gorillaz, Sasha etc) via the wonders of t’internet. It is testament to how good the 2010 festival was that poor event planning, missed acts and too hot weather didn’t ruin it and I will definitely go again but the best Glastonbury ever, I don’t reckon.

I think that covers everything since Blog 6, well almost everything, since I discussed the World Cup in my last blog I think I should at least mention it now. I should mention how crap England was and congratulate Spain, who didn’t exactly win it in style but were definitely the best team. Well done España. So then, the next time you visit this hallowed page I will have had an international visit from Princess Wood and Liverpool FC will have been back in semi-competitive (Europa League) action, so it’s mahalo and aloha for now.