Canadian, please...

Success!

The Christmas dinner was wonderful, with a taste like heaven and home.

Making Christmas candy in the bus.

Raingirl and Blackjack left for Chicago the morning of 26th and left Hippie and me trying to entertain ourselves. The only way we know how is to visit national parks, so we went to Mount Rainer National Park. Mt Rainer is an enormous snow dressed mountain in Seattle, we drove for hours to get there, but the park was closed >:-0. Still, we took a bath in a melt water river, and, o boy, it was invigorating! (Hippie: "This is a stupid, stupid idea!" Me: "Yeah, let's do it").

In need of a bath

Yesterday we picked up Angel from the airport before the sunrise, he celebrated Christmas in Hawii with Turtle and McConaughey and was now returning to spend some time with his family in Vancouver. The family was supposed to pick him up at 12, but was delayed at the border, so the three of us spent some time experiencing Seattle. We went on the Boeing factory tour and watched the birth of airplanes, 747, 777 and the new 787. The boys were all ah's and oh's, but I was too tired from waking up at 6 for really enjoying the tour. Apparently it's not an engineer thing, it's a guy thing. Still the 787 was cool, it's made from composite materials that are stronger and lighter than the usual aluminum, which results in a more fuel efficient plane.
Fun fact: The resason why most ariplanes are white is because bright colors are lighter than dark.


After the tour we headed north for the Canadian border. In the customs there was some confusion when brusque guards asked us to step out of the car and walk to a building. Oh no, what's going on? was my thought, but they only wanted to put some stamps in the passports. Now we stay at McConaughey's apartment, while he's still in Hawii. I can not explain how good it feels to stay indoors again...

A Merry Little Christmas

We arrived in Seattle the 23rd of December. Driving in Seattle is driving you crazy, so we had a hard time finding the B&B where Raingirl and Blackjack stayed. It was on 22nd Avenue, but it turned out to exists a number of 22nd Avenues, not to mention 22nd Streets too. Raingirl was kicked out from her apartment during the holidays, that is some kind of American thing to close campus apartments during breaks. Her family was visiting for the holidays and they will travel to Chicago and NY when we go to Vancouver.

The first thing we did, even before taking a shower, was going to the movies and watching Avatar 3D. It's the first time I ever saw a 3D movie, so it was amazing. The movie will get an Oscar for best special effects, for sure, but the story was not particularly interesting, it was about a colonial force trying to subdue the native people and get the natural resources of a planet. The skin color of the natives was blue, but might as well have been red.

I had to buy new warm clothes, because of course I didn't bring too much winter clothing when moving to California. The number of long sleeved shirts I had could be counted on the fingers of one hand, now I have two more and might survive the winter in Vancouver.

On Christmas Eve we exchanged some gifts, I got peace symbol earrings, a necessary accessory for a red dread head and then had a Christmas dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant. It was no white Christmas, in double meaning. For Hippie, Blackjack and me, this is the first Christmas without our families. To be honest, it's not very much of a celebration, but still it's fun in an odd way. Since they don't have the same Christmas food here as back home, Hippie and I decided to make a proper traditional Swedish julbord in the VW bus. We went grocery shopping yesterday morning: herring, ham, sausages, beef for the meatballs, rice for the rice porridge, whipping cream for the candy. And Blackjack brought the spices we need to make hot spiced wine, glögg.

It will be legendary, I'll keep you tuned.

From all of us, to all of you, we wish you a

Merry

Christmas!

The Long and Winding Road

The long and winding road took us to Berkeley, where we slept in Lovebud's co-op. She told us about her trip to Oregon, where she'd visited redwoods and hot springs. We wanted to do the same and after a really short stay in San Francisco, we barely grabbed an organic fair trade vegan lunch, we headed north to Redwood National Park.

More trees. Seriously, we travel from LA to Vancouver and all we do is watching trees. However, these trees were the tallest in the world, and we spent a foggy and rainy day on a hiking trail, in a forest world like the moon of Endor.


From the redwoods we drove until late at night and crossed the border to Oregon. We wanted to visit Crater Lake on the way. Crater Lake was created by a volcano that collapsed on itself. We arrived in the middle of the night, in full snow storm and drove up the slippery slope to the top. There was no campground, so we just parked on an empty parking lot and slept there. The morning arrived a few hours too early when a park ranger knocked on our window, demanding to see ID and registration. Illegal camping. We were kindly advised to leave, unless we wanted to camp until the snow melting in April.

And then we came to Oregon...

The pages on Oregon in Lonely Planet USA are sparse, and honestly, there's a reason for that. The only remarkable thing about the Beaver state is that it is not allowed to pump your own gas. There's a scenic drive along Hwy 58 trough a mountain pass, but the weather was so bad that no mountains could be seen. The rumors about hot springs were true though, but they were well hidden. A frantic search in wet woods and along a huge dam finally led to the hot springs. It was more of a one feet deep muddy pool, but it was HOT. Nice!

Additionally some hundred miles later we arrived in Portland. Christmas and window shopping. By an accident we found Backspace, a hip little internet café (a café with free wifi).

The beautiful void of Oregon

Born To Be Wild

The first day we spent entirely in the car. Traveling the roads in more or less the direction of Sequoia National Park. The bus has gas stove and fridge, and we filled the fridge with necessary supplies (wine and fruit).

The bus

The scenery changed dramatically on the way, from desert like conditions, to fertile green vegetation, and then to red fields of grape vines, to yellow-grey sand and rock. We arrived in Sequoia in the middle of the night and found a camping.

There was only two other cars, so we went to speak with some youths with a campfire. They were Swedes. Who else would go camping in the middle of December? The Swedes were pretty cool, two of them had travelled from New York, down the East Coast to New Orleans and then to San Diego. On bikes. We shared mashmellows and stories.

In the morning we hiked to see the sequoias. The biggest trees in the world. And they are BIG!

Video of Sequoias. You don't believe how big they are...

In the evening we drove to Yosemite and camped in a nice camping spot. It was cold, 0 degrees-Farhrenheit. When camping in a national park you're supposed to store all food, or anything with the smallest recemblance to food, in a bear safe metal box. Because the bears might break into the car otherwise. The bears are supposed to sleep in winter, but still, I lay awake for a long time listening to the sounds from outside the car. I am sure that I heard a bear once, or some animal, sniffing outside, and I hurridly woke up Hippie, but our voices scared it-whatever it was-away.

We had arrived at midnight and not seen anything in the dark. So in the morning we were surprised over the beautiful view. There was a river just outside the camping with water that tasted way better than the tap water!

We drove down to Yosemite Valley and marvelled at the sights of the mountains. And then we dared to hike up to see Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in North America, with just a few hours left before sunset. The climb was steep, and soon the legs felt like lead, but it was worth the pain and the effort when we got there. While gazing at the falls and having a snack, a big chunk of snow fell down from the cliffs with a tremendous thunder. We waited for a while, cameras ready in hand, to capture the next falling chunk, but that Kodak moment was lost on us, since the sun was setting rapidly and we had a long way back.

El Capitan and the Half Dome in Yosemite Valley

I've heard that it is possible for a person to live without internet for up to a week, but we found the public library and borrowed computers to connect with the world. I have a few gigabytes of memories in my camera and I will upload pictures as soon as I get a stable wifi-connection...

Hit the Road Jack

The car is loaded, the cameras are charged, the iPod contains audio books. We're ready to hit the road. The road leads to Sequoia, Yosemite, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and yet undecided sights on the way.

It's wonderful to be young and free and have a car that can take you anywhere. The sky is the limit. Or at least the horizon.

PS. I'm now $8 righter after winning in our poker night yesterday. Eddie is $45 poorer after getting a parking ticket. DS

Vacation

Yesterday we surfed. It was stormy and rainy, but we jumped eagerly into the waves anyway. This time we had huge surfboards which turned out to be much easier than the small ones we used before. A few times I even managed to get into a standing position and keep it for a fraction of a second before I gracefully splashed into the ocean. It was cool. Literally. The feet were icicles.

After the surfing we baked ginger bread and cooked rice porridge with cinnamon and vanilla. And then we danced into the night, singing loud like tone deaf vikings, cheerleading the shots. Life is fair.



Did I mention that Hippie's a breakfast person? Well, it's definitely worth mentioning. In the morning, when I zombie out into the kitchen, I'm greeted by Swedish pancakes, French toast, grilled sandwiches, scrambled eggs, bagels and bran flakes. Getting up in the morning doesn't necessary have to be a bad thing.


I have a plan. A simple plan. A road trip along the West Coast up to Seattle. Celebrating Christmas with Raingirl and Blackjack. New Year's in Vancouver. And a return ticket from Seattle to LA the 3rd of January next year. If I get a signature on my DS-2019 visa form (so that I can re-enter US) tomorrow we are ready to hit the road.

Sugar Baby Love

Finally, all my finals are over and I have a life again. Holidays until January 4th. I LOVE my life.

But first things first. It's time for a proper update.

Last weekend, the girls down below, the boys next door and our apartment had a gift swap. Everyone drew a name in a hat and had to buy a gift for that person in the price range $5-20. Many bottles of beer changed owners, I got a scarf, gloves and a cap, which was perfect since the weather suddenly turned freezing cold!

My last three finals went well, and when I got the result from the first Computer Graphics final, I was positively surprised, but somewhat perplexed, because there is no way 83% of the answers were correct.

Yesterday, Hippie came to Santa Barbara. In the (next) most amazing vehicle ever. An old Volkswagen bus with bed, stove and fridge in it, painted in brown and orange. VoW!

My plans for Christmas and New Year's had more or less vaporized, because it was impossible to find affordable housing in NY this time of year, with such short notice. But now when Hippie is here, in such a wonderful car, the temptation to get on a roadtrip with him up the west coast is an irresistible adventure.

But the important things has to be prioritized. So today we kick started the Christmas celebrations. Turtle brought spiced wine (glögg) that filled the kitchen with nostalgic smiles, happy signs and blank eyes. And we baked like madmen. Saffron bread (lussekatter) in creative forms. Christmas candy (kola and knäck). Ginger bread dough. It smells like heaven. Tastes like heaven. Feels like heaven. The recipe for happiness is: cream, syrup, raisins, almonds, sugar, baby, love.

Something Stupid

Four finals in forty-eight hours. The first one is finished and probably failed. Fuck it! Maybe I'll get a few points for creative storytelling: "Once upon a time there was a matrix M, he was a translation matrix, or, no, a rotation matrix, or...ehrm, he was a 4 x 4 matrix, or, maybe 3 x 3, or, an n x n-matrix..."

OK, I will probably not fail the course completely, because there was this math question, that had absolutely nothing to do with computer graphics, and hence was solvable. But the rest sounded like C to me.

Tomorrow I have two finals, one in the cursed AI course. It contains logic and reasoning. You might be misled to believe that I should master this subject since I'm not completely brain dead. However, the sentence

¬ brainDead(Me) ⇒ goodAtArtificialIntelligence(Me)

is NOT valid.

Ah, the best thing with advancing within the academia is that it opens up a world of nerdy inside jokes. Like: curiosity killed Schroedinger's cat. Your moma is so fat, that when I put her in an array, I get index out of bounds exception. Or: how does a physicist wage bargain? Saying: "Who cares about a factor 2, it's the same order of magnitude."

The Final Countdown

I have four finals the upcoming week. Two of them are easy, two are hard, I need to pass three to get the credits I need. I have no idea how the grading system works here, but the finals are generally 30-40% of the grade, and to pass a course with C you need 70% in total. So, I basically need to score 30% on the finals to pass. I prefer higher grades, for sure, but now I'm most concerned with being able to count the credits as a full year when I get back home (then I need 12 credits/quarter).

There is something I've planned to do for a long long time: Adding links to the post titles so that the reader can listen to the songs (just click on the title text). The links refer to youtube-clips (nothing that requires software installation). Hence the links might "expire" after a while. I've just added links to a few posts back and not all the way back to the September posts, they're coming after the finals.

And: I want to wish happy birthday to someone who just turned sweet 16.

Hips Don't Lie

Eddie was the first one to complain. After one month. Then Youtube started and after a while Soleil joined in the wailing. After Las Vegas and Thanksgiving I couldn't agree more. Hips don't lie. We've gained weight since we got here. A lot. Who's that fat whale in the picture, she looks familiar somehow? Ooops, it's me! But well, the but swells, it is time for a lifestyle change....

Tomorrow. The first day of the rest of my life...