Losing memories and Nordic Culture Coastline

After watching Inside Out,which I cried while watching, I realised that memories are really precious. We lose some of our memories all the time. And I bet I probably lost so many of my memories already. Especially for people like me who are not big fans of the camera, I realised that sometimes I lose the memories and probably have no way of remembering it. So I came back to this good old blog and decided to pen down things I remember so that if I ever lose some of the most interesting memories, I will remember them here. Although I think it would not have been as effective as if I wrote them down when the memories were fresh, but better than nothing.

This especially, applies to the time when I was away on exchange. More than a year has passed and I realise that I have forgotten things. Some things that used to be so crystal clear has started to become blurred. I think I will be really sad if I no longer remember my time there. :(

So, I will talk about my favourite and worst memories not in any particular order. 

#1 Nordic Culture Coastline 

This trip happened during the end-Spring. We went there in May and it was one of the most memorable for me because I had a huge meal of salmon. The entire meal was made literally of salmon and it was one of the most amazing trips ever because I know that it is truly unique and not many people would be able to experience it as it was done with the school, without any tour guides. The teachers were the ones that brought us around, and they were locals. We could ask them anything under the sun and it was amazing. 

For this trip, the class was split into two groups and I decided to go with Si Rui because I had my Swedish oral during the other period. The people who went with us were the french guys, Li Yu from Taiwan, Zhang Xie from China, and some others. Si Rui and I were in a group for the group presentation with Matej as our group leader, Zhuang Xie, Li Yu and ourselves. Somehow, the Asians always end up sticking together. We stayed in this house built a century ago and we took a 4 bed room with Zhuang Xie and Li Yu.

Here's the picture of the farmhouse on a sunny day in May

Here's the image of the house next to the farmhouse. It used to be a school.

When I first saw the house, I was very excited to be in it because it was a farmhouse in the countryside and it was built a very very long time a ago. According to the teacher, it was built to  be a school house for the kids in the countryside and they had to travel very long distances to come to school. Which was pretty cool. The other building also had an old-school stove that used coals. That was very interesting too!

A modern stove added next to an ancient one. 

On strange thing which baffled me was the design on the house. The only toilet in the 3 storey house was attached to the house, but in order to go into the toilet, you have to walk around the house and the entrance to the toilet is outside the house. That means that if you have to pee at night, you have to walk out in the dark cold night and walk to the toilet. And if there is someone there, you have to wait outside in the cold. I know, because being someone with a small bladder, I had to wait outside in the cold. Hahahhaa. It was quite serene to do so actually, and I did not mind that much. Because there are not many lights around the house, you could see a sky full of stars while waiting for your turn to pee. The view was very spectacular. In the day, if you walked behind the house, there is a backyard overrun with plants. There, there were edible plants which I was more than happy to forage. I was not the only one. I spied the teacher picking some of those rhubarbs. >:) I was very happy with some chives we picked around the house, Si Rui helped me in my endeavour. I was fun trying to spot the chives.

Look at my loot! 

Other than the fun times in the house, we also had day trips outside which I really enjoyed too. Hmmm. I enjoyed everything. One of the first things we did on the trip was to go to the Overum museum. Basically, it was very old adorable men telling us about the history of the area. The area is an aging one with not many young people left, as we can tell from the demographics of the guides. The told us about the area and how it used to be an economically important one because they produced ploughs for farming. This is especially important in that era because those were the farming times. They also had relatively advanced technology for that age. It was very interesting to learn from these very passionate old men. Their Swedish accents were a little strong, but I would like to think I have mastered Swedish accented English comprehension by then.

The museum and some of the guides in blue

The guide talking about how iron was transported, I think. 

The trip to the museum was a relatively short one. We also went to another museum of sorts, where we saw the equipment people in the past used to kill pigs. That was a very crampy museum, but it was interesting to see a butter churner in real life. After all these years of reading historical fiction, I finally have a churner in my head to complete the scene! Whee! We also went to someone's house (in the past, now a museum) to  look around.

Tools of the trade (for the butcher)

Guess what is this! This is like a thing in which you put coins in. 

TATTING!!! So pretty, I wanna try! :')

Then, we went fishing. FISHING. The thought of fishing my own food makes my heart pump so hard of excitement. But alas. All I did for the fishing was to sit in my boat and see the other group with the experienced fisherman put the net to the sea. I did nothing but wait in the boat. The boat ride was very enjoyable though. The temperature was cool, about 26 degrees and the sun was shining. I happily forgot to bring sunblock for my entire exchange,but I did not have any issues with the sun until this trip. Totally forgot that the sun will come back again after a hiatus during winter. As a result, as much as I enjoyed my boat ride, I got terribly terribly burnt. I brought a cardigan and I dared not remove it for the fear that my arms will get burnt too. The colour change was hilarious. But the sun also made me a bit crazy like always. Tried to sing songs about fishing, but no one other than Li Yu knew the Chinese fishing song. Catching the fish the next day was just as uneventful because I was once again in the boat that was the bystander. We literally used our eye power to fish. But it was quite exciting to see the myriad of colours reflected on the fishes when they first caught the fish. The colours was due to the fish scales. What fish? Why, we only caught herrings. Oh herrings. Herrings and I have a history.

If I could go fishing in the Baltic sea again, I would smile that happily in the sun minus the sunblock. Hahaha. 

The other boat, which did the fishing. Hahaha.

Smoking thing, the thing you use to smoke fishes. 

After catching the fishes, we had to remove the fishes from the nets. It was a fun and tiring activity, but I think I got the hang of it. I quite like doing it. Some of the other classmates, like Sebastian, my "subordinate" quite failed at it. I became his "supervisor". Hahaha. That was quite funny. The scales will detach from the fish once it dies, which is quite soon after you pull it up from the net. This was interesting, because it means that the fish would not be scaly! Yay. I don't eat the skin of the fish for the fear of the scales. The teacher asked us to bring back some of the fish. Some people decided to bring back 2 or 4 or none. Guess how many greedy Rebecca decided to get? 6! On top of that, I asked Si Rui to also get 6. So we have more fishes to play with when we get back. We learned how to clean the fish by pulling the tongue or something to remove the intestines of the fish. That was fun too. We went to to the Lax Boa to clean the fishes. I remember that the toilet in that area was the old school type with a hole as a toilet bowl. It was surprising clean for such a rustic model. Hahaha. There was a wooden house that only housed the toilet. Or a toilet that was in the shape of a mini house with mini curtains and all. But it was cute. Hahaha.

SALMON FARM! 

 We went to feed the salmon in the farm, owned by the owner of Laxboa. You can hear the splashing the salmon made when the food was thrown to them. Boy, were they happy. I would be happy too if those salmon went into my tummy. >:)

I look so happy! Hahaha. 

Ducks on the wall

I guess the owner caught them and filled them?

Feast of SALMON!

 This was hands-down one of the most memorable meals in the enitre exchange. When can you ever ever eat home-smoked salmon, marinated eel, and the whole salmon is there for you to see and it is FREE-FLOW. It is just super crazy and I felt super happy looking at the food. The owner was very nice because he heard that we were from Singapore and his daughter went to Singapore for exchange. So he let us go take our food first. It was crazy hard to take a picture before everyone started.

Look at my crazy happy burnt face >.<

Fishes stuck in the net. 

I realised that it took some practice and technique to remove the fishes from the nets. You have to untangle the net from the gills and pull it out head first. I thought it was fun. Even if the fishes were herring.

One of the other things we did was to take a walk along the coastline. We were walking when we saw a family of baby squirrels running about. The squirrels were not afraid of us at all! They just kept following us and Nina had to chase them away. I quite like walking in the countryside, I realised. Never knew that part of me existed. But it was really beautiful. I even tasted the lake water and it was cold and crisp. So yummy! Apparently it is okay to drink it because the water just melted from the ice, but not a good idea to do so in summer. It will be contaminated.

Wild flowers!

Legless lizard? Worm? Snake?

One of the large summer houses along the coastline. #houseofdreams

Only in Sweden, you drink beer with your lunch on school trips.

 I have to say that I did not really drink the beer because beer makes you pee. Which is a bad idea when you are walking along the coast with no toilet in sight. Hahaha.

So many of these rocks around. 

Wild flower #2

Wild flower #3

A panorama of the coastline

Such beautiful sights, how can I not fall in love with the place? *poignant smile*

Falukorv, pasta, peas and tomato sauce and cheese for dinner.

Oats, cornflakes, milk and apple sauce and lingonberry jam and raisins for breakfast.

Ham, lingonbrod, ghurka och ost pa lunch 

Ol, ham, tomat, ost och polarbrod pa lunch

Best ever lunch: Smoked salmon with and without cheese, marinated herring, gravlax, fake sashimi (haha), salad and potato for lunch

Rhubarb pie and raspberry panna cotta for dessert

Brunch for the last day

Scrumptious feast of leftovers for bunch on the last day. :')

Attempted herring again. 

Notes to self: herring is more palatable with sour cream.

Reflections:

This trip was more distinct in my mind maybe because it was the last Nordic culture trip, and also the latest since I left Sweden. In this trip, we got to talk to the other students more, ref. Florian and Sebastian and I really enjoyed myself. It could be that there were fewer of us (Singaporeans) so we found ways to interact with others. But I really enjoyed myself and learnt a lot in the process. Maybe because it was my last 2 weeks in Sweden, so everything felt so surreal. I am not sure. But I really do miss the place and I also know that I will never be there in the same circumstance again. It is devastating to think of it that way, but I figured that's life. So I promise myself. Savour all opportunities. You will never know where life brings you. 

Of course, there is a lot more to the story about the herrings, and I think I will talk about it next time. That's a embarrassing and funny story to tell. :')

Amigurumi gift ideas

Sorry again for the long hiatus, but I am back for a bit! :) I started my internship 9 weeks back and I am inching towards the last week of my internship. It has been an interesting experience in this MNC, and I have learnt quite a lot. I do not regret giving up the other internship opportunity as I felt that this internship given me chances to try things I have never tried before, such as creating infographics and doing a presentation in front of fellow colleagues. At the same time, my colleagues are also very friendly. Since I would not ever be in this industry (Because I am not qualified), it has been a really good experience for me. :)

That being said, it is time to worry about farewell gifts for the colleagues! After thinking for a very long time, I decided to crochet some amigurumi for my colleagues. Since I have not made it known that I can do that, I figured it would be a nice surprise for my colleagues. At the same time, I can practise my crocheting skills. It has been a while since I crocheted, so I really really enjoyed it! :)
It is my last weekend, but I have not finished crocheting. I have been doing it on and off for the past week and a half and I still have some to go before I have something for everyone. Making stuff is one thing, but deciding what to give who is another thing. :/

So let me share what I have been making :D

First up, is this very adorable pacman ghost! This is the tutorial that I used to make the ghost. It was very fun to make. Thank you for sharing the tutorial, Ms premise conclusion!

Here's my pacman ghost. It does not quite look like a ghost with such cute eyes, but it's okay. I am thinking if I should embellish it with something. Hmmm.

Then, I found this tutorial for making a lemon. This one is for my fellow intern, who followed the other colleagues in putting lemon slices into the water then asked me if she can drink milk. She is so funny. Hahaha. When I told her the lemon water will react with the milk to become curd, she did not drink the milk. Hahaha. The only think about the tutorial is that I was not able to gauge where to put the eyes, so my lemon's eye came out a little too much to the left side. But I think it is still cute nevertheless.

Here's the lemon!

I found another tutorial which I could not resist. A tutorial on making a sperm whale! It is super adorable and the tutorial can be found here!

And here's my whale friend :)

Isn't this super adorable? I had so much fun making it! I was thinking of adding a suction it so that my colleague (who has a young child) can stick it on the car window. But I am still thinking about it. :)

Okay, so this is my super quick update on the stuff I have been doing lately. When I finish everything, I will post a picture with all the things I have made. I am going to be so busy hooking this weekend. :D

Alienation from the food you eat.

Another procrastination post. I was talking to my friends about the potential "grad" trip that I want to go to Japan and the topic of food came up. I have always been quite adventurous with my food (to a certain extent) and mentioned my desire to try raw octopus in Japan. this resulted in a mini debate about karma and the food you eat.

Here is how our conversation started.

So this was where I left the "debate". Ours is clearly a difference in mindset, and I do not foresee us agreeing on this topic. But I thought about this before.

In sociology, we learnt that because of capitalism, we are alienated from the product itself as well as the process of making the product. Marx said this with regards to the people producing it.

However, I think (and many other think) that the producers are not the only ones who are alienated from the product. The consumers themselves (yes, that's us) are also alienated from the products we consume. Have you ever thought about the number of chicken wings you eat from the roasted chicken wing shop? 2 wings = 1 chicken. How many chickens were killed for your consumption? It may be just the wings, but one chicken only has 2 wings! If you eat 10 wings, that's 5 chickens killed.

Many of us cannot even stomach the thought of killing an ant. Much less a wriggling live chicken. So how can we even bear to consume so many wings?! Because somehow, we forgot that the chickens had to be killed. Then, in this case, if you get bad karma from killing the chicken, who gets the bad karma? The one who killed the chicken, the one who cooked the chicken, or the one who consumed the chicken? If you think about this, 100 years ago, unless you are a rich lord with kitchen staff to help you. The person who would be doing all those would be the same person. Alienation from the process of making food is one of the reasons why people consume so much food in modern society. That is my opinion. If you had to kill, defeather and cook 5 chickens to eat 10 wings, are you going to do it? What would you do with the rest of the meat? How long is it going to take you to do all that?

Back to the question of karma. I am not an expert on my own religion, but I think that the idea that eating meat that you didn't kill does not give you bad karma vs eating meat that you have to order to kill on the spot gives you bad karma. I highly doubt that the idea of karma is so simple. My friend's family does not eat crab because crabs need to be steamed alive/killed on the spot. So the idea that you ordered the crab to be killed is bad for your karma. BUT. I beg to differ. Although you may say that the food in the supermarket we buy are already killed and therefore it is less cruel to purchase them, but they were killed for your consumption. And pretending that they died a better death before you purchase them does not make the consumption of meat less cruel.

In fact, the way animals are being killed in the slaughterhouse can be seen as even more inhumane. I had to watch this documentary for one of my modules previously, called "Our Daily Bread" hit the issue to the core. The documentary shows how food is harvested, slaughtered etc. Do you think that being killed by emotionless machines are more humane? These animals were treated like food even before they were food.

Although I know all these and I understand all these, I do not see myself turning vegetarian anytime. I think the whole point is to understand where your food is coming from and acknowledge that even if you did not kill your food by hand, you played a part in its death. And birth as well, of course. And accept that if there is karma for eating other living things, you have to live with it. Not killing your food by your own hand does not mean that you are less guilty of the part you played.

I don't know how to put this through to my friend and I am not sure if it will offend her. So Qinglin, if you ever see this blogpost of mine, please don't get offended. We agree to disagree. :)

Birth of a baby, a cause of economic celebration?!

I was studying for my exams, when I decided to take a break and take a look at the news. then I saw this piece of news which gave me something to think about.

Experts say the royal birth could inject tens of millions of pounds into the British economy, with a baby princess particularly lucrative because she could become a fashion trendsetter.(Strait Times, 2015) 

The news article was about the birth of a new princess in UK, which I am quite happy about! I am already curious to see who the baby looks like! After talking about how the world is so excited for the birth of the new baby, they insert that line. 👆👆👆

Like what!!! You are objectifying a baby even before it is born as a potential trendsetter and profit maker for the economy. That is rather sad. This makes me wonder about the "experts". They must be economists. -___-||| I remember reading an article about Prince George's trip to Australia. The article, although it described his dressing, mostly talked about the boy's antics and tantrums during the trip, how his character was like and his interaction with his parents. I really hope that when the baby girl is shown to the media, the media would not start talking about her eyes, facial features and what she wore. I am sure there are other things to talk about.

Okay, that was all I wanted to say. Now I have to go back to work. >.< I cannot wait for school to end. Why does this semester feels so dreadful.

Inequality in daily life and the fastest semester ever!

It seemed like it was just yesterday when I came back from Sweden after my exchange. Time passed so fast and half the semester is already over. It has been more than 6 months since my return and I still suffer from withdrawal symptoms. I think I might have developed a bad case of wanderlust. I just want to go around the world and absorb the awesomeness of the world. Haha. 

However, I have to say that the modules I am taking this semester are rather interesting. For my major, I am taking HS3007 Religion and Society, HS2008 Inequality and Social Class and HS4001 Qualitative Research. They are all my favourite topics, but I have to say that HS2008 is quite a heavy module for a 2000 level course. I think the content is quite worth the effort though! It is giving me a lot of insights into how inequality manifests itself in the nitty gritty parts of life. 

For instance, our consumption of branded goods. Why is it that the people who are struggling to survive with everyday live would still partake in the consumption of luxury goods? I used to have a friend in secondary school who was under the Financial Assistance Scheme. However, when she mentioned that she had a PSP which her mom bought for her, I judged her. Why would she spend such money on a game console when she is under the FAS scheme? One of the readings from Pugh gave me some insights with regards to this. Such symbolic consumption is more than an allocation of monetary resource. My friend's parents partook in symbolic indulgence, to show that they were able to provide their children with material goods. In turn, my friend gets a sense of belonging, a feeling that she had membership with the group. However, I think it backfired on her in this case because I was truly troubled about her priorities at that time. I kept wondering why did she spend the money on the game console. I guess I see it from a different perspective now and I really regret judging her. 

HS4001 was more interesting in my opinion. The readings for the module was very interesting, but I think it is not as easy to score. It is not so easy doing an ethnography and my partner and I overlooked some aspects, causing our grades to suffer. However, I am glad that I learnt something from it. We were supposed to write a self ethnography about ourselves. And I thought it would be interesting to share it here. In case I lose the document somewhere along the way, at least there would be a record of it. My self-ethnography also has inequality embedded in it. 

"Do you have any staple bullets?" I asked the friend next to me.

She looked at me for a moment, then said, "It is not staple bullets, it is staples. And I don't have any."

At the age of seven, I never felt that there was anything wrong with "staple bullets". My parents called them as such, and I thought everyone used the same phrase to refer to the small metal pieces we used to attach papers together. It was only when I grew older that I realised my linguistic ability marginalised me from most of the school.

I was in a single sex,  mission school. During that time I realised a group of friends and myself were slightly different from the rest of our schoolmates. Most of the students in my school came in through religious or familial affiliation. Unlike the most of my friends, I got in through a stroke of luck. Having only a fifteen percent chance of getting into school through the last phase of balloting,  I got in. Majority of the students of my school came from upper middle class families and students under the financial assistance scheme (FAS) were a rarity. I was not in FAS, but my family was not very well to do either. I would say, I belonged in the lower middle class. 
I realised that I had a different level of linguistic ability when I was constantly being picked on by the English teacher and often got my compositions read out loud in class. Not because it was amazing, but because it was an example of a bad composition. Some of my classmates also laughed at some of my mispronounications and never hesitated to correct me while snickering. 

In introspect, I realised that my inability to use the English language as well as my school mates was due to a lack of social capital.  I learnt whatever I knew about the language from my mother. However, my mother was not that eloquent in the English language as well, because she came from as chinese speaking family and only started to use the English language when she started working full time. Despite her inability to speak standard English,  she chose to use it as the main language when speaking to my brother and I.

I was not the only one who spoke differently from majority of the school. There were a group of girls who often hang out together in my class because they did not speak in the English language as well as the rest of the school. They often used Chinese when communicating with each other instead. I realised I did not fit in with them either. My Chinese language ability was also limited and I found myself speaking my English while they reply me in mandarin. It was kind of awkward sometimes when they made the effort to reply me in English instead.

That was when I realised that linguistic ability was very strongly linked to the habitus of a person,  the language that one speaks most know a regular basis and how you used the language. This is what bordieu calls habitus. This habitus originates mainly from the household, because young girls usually spend most of their time at home. The linguistic ability of one child is highly dependent on the linguistic ability of the parents. The child linguistic ability becomes a form of social capital in school and also a tool in power relations. The corrections on my usage of the English language in school by my classmates were actually a form of power play where they tried to establosh some form of social hierarchy based on your linguistic  ability. People who were not able to use the English language proficiently were considered more inferior.

I hope you enjoyed reading my mini auto ethnography. Laavy mentioned that we will get back to this when we reach week 11 and I am kind of looking forward to it. It had been a while since I had to write a timed personal recount kind of thing and I really enjoyed it.