kareina

We had a very nice, largely lazy weekend. We did host a couple of couch surfers from the Netherlands. A delightful young couple. Greeted them with a late lunch upon their arrival, took them out to Gammelstad to see the open-air museum and church village, then took them to the summer cabin of our folk dance teacher because they wanted to see the sea, since they are doing a journey around the Baltic, and the summer cabin is on the coast. While we were there I learned about Åkerbär, which they described as the world's most aromatic berry. They had a very small bucket full of them (the berries being very difficult to find and to pick), and let us try one each. Yum! I hope that when we find a house to buy the land has some of those growing on them.

On Monday morning I joined the rest of the full department (SBN, or Samhällsbyggnad och naturresurser, which translates to Civil, Enviromental and Natural Resources Engineering) departing for the town of Arvidsjuar for a "Kick-Off Retreat" to start the new school year by getting to know our colleagues. The retreat was listed as "mandatory", and 173 of us (of around 350) actually showed up. I know that at least some folk had good excuses--the PhD student across the hall from me and his wife are both in the department--she is one week over due with their second child, so they stayed home to keep waiting rather than attend the retreat).

The conference hotel is a full two hour's bus ride from our uni, and by the time we arrived my back, which had been feeling much better, was once again quite unhappy with me. So after the opening ceremony I checked with the front desk of the hotel, and yes, their spa does include massage. So I booked one. The soonest opportunity they had was at 14:00. My talk was scheduled for 15:00, so I booked a 50 minute massage. It helped. When first I lay down on the table my lower back hurt just laying there. By the time she was done it only hurt when she pushed on the sore muscles or I needed to move.

The down side of having trained as a massage therapist myself is that I tend to observe their technique and a running evaluation of their work runs through my mind. I opted not to give her feedback, because after the massage I needed to get dressed and head downstairs to give my talk straight away. But, having thought it out, I will share it with the lot of you. Perhaps someone somewhere, will benefit from it.

Her massage was in general good--she has a confidant touch, and a very reasonable pattern to her work--starting with the back and shoulders, progressing to the legs, and then working on the front of the legs and arms. However, in a normal massage I also like the feet and scalp/face/and neck worked on as well. (I suppose that it is possible that she does these normally, but cut them to give my lower back extra attention, since I had told her that was the problem area.)

But the thing that I found really disconcerting was her tendency to let go and walk away from the table to get more massage oil or another towel to cover my back when she moved to my legs, or to adjust the arm rests on the table before I turned over. (note: I hadn't seen a table with such arm rests before, I think I like it) When I was in massage school one of my teachers cautioned us to never let go of our clients while working. She suggested that we treat them like a horse--maintain a contact as you walk around their body so that they know where you are when they can't see you. If you need to get more oil keep the back of your hand against them while pouring oil into it with the other hand. I so agree with this logic! Every time she let go and walked away I wondered if she was done, already. That moment of confusion adds a bit of tension that takes some time to sooth back out when she returned to work. It would have been better if she kept the contact when she had to do other things. Sigh.

All in all I didn't think she did as good of a job as lord_kjar does. Her work is clearly mostly a memorized pattern, slightly modified to suit the needs of the body she is working on. His massage is always based on "listening" with his fingers to see how the body is doing, where the knots are, and what needs work. He never gives the same massage twice. However, if the massage wasn't as good as what I could have had at home, still it was quite good, and had me feeling better enough to do my talk in comfort.

My talk seemed to go over fairly well. Since our department has everything from Architects to Scientists I aimed it at a general audience, and simply explained my project title, one small bit at a time, starting with "why 3D modeling", and then explaining every other phrase and ending with "how does one approach such a project,anyway?". My boss said it was well done, which I appreciate (and hope he remembers when it comes time to decide whether or not to renew my contract).

I enjoyed listing to many of the other talks. One which I found particularly interesting talked about using a cone filled with prisms to collect sunlight, then pipe it via fiber optic cables to be stored as heat and later converted to energy. The long term goal of the project is a system that can provide for all of the energy needs of a single home, with one cone and etc. Their test cone full of prisms collected the sunlight and concentrated it enough to burn holes in a bit of wood as soon as it was put into the path of the combined beam.

In the evening the instructed us to combine ourselves into groups based on the regions from which we come. I opted to join the "Asia and Oceania" group, both on the strength of my Australian passport and the fact that I lived in Japan till I was three. This meant that I was the only Australian and the only Japanese person in the group. Which is kind of surprising--our department is 43% foreign born. Our group had a large number of people from China, a bunch from India and from Iran, a few from other Asian locations, and me. After we were in groups we were instructed to come up with something to entertain people at dinner, preferably from our homelands. I decided as the token Australian I would stand on my head, since everything there is upside down compared to up here.

Therefore, when the department head opened the evening's entertainment by calling up the the group from China, who sang a song in Chinese, I followed and gave them my Australian/upside down intro and did a headstand. There was lots of very loud applause when I did it, and our department head gave me a hug and told me that she thought I was joking when I told her I would. From there we had offers of songs, stories and other bits of entertainment at random intervals for the rest of the evening, which made for a very enjoyable dinner. (Not that I was eating, of course. Dinner was scheduled to begin at 19:00, and I rarely, if ever, eat that late. Therefore the lady who organized the event had pre-ordered a plate for me served hours earlier--I had my meal in my room at 16:45, and was quite happy I did, since the food for everyone else didn't hit the table before 23:30.)

My back wasn't overjoyed with me for doing the head-stand, mind you, but between the massage, and the half an hour I spent in the sauna during the "relaxation" time before dinner it was mostly ok with me that night. Sadly, the bed was a bit on the soft side, and the pillows were dreadful polyester filled things that got me to complain on FB about my failure to bring one of my own feather pillows with me. I normally do bring at least one, but given the back issue I opted to keep my pack as light as possible this time, and regretted it. Luckily, I did bring my cloak in progress, so instead of having to use the dreadful polyester filled doona they hotel provided I took out the filling and used the doona cover as a sheet, with my cloak as a blanket, so at least the covers were nice.

Sadly, my back wasn't overly happy in the morning, and the bus ride home didn't help either, but once I was home I once again had access to massages from lord_kjar and the possibility of hanging from my hips from his upraised feet, which always helps my back feel better. So hopefully now that I am home the recovery will resume and I will soon be back to normal. I hope so, my exercise log is very disappointed with me this month, and it had been looking better than average before I hurt myself.

I have a week and a half to get it better before I fly to Stockholm, where I will meet my mother and then board a new plane to Copenhagen, where we will visit cousins who live there for the weekend before returning home for her visit here. She will be here for nearly a month, and I am looking forward to seeing her.