Survey Slip-Up

After putting a bit of effort into formulating the questions for Johanna’s and my survey on the transition to higher education, yesterday turned into an empirical embarrassment episode of epic proportions (if we are to stick with the alliterations). Using the Artologik tool for the first time, I was a bit too quick to accept the reassurance from our administrative staff that everything looked okay before publishing the survey – unleashing an unstoppable queue of e-mails to more than three thousand present and former students, with the reminder to answer the survey being sent out before the actual invitation.

Wanting to run away from it all, I went for 5k around the block, finishing with pancakes in the garden while listening to a redstart singing in the tree, probably just back from Africa. Yes, the Merlin app has truly opened my senses to what has always been right in front of me.

Back to Tylösand

With no races planned, I made the most of this recovery week by running a faster half marathon out to Tylösand this afternoon, circling the cliffs of Tyludden before heading back past the quarries of Grötvik, soaking in the seaside light, and only easing off over the final five kilometres to leave enough energy for a bit of work later tonight.

Tomorrow, I will give a class on Agenda 2030, a topic I find both inspiring in its scope and frustrating in the way it often reduces sustainability to familiar, and not always particularly effective, discourses.

Wild nettle pesto

After taking Caia for a coastal sunshine stroll yesterday, Johanna and I ended the day at her wooden lookout deck over a bottle of Albariño that we had brought back from Portugal in December. Overnight, the blue skies had turned a solid grey, providing some downtime to catch up on academic duties and get Johanna’s guesthouse ready for rental.

From childhood, I remember my mother making nettle soup and the fleeting season for picking them at my grandfather’s farm in Skåne. Today, with a slightly postmodern twist, Johanna and I picked nettles of our own and made pesto for lunch.

Norrnäs

Having duly celebrated Valborg in Gyltige, Johanna and I filled her car with all possible camping gear and drove across the border into Kronoberg for a night on the shores of Bolmen. As Sweden’s twelfth largest lake, it almost felt like being at the sea, and through the night we could hear flocks of geese flying overhead.

Going swimming with Caia, Bolmen’s depth of 36 meters also proved a stark contrast to the sunny skies above. Before heading back, we got to check out the remains of the 13th-century fortification of “Piksborg”, the former narrow-gauge railway line between Halmstad and Karlshamn, and, most lovely of all, the beech-clad peninsula of Norrnäs udde stretching out into Bolmen.

3x Valborg

Gallows Hill

Despite my three years in Halmstad, today was the first time I ventured up Galgberget, with its nineteenth-century lookout tower, birch forest, and steep climbs. The tower even housed an anti-aircraft battery during the Second World War. Finishing my run at Espresso House with a freshly baked croissant, I felt almost as if I were back in San Diego, where Johanna and I would go for coffee runs in the mornings.

With the first three days of this week jam-packed with meetings, there has not been much time to reflect, but I look forward to turning Hallandsgatan into a more permanent home in the autumn, as Eddie will also start a new school here in Halmstad. For now, I guess it is back to work and that last sip of South Australian Shiraz.

Two hours

More than six years after Kipchoge’s highly choreographed two-hour marathon in Vienna, Sebastian Sawe broke the last great barrier and ran the world’s first official sub-two-hour race in London this morning. Meanwhile in Hamburg, my long-time Strava friend Niklas set a new marathon PR of 3 hours and 17 minutes at the age of 52, proving once again that no human is limited.

Trying to inspire the kids to adopt some of the same mindset, I took them on their longest hike ever this morning (which, apparently, also became my longest hike activity on Strava) under the most beautiful blue skies, spotting sparring deer and endless spring flowers as we traced Gotaleden eastward towards Jonsered. Topping it off with a record 15-kilometre indoor row at Nordic Wellness Örgryte, I think a recovery week in Halland is just what I need now.

Forty years later

Today marks forty years since that fateful night at reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and what would become history’s worst nuclear accident. As the news media keeps recounting the events, a new report by the Anthropocene Institute brings much-needed perspective as it points out that the number of premature deaths would have been at least ten times higher had Chernobyl been a fully operational coal power plant. Though less spectacular, hundreds of thousands of people die every year from fine particulate pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, yet none of these deaths seem to inspire HBO documentaries or sustained public outrage. Having been to Pripyat myself back in 2016, I am not trying to trivialize the human tragedy but, given the urgency of climate change, irrational fear of nuclear energy may ultimately prove far more dangerous than radiation itself.

Saturday slow

Experiencing a sudden bout of springtime lethargy, I struggled to get out of bed this morning. After all the boundless sunshine, the sky had turned grey, and it took all my self-discipline to lace up my trail shoes and head out around Delsjön. Stopping to listen to the birds with the Merlin app, and then to spot KLM’s morning flight with the Planefinder app, I got my share of augmented reality before returning home to two boys playing Minecraft.

According to the forecast, it will stay colder, but with the sun returning, I will make another effort to go hiking with the kids tomorrow. Otherwise, I plan to spend much of the weekend clearing things out – including my multi-decade collection of Monocle – as we have finally given notice to our landlord and will be leaving Ängtegsgatan at the end of July.

Bureaucratization

Yesterday, Johanna and I drove down to Malmö for the world premiere of Kvalitetsplanen, a “performance lecture” about bureaucratization with Patrik Hall, who, some twenty-five years ago, was largely to blame for me ending up in political science. In the play, Patrik skillfully captured the paradox of the ever-increasing number of “organizational professionals” who are presenting their work as a response to bureaucratisation rather than a source of it.

Afterwards, we headed over to Vibliotek, which apparently was celebrating a decade on Södra Vallgatan, for some very Spanish tapas and happy hour prices on Estrella Damm. With the parks and fields turning green, one soon forgets that life in the Nordics is not always like this. Driving back over Glumslövs backar this morning – “där ute bland kuster och motorvägar” – everything somehow came together in one moment.