Poi, aka Fire-Spinning

The last post, supposedly covering all of June, would actually have been much longer had I really included all of June in there. The reason why? Poi.

Poi is of Maori origin. You can read more about it by clicking here or googling a bit. I remember my Kiwi friend Kalinka practising poi outside our flats in Dunedin, New Zealand and I thought it was pretty cool, but I didn't realise at the time how popular it is around the world.

On June 25th, I drove Lisa to our oldest brother Dan's house by the forest a few minutes from our place, and along with a few of Dan's friends we walked (I limped) to the school park across the street. I can't remember everyone's names so I'll just say Dan and friends to make it easy. Dan and friends, plus Lisa, soaked their poi in fuel and took turns spinning fire. Very limited captions below, since most captions would simply read "Wow!" Some of them look like dragons flying around and stuff.



















This is a neat trick where they spin the poi around along the ground, creating a ring of fire for a second or so, which didn't seem to leave any marks on the grass at all since the fuel burned off so quickly.




Dan framing himself like an old-time portrait, without realizing it:










Note the teeshirt Lisa's wearing says Fury on the back. My uncle John's old band was called Fury in the 70s and they wore these sometimes when they played. Interestingly, the first band of Rivers Cuomo from Weezer was also called Fury, years after my uncle's band had formed (and I think had already disbanded even). An Australian metal band called Fury formed in 1993.






Lisa wasn't the only one to light herself on fire, but I had to take a photo of her singed hair. Once she cleaned it out you couldn't tell anything had happened.




Dan and two of his friends then decided to spin all at the same time for a bit before leaving:






Dan lying on his back with his legs folded behind him so he could come back up to a kneeling position and stand up again:




One of Dan's friends (she's actually quite thin, in case anyone who knows her is reading this - the long exposure caused her movement to make her look bigger than she is). I think she looks like she caught the Phoenix and is holding it by its talons.





And that's what fire poi looks like.

First month visiting Canada

In 29 photos, here's a summary of my entire month of June:


I arrived in Vancouver on May 26th, and on the 30th I took a bus over to Bowen Island alone to relax and go for a row while I could still climb in and out of the rowboat. It was good fun, but I took very few photos. On my walk up the dirt road to get to the ferry, I saw a deer in a neighbour's yard where we often see them:




One of the themes I've noticed among my photos is my tendency to take photos of flags whenever I see them in the wind. This is the flag of British Columbia, the westernmost province in Canada. The flag in the background is just an ugly company flag for BC Ferries.




The next day, June 1, my sister Josephine took off for a two month solo backpacking trip in Latin America. She flew into the south of Mexico and will fly back to Vancouver from Bogotà, Colombia on August 8. We have the exact same backpack.



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There are three sets of photos below: flowers in our garden, knee surgery, and Mt Seymour. If you're bored by flowers, don't give up; just skip down to the knee stuff, which should amuse anyone with a sense of humour as unrefined as mine.

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After Jos left, I walked around our unkempt garden for a few minutes taking pics of flowers while I could still walk. These clematis blooms, about 7 inches across, are really neat:






I also really like these wisteria blooms that drop down from the archway overhead as we walk from the car to the back door of the house:




This fly stood relatively still on the grape leaf long enough for me to get a number of shots. I don't have a dedicated macro lens, so this is the best I could do with my normal zoom lens.




Buttercups growing wild in the sidewalk cracks. If you hold them under your chin in the sun, your chin glows.




These chrysanthemums are inside in a pot. These blooms were already about a month old!




Then I went back outside to the front yard, where there are bright red/orange poppies that I gave my dad many years ago. The blooms are about 5 inches across! These flowers are really this bright; I only resized the following photos - I made no colour, contrast, or brightness changes.




I don't know where these pink poppies came from, but they're cool too.




More red poppies:




An iris a few days before blooming:




Pink poppy again, from the side:




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The next day, June 2, my dad drove me to Vancouver General Hospital where I was scheduled to get my knee repaired. This is a picture of my left knee prior the hospital visit; it may look ok, but inside it was all messed up and hasn't been functioning properly for 4 years.




I told the anaesthesiologist that I woke up in the middle of a hernia surgery two years ago and pulled my mask off (I was delirious, I'm not quite stupid enough to do that if I know what's going on), at which point they had to pump more drugs into me. I also woke up in the middle of having all four wisdom teeth taken out last year. Although I was eating pizza later that afternoon, the pain when I woke up in the middle of having my teeth crushed into little bits was rather intense. So this time the guy said he'd be sure to give me extra drugs. I woke up in some other room with a bandage on my knee so I guess they gave me enough!




I don't know if this is for visitors or staff...




This is my knee after the operation:






This is the back of my left leg, above the knee.




It's all bruised because they cut out two lengths of hamstrings about 25cm / 10" long, which they folded over and sewed together into a single string about 12cm / 5" long. This is a replacement for my Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) which was torn completely from my femur. Your ACL is almost definitely attached to both your tibia and your femur the way it should be.

The surgeon put two small holes above my knee, then put a wire through one hole and around the end of the new ACL, then back out the other hole. When he pulled on both ends of the wire, that pulled the new ACL up into the long hole lower down my knee and up into place by the femur. He then fastened that end in place with a bioabsorbable screw (they don't use metal anymore - this screw will simply be gone about 2-3 years from now) which screws into a hole he had drilled into the bone. The lower end of the new ACL was put in place in my tibia without the need for the wire, and is held in place by another bioabsorbable screw. You can watch a video of a similar procedure online, just google ACL reconstruction surgery and you should find a few neat vids. The new ACL will, after about 3 months, be quite weak, but will then start establishing a blood supply with the bone the way the old ACL used to have. After about 6 months, it should have a full blood supply and those two hamstrings they sewed together will have become a functioning ligament holding my knee together properly.


I spent one night in hospital and left the next afternoon. A few days later, my friend Kelly and one of her friends came over to my parents' house and we did some art stuff, since I never do anything art-related. We made shrinky dinks. They're so cool. You draw stuff on plastic sheeting then cook it in the oven, producing toxic fumes despite no warnings on the packaging, and within a short time the plastic has shrunk into a much smaller size but much thicker. It's 100% to scale, and it's very solid. I traced, as best I could, one of the knee MRI images I have.




While spending many days in bed at my parents' home, with my baby sister (17 yrs old, maybe not quite a baby anymore) Lisa bringing me food and keeping me company, I decided to spruce things up a bit, despite my general dislike of American/Canadian pro "football":




By the end of the month, I had moved from crutches to a cane thanks to my physiotherapist, Dr Waymen Wong at Marpole Physiotherapy. Granny lent me one of her canes, the fancy hand-carved cane Lisa had brought back for Granny from Cuba a few months ago. So on June 29th my parents, Lisa, and I went for a short walk on Mount Seymour, just outside Vancouver. Nice place, filled with typical BC rainforest scenes that I've grown up with:






Lisa modelling my backpack:




Me modelling Granny's cane (and actually using it to hold myself up)




Two waterfalls:




Dad and Mom:




More natural beauty:




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Well, that's all of June in one blog post. Next post, coming very soon: fire poi, also known as fire-spinning!

Last few days in Sweden

I've been busy lately, but I'll post a quick note about the last few days I spent in Sweden after I returned from my trip to the Balkans.

After arriving back in Uppsala, I wrote a thematic paper then prepared a thematic presentation to go with it, then presented said presentation. On the 23rd, after I got my room cleaned up, stored some stuff in my storage closet, and packed my stuff, I caught a train to Göteborg (Gothenburg).

I spent Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday there, and flew out early Monday morning to Vancouver via London, arriving here in Vancouver May 26th, 365 days after I left (not including my 10 day trip in March for the knee stuff).

Current plans are: fly out of Vancouver August 13th, land in England August 14th for a 4 week internship in Oxford; fly home to Sweden in late September to get my act together there, then fly out sometime in October for Thailand where I hope to do my thesis research; fly back to Sweden at some point to actually write the thesis, submit it, then head off to wherever I manage to find a paid position to kick off my career. Other than the internship, all plans remain fluid, since I never really know what might come up to change them.

A few photos from the last days in Sweden:

On my last trip out to the student bar, I carried my passport as ID as always. And yes, it is real. Note that it opens 'backward.'




On May 23, I trained across the country to Göteborg and met up with three friends who lived in the same set of flats with me in New Zealand - Karin, Vania, and Ratana - and one new friend who was there the next year, Henrik. Vania and her sister Sonia both work at Liseberg, which I visited just before Christmas.

This time, on Saturday, we went so the 'kids' could go on all the rides. I'm too old for rides, so I volunteered enthusiastically to be team photographer for the day.

Before the rides, Vania had to pay for parking. So while she walked to the nearest functional machine, we stole her car and drove it to another part of the lot, then hid a few metres away.




She spotted the empty stall immediately and found us (we accidentally wore ridiculously bright colours that day) pretty quickly...




Ratana, Henrik, Vania just before they got on the rainbow ride:




Can you see them?




I have no idea.




Rollercoasters:






This one is made entirely out of wood (I'm pretty sure there are some metal bolts, but the structural stuff is all wood).




A city tram outside the park, seen from a super high viewing tower at Liseberg:




Crazy jukebox car ride:








That all-wood rollercoaster, with the three kids on it:




That night we went out to a dance club, danced a bit, and eventually went to bed very, very tired.

Sunday, among other things, we had a barbeque! Vania's parents are terrific hosts; I highly recommend Hotel Ranjbar if you're ever in Gothenburg! Mohammad and Jinus cooked us up some terrific Iranian style shishkebab stuff, and it was delicious!










To eat it, you have to hold the bread in your hand a bit folded, then take the skewer and pull it so that all the food stays in the bread - much harder than it sounds! Then add salad and special Persian spice mix and voilà! Instant awesome.






Right near Vania's parents' home there's a lake so, on Sunday evening after Henrik caught his train home to Lund, Ratana, Vania, and I went there to chill for a while and eat candy.




It's a very pretty little lake!




Vania drove me to the airport early in the morning, and after a short flight to London I was airborne once more en route to Vancouver, where I landed safe and sound in the early afternoon of the same day.

I then went to my friend Helaine's apartment for a Settlers of Catan party, during which I played my second ever match of the game and beat the veterans I was competing against. I put that here purely to brag :-)