In Sweden after the New Year, people greet each other with God fortsättning, which means “good continuation”. I am wishing all of my friends and readers, a great continuation of the New Year 2015.
Here are some photos of the first full moon of 2015 over Stockholm. The first is over Globen, the largest globe structure in the world, which also serves as the sun in the Sweden Solar System model. Then I have a photo of the moon over the Wenner-Gren Center, where I lived when I first moved to Sweden in 1992, now nearly 23 years ago.
2014 ended with me learning that my proposal to the National Science Foundation was not funded. The process of getting government funding these days is difficult to say the least. You submit a pre-proposal in January. Then you find out if it passed the first stage in May. The deadline for the full proposal is in August. Final results come out at the end of December. It seems through the entire process only about 5% are funded, meaning that 95% don’t make it. But this year I was close. The project is terribly important, studying the effects of deforestation on malaria transmission. I am sure that I will find some way to do the work, but for the short term, it means that I will be spending more of my sabbatical in Europe, instead of Cameroon.
It was a long holiday for Swedes. Most are starting back to work today, January 7th. The stores are full of shoppers looking for deals at the after-Christmas sales. The economy seems to be doing fine here. But people also take time to go ice-skating or to performances. If you have skates, there are several outdoor rinks open for free to the public. I saw a very modern performance of Othello, in modern Swedish. I like how theater takes risks here. It was a stark stage, in simple contemporary costumes, and in the end, when everyone dies, there was blood all over the place.
After my experience at the Bogota airport where I ran out of breath running between airplane gates, I decided to start running. I bought some good shoes and the outfit. Stockholm is the perfect place for runners, because of the many huge flat parks. The Lill-Jansskogen is a large forest park right across the street in the center of the city.
Next week, a short trip to San Francisco!