It’s been exactly one month since I moved to Uppsala. I’m still adjusting and discovering my routines here, but here’s what I’ve been up to so far.
Short story fikas
I started a new Readers & Writers Meetup group. We’ve had our first few sessions over the last few weekends:
- About technological singularity
- About being human
- About a fox who learned to ‘speek Yuman’
Although Meetup is being a hassle, so we’re now trying out Facebook (shudder) as an alternative platform. We’ll see how it goes… The next short story fika is in about a week and the theme this time is ‘Duty’.
Just inject all the things into my brain
So far I’ve been to…
- A lecture about the end of the universe
- A lecture on freedoms and unfreedoms in America
- A lecture on a wireless prosthetic limb and brain implant that restore physical sensations
- Practical philosophy paper review discussions:
- A live podcast recording on becoming human
- A talk on Polar Gothic literature at the local occult bookstore
I was fortunate to have gotten a week off to settle in after moving, so got a head start on exploring the seemingly endless stream of interesting things to learn about.
Finished writing a new book
After moving I finished the final edits on a new sci-fi romance book. I had originally drafted the book over the course of three weeks while going through a rough time a few months ago. It was the fastest I’ve ever written 60,000 words.
Mer svenska
I’ve started aggresively defaulting to Swedish when speaking with people here. Jag är inte så bra än, men det går ganska bra när jag har druckit kaffe. Mina kollegor sa att de har märkt att jag blir bättre varje dag när vi pratar med varandra på kontoret. Vi tar alla våra all-hands-möten på svenska nu, och hade vår “end of year retrospective” på svenska också förra veckan.
I’m planning to attend some of the språkcafe being organized by the churches here as time permits with work. Speaking of work, I’ve been working a bit from some of the cozy cafes near my place. Something about having a limited amount of time at a cafe just helps boost the focus.
Exploring, chilling, building
A friend came over last night to help me put together a dining table, and then we tested it out by having actual dinner at it. This thing was heavy - who knew a slab of oak could be so hard to lift! (I did. I knew.)
Rigel helped with the operation by quality-testing the chairs:
And, of course, I’ve been spending plenty of time prowling around the nature and chilling at home on nights and weekends.
In retrospect, it’s been a really busy month! I love it here so far. It hasn’t all been easy, but it turns out learning about vacuum decay and the heat death of the universe is exactly my kind of distraction :D