Greetings from New Mexico

I'm back in New Mexico after an ultramarathon journey from Stockholm—it took more than 40 hours to get here, with delays in Stockholm, Newark, and an overnight stay in Houston. I was one of the lucky travelers, though. If you've been watching the news over the past week, you may have seen how people have been stranded in airports for days. When I arrived in Houston (very late, after my scheduled connection had already left), the customer service lady told me they'd booked me on the next available flight to Albuquerque, which was scheduled to leave three days later! Luckily, I managed to get on a standby list and was able to make it Santa Fe the next day.

And it's well worth it to be here: there's over foot of snow on the ground (see photographic evidence) and I'm happily vegging out in my own living room with John, the kitties, and a roaring fireplace.

But I still have a couple of Sweden-related items to share:

1) My mother-in-law reminded me yesterday that I never posted about the results of the Sverige's Lucia contest. My favored national Lucia candidate, the dark-complected Nicole Wångne, did not win the flaming wreath. Instead, it went to a blondie named Emma Johansson. Oh, well.

2) I spent today revising the menu, shopping and prepping food for my Allt Om Mat dinner, the photo shoot for which will take place on Sunday. I realized that a few of the ingredients I was planning to use are impossible to find in Sweden. So I nixed tamales (no masa harina), switched the ancho peppers in my soup to chipotles (thinking those will be available in Stockholm—if not we can probably make due with smoked Spanish paprika), and switched the stuffed poblanos to stuffed roasted bell peppers. Hopefully that does the trick, but further revisions might be needed once we go back to the magazine's test kitchen. In any case, we're going to have a killer dinner with family and friends on Sunday. I'm making people wear earth tones so they don't clash crazily with our new pumpkin-colored dining room. This is perhaps the only dinner party ever in which the hostess tells the guests how to dress. Oh well, they'll get to be in a magazine and eat some yummy food in the bargain!

Here's the final menu:

Turkey caldo tlapeno
(soup with smoked turkey and chipotle peppers, thickened with pinto bean puree and garnished with Mexican crema and avocado)

Mincemeat empanaditas
(instead of the sweet, pie-filling style mincemeat, I'm slow-cooking the beef in rum and then mixing in the fruit and spices, for a rich and unique appetizer)

Grapefruit, shaved fennel and pumpkin seed salad
(with oak-leaf lettuce and sherry vinaigrette)

Roasted brussels sprouts with chestnuts and bacon

Chiles en Nogada
(poblanos and bell peppers stuffed with pork picadillo and covered with walnut cream sauce and pomegranate seeds)

Pecan pie with chipotle frozen custard

Yummmmmm!

Countdown to Christmus!

It's drizzly and dark here. I'm working like a maniac. People are asking me retarded questions about the Internet. I'm addicted to the Hallmark Channel and cheap Tetrapaked wine. And yet, I am PSYCHED, because in about 48 hours I'll be leavin' on a jet plane for sunny Santa Fe, New Mexico, home to my man, my mountain and my wrestling gray kitties. Woohoo!

It's snowing buckets at home right now and John promised that he might even go hiking in the snow with me, or at least drive me up the mountain and sit in the car listening to music while I hike. (Sorry, inside joke there—John hates hiking.) There's a whole cord of firewood stacked up in the living room and a Christmas tree bent over a little at the top because it's slightly taller than the ceiling. And at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, there's a barstool shaped like a tractor seat and a margarita with my name on it. Plus a new train that I can ride for free to and from Albuquerque. Can you tell I'm giddy with homesickness?

I've never been away from home for so long before. I mean, I've moved a bunch of times, but I've never had a home with my stuff and pets and husband in it and gone someplace else for four months. And I hope I never do that again, honestly. Not that I'm not really enjoying this stint in Sweden, but as the departure time on that SAS flight grows near, I'm increasingly ready to get the hell outta here for a few weeks. (That's right, a few weeks. The office is closed till January 7th and then I'll be attending CES in Vegas, which puts me back in Stockholm the week of the 12th.) I don't feel I'm offending any Swedes by admitting this, either—the weather here is miserable by any standard, and everyone who can go away for the holidays is doing so.

I've been largely insulated from the recessionary blows during my stay, so it will be interesting to feel the difference in the U.S. I know people are really struggling with layoffs and holiday bills, so this season more than ever will be a good time to do something nice for people in need. Maybe I'll go to the local soup kitchen and cook while I'm in town.

Speaking of cooking, while I'm in Santa Fe I'll also be preparing a holiday meal to be featured in the November 2009 issue of the Swedish food magazine Allt Om Mat (yeah, they plan way ahead). My friend and former pastry kitchen colleague from SantaCafe, Mark Bixby, will be my co-chef for the meal, and the event will be photographed by Stacey Adams, who also shot our wedding. I can't wait! I'm thinking I'll take a bit of a break from blogging during the holidays (seeing as I won't be in Sweden and all), but maybe I'll post a couple photos from the dinner just for fun.

My one wish is that I could swing through New York on some leg of my trip to visit my friends there, especially Christine and Shamus who just got engaged! ("Christ-mus" is pictured above at a 2006 holiday party, before they were even dating) Congrats, guys!

Lucia in the Rain, And A Rap Video

Today is Lucia Day in Sweden, but I'm doing laundry instead, because I celebrated last night by attending an advent concert at the Nordisk Museum (pictured here). I went with my colleague Elizabeth, and it was pouring rain, which made me reflect on the interesting Swedish attitude toward weather. (We'll get back to Lucia in a minute, I promise.)

Earlier in the day, I had tried to hail a cab to take me to a meeting maybe 25 blocks away. It was raining, and although the destination was walkable (by Swedish standards, anyway), I didn't feel like it. I got into the back of a guy's cab and told him where I wanted to go and he said, "It's just straight ahead and then you turn right and go for awhile." And I said, "Yeah, that's right. Go there, please." So he goes, "Lady, I'm sorry, take a walk. It's good for the health." I was shocked! It wasn't like I asked him to drive 100 meters and stop at the corner, and even if I had, it was pouring rain! So I got out of the cab, really pissed, but also sort of doubting myself. Was I being lazy? Was my request unreasonable? I didn't even have an umbrella. But I decided to walk anyway, because maybe I was overestimating how far the place was.

But no, it took me 20 minutes to walk there and I was completely soaked when I arrived. Interestingly, though, I noticed that I wasn't the only one who didn't have an umbrella. In fact, lots of Swedes don't carry an umbrella for a walk in the rain—especially men. I'm not sure whether it's some kind of "we're hardy Nordic people and we can withstand the weather" attitude, or they just don't mind, or what. I like to think it's the latter, because it seems sort of noble to be so harmonious with the weather. Like that passage in Another Roadside Attraction, when the protagonist is trying to teach himself not to flinch and squint in the rain.

So, anyway, people were still not carrying umbrellas on the way to the Lucia concert, but this time I found a cabbie who judged the distance to the museum long enough to travel in a car without shame.

The event was held in the vaulted main hall of the Nordisk—a dramatic setting made all the more mysterious with blue lighting creating shadows and contrasts among the architectural flourishes of the cathedral ceilings. The beginning of the concert was the best part, as the choir wound through the hall with their candles and white garb and star-shaped lanterns on tall staffs. They sang traditional Swedish Lucia carols and advent songs a cappella, and the acoustics in the hall were amazing. At one point, they actually split up, and most of the sopranos and a few altos moved to the other side of the room from the others, to play with the sound bouncing through the chambers. There was a children's choir, too, which featured one hilarious little girl who—singing all the while—kept looking around at everyone else on stage and fussing with her skirt and rubbing her hands up and down the velvet bodice of her dress.

As a nice contrast to the Lucia concert, the first music I encountered this morning was the soundtrack of a rap video being shot in front of my apartment building. So funny to see this happening in staid Vasastan! The music was really good, though—sort of North African influenced hip-hop. The cameraman had his rig set up in the back of a hatchback car, and they were rolling down the street really slowly filming two guys (the rappers, presumably) as they lip-synched and strutted and danced. Pretty great.

Time For Some Photos

It's been a long time since I posted a gallery, so here are some recent shots of random things I find interesting. Several are of food, you will notice. A few shots are from the Bonnier Publishing Program, which was held at a country bed and breakfast called Thoresta Herrgård. Happily, none of the shots included in this gallery involve saunas.

I also posted two shots from Saluhallen, a very cool food market in the posh Östermalm neighborhood of Stockholm. It's not exactly accurate to call it a farmer's market, or a meat market... it's more like an artisanal awesomeness market. Any foodstuffs that can be expensively raised, grown, line-caught, dived for, canned, cured, butchered, cultured or baked are likely to be found there. I tasted little bits of the most exquisite salty, crumbly, caramel-scented farmhouse cheddar and a bite of fantastic homemade sausage, ogled a giant monkfish on ice and a display of gorgeous rhubarb jam, and then had dinner at the restaurant outside the market called Lisapåtorget (Lisa At the Market). The place serves amazing seafood dishes, and at least the night I was there, there were just two women working there, serving about 50 patrons (half were only drinking, but still) while doing all the cooking and running the cash register. Holy moly. They are my new heros. It's weird enough that I took their picture (above left), so I didn't ask them for their names, but here's to you, superwomen!

Swedish Lesson

This is the sort of scene that really gives a Swedish student pause. Oh god. I'm not supposed to do something. But what??

A look inside Megan's brain:

Okay, stare at the sign for a while and see if I can make sense of it..... Nope. Okay, what words DO I understand? Obs = "observera," or "please take notice." "Är" means "are." "Inget på dem" means "nothing on them."

So we have: "Please notice, _____ are ______, _______ nothing on them."

That long word, let's look at that more closely. "Nyoljade." I see the word "ny" in there, which means "new." What does "oljade" mean? Let's guess at something that is close to English. Oiled? So, new-oiled? Eureka! Something is new-oiled. Put nothing on them. Ah, the countertops are newly oiled, put nothing on them!

This is my life, every day.

Half-Year of the Dragon

We just wrapped up an intense three days at the Bonnier Publishing Program, and I am wiped. It is such a neat group to be involved with, and the energy was superhigh, but as soon as the last day ended I kind of collapsed.

The program members come from all corners of the Bonnier world, and all are involved with digital media. The main stated purpose of the program is to help us build leadership skills and develop a tool set that will allow us to successfully launch new Web businesses for our companies. This is hugely interesting to me because my focus at work has been shifting increasingly toward business development. I'm still technically an editor, but I'm finding that the most exciting thing about my job is solving the puzzle of how to execute successful project launches. In today's online media world, it's no longer true that "content is king." Great content has to come hand-in-hand with great technology and a solid revenue model.

So, after a day and a half of warm-and-fuzzy "getting to know our colleagues" activities, the Publishing Program participants were given a task: to divide into four groups that will each develop and pitch a new digital business plan to the top management. This isn't just an exercise, either—the management actually intends to select at least one of the four projects (provided at least one is good enough) to launch in 2009. The format is similar to The Dragon's Den, the popular BBC reality show in which hopeful entrepreneurs pitch ideas to a panel of ill-tempered venture capitalists (pictured above).

We broke into teams and kicked off our projects today, and each team member has quite a lot of homework to do before the next Publishing Program module in January. We'll gather for a total of four more learning modules between now and May, during which time we'll meet entrepreneurs and learn from their successes and failures, study up on the platforms and technologies shaping the online media landscape right now, and have seminars and workshops with top trend analysts, investors and developers. I couldn't be more excited to be involved. It's quite an honor, as this program is very expensive for our company to put on, and there will be a huge internal focus on the business plans we hatch this spring.

I also got a completely unrelated (but also honorific) invitation this week, which weirdly also relates to dragons. My friend Keira, who is becoming kind of famous in the fitness world, offered to train me to earn RKC certification, which will allow me to teach kettlebells classes part-time in her gym (something I'd love to do to keep my fitness-motivation high). The training for this certification is pretty grueling, as I'll have to prove my strength and knowledge of kettlebell technique with a series of difficult physical tests during the certification workshop, April 20-24. The official Web site for RKC Kettlebells is called dragondoor.com.... which means that within one month this spring, I'll be entering first the Dragon Door and then the Dragon's Den. Gulp.

Group Bonding

I'm at the Bonnier Media University Publishing Program today through Wednesday, and so far it's been an incredibly interesting and strange experience. Today's objective was simply to get to know the other members of the program. There are 19 of us from all over the world, and everyone is very bright, professionally accomplished and employed in the Web media field, which makes for narcissistic but really engaging interactions. ("Ooooh, you're just like me! Fascinating!) I'm forbidden from talking in too much detail about what we discussed in the classroom, because that would ruin the surprise for future program participants and also break the circle of trust or whatever, but I will say that the day's activities required us to dig into relationships with our colleagues on an intellectual and emotional level right off the bat. (Now you're REALLY wondering what's up with the photo above, but I'll let you wait another paragraph and a half to find out.) After just one day, I feel like I know about half of the 19 people quite well. We'll meet for this program five times between now and May, and the idea is that we'll improve our leadership skills and learn new techniques and ways of thinking about Internet business.

This session is being held at a country resort about 40 minutes outside Stockholm called Thoresta Herrgård. It's a simple but very cozy bed and breakfast (lots of candles and fireplaces everywhere), but the food is off the hook. I had no idea I'd be enjoying a fine culinary experience when I signed up for this course. I wish I could recite tonight's menu, but it was in Swedish, so I have to just try to remember what we ate. There was an amuse-bouche of some sort of seafood bisque with a ravioli, a first course composed of several pretty little sashimi (arctic char, salmon and scallop) with dollops of horseradish cream, white chocolate-cauliflower puree (much tastier than it sounds) and parsley jelly (also delicious, despite seeming strange). The meat course consisted of a slice of braised pork belly (Oh. My. God.) a gamey little sausage round and some fixins' (pickled onions, minced apples, mustard cream). Then there was a dainty cheese course with little cubes of brie, some sort of sharp Swedish cheese and a bit of blue cheese, followed by dessert: pear-yogurt ice cream, a dollop of chocolate mousse, and a sliver of apple cake. Seriously, I vote for the chef at Thoresta Herrgård to cook the next Nobel dinner. Throw my paltry little fantasy menu out the window—this was hands-down the best meal I've had in Sweden.

The night was capped off with an activity I mercifully managed to bail out of: a group session in the sauna. (By the way, I have no idea who those people in the photo are. It's a stock image.)

To Swedes, it's apparently perfectly normal to hang out nude in a 110-degree room ass-cheek-to-cheek with the people you work with. Call me crazy, but I don't want to be across the meeting table from some colleague a week from now and have to think to myself, "I've seen this guy naked." And we're not even going to talk about the Finnish people who beat each other in the sauna with birch branches. I'll leave you with that thought.

Megan's Nobel Menu

As promised, I spent a little time this morning fantasizing about what I'd cook for 1,300 guests if I were the chef in charge of the Nobel dinner. The elements to keep in mind, of course, are: 1) preparation time— you must be able to get each course out to the ridiculously large number of tables at the same time, so things that can be prepared ahead/in batches are better, with no fussy composed plates 2) seasonal, Scandinavian ingredients 3) deliciousness 4) the traditional Nobel dessert is always ice cream. So, here's what I came up with:

Arctic char sashimi with shaved fennel, smoked salt and orange oil

Smoked venison, lingonberry and gooseliver terrine, served with coarse mustard

parsnip soup shot, crayfish, parsley oil

reindeer "filet mignon" with reindeer sausage, port-wine demiglace, juniper

jansson’s temptation
(potato gratin with bits of anchovy, molded into a little dome with a ramekin)

Shredded sorrel, purslane and pea shoots with cloudberry vinaigrette

vanilla custard ice cream and ginger cookies

Can you do better? Bring it on in the comments!

Nobel Fest

Tomorrow marks the start of Nobel Week, when this year's laureates gather in Stockholm with their families and a cast of thousands of support staff, media people, royals, dignitaries, celebrities and students to celebrate great accomplishments in literature, economics and science. Early in the week, the prize winners will give press conferences and a series of lectures on their topics of expertise. I will be outside Stockholm attending the Bonnier Media University Publishing Program 3.0, but if there's a break in the program I'd like to zip back into town to attend Paul Krugman's economics lecture.

If you're not familiar with Krugman (pictured above—without the dress), he's an American economist who became famous in his field in the 70s after developing a new supply system for international trade (Honestly, I don't know very much about this—this level of economics is way over my head. You can read a layman's synopsis of his research here). This is the work for which he's technically receiving the Nobel Prize. But Krugman is better known for his writing in the New York Times, in which he has spoken out against the Bush administration's economic policies since Dubya's first term in office. It's widely assumed that the Nobel committee chose to honor Krugman this year largely as a statement against Bush (although they would certainly have honored him at some point in any case).

Thursday, December 10th marks the Nobel Awards ceremony and banquet, a gala event held in the ornate gold and blue halls of Stockholm's beautiful City Hall. The occasion is extremely formal, but in many ways it's more like the Oscars than the stuffy affair most Americans might imagine. The Swedish and international press pool around the red carpet, remarking on the ladies' evening gowns and narrating the arrival of the celebrity guests and Nobel honorees, play-by-play. The dresses worn by the Swedish queen and princesses obviously get a lot of attention—not only because of who they are, but because they make some daring fashion choices. Queen Silvia was on a Nina Ricci kick for a few years there (which I think is cool), and then for a few years she wore extravagantly beaded numbers by Jacques Zender, that to me looked unappealingly like quinceanera dresses. The past two years she's worn interesting designs by Japanese couturier Gunyuki Torimaro. My favorite one, a dramatic bell-sleeved sheath from 2006, is pictured above. You can see the full gallery of her Nobel dresses since 1976 here, if you care.

Each year, 1,300 people are invited to the Nobel banquet from all around the world, and tickets are enormously coveted. Seats within view of Queen Silvia are considered extremely prestigious. Among the invitees each year are 200 university students from Stockholm, a symbolic gesture honoring future generations of academic achievement that will lead to tomorrow's Nobel Prizes.

The food is also a huge deal during the Nobel festivities: Sweden's top chefs are selected to create lavish menus for the banquet and other soirees during the week. This year, the desserts are being made by Magnus Johnansson, the pastry chef behind Xoko, a really great dessert cafe in my neighborhood. I'm not sure the menu for 2008 has been publicly released yet, but last year's consisted of: "lobster aspic with dill-baked halibut and Kalix bleak roe, young cockerel with cockerel sausage and almond potato-celery root terrine and raspberry and blackcurrant parfait on beds of pistachio with vanilla ice cream." Huh. I think that sounds extremely elegant, but a bit precious, and not sky-high on the yumminess index. Which suggests a fun game! What do you say we play, "What I'd Cook for the Nobel Banquet." I'm going to take some time and really think about that, and I'll report back later today or tomorrow. Please feel free to submit your own fantasy menus, keeping Scandinavian-inspired flavors in mind, of course.

You might wonder why I've been studying up so much on the Nobel Festivities... Well, I was hoping to cover some of the events for CNN International next week. I contacted the producer I've worked with in the past, and he was interested and asked for a more detailed pitch, but then Turner broadcasting laid off a bunch of people in his department this week, and I think he forgot about me (or, um, is no longer working there??). I plan to follow up on Monday, but with the Bonnier Publishing Program next week and the fast pace at work right now, it will be much easier on me if I don't do this additional reporting. Still, being in Sweden during the Nobel Awards is probably a once-in-a-lifetime affair for me, and reporting about it for CNN would be something to tell the grandchildren, for sure. So, we'll see what happens. In any case, I learned a lot about it!

Work, Parents and A Crazy Old Lady

The last week has been crazy! Work is really ramping up, with the new Bonnier.com site production going into high gear. If anyone reading this happens to be from Bonnier, well, not to toot my own horn, but I think you really have something to look forward to. We're building a very slick social network/wiki tool with groups for all the businesses around the world, which we hope will effectively replace the need for the company-level intranets that exist now. Not that we're encouraging people to close down their old internal sites, but for those groups who were planning to upgrade and redesign, you now won't have to, because we're giving you something really good for free. And in this economy, I think that will make everyone happy.

My mom and dad (pictured above in their Icebar gear) are still in town, and I feel a little guilty because I've only been able to hang out with them in the evenings for the past few days. I was hoping to slip out of work early at least one day and accompany them on their activities, but it's just been too busy. And they go home tomorrow! Kind of sad. So far we've done some really fun stuff, though. I told you about the julbord in my last post—that may have been the week's highlight. But we also went to the Absolut Icebar, which they loved. It's a really silly place: A bar completely constructed of ice and situated inside a huge freezer kept at -5 degrees celsius. They give you a furry poncho and a fake reindeer skin to sit on, and hopefully you had the good sense to also wear a warm coat and gloves. Admisison includes a vodka cocktail served from a glass made of ice. The drinks were really good, and it was kitschy and fun for about the amount of time it takes to finish one cocktail. They were so tasty we were about to order another round, when we realized we were freezing our asses off, and could simply go to a different bar.

Last night we went to a random Thai restaurant because we were sick of Swedish food. The evening's dinner entertainment came in the form of a strange woman who sat down next to us and told us her left arm was completely numb from having surgery earlier that day, but it was okay because she'd just taken a pain pill. She was a rather older lady, past the age limit where everyone speaks perfect English, but she was chattering away in Swenglish anyway, which was sort of sweet. But then the pain pill kicked in and her English went downhill, and became a bit slurry. She started asking all kinds of questions about money ("How much did your hotel cost?" "Is it expensive to live where you live?" "You spent quite a lot to order all that food and you're not eating it," etc.). That was a little uncomfortable, but maybe just a cultural difference so we laughed politely and answered her questions discreetly. But THEN she started telling us that she's moving to Finland because she doesn't like Sweden's easy immigration laws. She thinks the country lets in too many Muslims. Whoa! She went on and on about this, getting increasingly snowed under by the second by whatever narcotic she'd taken. She wasn't drinking or anything, but by the end of the meal, we all had pushed our chairs away from her and were awkwardly looking down at our plates while she leaned over the table with a wagging finger saying "devil Arabs, devil Arabs" over and over. Yes, lady. Go to Finland. Go waaaaaaaaay north in Finland where you can be all alone with your fifteen cats and the open tundra.

A Riot and a Feast

The Riot

Yesterday was November 30th, the anniversary of the 1718 death of King Karl XII, Sweden's "warrior" king. King Karl had great imperialist ambitions and during his reign, the borders of Sweden were extended all over the Baltic region through a series of wars. For some reason, today Sweden celebrates the day of his death with pretty little cakes. And also Neo-Nazi riots.

The weird cakes were served at my office last week, but the latter bit came as a shock last night when my parents and I tried to take taxis to the Grand Hotel for dinner, and found that all the roads near the hotel were closed off with police barricades. Apparently, Sweden's skinheads see King Karl Day as a good time to demonstrate for their racist cause, so every year they gather at the statue of the dead king (which happens to be in a park right near the Grand Hotel). Unfortunately, another radical group, the extreme-left militant communists, also see King Karl Day as a good time to fight for their "warrior" cause, and they also gather at the statue.

So what ends up happening is the two groups annually beat the crap out of each other in a posh city park.

Luckily, there aren't very many communists or skinheads—the number of protesters is usually only about 600 people. And since they both have the right to peaceful demonstration, the government allows them all to converge on the statue each year. But inevitably there are arrests, and often the riot police have to come out with rubber bullets and shields, and the whole thing costs taxpayers a lot of money.

We didn't actually see any fighting last night, as the protest had been broken up by the time we got to the hotel, but you can see a few images and a rant from a pissed-off Swede at this site, if you'd like to learn more. He makes it seem like the Neo-Nazi problem is widespread in this country, but from what I've gathered in conversations with my Swedish friends, it's a toxic but tiny minority.


The Feast

Once we arrived at the Grand Hotel, we were treated to the most amazing spread of food I've ever seen. And I'm a pretty serious foodie, so that's not a statement I'd make lightly.

Since I "missed" Thanksgiving this year and I won't be with my parents at Christmas, I wanted to share a holiday meal with them, so I thought it would be nice to have a traditional julbord at a nice hotel. Happily, the Christmas season starts here on November 29th, so we managed to do it while they're in town this week.

Well, the food was incredible. There were probably 10 different types of pickled herrings, smoked and cured salmon and char, smoked venison, pork ribs, slow-braised pork, a whole table of interesting housemade force-meats, pates and charcuterie, deviled eggs with prawns and caviar, grain salads, beet salads, green salads, homemade pickles, jansson's temptation, Swedish meatballs, lingonberries, amazing cheeses, chocolate-covered hazelnuts, handmade caramels, chocolate pannacotta, crullers with cloudberry jam.... and I'm only naming my favorites. We also had excellent wine, tasty Christmas beer and five different kinds of aquavit (fennel and coriader, elderflower, carrot, and two others I can't remember, for obvious reasons). Wow. Wowee wow wow. Today I am taking it easy—I think I have a herring hangover.

Anyway, Mom and Dad were suitably awed by the interesting foreign food and booze, the gorgeous hotel setting and the elaborate wreaths, flowers and greenery everywhere. Today, we're downscaling to salads and tea, and there are no militant protesters or SWAT teams in sight.

The Truth About Lucia

Christmastime in Sweden is a big deal, from what I can tell—possibly even more important than in the U.S., where political correctness has ushered in all sorts of weirdness about holiday equality (see Kwanzaa, Festivus). There are a lot of really strange holiday traditions here, which I plan to chronicle as they unfold in the next few weeks.

The first thing worth noting is the shattering of my innocence about Santa Lucia. Since I was a little girl, I've heard about the Santa Lucia tradition in Sweden, and it always seemed really sweet and uniquely European. I pictured rows of softly singing blond children walking through an ancient cathedral dressed all in white, with wreaths of candles on their heads. The saint after which the day was named must have been some Mother Theresa-like character who offered comfort to the poor and sick—especially if the poor and sick happened to be adorable blond children.

Well, today, I was walking down one of Stockholm's main shopping streets, and in a store window I saw a mannequin clad in white lingerie and a slinky white robe, with a wreath of candles on her head. Which for some reason seemed really shocking! Christmas is so plastic and commercial in the U.S. that no one blinks an eye at red and white fur "Santa" lingerie, or stupid Fredrick's of Hollywood elf costumes, but Lucia seemed too pure and virginal to me to be swinging around a stripper pole like that.

Mainly, it seems that Lucia's job is to make people fat. During the weeks around the her day, Swedes eat a lot of gingerbread cookies, which reportedly "make you kinder." Riiiight, and drinking glögg makes me smarter.

But wait, there's more. Lucia isn't just enacted by slutty mannequins and little girls in churches. There's a national Lucia, crowned during a pageant situation for besting her competitors with a combination of good looks and singing skills. Naturally, all the contestants have that perfectly airbrushed beauty queen appearance and make canned speeches about world peace and kittens, but they're also involved in charity work. The title is a big one—somewhat akin to being Miss USA—so they even have a PR team and a marketing tour. But there is an interesting element to all this: One of the top five candidates for 2008, Nicole Wångne (pictured above), happens to be a brown-skinned person (I think she's of South Asian or Indian decent, but she didn't mention her heritage in her bio). I'm so hoping she gets chosen. This could be the groundbreaking year when an black American is voted into the White House and a black Swede wears the White Dress!

So, who was this Saint Lucia who gets a day named after her? Well, she was a Sicilian girl who may or may not have traveled to Sweden several centuries ago. She gained sainthood thus: A man fell in love with her and asked her to marry him, but she didn't like him, so she said no. He became angry and threatened to set her on fire, so she prayed to God for fire-retardance. The jilted suitor set Lucia on fire and she didn't burn, so he stuck a knife in her throat instead. She then bled profuely and sang beautiful songs for three days before dying of brutal stab wounds. Also, she was known for being a kind person. The end!

And that, kiddies, is why we celebrate Lucia, the Queen of Light.

A Context-Free Gripe

You know what really bothers me? When a person establishes herself as an arbiter of good taste, gains a big client list, and then begins to paint every single one of her clients to look exactly the same. Let's pretend for a moment that this gripe has nothing at all to do with me or my work. I'm not going to name any Swedish names. Let's say I'm talking about Rachel Zoe. So Rachel Zoe had a fashion idea: She styled herself to be extremely thin with wild blond, bohemian hair, flowing dresses, large sunglasses, tangles of jewelry, oversized statement bags, and teetering heels. And then: Bang! Bang! Bang! Out roll Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Mischa Barton, Kate Hudson, and Keira Knightly, all looking like little Zoe clones.

Sure, a client pays for the benefit of Rachel Zoe's personal style, but the hope is that she will get to know the person or product or brand in question and tailor a stylish and unique identity that one can call one's own. The converse is pretty much the equivalent of a choreographer selling the same dance routine to two different ballet companies. It sounds ludicrous in the dance company context, doesn't it? Unheard of! Terrible! So why do we stand for assembly line sameness when it comes to style? It's lazy, uncreative and unscrupulous to apply the same formula to every client. This approach should destroy the reputation of such an arbiter of taste. But alas, somehow it never does.

Whole Bunch of Crazy

Okay, I'm behind on my Swedener reportage, so I'm going to give you several items all in a lump today.

1) First of all, I had a little adventure this weekend when I accidentally locked myself out of my apartment. At 1:30 in the morning. Oops! I went to a little cocktail party at my friend Jessika's house, followed by drinks at a bar, and when I got back to my place I found that the apartment code number that usually gets me into the building was disabled. I guess the landlord expects his tenants to turn into pumpkins at midnight. At any rate, because I always use the digital entry, I didn't have the key with me (who has time for such antiquities?) and I found myself shivering on the doorstep, sort of half-heartedly hoping one of my neighbors would also be coming home from a night out and let me in. But, no such luck. So I decided to go to the bed and breakfast down the street and get a room. Well, it's a very small hotel that actually just takes up one floor of an apartment building, and it was closed. I followed a guy into the building anyway, in the hopes of talking the nightwatchman into renting me a room, but the nightwatchmen was sleeping. So I stood there awkwardly in the lobby listening to people snore and trying to figure out what to do. Then I sat down in the hallway and continued trying to figure out what to do, and ended up falling asleep. Eventually, I woke up and called up Jessika, who was just coming home from the bar. (Thank god!) She was generous enough to invite me over and I have never, ever been so psyched to sleep on someone's couch. Except maybe the time that Christine rescued me in New York under almost exactly the same circumstances. When will I learn?

2) I have become absolutely addicted to Läkerol. For those of you who aren't familiar, Läkerol is a brand of very strong licorice-flavored breath "mint." Luckily they're sugar free and almost calorie free, or I would have a serious problem. I've been going through multiple boxes per week—I just can't get enough of that stringent licorice taste. Hopefully it's just a phase, but I guess it's better than doing daily shots of Sambuca, right?

3) After more than a month's hiatus, I decided to resume my Swedish lessons with a new teacher. I don't think I've touched on this in my blog, but my former teacher was really, really strange. No need to go into detail but the guy is a depressed Swede who hates Sweden, speaks English with a bizarrely affected Louisiana accent, and loves Tila Tequila. Plus he never actually spoke Swedish to me and cleaved closely to a mind-numbing text book. All of which added up to a situation where I came to sort of dread my weekly lessons.

Well, the new teacher is a pretty and fashionable young woman with a sunny disposition, and she ONLY speaks to me in Swedish, which is kind of key if I'm going to learn anything. I feel very embarrassed and uncharacteristically shy aboout speaking Swedish, because I'm pretty bad at it, and I hate being bad at things. But she is really nice and encouraging.

So yesterday we spent the lesson reading the daily news, in which I learned about a crazy guy who burst into a Stockholm church on Sunday armed with an ax and a can of gasoline; a famous but as-yet unnamed Swedish actor who beat the shit out of his sambo over the weekend; and of course the most important news of the week—the marriage of 60-year-old Microsoft billionaire and space tourist Charles Simonyi to 28-year-old Swedish socialite Lisa Persdotter.

The latter story would normally just be the usual, somewhat icky tale of an enterprising and nubile hottie snagging a rich old dude —except Lisa Persdotter's not that pretty. Ha! What I really mean to say is, except for the fact that Simonyi's most recent pre-Persdotter relationship was with none other than multimedia publishing, worldwide merchandizing, TV star/DIY queen Martha Stewart. For 15 years. Ouch. I think it would be foolish to say "poor Martha," because she's doing very well, thank you very much, but I hate hearing about men who leave successful, mature and complex women for younger, simpler arm candy (see photo above).

4) Now let's end on a light note. Yesterday Niklas sent me a hilarious video of a German Ikea commercial that was banned, for some reason. Maybe because it paints Swedes in such an unflattering light? At any rate, it's a really funny satire of a rural Midsummer celebration. It's the thick of winter here right now, but I'm wishing I could be here in July—if my friends threw a Midsummer party with a quarter of this much awesomeness I'd be set for life. I love the people just pouring jugs of moonshine and buckets of dead fish andomly all over the table. Varsågod:

Vinter Vunderland

That there is a photo of the soccer field-cum-ice rink near my apartment, at 3 pm today. The days are cold and the nights are long this time of year, which translates to lots of bundling up, with everyone under the age of 14 sporting snow pants and either skates or a sled. There's also a lot of nesting going on. Windows everywhere are lit with candles, and conversations with my friends suggest I'm not the only person who has suddenly morphed into a 60-year-old lady, drinking copious amounts of herbal tea, reading paperbacks in the bathtub, and going to bed at 9 pm. Sheesh. If it makes me sound any cooler, I've also been downloading lots of music and doing kettlebell workouts in my living room. No, that didn't make me sound any cooler.

At any rate, the forecast calls for continuing snowfall through Wednesday, which is kind of exciting. Maybe I'll be able to cross-country ski to work this week!

A popular Swedish pasttime—well, among outdoorsy folk, at least—is going on longish-distance skating outings on the frozen rivers and coastal waters. There's not enough ice for that yet, and I'm not nearly good enough at skating, but it seems like something I'll have to try at least once. I guess I could practice with the little kids on the ice rink pictured above. I need to buy a new pair of running shoes this week, so while I'm at the sports store I'll price out ice skates and, um, a helmet, knee pads and butt padding of some sort? I'm pretty much guaranteed to break myself if I attempt this sport without full Mighty Ducks body armor. Wish me luck!

Mom and Dad's Sweden Sweep

When Rebecca came to visit back in September, I didn't really know my way around Stockholm yet, so I basically threw a guidebook at her and told her to make herself at home. Well, partly because Rebecca spent her time in Stockholm just chilling out and partly because I gave her no guidance, she had a bit of a lame time here. I'm not so much for staying out late partying these days (guess I'm getting old), but I really am capable of putting together a fine travel itinerary if I just put my mind to it. After all, who was the brains behind the wedding party train this summer? Ahem.

So, my mom and dad (pretend that's them at left) are coming to town next week, and this time around I may have flipped out in the opposite direction of Rebecca's visit by creating the Swedish Experience Extraordinaire. They literally have an hour-by-hour game plan for their entire week (with built-in free time, natch). Massage appointments? Booked. Julbord rezziess at the Grand Hotel? Yup! Archipelago tour? Ja vist. Museums, shopping, Skansen, herring, cocktails, holiday fairs, Gamla Stan, changing of the guard? Chhhhhhhhheck.

Now what I want to know is, who's next on the Capital of Scandinavia tour? Your time is running out! Rhonda? Heather? Anyone... Bueller?

Branded

I'm exhausted this evening after a whirlwind few days at work. We're heavily into both the brand project and the Web site project now, and the meetings and decision-making process are getting really interesting. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to talk about the Bonnier brand on this blog, so I'll skip revealing any details of the strategy, but I will say this: The more we dig into the facts of the company history, the values we stand for, and the direction we're heading for the future, the more I can honestly say that I feel really good about working for an organization I believe in. Everyone who has approached this project from the outside (consultants, Web design people, our creative agency) has in some way commented that they expected us to be a boring, stodgy old publishing company and were really amazed to discover how progressive and interesting Bonnier is.

I know it's incredibly corny to be cheerleading about my workplace, but just take off your cynical hipster hats there for a second, cool kids, and hear me out.

One of the most meaningful things about this gig for me has been the fact that my specific circumstance (being a random employee in the U.S. who got plucked out of a magazine to work directly with the head honchos in Stockholm) is a direct validation of one of our key brand values. We like to say we care deeply about entrepreneurship and opinionated individuals, how we're not hierarchical and how good ideas can come from anywhere in the company. Lots of companies say things like that, but I feel like I'm living proof that that's true at this one. For instance, today, I sat for three hours in a meeting with two of the top people at Bonnier and a couple of guys from one of the best brand consultancies in the world, and we hammered out the foundation of our new corporate brand strategy. According to my resume, I had no business being in that room, but I got invited because somebody liked my ideas. Believe me when I say I could have been anyone—I guarantee that if Lollo the receptionist had expressed a solid branding idea, she could have joined in, too, and I think that's pretty damned inspiring.

I spent the rest of the day putting together a PowerPoint of the concept and rough designs for our new Web site, which Niklas and I will present in a meeting with Bonnier's management group tomorrow. Fingers crossed that they like our ideas... We think they're very strong, but if these six key people don't agree, it could be back to the drawing board.

Rah! Rah!

Chasing the Sun to Arabia

Hello! Sorry I kind of dropped off for a few days there... I forgot to tell you I was going to Dubai to visit my grade-school friend Rhonda, who lives there with her husband Kai and daughter Zuzu. To anyone in the U.S., a "quick jaunt" to the United Arab Emirates probably sounds insane, but when it's wintertime in northern Europe, the Middle East is actually one of the most convenient destinations for a warm-weather getaway. I figured I was far more likely to make the five-hour trip to Dubai from Europe than I would be to travel there from Santa Fe, New Mexico. And it's such a strange and interesting place in the world right now.

Unless you can stay with a friend, like I did, or you've got paid accommodations through a work assignment, Dubai is prohibitively pricey to visit. The luxury beach hotels offer a world-class setting for relaxation, but many of them run $5,000 or so per night for an average room! Completely psycho. Rhonda and I decided to buy a day pass to one of the private beaches on Saturday, so we got a taste of the high-roller experience (thatched-roof beach cabanas and full food and beverage service) at a fraction of the price. That was an awesome day, and it turned out to be the highlight of my trip. The Gulf water is wave-free and perfectly clear, so you can see schools of little fish swarming around your feet all the way up to the edge of the sea. There are no breakers at all, and the water is so salty and still that you can just float on your back for ages.

Plus, the beach scene is extremely entertaining. You can't help but gawk at the lanky Russian supermodels and curvy Arabian princess-types hanging on the arms of paunchy, hairy oilmen twice their age. At night, the beaches become open-air nightclubs featuring live bands and drive-in-style movies, and a walk past the Burj Dubai (the famed sail-shaped building pictured above) ends at a marina where some of the most valuable yachts in the world languish until someone decides to take them for a spin.

All that was impressive, yes. And so were the fantastic dinners we had at two of the superpremium restaurants popping up across Dubai like mushrooms (We went to "The Address" and "Zuma," in case you're interested). But beyond the flash, there isn't a whole lot to Dubai.

Okay, that was a grossly oversimplified statement. There's SO MUCH going on in Dubai in terms of development, and the clashing cultures of new expats from a hundred different countries. Perhaps you're familiar with the oft-cited statistic that Dubai is home to 35 percent of the world's construction cranes. Seriously, my impression was that the city is comprised of a vast series of interlocking construction sites dotted with high-rise buildings, seven-star hotels (their claim, not mine), mansions, and malls. And in between the shiny glass and steel structures and intricate networks of highway, all you see is sand, for miles around.

I imagine that Dubai feels to its vast community of foreign workers a lot like California did during the gold rush of 1849. Except, at least according to one snarky Brit I met who works in business development, the Emirati fast money has pretty much dried up, and the prospecting days are over. In other words, if you're not already there, you're not getting there cheaply anymore. What keeps people pouring into Dubai is not the bootstrapping spirit of the Wild West, it's the generous tax breaks bestowed by the benevolent dictatorship of Sheikh Mohammed.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. The chaotic energy of a half-built city, the thrill of owning property in a place where home values can double quarterly... I totally get why people move there. Rhonda and her husband have a special affection for the Middle East (Rhonda is Egyptian and Kai went to college in Cairo), so they're drawn to the place for personal as well as financial reasons. But I personally don't think I could do it.

I have a couple of Swedish friends who asked me to report back about Dubai because they might consider moving there. And maybe I'd be like-minded if my long-term strategy involved choosing between Arabian sunshine and gray Scandinavia. But I already have a house in the New Mexico desert, and I like that desert a lot. I like living in a place with a couple hundred years of history, where the streets curve weirdly and change names randomly instead of following the strict lines of a brand-new grid. I like that Santa Fe's buildings bleed organically from a city center out into the mountains. And I know that it's crazy for me to be comparing the two places, but once you're in Dubai, it just feels like a very Westernized desert town. Most of the time I felt like I was in Las Vegas, Nevada, Scottsdale, Arizona or a drier Houston, Texas.

It's kind of alarming to me how Dubai's infrastructure is popping up haphazardly all at once in many different parts of town, without any real city planning. The place isn't walkable—it takes a twenty-minute drive to get anywhere, and you never really get the satisfaction of a true downtown, of being "where the action is." And it also alarms me that the vulgar money-slinging culture reminds me so much of my own country. Part of the reason Dubai didn't feel all that exotic to me is that I'm quite familiar with that culture of conspicuous consumption, gaz-guzzling luxury SUVs traveling 25 miles back and forth across town several times each day, and flashy Vegas-style megaresorts.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound ungrateful for my trip. I had a really great weekend hanging with my friends—lots of quality time, great conversation, some luxurious experiences and a gentle introduction to the craziness of the Middle East. And it will be fascinating to see what happens to Dubai in the next ten years. Can the city just keep on metastasizing at its current rate? Will the sheikh eventually start levying taxes? (There are no taxes at all right now: no property tax, no income tax and no sales tax.) Is it going to be sustainable for Dubai to run on desalinated sea water over the long term? (That's what the city runs on right now, but a liter of clean Dubai water is the most expensive to produce in world.) Will the population stabilize into a harmonious racial rainbow? Or disperse into clusters of monocultural "little Indias" and "Chinatowns"?

Once upon a time, America was considered the great melting pot—in hindsight, a strange concept for a country with a history steeped in racism. But I think the real smelting is going on right now in Dubai. Whether or not it's a place I'd like to live, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the city's development... and hopefully heading back again to hang with Rhonda, Kai and little Zuzu.

Here's an album from the adventure:

"Secretary" Bill Richardson?

Let's put Sweden on hold for a moment, and talk about American politics (again). Right now, the media is placing bets on Obama's cabinet choices. NYTimes.com even has a cool interactive tool that lets you compare your choices with those of other readers.

I'm excited about the prospect of Santa Fe hometown hero Bill Richardson being one of the top candidates for Secretary of State. But I also have reservations, because I realize that my excitement stems mostly from familiarity with the guy. (I even know his horse personally.) I've been living in New Mexico off and on for more than a decade, and I met Mr. Richardson on several occasions while I was writing for the Santa Fe Reporter. (I met his horse while working at the ranch where he's stabled.) Richardson is a damn nice guy. Bowl-you-over charming. But I also remember the debacle of the hard drives that went missing from Los Alamos, and how much flak Richardson took on Capitol Hill for his administration's slow and bungled reaction. (No one who lives in New Mexico was really surprised, by the way—it is the land of manana.)

And I didn't know, but just found out, that Richardson interviewed Monica Lewinsky for a U.N. post as the sex scandal was unfolding, possibly as a favor to his buddy Bill Clinton.

But putting these political stumbles aside, in my opinion, Richardson has been a pretty great governor, initiating projects like the New Mexico tax rebate for filmmakers, Spaceport America and the Railrunner train from Albuquerque to Santa Fe— all designed, and so far successfully implemented, in an effort to stimulate the state's formerly sagging economy.

But Richardson's diplomacy skills are the real reason he's in contention for the Secretary of State appointment. No one could argue against Richardson's remarkable negotiation skills. I was working at the Reporter in 2003 when the Bush administration had one of its first standoffs with North Korea. Bush's people didn't feel like talking to the Koreans, but Richardson did, so he personally invited them to come to Santa Fe and have a chat about their nuclear policy. And they did! Crisis averted, no red button pushed. Go Bill!

Slate described some of Richardson's other victories in this passage from a 2000 article:

Clinton passed over Richardson for the Cabinet in 1992, but the president and the congressman, each recognizing a kindred spirit, became fast friends. Soon Clinton deputized Richardson to act as an unofficial U.S. negotiator with thugs and monsters. In the mid-'90s, Richardson freed a U.S. helicopter pilot downed over North Korea, a pair of Americans who inadvertently crossed into Iraq, an American jailed in Bangladesh, and three aid workers held hostage in Sudan, among others. He was dispatched to butter up Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Haiti's military dictators, and Burma's tyrants.

Richardson courted the despots with the same rumpled, hail-fellow-well-met manner that won him friends at home. He played up his friendship with the president, flattered the hostage-holders, listened to them graciously, ate their food, told self-deprecating jokes, and cajoled them with promises of good press and American sympathy. He was magic. Sudanese rebel Kerubino Kwanyin Bol was intransigent till Richardson asked to visit Kerubino's child, who was dying of measles. That request melted the warlord, who dropped his ransom demand from $2.5 million to a few jeeps and some rice. Richardson's missions won him three Nobel Peace Prize nominations.

Did you catch that? Three Nobel Peace Prize nominations. Sheesh. So, I guess despite the couple of weird incidents cited above, my overall impression is that Richardson's diplomatic skills could be a great boon to the Obama administration (I get chills typing that phrase). Plus—a Hispanic guy and a black guy leading the nation! Um, you learned from the Lewinsky thing, right Mr. Richardson?

Where My Grrreens At?

Last night I was lamenting to my husband how hard it is to find leafy green vegetables in Stockholm. This seems odd to me, since Sweden has the perfect weather for growing kale, chard, mustard greens and collards practically all year round. So why can't I find them in my local grocery stores? All I find is the usual stuff: tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, lettuce... usually flown in from somewhere far away.

"Um, honey, you're in a different country," John reminded me. Riiiiight, that. The thing is it just seems so strange given how healthy the culture is here, but vegetables in general seem to be a bit of an afterthought (the main attractions are definitely meat, potatoes and bread), and I've never seen cooked greens on any menu, anywhere. I prefer to pile my plate with veggies and try to make the meat the side dish. And I love greens so much that I actually crave them. Back in my bachelorette days in New York, I would sometimes saute a big heap of kale with lemon, olive oil and parmesan and eat just that for dinner.

If I can't find greens in the supermarket, surely some farmer's market must have them. The hippies around here must eat greens, right? So far I haven't found such a market, but a little online research this evening revealed that there is in fact at least one—I just missed it in the busy season and it won't open up again until Christmastime. It's at the main plaza in Södermalm, called Medborgarplatsen. And another place to scout might be Asian groceries. I'll try to check out the shops in "Chinatown" tomorrow.

Stockholmers, help me out here. Any ideas where I might find some greens? See how delicious they look in the photo? I bet you're hungry for some, too. At this point I'll go anywhere in the city. But please don't say Hötorget. I'm not craving mushrooms and knockoff handbags.

What's New In Sweden

I've gotten a few phone calls and emails from friends lately who would like me to cut through the surface-level accounts of Swedish culture for a moment and say something personal on this blog. "Yes, yes, but how are you REALLY doing?" my concerned friends keep asking. I think they all think I must be going mad with the short days, the gray weather and the long distance to John.

Well, there are ups and downs, of course. There have been a few days that have been hard. I felt a bit adrift after returning to Sweden after my honeymoon, like "what the hell am I doing here?" But honestly, cross my heart, overall I'm doing quite well. I miss John a lot, but being apart seems to have strengthened our relationship. There's not the anxiety that usually accompanies long-distance relationships because, well, we're married. It's not like we can just up and decide not to be together. It sounds a little silly, but the fact that we're married makes us both feel secure, and the fact that we're apart makes us feel independent. We're glad it's not for any longer than what's already arranged, but we're dealing with it just fine.

And the weather in Stockholm is not such a big deal, either. It's sort of romantic, actually. It's misty and mysterious, and with the sun setting at around 3 pm, you have this strange sense that there's an extremely vibrant nightlife in the city, even though what's really happening is that people are going about their usual day life in the dark.

Plus, I've made some really nice friends here. I keep hearing about how hard it is to break through and really get to know Swedes, but maybe I lucked out because I had an "in" with friends of friends from the get-go. Or maybe Swedes just like to think of themselves as distant and reserved. I think that's definitely the feeling you get when you encounter strangers around town. But one-on-one, just about every single person I've met has been warm and hospitable.

I'm starting to search for the person who will fill my position here when I go back to the States, and I'm surprised to find that I'm already a little nostalgic! I feel like I'm leaving soon and I'm going to miss this place and these people. Stockholm moves a whole lot slower than New York. The pace is more like Santa Fe, with the same emphasis on quality of life, relaxing and spending time in the outdoors. For me, that's the most surreal thing. I'm in a city, but it's so... chill. Apart from the Swedish obsession with punctuality, that is. I guess it's chill if you just prepare to be at a place with the right amount of time to get there in a leisurely fashion. I haven't mastered that art yet, but I'm getting better.

I'm hoping we get some snow around here soon. It's been icy a few times, but the sea hasn't frozen over yet. I really want to try skating or cross-country skiing while I'm here. People go on long, er, hikes over the frozen waterways and it would be fun to check that out. Niklas says he doesn't do that because he's afraid he'll fall through thin ice and die. Which gives me pause. But Fresh and Sweaty has an outdoors program and I doubt they'd let the inevitable duckling queue of middle-aged skaters fall into the sub-zero water. So maybe I'll go with them.

But anyway, the point of all this is: I'm fine. Really. Better than fine! I'm going to enjoy my time in Sweden and then return to a politically changed country that feels entirely new, and that's pretty awesome.

Doing Good, Lazily

Fundraising for good causes is one of my not-so-secret passions—a "side job" I do because I think anyone who can help others should. Although I hate cold-calling people for business reasons, I am perfectly happy to heckle my friends, relatives and even perfect strangers into giving a few bucks to the Heifer Foundation, the Leukemia Society, The Hunger Site, UNICEF, Kiva.org, 826 Valencia, or whatever my preferred charity of the moment might be. The theme is almost always "children": poor children, children with cancer, children who need food, children who live in places ravaged by natural disaster, etc. Well, today I discovered a new worthy cause, and an interesting vehicle for giving.

(See my strategy? I rope you in making you think you're gonna read about Swedish hotties, and then I feed you do-gooder stuff.)

Today at work, I was interviewing a high-level executive in one of Bonnier's book divisions, and he told me about the imminent release of J.K. Rowling's new book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The interesting thing about this book (apart from the fact that it stems from a very meta book-within-book story in the seventh edition of Harry Potter), is that Rowling has pledged to give 100% of the royalties of this book to her charity for children in Eastern European orphanages. Beedle the Bard launches worldwide on December 4th, and you're likely to hear more about this charity in the media shitstorm that will inevitably follow, which is a good thing. But you can say you saw it here first.

Rowling's charity is called the Children's High Level Group (lousy name, I know), and the purpose is to improve living conditions for the thousands of children who are institutionalized in Eastern Europe because their parents are too poor to care for them, or they're orphaned, or disabled, or disowned because they're descendants of the wrong ethnic minority. The places where these kids live, often from infancy, are terribly understaffed and underfunded, and many of the children develop serious mental issues (often leading to drug dependency, victimization in the human trafficking industry and suicide) because they don't have regular exposure to human touch. And on top of all that, they're typically subject to bullying and violence from other children scrabbling for scarce resources.

J.K. Rowling cofounded the Children's High Level Group (that's her in the photo with the baby, above) with the goal of lobbying for EU regulations and funding for these institutions, as well as directly providing material resources, education programs and emotional support for the kids.

I did a little research about the charity as background for the story I'm writing, and I found that one of the ways you can support CHLG is through a cool click-donating search engine called Everyclick. I'm a big fan of the clicks-for-charity fundraising system. It's so smart, and everybody wins. Basically, the idea is that a site sells ads—usually the charity site itself, plus maybe your own blog, Facebook profile, etc—but instead of taking the advertising revenue as profit, the organization gives it to a good cause.

Depending upon the size of the site, this can amount to millions of dollars of charity money, paid for by advertisers who would have been shelling out anyway. As a Web user, all you have to do is click. Since advertising prices are dependent upon traffic (the pay-per-click model), you are effectively the link that brings the money from the advertiser and puts it in the charity's pocket.

So, Everyclick took the concept a bit further by creating a whole search engine with targeted ads for funding charities. To use it, you sign up and replace your normal search engine with the Everyclick engine (I'm using Firefox as my browser, so I just switched the search toolbar to run on Everyclick—and I can easily toggle back to Google any time). Every time you use the search engine, your clicks generate a few pennies for the charity of your choice. Great idea, huh!

There are just two tiny incoveniences involved: 1) All the charities are UK-based, because Everyclick is a UK site, and the currency appears in pounds. No biggie, though. 2) I started using it today and I feel nice and helpful, but the user interface isn't as slick as I'm used to. It seems to be finding what I need, but for hardcore research I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep relying on our friends in Mountain View. Anyway, if you feel like doing something good today, with very little effort, check out Everyclick.

Candy, I Can't Let You Go

This evening's edition of Artificial Swedener will be part blog post, part confessional. You see, I've been following a diet lately—the idea is to eat like a hunter-gatherer—but tonight I discovered Swedish candy and fell off the wagon, hard.

We'll get back to the candy in a moment, but first, a little biological anthropology (my major in college, don'tcha know). It sounds counterintuitive, but hunter-gatherer peoples typically have a much better nutritional profile than those of us who eat a post-agricultural diet. The diseases of Western civilization (heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, namely) are completely absent in communities that don't have regular access to cereal grains, dairy products, alcohol, and processed foods. But then again, ice cream, Twinkies and beer goggles are also absent. Lame!

So anyway, the diet plan (the "Paleo Diet for Athletes") says to avoid all grains, sweeteners, alcohol, dairy and fermented foods. I actually like eating the Paleo way... except when I don't. You're really only supposed to eat vegetables, meat and fruit—plus occasional exceptions after heavy sports-training, and one meal each week where you can eat whatever you want. (A pound of candy, perhaps?)

Since moving to Sweden in August, I've been walking past sweets shops probably nine or 10 times each day—they are on practically every street corner. And the bins of multicolored confections never really appealed before. But tonight the scales fell off my eyes and I suddenly realized that I have my own money, no grown-ups to tell me "no," and I'm living in a Willy Wonka wonderland of sugary delights! Woohoo! So I went to one of these candy convenience stores and put one of nearly every little doodad in a bag. There are bunches of different kinds of licorice in cute shapes, but much like the earwax and vomit candies in Harry Potter, you have to be careful or you might end up with a disgusting salty one that tastes like a practical joke.

There are also gazillions of different kinds of gummies, and these fluffy, marshmallowish candies unfortunately called "scum goodies" (skumgodis). There's chocolate ones with crispies on them or nougat inside, sour ones in bright pastel colors, hard ones shaped like fried eggs, butterscotch foamy ones, white ones with caramel and on and on and on. You don't often see candies like this in the U.S., although I bet these are what my grandmother means when she talks about "penny candy." Nowadays, your sugary sweets are all branded up and sold individually in familiar little packages—there's no mystery left in the candy-selection process. Unless you count the Forrest Gump-style revelation of boxed chocolates.

Well, anyway, I can't remember the last time I ate like 20 candies in a single sitting. I think I was about eight. Eating a pile of candy is pretty much the diametric opposite of the Paleo Diet, but it feels good to be a kid once in a while. And there's always tomorrow to try and be virtuous again.

Yes, We Did!

I'm coming down off a sleep-deprivation high after staying up all night on November 4th, watching the U.S. election results roll in, and then hosting a breakfast yesterday morning as Obama was named president-elect. First, I went to the very fun and huge Democrats Abroad party at a downtown hotel (that's my friend Tanja and me, having a pariotic moment at the party). Then, at 6 am Stockholm time, nine of my Swedish friends were munching pancakes at my apartment, huddled around the little TV set as our hero gave his historic speech.

Truly amazing, that's all I can say. (Well, I could say a lot more, but there's plenty of Obama coverage on every newspaper and TV station around the world, so I'll refrain.) But, wow, going to work was hard for me yesterday. I powered through, fueled by sugar-free Red Bulls and a renewed hope in the future of democracy. And then I went to a work dinner at a surreally sceney Stockholm media hotspot, after which I awoke in the middle of the night in a panic because I dreamt that "something bad" had happened to Obama.

So today I have a spooky pair of hollows under my eyes, and wow, it was hard going to work. But I powered through, fueled by sugar-free Red Bulls and a renewed hope in the future of democracy. Sheesh. Here's hoping election day doesn't turn into Groundhog Day.

The World Votes

As I mentioned in my last election-related post, I've been paying close attention to the international coverage of the election, and the global community's opinions of the candidates. Well, yesterday a pretty great piece came out in Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's most prestigious daily newspaper, showing how McCain and Obama performed in opinion polls taken in countries around the world. As my mom pointed out in a telephone conversation last night, at the end of the day these polls don't make a damn bit of difference, because the international community isn't voting, but still. It's interesting stuff. The results I'm about to cite were compiled from research done on November 1 by the BBC, the Economist, Gallup, Reader's Digest and Synovate Global Opinion Panels.

Polling was done in: the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, France, Germany, England, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, the Philippines, Loas, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Palestine, Singapore, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and Australia.That's a pretty comprehensive view of the world.

So, without further ado, drumroll, please.... The compiled results from all the countries listed above:

49% for Obama, 12% for McCain, and 39% undecided.

Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa showed overwhelming support for Obama, with country-by-country results in the 70% range. Interestingly, the countries where McCain garnered the most support were Georgia, the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia. I think the Georgians support him because of that anti-Russia comment he made during the second debates: "When I hear the name Putin, three letters come to mind: K. G. B!"

Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to this nifty polling site I just found, iftheworldcouldvote.com. It was started by two guys in Iceland, and at the time I wrote this, they had collected nearly 763,000 votes from 212 countries. Click on the link above to see the results for yourself.

Baby Name Conundrum

I just heard a really strange story that must say something—although I'm not sure what, exactly—about both "Swedishness" and what it's like to live in a social democracy.

Apparently, in Sweden, you're given 3 months to decide your baby's name and formally submit the name to the Swedish government so the child can be issued an ID number. And, apparently, it's quite common for people not to be able to decide what that name should be until the last minute.

Now, to me, this is really crazy. Besides knowing the sex in advance, my American friends with kids have often paid for the latest 3-D scans so they can see exactly what the face looks like and they feel like they really "know" the baby before it's even born. They typically start calling the kid by its chosen name during the 6th or 7th month of pregnancy, and they certainly write something on the birth certificate on the day the baby is born.

Niklas told me he and his wife took several months to decide their little boy's name: Elton. Until the decision was made, they referred to him as "little brother." And my colleague Maria changed her baby's name several times before finally settling on the name that slid under the three-month deadline. But what happens if you haven't decided a name when the buzzer goes off?

Well, the Swedish government chooses for you. And you're not allowed to officially change your name in Sweden, so that's the name the kid will have on his papers forever.

We found this out firsthand when a colleague (who in this case shall remain nameless) let the three-month deadline slide by without choosing a name, and received an official letter informing her that the child's first name would be her maiden name. So, if I were that baby, for instance, my name would have been McCleary Miller instead of Megan Miller. Well, before the mother got a chance to do anything about it, her father—the kid's grandfather—who, by the way wasn't asked for any proof of identity, so he could have been anyone, called up the government office and said, "For 5 generations, the first-born males in my family have always been called Georg, so this baby's name must be changed to Georg."

I guess the grandfather kicked up such a fuss that they decided to humor him and changed the name! So that is the name now set in stone, and the mother lost her opportunity to have any input into the decision. Wacky, right?

International Election Mania

I really, really wish I could be in the U.S. this coming Tuesday for election night—obviously it's going to be a historic evening, as we can see from the record numbers of Americans already heading to the polls for the early voting available in 40 states. But since I'm going to be here in Stockhom, I've decided to throw an "election breakfast" for my Swedish friends so we can watch the tail end of the news coverage and toast (or console each other) with mimosas when we find out who wins.

Some of my friends in the U.S. have been surprised when I've told them how very interested Europeans are in our election. Many Swedes are following it as closely as Americans: it's all over the TV and newspapers and passionate followers in my circle of contacts include Jonas Bonnier's 16-year-old son, who pulled all-nighters watching each of the debates (they aired here at 3 am), and several of my coworkers who are morbidly fascinated by Sarah Palin.

What was really amazing, however, was experiencing first-hand how passionate people are about this election in Asia. While in Bali, we saw TV election coverage from the BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera, and the networks in Indonesia and Hong Kong. Just walking down the beach in little fishing villages or talking to taxi drivers, Balinese people would ask where we're from, and when we told them we're American, they'd say "Obama!"

Since moving to Sweden I've gotten a deep sense of exactly how important the U.S. is to the rest of the world. Our country really does lead in economics, foreign policy (gulp—sorry, world), and pop culture. And the rest of the people around the globe don't have the opportunity to vote for our president—they just get stuck with whomever we choose. The whole world used to love America, but over the past eight years, they've begun to see us as a bully and a rogue element. We haven't been making decisions that benefit the global community, which means we've been abusing our position and power, and consequently losing them—not to mention the goodwill and respect that are always crucial to leadership. But now that everyone has seen how a U.S. market slide can cause all the other global markets to fall like dominoes, the international community desperately wants us to pull it together and get back on top again.

If Obama wins this election, the U.S. will be making a historic shift from a right-leaning government to a left-leaning one, which reminds me of the drawings of a giant pendulum that Mr. Fleming, my 10th-grade history teacher, used to make on his blackboard. Whether we were talking about the Whigs versus the Tories in the English Parliament or the Jacobins being ousted by the people's party during the French Revolution, he always wanted us to keep the larger historical context in mind: when any government swings too far to the right or left, political and economic forces always move it back in the opposite direction.

I was born during the Carter administration, so I've seen two Democratic presidents and two Republicans so far (both from the same family, which is really weird). For most of my life, the parties have cleaved to a pretty moderate path. But now that the disastrous results of the Bush administration's ultra-hawkish foreign policy and severely deregulated economic policy are fully being felt by the people, the historical pendulum just might be positioned for a swing.

Whatever happens on November 4th, I'll be in my tiny apartment filled with pancake-munching Swedes, anxiously watching as the last results roll in.