+ This morning I spent two and a half hours at this hair salon called Deevi in Södermalm. Kristin, a friend of Fred's from when Saturday Looks Good To Me was on tour in Sweden one time, recommended it and it turned out to be fabulous. Despite a lovely summer in the California sun (or, rather, in biochemistry lecture) my natural hair color seemed to be getting progressively darker but now, after Helene's very thorough job, I am very, very blonde again! Also my hair had been growing like a weed and I was too lazy to get it cut but now it is much better. Usually when hair stylists, even my beloved Yuki, use any sort of product in my hair whatsoever at the end of a haircut I end up looking insane because my hair is so fine and just doesn't take well to having stuff in it. But Helene was awesome and used a straightening iron after she blow-dryed it to flip the ends up a little bit and it was like Farrah Fawcett but totally awesome. After three hours it's now pretty much poker-straight again, but it was fun while it lasted. The term "poker-straight" comes from a metal poker used for the fireplace, not cards, right? This story doesn't have much to do with cultural excursions in Sweden or health equity studies or anything, except now I look super Swedish, not just Swedish. Someone stopped and asked me for directions as I was walking back to the T-bana after leaving Deevi, but I was totally useless.
+ There are a lot of cute dogs in Stockholm, including lots of sweet pit bulls, which makes me happy to see. I don't remember if I already wrote about this here but you can take dogs on the subways and buses here (mostly, although there are some restrictions about which cars they can be in and at what times), and a few weeks ago I saw a big smiling bearded collie on the T-bana and it made me so happy. I've also seen this crazy obese bulldog being walked in the neighborhood around CHESS twice now, and it's so fat I know it's unhealthy but it's pretty funny.
+ They do everything by bloody bank transfers here. That's probably mostly false, but there are so many invoices and bills that get mailed to you and it's incredibly annoying and time-consuming. I am still waiting for the mailing from Trygghansa, the insurance company, for my renter's insurance, after calling twice and discovering the second time that they had the wrong address, and since the letter still hasn't come I bet he got it wrong the second time too. And this afternoon I went to a Handelsbanken branch to do the bank transfer for the EUPHA conference I'm going to in Helsinki on Wednesday, and it took forever and it's going to arrive late and now I have to email the people in Helsinki and the whole thing was just awful. I know bank transfers are generally fairly simple but all of my stuff seems to end up being incredibly complicated. The guy who helped me was very sweet, though, and asked for my phone number at the end "just in case" even though I already got confirmation for the transfer. I thought that was pretty funny. Anyway, Jake will be here next week to beat him up. I'm sure it was my Farrah Fawcett waves and complete bewilderment at nearly every detail relating to my Handelsbanken account & the transfer that made me seem so charming....
+ I feel like a total Fulbright fraud because I've barely been doing any work at CHESS. Just writing about it makes me feel bad. I have some excuses - writing literally tens of essays for my med school secondaries, moving to my new apartment, trying to do fun things in Stockholm so that I don't feel totally lonely and disconnected - but I feel lazy and awful and it's really hard because I have to take the initiative completely if I'm going to have actual roles in projects. Basically I have to sit down and write some emails and figure some stuff out and I don't think it will be that hard once I make the effort, but I just feel terribly lazy and useless right now.
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