Down in the south (relatively speaking)

[luzula]

I've just been at a math conference down in the southwest of Sweden, and I'm now hanging out with my parents, which is FTW. It's also great to be where it's spring--we still have some snow left up in the north.

The conference dinner was in honor of B, my academic grandfather (that is, the man who was the thesis advisor to my thesis advisor, M), for his sixtieth birthday. M and B are so adorably slashy. M had re-written the lyrics to a song for the occasion, and performed it with his band. In the song, he said that B was the most important man in his life. Also, for M's fiftieth birthday a couple of years ago, B held a speech where he compared their relationship to a marriage. Awww.

Other stuff that's going on:

1) I have to do some rewriting on my Big Bang story. Please poke me occasionally and tell me sternly to keep writing, okay?

2) I'm currently in second place in amplificathon, and I'm having fun with that. Taking singing lessons has really had positive side effects for my podficcing, and it's a lot of fun to record in different kinds of fandoms. To save energy, I'm only posting the podfics to the comm, but I'll post a list here after the challenge.

3) I managed to get time off from my post-doc to work in the mountains again this year! \o/ The great thing about it is that they will also prolong my contract so that I don't lose any post-doc time. I was pretty sneaky about this: I asked them if they'd let me have time off to be employed on another research project. I'm pretty sure they thought that it was another mathematical research project, but I never said so (in fact, I'll be doing fieldwork in biology).

4) I think I have discovered a fandom wherein I can listen to long podfics without needing canon knowledge and without getting sucked into the fandom: Supernatural RPS. I love listening to podfic, and I've run out of podfic in fandoms I know. Sure, I listen to other audiobooks too, but sometimes I just want a story with that fanfic flavor, and Supernatural RPS AU:s are great for this. I feel a little bit weird about it, because with most fanfic I read, it's about having a prior love for the characters, and here it isn't (which is why I'm not getting sucked into the fandom). I mean, I don't actually care about Jared and Jensen--for me, they could as just well be new original characters for every new podfic I listen to.

Comments

[luzula]

What's your experience?

Well, I've had problems with my voice over a couple of years. It's something called phonasthenia, where there's nothing physically wrong, but the problem is that you're using a faulty technique, and when you use your voice a lot, that leads to a lot of strain (and possibly worse things down the line). So I went to a speech therapist and got help. She taught me to relax in my throat, which partly solved the problem, but I never felt that I got enough "oomph" in my voice, and couldn't get the nuances that I wanted. And now that I'm taking singing lessons, I'm learning to use the support muscles in my stomach much better. I'd totally neglected the ones at my sides and in my back, because the speech therapist mostly focused on the front of my belly and how it should go in when I empty out the air. Anyway, this is helping me a lot in podficcing, too. But if you don't have problems, then you might be doing this right already.

My only experience with Swedish academics was when I once went to Stockholm to serve as the Interrogator or Inquistor (?) on some poor student's thesis defense. It was very medieval.

Well, it is called a defense, after all. : ) We do have this system in math, as well, but I don't think there's the same amount of controversy as in the social sciences and humanities. I mean, if you've proved a theorem, you've proved it, and it's hard to object to anything. In your subject, I bet there can be a lot more differing opinions.

Be sure to tell me if you come to Sweden again! And if you're curious about what I do in the mountains, here are my previous reports.