It’s been a fun weekend and for the first time in weeks the weather’s been sunny. Much of Sweden has gone directly from meteorological autumn to meteorological spring without any intervening winter, and the country’s highest January temperature ever was measured: 12.5 C. Scary. But it’s been overcast. This was more fun.
- Went to Linda Qviström’s thesis presentation (Medieval windows and indoor lighting, super solid work), chatted with colleagues.
- Played boardgames: No thanks (short) and Shogun (long).
- Went hiking with friends and their kids in the woods south of the mill ruins at Tyresö Nyfors.
- Took a long hike or walk in the woods and fine housing area between our place and Solsidan commuter train station.
- Had a piece of decadent chocolate-peanut cheesecake at the Kladdkakan Café in the Old Town.
- Checked out the Jewish Museum, whose exhibition about Jewish history in Sweden firmly places its subject matter in relation to current immigration debate. I found the collection of branded wooden coat hangers from little post-war Jewish tailor businesses around Sweden quite striking.
Dear Reader, what did you do for fun this weekend?
Aardvarchaeology - by Dr. Martin Rundkvist 
The most fun is, as the clouds finally had some gaps I got to see a very bright Venus in the afternoon sky. Also, as the snowfall stopped, the birdfood I scatter on the ground is not hidden by snow. A pretty important thing if you are a bird during winter.
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Took my ebike from Naha to Yonabaru, a breezy 12km ride. Had lunch at a local Taiwanese restaurant, then ice cream by the sea (winters here are 17-20 degrees). Rode back by way of Shuri, with some nice views and a deep gratitude for the electric motor helping me up the steep hills.
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Jan, out of interest, do you see much visible residual evidence of the Battle of Okinawa?
Jealous of your ebike. Stupidly, they are illegal in very steeply hilly Hong Kong.
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Not really. The island was almost completely destroyed so there’s no ruins or anything like that standing from that time that I know of. There’s a couple of underground bunkers (open to tourists I think) and a few of the historical ruins still have marks from gunfire. But overall all the damage has been removed by now. There’s plenty of _invisible_ evidence left though; it can be problematic to build structures on parts of the island as you tend to encounter human remains or unexploded ordinance when you dig into the ground.
With that said, I live here so I’m not that attuned to landmarks or other things that visitors would know about. There may be plenty of visible remains around that I’ve just never stumbled onto.
Oh, and the ebike ( a pedelec – I still have to work myself) is absolutely perfect on a mountainous island like this.
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Why the ebike ban?
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I just learned that Okinawa has 1.5 million inhabitants!
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The official reason for the ebike ban is that there is no clear dividing line between bicycles that just have a small ‘helper’ electric motor like Jan’s ebike and what are in effect very light motorcycles (which unlicensed people ride on the roads in the Mainland, killing themselves with monotonous regularity), and a continuum of everything in between, Mainland Chinese designers being the creative people that they are, so there would be a big regulation problem. (In reality, what this means is that they would have to draw up some sensible rules about what is acceptable and what is not, which would undoubtedly plunge them into endless arguments with suppliers and would-be owners, and they would have to put a lot of manpower into policing the rules – it is just easier for them to ban everything).
Obviously they don’t want the more high powered versions on the cycleways, where they would be a hazard to cyclists, and equally they don’t want them on the roads.
The little e-scooters are also banned, but they are much smaller and easier to smuggle into HK, you can fold one up and put it in your luggage, and I see people riding those on the cycleways now and again. They go pretty fast, but they are no real hazard to cyclists because of the much lower mass and hence momentum – the scooter riders would probably come off worse than the cyclists in collisions. And they are easily controllable and can stop quickly, so there has been no ‘crackdown’ on them, even though the authorities must know that people are using them.
I did think about getting myself an e-scooter, but: 1) Mrs Massey said “No you’re not!” 2) They are fully self-propelled, with no pedaling or pushing on the ground with one foot required, so there is no element of exercise involved, which kind of defeats the purpose. 3) Some of them have caught fire while being charged, essentially having been made in backyard factories in the Mainland, and as they are totally unregulated, there is no way to tell which ones are safe and which aren’t.
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Martin, I suggest reading up on the Battle of Okinawa some time, if you haven’t done already. It was truly appalling, and no doubt figured strongly in the decision by the USA to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than attempting an invasion of the Japanese home islands, which would have been equally appalling but on a very much larger scale.
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Under instruction from Our Glorious Leader, I spent the weekend besieged in our flat, mopping the floor multiple times with bleach and cringing curled into a foetal position in the corner furthest from the front door, wearing a surgical mask.
No I didn’t.
Daughter has been making use of her unexpected prolonged period at home to *finally* sort through a lot of her childhood stuff and unearthing a lot of poetry and other writing she did as a kid. (And carefully filing it all! Not throwing that stuff away!). I spent a lot of time reading some of it, reliving her childhood and the endless amusement I got from her, convulsed with laughter. She was a very funny little girl.
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