Valborg: An event with a class of its own!

Even though the world has shrunk owing to all the technologies surrounding us and people are more aware of the different cultures around but still there are certain events that have not reached the fame they should have. “Valborg” a Swedish event to celebrate the arrival of spring is one such wonderful event. I was honored to be at Valborg very recently and would love to share my experience during a short but a wonderful stay during this event in Upsalla, Sweden.

It all started with a plan of university friends to have a grand reunion in Sweden. A long weekend was coming due to the holiday on the 1^st of May so the time seemed perfect for a short trip. Our Swedish friends told us that it was a good time to visit as this is the time to visit Valborg. It was the first time I ever heard of this event and so looked it up on internet. What I basically found out was that it’s an event where everybody gets drunk and wasted. The idea of thousands of drunk people walking the streets didn’t strike me much as an attraction but the friends persisted that it is an event worth seeing.

This event is mostly associated to the students and is celebrated in cities like Stockholm, Lund, Linkoping and Upsalla. Upsalla has a very big and renowned university and the city is crowded with students everywhere. The central and the most expensive part of the city is owned by student factions called “Nations”. The student nations represent the students from different parts of Sweden. Each nation has its own student housing, clubs, bars , libraries, sports teams etc. Only students have access to the nations so this is the part where u will find the most educated lot.

Norrlandsnation

During Valborg a rafting competition takes place. These rafts are hand made by students and they spend several weeks preparing them. Just outside the Angstrom Labs they prepare a special perimeter dedicated to the constructors of the rafts. This itself becomes a festival as students move into tents and construct some bars and play grounds around their work area. Each boat is big enough to carry 4 to 6 people and is based on a theme. I saw some ninja turtle rafts, some Russian rafts, a tea cup , a dragon , a rage comic boat and dozens of others under construction.

The day of the valborg starts with a very special breakfast, called the champagne breakfast that starts early morning near a lake that flows through the heart of the city. All citizens of Upsalla crowd the streets this morning with their picnic baskets ready for a morning breakfast near the lake. The purpose is to see the boat competition where the students bring in their creations. The rafts passing through the lake is a wonderful sight. All these wonderful colors spread in the water and the  rafts having small skirmishes with special weapons like oranges and eggs make it a wonderful sight. The lake has two big waterfall type deep slopes and the  rafts have to survive that and generally most of them are too fragile to pass through this area. Its really fun to see the  rafts going through these challenges.

After the raft competition finishes people spread around the city and occupy virtually every green patch around to party in the open. Loud music, themed clothes and blue caps is something that is visible all around. At 3 pm The university chancellor gives a speech at the university library for a couple of minutes and wishes everyone happy spring and this is where they change hats from blue to white that marks the beginning of spring and they all run towards their respective nations. A huge waiting line forms in front of the nations where the students wait to party hard until it gets dark.

Uppsala has a beautiful castle built on a  35-metre high hill to the southwest of the University Library. The valborg festivity reaches its peak with a royal dinner in the castle followed by a ball dance that is more or less like a prom. The best part is the special dress for the occasion. The men have special Tuxedos that have tails and are named as tailed suits and really look quite brilliant. The women dress up with long dresses that look magnificent and give an aura of a real royal gathering.

The dinner finishes around 9 followed by an orchestra and ball dances. Out of all the dances the stand out version is the typical Swedish dance where the couples spin together with their suits opening up as flower petals. As the clock ticks to midnight all the lights go out. Candles are brought to the middle of the hall and all women sit around them. The men stand up facing the women and then start singing some cultural songs. I was marveled by how perfect their singing was, like they have practiced it for years and years. The singing continues for twenty minutes or so and then the dancing resumes.

Sadly I left at 00:30am to catch my flight but I have been told that the evening continues till 2 am. It is true that by the end of the day you have thousands of drunk people walking amongst the streets but the fact that there is no event of violence or rape suggests how well behaved and controlled Swedish people are.

The beauty of this event cannot be described in words or presented with photographs. You have to live through this event to capture the vibes and all those glorious moments that inspire you throughout the day.

If you ever plan to visit Swden, do put Uppsala in your list and remember the all important 30^th of April, the Valborg day.

Even though you might not get a chance to see the nations from the inside but you can go to the castle for the ball. And if you have the tailed suits then you can join in for the dinner too.

For the next Valborg we plan to make our own boat, maybe the “Forever alone” boat from rage comics. Let’s see if this idea comes to fruition.

In the end I can say that this was the biggest and the best of the cultural and student events I have ever seen in my life. I feel lucky to have been there and I would love to present my gratitude towards our great Swedish hosts, Rebecka and Andreas that made it possible to live through these wonderful moments. Maybe one day I will invite them to see some festivities in Pakistan too J.

* I will update the pictures as soon as i gather them from all the friends. the pictures above have been used just to give an idea about the event !

Human Brain storage manipulation and a freaky future !

One major research interest is to fully understand the functioning of human brain. There is a whole new world there to be explored that can practically change the whole way of how we live in the world of today.

One question is how the human brain stores information and which parts of brain are used for information storage. Normally an intricate maze of neurons is involved in the storage of memory but this concept in itself is too complex and is still a theory

Another theory is to consider that human brain stores data like a hard disk does, that is storing the information in a magnetized form. Let's say that the spin up and spin down are attributed as 0 and 1. Now the information is stored in certain cells and because of the data written in these parts they acquire a certain magnetic field. This field is so weak that we are unable to feel it outside the brain and hence the information stays within a certain boundary around the brain.

Anyhow, scientists have shown that they are now able to manipulate biological molecules at a nano scale and they can also control their movement in the human body by using magnetic means. These molecules also use the blood flow to reach certain parts of the body.

Now if we take a molecule with a very weak magnetic pattern which is susceptible to change as soon as it enters another magnetic field and send it through our blood network to the part of the brain where memories are stored. As the molecule reaches that part of the brain, through some magnetic control we can break the shell around it (shell corresponds to the transporter molecule that breaks as soon as certain field is applied and then the molecule inside can be collected back through several means) and as soon as the shell is broken our bio molecule will be under the effect of the field of the memory cell which is close to and will copy that very magnetic pattern. This molecule will then travel back and can be collected back. This molecule essentially will have all the information stored in the part of the brain it went close to.


Well stopping the geeky thoughts here and coming to the point ! if we can copy human knowledge this way then we can copy them back to some one else as well. In short we can share knowledge just by a simple injection.

What does it mean? What can it change ? Well imagine your son going to the school at the age of 5 and coming back home with all the knowledge of quantum mechanics and high bio tech molecular manipulation etc. It means the next generation doesn't have to spend decades to understand the same knowledge we have, instead they will absorb what we learned and carry on ahead with decades of time more than what we have now to spend on fundamental and advanced research.

I wish to see that time where we can fully understand, explore and control the biggest mysteries of nature, the human mind !

Anxi



"Always remember that your present was the future of someone and the future of yours will be the present of someone"

Dream of today is the future of tomorrow !

I personally believe that we all scientists need inspirations to grow ideas and then follow them. These inspirations come from dreams stemming from many visionaries and at time by just some random people.

A very good example is the French author Jules Verne (1828-1905). The man who gave so many ideas in the 19th century where they all looked like a fools dream. 8 of his dreams actually came true including Submarines, News casts, Solar Sails, Lunar Modules (rockets), sky writing, video conferencing etc.

One other good example is the sci fi world from Star Trek where touch screens and video talks felt like a dream world, and technology associated to alien species only. Now every household has these things which are pretty much basic for all of us.

What i want to point out here is that there are dreamers and visionaries in this time as well. We call them ridiculous and stupid and non practical just like our ancestors were doing with the visionaries of their time. But like always a time will come where these dreams will come true. The foundations of such dreams has already been laid. How? that's a but tricky to be understood by a common man.

The basic explanation of paranormal phenomena stems from the concept of quantum physics where the laws of physics as we knew them for macro scale change a hell lot.

The application of these idea has already led to the basic of some very amazing things. Wanna know which ones ??

Well without going into the details let's say teleportation has been achieved already and invisible clothes has been made as well that will render u invisible in the middle of thousands of people. Prosthetic Limbs are becoming a great replacement for natural limbs and function the same or at times better.

So the very concept of dreaming is actually at times the basis for the creation of the un imagined.That is why i encourage you to dream, and encourage you to imagine of how the future can be or how u want it to be rather than waiting to see what future shapes up as without contributing anything to it.

I will write a bit more about Deja Vu and Reality of Dreams in another blog as soon as i get the time. Don't hesitate to post any ideas that you have.

Anzar

Are we walking amongst the people of this era for real ?

Just a few decades back, the very concept of having a touch screen phone in your hand was more a fantasy than anything else. There was no theoretical explanation to such phenomena and hence the practical implementation was a far cry. And here we are today with every second person having a tactile device and it feels pretty normal to have it.

Certain things, though theoretically explained have still not been achieved like time travel and teleportation. There are some scientific issues to be resolved before having any practical implementation. Considering that scientific growth will enable us one day to achieve what we believe is not possible for the moment, there are certain fears that should grow in a thinking mind.

Imagine a time in the future where time travel is possible and is as common or easy as the use of tactile devices then what makes us so sure that many of the people amongst us are not time travelers. The ordinary people you see around you, maybe some of them are mere travelers, maybe a part of an experiment or maybe for a certain purpose they are moving about in time. The point is that if time travel is possible then what will prevent those people from travelling back in time to us and if it’s really possible then what’s the proof that everybody around us is really from this same period of time.

We have always been overwhelmed by the concept that there exists a parallel universe where aliens exist and they are scientifically far more advanced than us, a concept that I disagree with. If you google for words like aliens and unidentified air crafts you will stumble upon many leaked news where machines unknown to the present science were discovered. What if these are not from any extra-terrestrial but are actually our own future generations creating or experimenting things like time travel and what you see are mere glimpses of their work.

There are questions and many of them that make me question my own sanity. These questions create fear and the fear is from science itself. Since a long time mankind has been shaping science but the future will see science shaping mankind. We already see glimpses of it in our everyday life.

My question for you, if time travel is possible for you today, do you want to make a trip to your past just to see some dear ones or to change somethings. If yes, then why do you believe that the people in future having devices like these will not return in time just like you want to. And then what makes you so sure again that the people amongst you are really from the same era?