Sitting on the suitcase might just work...

What does one bring with one to Norway?

I've lugged my impressive purple suitcase out from the top shelf in the hall and started throwing things at it. Packing has never been my strong suit. I hate to fit myself into the stereotype of 'haha... man + organisation' that is too often conveyed, but stereotypes sometimes have a good reason for existing. I refuse to fold clothes neatly, then get stumped why they don't ****ing fit. Why does folding them take up less room then tightly shoving them in?! Stupid compression, it always reminds me of the difference between saving pictures as .JPG or .PNG. Roughly the same effect, but .PNG files are bigger than you.

There's always the nifty modern approach of using vacuum packing. You stick all your stuff in a plastic bag then hoover out all the air. It has the added benefit of it being ridiculously fun to see what things look like in a 'vacuum'.

Regardless of how much effort I put in tonight, I'll forget something I'll regret. If you don't see another few blog posts in the coming week you can bet I forgot my laptop charger. You've really got to watch out for accidentally leaving suspicious items in your handluggage. A razor, a large bottle of shampoo, or in Norway's case: a potato. Bizarre importing rules specify that Norway wont allow any potatoes to be brought into the country via the medium of folk's luggage. My Norwegian hostess Mia came to the conclusion that their government is worried our potatoes might be better than theirs (presumably resulting in widespread public revolt?) or that ours might make theirs sick (widespread revolting. No? Oh fine, I'll leave the puns alone).

This guy will mess you up if he finds a single spud in your luggage.

Gifts for my hosts are always a first priority, so they go in first. One of the best parts of any country is the spectacular differences between its food and that of other places. Mia loved sausage rolls of all things... I can't help but feel our cultural preferences let her down with that one. "Haggis, Mia?" "Aaaaaaagh neeeii! Takk....men nei..." Norway is famous for bankrupting its citizens with the price of alcohol, so another good gift would be beer. Lots of beer. Hopefully Jørgen will be pleased.

Clothes, warm clothes, more warm clothes (can I pack fire?). Laptop and laptop accessories (make laptopless people jealous at airports). Norwegian Krone (I'm particularly fond of the femti Kroner note. It's green with lillypads on the back; I don't even think we get lillypads in Scotland). Ach, the list goes on. I'm incredibly excited to get on the plane and explore Trondheim, even if I have to do it naked and without internet.

Huzzah.

2011, time for an update.

Given the extreme workload towards the end of last semester, finding free hours to type up an article or two became impossible. The exams are over now, for the time being, and I think I did alright. Painful though it was, the study process was quite cozy. Blisteringly cold weather sent the temperature in my unheated flat tumbling, so I joined some friends in the Games Labs where we proceeded to power-level psychology and computing, respectively.

For clinical psychology I studied the pros and cons of Cognitive Therapy (apparantly pretty great for most things) in comparison to Rational-Emotive Behaviour Therapy (apparantly literally made of bias and lies). I examined the main diagnostic tool for American Psychiatrists; the DSM-IV-TR. For no reason, because the exam question was ridiculous! "The DSM looks at hundreds of conditions. What does it not look at?" Are you kidding?! To correctly answer that question -in an hour- we would have to know all of the areas it does look at, then try to fathom what exactly the examiners were wanting to hear from us. The incredible art of bullshitting answers lead me to suggest that the DSM does not examine sub-syndromal levels of the conditions (but it sort of does) and fails to take into account cultural differences (which it also, sort of does).

For communication and consciousness I had a lot of fun flicking my way through engaging articles about (a) examples of language affecting the way individuals thought; and (b) which explained the neurology behind our idea of consciousness. These both warrant bigger blog articles about them, but suffice to say that speakers of languages that exclusively use compass directions, develop a super-human sense of orientation. Hauntingly, it appears that our consciousness may just be a monitor for our brains, who make all the decisons first, and inform our minds second... Still hard to wrap my head around.

Most importantly, for evolutionary psychology I studied cultural transmission, religion, art, altruism, mate choice, jealousy... I went into so much depth on so many things, most of which linked seamlessly with my main interest; sexual selection. Over the course of the year I've decided that this is what I want to take with me into later life. It doesn't hurt that both my project tutor and the evolution tutor are incredible lecturers and motivators.The sun has risen over my last semester at Abertay Uni, and before I follow it past the horizon I have a lot of work to do; but at least I know what I'm aiming for.

In a couple of weeks, I head to Norway to stay with my Friend Mia and her patner Jorgen (with one of those mad Norwegian Os that I forget how to type on an English keyboard... I'll get there). I can't wait to see a country I've never been to before, and be guided by a great friend. I'll document my travels in a special diary-style blog post, so stick around for more regular updates again. I'm heading to a meeting to improve my academic CV right now, and I'll keep you posted about how this whole search for research positions goes.

'Dr Munro...'

I'm going to be so smug about that. Atrociously smug. I'm talking 'raising my hand when somebody shouts "Is there a doctor on this plane"' smug.