Wednesday was basically my last day at my former job and though I have quite a bit of studying to catch up on, I decided to take a few days off to see if I could finally get rid if my cold. While I should probably have stayed indoors (and I am since yesterday), A and I decided to go down to the Museum of Natural History to see the Hope Diamond which is on display there right now. It is so big and perfect that it is almost seemed unreal, but their entire display of gems was a reminder of how remarkable nature is. It was also my first visit to that particular part of the Smithsonian and we stayed until they closed. I will definitely go back soon!

After a very nice birthday dinner for A at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse (where we completely overate), I have basically stayed indoors. While (quite) white and beautiful, DC is cold these days and I am still not well. I did stay away from Amazon and the ballet sites though!

Crossing the Mall on the way to the Natural History Museum on Friday

I have been fighting a cold for the past three weeks. It is extremely frustrating! Especially since I just had found a couple of dance studios around the metro area and was planning to start taking classes again after the holidays. I tried to ignore it for a while and even went out running one of the first days, but that didn’t exactly help. So last week, I tried to slow down a bit and stayed in and worked from home, but after a few days, I was completely struck by cabin fever and my whole body seemed to have serious sings of the restless leg syndrome. Restlessness and frustration proved to not be a very good combination for me and I ended up surfing ballet sites and dance clips on youtube, and went on a shopping spree for ballet DVDs. Well, not really a shopping spree perhaps, but I certainly got more than I probably needed. While I am still not fully recovered, I tried one the other day and it was great, so at least I don’t have to suffer from buyer’s remorse in addition to my cold! And if you wonder why I still love dancing, look at this clip:

It is lovely to be so strong that you almost feel light. This clip shows some of the hard work that goes into it though:

Today, I am packing up my office since the past 2 years and 3 months. It’s OK. I am not going back to Sweden yet though, as I thought a while ago. I got an assignment with the Africa region in the World Bank that I will be busy with over the next few months. The assignment is really interesting and I am looking forward to it. After having worked on countries in Europe and Central Asia for the past 4.5 years, it is probably time to change focus and learn something new. Physically, I am not moving that far though, only two blocks down the street and I will now be located in the block next to the White House. When I lived in Moldova, I sometimes snuck in to the Government cantina for lunch but I guess that won’t be possible here, even if it would be convenient!

Holiday Season has come to an end. I threw out my little Christmas tree today and packed down all my Christmas decorations in a box. I really enjoyed holiday season this year and made the most out of it, which made the fall a lot more pleasant for someone like me who is such a summer person. However, almost three months remains before spring is here (and the next 6 weeks are definitely winter’s coldest), and I would like to come up with a good way of making them a little more pleasant. So if you have any ideas, please let me know!

I had a little table tree this year

According to an article in the Guardian yesterday, it seems like food prices are on their way up again. I think this is only the beginning. Or rather, I think we are seeing an end of an era when we in the U.S. and the EU spent only a very small share of our incomes on food. It is not sustainable and these low food prices have resulted in both environmental externalities and negative impacts on health.

Over the longer-term, prices are likely to continue to increase due to increasing oil prices, climate change impacts and mitigation measures and the competition for land that this will result in, an increasing world population especially in urban areas, and changing eating habits with higher meat intake. While we in the West would prefer to continue to spend money on clothes and electronics rather than food, increasing global food prices have a very different impact on the 1.2 billion people that live on about one dollar per day, and even on poor urban populations in middle income countries. The price on bread can determine whether someone can afford heating in the winter or not. Or if a kid can go to school or must help raise income for his or her family. And since this is a small world, my worry is that this will result in increasing migration waves and political instabilities in many regions that will not remain isolated events. No doubt, this will be an important global issue for the future.

Here is an interesting article that was published in the Guardian yesterday (based on cables that were disclosed through WikiLeaks) on how much the U.S. actually has tried to push the EU to accept genetically modified (GM) crops. The article also shows yet another proud involvement of the Vatican an issue that certainly doesn’t benefit the poor and vulnerable in society.

Not all of you might be so familiar with the agricultural sector, but apart from dubious environmental impacts and nutritional value of GM crops, the main problem with these crops is the patenting of seeds. It means that farmers are no longer allowed to save seeds from season to season to use for planting, but are instead forced to buy new seeds every season from the company holding the patent. In many cases, farmers have also been forced to pay penalties for if their crop has been contaminated with GM crops (something anyone who has been out in nature understand how difficult it is to avoid).

I am not familiar with all crops, but the scale with which a company can take over the input market for a crop can be shown with soybeans, which is the crop with highest share of GM produce in the world. The GM soybean was introduced in 1996 and has since then taken over around 60% of the world’s soybean production (58.5% in 2007). In the U.S., 85% of all soybean production is GM. (Source: GMO Compass) Further, according to Organic Consumers Association, as much as 90% of total acreage planted with soybeans in the U.S. is planted with seeds from one single producer, Monsanto. It means that something that came from nature is now almost completely controlled by one company. Read the article and decide for yourself whose interest you want to control the production of the food you eat.

In general, I like making new year’s resolutions. It makes me feel like the new year has a purpose and that there are new things to look forward to. But when I looked at the list of resolutions I made for 2010, I realized that I still haven’t implemented all of them. I also have even more unfinished things on my to-do-list. So I thought that a good new year’s resolution for 2011 would be for me to do everything on my lists! Otherwise, my friend Maria’s resolution for 2011 is to really make the most out of 2011, which isn’t a bad one either. My lists are quite long though, so if I do everything on them, I will probably have made the most out of this year!

Me on New Year’s eve (the top is made by a seamstress in Chisinau)

And I mean it! 2010 was for so many a quite difficult year, and I can only hope that 2011 will be better! From a global perspective, the financial crisis continued to have an impact on people’s lives all around the world. In the U.S. we hoped for a recovery that never came, at least not on the labor market, and many people continued to struggle in their daily lives. In Europe, governments had to deal with fiscal deficits and Europeans experienced severe state budget cuts. In countries where I work, the already vulnerable were often the ones hardest hit. And many developing countries saw continued low demand for exports and decreased remittances, slowing down much needed economic growth. Several severe natural disasters also hit the world, starting with the devastating earthquake in Haiti followed by the even more devastating floods in Pakistan (along with disasters in other places not fortunate enough to be the focus of Western media), and the consequences of these disasters are likely to remain for many years to come. Climate change continued to affect the world, not the least with the fires in Russia, while our never-shrinking demand for (cheap) oil led to one of the largest oil spills in history with horrifying environmental impacts in the Gulf of Mexico.

2010 was also a heavy year for me and many of my friends and for some of my family members. Work often seemed to be the cause of this, but it became clear how easily professional aspects influence other parts of our lives. Many looked for a job in a very slow economy, and had to experience the frustration that it brings. Others were unhappy in the places where they worked, but with no other options than to stay. Many of us also experienced an increasingly tight fiscal environment at our jobs and had to cope with the extra workload that it brings when there are no means to hire more capacity. And the stress from all of this seems to also have been tearing personal relationships.

For me too, 2010 was a very heavy year, perhaps more so than I had ever expected life to be. But through all this I have been happy to be in good health, especially since I know that not everyone was equally fortunate. Several of you experienced severe sickness this year, and a few even deaths in your family.

But even though 2010 was an immensely heavy at times, it was also a quite interesting year for me, with some travels to the usual countries (Sweden, Moldova, Romania, F.Y.R. Macedonia, and Montenegro), renewed Romanian studies (and I actually made progress!), and the start of a new and very interesting Master’s program in Food Policy, which hopefully is a first step to my long-aspired PhD. And perhaps best of all, I made a couple of new friends that I really value, and I had lots family and friends visiting me here in Washington DC!

I also know that some of you did have a really good year in 2010, and I hope that 2011 will be like that for the rest of us. So to all of you:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

GOTT NYTT ÅR!!!!

BONNE ANNEE!!!!

BUON ANNO!!!!

GODT NYTT ÅR!!!!

FELIZ ANO NUEVO!!!!

UN AN NOU FERICIT!!!!

GODT NYT ÅR!!!!

Sorry S – couldn’t find it in Kurdish…. Did I miss anyone else??

(Also, the photo of the White House was taken last year during Snow Week. We don’t have that much snow now.)

The day before Christmas Eve, I got a message from the management of my building, telling us that the heating system wasn’t working properly and that there would be an inspection the Monday after, i.e. yesterday.  There has been a problem with the heating in wintertime ever since I moved in here. Not because it doesn’t work but because it works too well. It’s been terribly warm in my apartment every year from November to March. Turning off the radiators is frowned upon because it interrupts the system and causes very loud noises in the pipes. And even when turned off, there is a big water pipe that runs through my bathroom, which heats it up to the extent that it also makes the neighboring room almost unbearably warm.

So yesterday the inspectors came by to check the radiators. I thought it would be the usual group of underpaid handymen with limited formal training and often equally limited English skills. These three men were in their late 50s or early 60s and all Americans. (Obviously, this is far from synonymous with expertise, but it is very unusual here in DC.) They asked me a couple of questions and started talking amongst themselves about how to solve the problem with the heating systems, taking into account what my other neighbors had said. When I asked them a couple of questions, they started explaining the system to me and how it was originally constructed, and one guy even told me what an older version of this heating system was called. (The word didn’t stick unfortunately.) Total radiator experts! And they seemed so passionate about it, which is not very common among professionals in DC. Nor is expertise. So it was really inspiring, and a little unexpected, to meet these men.

When I first came to Moldova, I was very careful with what I said and I didn’t want to make any assumption or say things that could offend anyone. Having learned that the two Christmases, the Catholic and the Orthodox, were a source of political tension since they had become symbols of the West and the East, the New and the Old. So in order to not step on anyone’s toes, when the topic of Christmas came up, I used to carefully ask which Christmas the person I had the conversation with celebrated. In reply, I normally got a laugh, followed by a “Oh, we celebrate both!” And yes, why chose?

This year, I didn’t have to chose either. Instead, I celebrated both the Swedish and the American Christmas. In Sweden, most celebrate Christmas Eve, and though there are regional differences, the dinner normally consists of a smorgasbord with pickled herring, salmon, sausages, meatballs, potato, and pork. I was fortunate enough to be invited to Monika and Willie together with A for Christmas eve, and we ate and ate, and then ate some more. Monika had really outdone herself (she had even made a Swedish Princess Cake and gotten a very Swedish box of chocolate), and though I was far away from home, it felt like a real Swedish Christmas!!

On Christmas Day, I was invited over to Patrick’s family, and had another lovely dinner with lamb, pork, chicken, mashed and sweet potatoes, and green beans. Patrick had also invited two other acquaintances of ours that were here over Christmas, and his sister had invited her best friend with her visiting mother, and I thought it very nice that his family opened up their home to non-family members. In Sweden, it is such a family day. I tried to understand what was the real American Christmas tradition, but as oppose to Thanksgiving, it seems to be more diverse and probably more rooted in different family and country traditions. So there is no typical Christmas dinner. But it was a lovely way to spend Christmas Day!