So how do fish stay upright?

Today a good friend of Haakon, our lab manager, came back from 3 weeks on an oil-rig. Sören (that's him) normally works off-shore for 2 weeks, and then stays on land for 4 weeks. That's the way these oil-people roll here in Norway.

To welcome him home, we had a very nice fish dinner consisting of the Red snapper that he brought along, potatoes and broccoli. They taught me how to eat the fish head (not the whole thing obviously, but the tasty parts). which turned out to be quite the snack. I was kind of surprised to find they don't eat the eyes of the fish, but the part around the eyes does get eaten. Interesting feature of the fish: the whole head is easy to disassemble, almost like it has been build with that purpose in mind. Maybe there is a creator after all, and he is smiling on us happy humans, for we have used his intelligent fish-design like he intended. In the most tasty part (according to my teachers), the brain, there are two very small and sharp bones on either side:



These bones (which apparently are sharp enough to cut glass) are used by the fish for balancing. Maybe when there is time, I should do a how-to-disassemble-a-fish-head tutorial. Although I don't know how many people will actually use that.

I'm also still working on a recurve-bow I want to make. I guess I'll make a tutorial for that once I'm finished, for it might turn out to be interesting to more people.

Outdoors

Yesterday Alex (my colleague from the De Waag Society) arrived at the lab. Haakon promised me we would go to Tromsø (where the airport is) a bit earlier, so we can have a look at his motorbike. It appears he owns an old BMW R70 bike... This guy just keeps amazing me, but since it was sunday, everything was closed... so we just had a nice fish meal.

The day before, Haakon, Johan, Aslak and I went on a little trip to the most northern part of the peninsula we are on. Where the land meets the sea, a lot of boats crashed. When the tides change, millions of liters of water flow from or into the fjord thus creating massive currents. Walking along the shore we encountered lots of wreckage, and even found a whole ship (well, whole... check out the pictures).



We also stopped at a little lighthouse to have some tea and found a can of joika (traditional sami reindeer meat) we decided to eat. It was such a nice place that both Johan and I agreed that we would go back there to leave new food, so it was ok to eat some of the stuff there.
It was nice and cosy:

Fresh food

Days sort of seem to flow into each other when the light never goes out. Yesterday evening we (Johan, Kenny, Luis and I) decided to go fishing on the fjord with a borrowed boat, but before we went we had to put out a starting fire at the Shopbot (the CNC machine). It seems the machine missed some steps while running through a program, got stuck and made the vacuum suck up a couple of embers... which consequently started to smolder inside the machine. Mats (one of Haakons son's) came in after dinner and told us there was smoke coming from the Shopbot house... I think we where just in time.

So when that was over we packed our stuff and headed out onto the fjord, with two fishing rods. At first we didn't catch anything, so when we landed ashore at around 3.30 in the morning we found some mussels and cooked those as a snack. Cooking them on some damp seaweed you put on a open fire works fine, and gives the mussels a nice smokey flavor.

We then took the boat further onto the fjord and by chance discovered a really beautiful spot to fish. Kenny was the first to catch a pollock and shortly after I caught one as well. I took one raw bite of the fish (first time I bite a fish that is still wriggling) and cooked the rest in some seawater. We had some cooking pots with us so steaming the fish was really easy.

When Johan caught a fish as well we walked around the shore a bit (very nice and peaceful around 9 in the morning) and then took the boat back to shore (with a nice detour of course).

Being up most of the day and fishing all night makes you kind of sleepy, so this we slept from about 12 this morning till around 6.30. I'm now working on some timelapse footage I took, and will probably spend some time working on my bow design (I'm making a bow).

And it will not get dark...