A Singapore sling and a dash of MIT incredulousness

I am currently writing to you from a remote cabin in Northern Norway, normally housing MIT students working on their dissertations, doing research or taking courses at the MIT FabLab next door. FabLab is short for Fabrication Laboratory and the idea is to be able to create almost anyting in a small scale, user-adopted laboratory. It is quite surreal to be in such a remote area, and at the same time being able to connect to the internet with fiber optics, using the latest video conferencing technology and knowing that if you desperately need something constructed, there is a big chance the ShopBot router, Omax waterjetcutter and the Modella minimill in the house next door, can get the job done. There are FabLabs in rural India, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Iceland, a number of places in the US and here in Norway on the Lyngen peninsula. You can read more about the Norwegian Fablab here.


MIT FabLab Norway was built and is run by a local sheep farmer and art history Professor. MIT first contacted him due to the fact that he was putting GPS equipment on his sheep and recording physiological data.

I am here in Norway with my ski-touring friends Aaron, Niclas and Beau. For some great pictures from my friends adventures, check out Niclas photo-blog. I am however spending most of my time in and around the cabin, for a few reasons. First of all, I am starting to write my thesis and aiming to complete it in a little more than a month, and secondly the happy ending of my last entry has a hair-raising, nail-biting continuation that has left me slightly unfit for strenuous mountain climbs...


Lyngen peninsula.

There is a Swedish expression - don't holler hello before you have crossed the stream - which I have come to take very much to heart lately. After going back to work in Cicalung for a few days I started noticing the skin around my wound was getting redder and redder, thicker and thicker, faster and faster. Going in for a check up at the hospital, getting a few wrong diagnoses, a CT-scan and an ultra-sound, the doctors finally diagnosed me as having Cellulitis. Cellulitis is a deep skin infection (not to be confused with cellulites!). After recieving medical reports from my Indonesian hospital that indicated a slight lack of judgement and resources in terms of the correct and sufficient amount of antibiotics, my insurance company decided to fly me to Singapore.

Singapore health care was even better than I had anticipated. Knowledgeable doctors, working in large interdisciplinary teams and taking their time with the patients. My mother, no longer able to deal with my continuing health ordeals from a far, came down and accompanied me. Great to have some time together and have time to catch up, even thought the circumstances where a bit unusual. After 10 days of IV-antibiotics they felt safe sending me back home to Sweden.


The view from my hospital window at Singapore General Hospital.

Thanks to my amazing friends and colleagues in Indonesia, the experiments and empirical research that I needed for my thesis have been completed without me. Thank you Wawa, Yono, and the rest of the Biogas team for doing my work while I was in the hospital, both in Indonesia and in Singapore! By the next entry, I will hopefully have a first draft of my thesis finished and let you have a peek.