After the London side trip, I was finally back in stockholm about 1 year after leaving Sweden.  I had some minimal friction convincing Swedish border control I was just here to visit despite 2 expired Swedish visas… but got I through late Friday night and went to visit my buddy Vinn who recently moved to Stockholm from Gävle.  We had a great chat and great breakfast and he walked me to the train for the next stop on the tour!
I took the commuter train to Uppsala to visit Divya and Shyam at their new place, which was beatiful in a nice little cluster of residential buildings with great courtyards, and a convinent 100m from the local willys.  They are just settling in but they know Uppsala better than I do, so they showed me around, took in the local cruising night, we ate at a marvelous Ethiopian restaurant and had a great walk through the park.
Then I took the pendeltÃ¥g south again  to saltsjöbaden for the 2012 NES (Nordic Ergonomics Society) conference.  I presented on some preliminary work on musculoskeletal disorders in farmers.  I could have been more strategic about this and presented the same thing as at ACE to save myself some trouble, but it turned out OK.  This conference was really a step above the ACE conference.  There were 5 parallel sessions with really high quality instead of two, and there were 2 plenary keynotes per day.  The location was OUTSTANDING in the Stockholm archipelago.  It is only a 30min train ride from Slussen but it feels 2 million miles away, filled with summer cottages, scenic lighthouses, stately mansions and lots of people enjoying time away from their regular life.  It was very lucky to be invited friend-of-a-friend style onto a sailing tour of the archipelago.  As the person with the most boat experience (small craft licence and been sailing twice) I got to steer the boat while the captain dealt with the sails.  I passed the preliminary skills test so I got to tack a few times and also brought the boat into the pier.  It was so great! I am enthusiastic about sailing again, although I don’t know when I’ll get the chance again (thanks a lot, SK!)
