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There it is: we have found a way to make hundreds of loud and rude college students inoffensive. It is not the most elegant way but it is efficient. An epidemic.

It started at the beginning of the week. You ate somewhere, you touched something and before you knew, you had it. You felt nauseated and after a couple of hours you received an email from the university:

"The George Washington University Student Health Service is currently seeing an increased number of students with gastrointestinal symptoms, most likely of a viral origin.”

“No. No. NOOO” is your first reaction. Now that you are facing the truth, you have to tell your friends you won’t be able to brunch with them tomorrow.

You continue reading the email:

“While symptoms can be uncomfortable, gastrointestinal illness is usually not serious and most people get better in one to two days.  There is no drug treatment or vaccine for gastrointestinal illness.”

Well, this is the polite equivalent of: “Don’t bother coming to see us. There is no cure. And we don’t want to get sick too”. Never mind, you are brave, you will bare the consequences of touching door handles irresponsibly. You will just go to sleep and hope you will not die in painful circumstances.

Wait. The email is not over:

"The university is working with the DC Department of Health and is currently awaiting the outcome of testing to determine the cause of the infections.  The university is also working to identify any commonalities in the cases at GW.  No single commonality has been identified to date."

Are we talking about the plague? I am not even sure we have health service at my home university so an investigation about the causes of the epidemic seems a little bit disproportionate. If we think about it for a second, they are basically hiring people to find the cause of a disease that is not serious and for which there is no cure anyway.

They finally found the origin of the epidemic: it is a norovirus. That doesn’t help us much, but it is way more elegant than saying that you have gastrointestinal symptoms. Yet, during the next few days, you still see one friend after another being trapped in his or her room, like soldiers dying on the battlefield.

There are two possible scenarios now:

1) People will get better, fewer and fewer will get sick and life will be happy and healthy again.

2) This is the beginning of the end of the world foreseen in 2012.

Right now, it's 50-50 given that every office at GW has turned paranoiac and is cleaning every inch touched by a student. But let's not be pessimistic, if we survived the bird flu, we will probably survive the norovirus.

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Philadelphia…Whoever created that city created a place where I had one of the most amazing days I’ve had since I came to the US.  The weather was awful, most of the places we wanted to visit were closed and finding the right place where to eat the legendary cheese steak was a long and painful journey. However, my mind is now full of unique memories and it is only because I had the chance to go there with the most amazing group of people someone can meet. But I’m getting ahead of myself! Let me give you a detailed description of my day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

At 6:45 AM sharp, my friends and I all met at the Foggy Bottom metro station. It was freezing (actually, I thought it was freezing but it wasn’t until later during the day that I discovered the real meaning of the word “freezing”), everybody was both excited and incredibly sleepy and we were running late since our bus was leaving in less than 30 minutes. Therefore, we chose the safest solution and took a cab to Union Station. As soon as we were on that bus, comfortably seated (seriously, those seats are incredibly comfortable!) and in a warm environment, every single one of us fell asleep, forgetting for a couple of hours about the excitement the trip was causing us and surrendering to the sweet call of Morpheus’ arms. After we arrived and had a nice breakfast in some cozy diner (best waffles ever!), we all went to see the famous Liberty Bell. We all had heard about it from different TV Shows or American friends as it is a big part of the American history. So, we all were expecting some kind of huge bell with this crack that has such an exciting story behind it. However, we ended up seeing a fairly sized bell with a crack that has absolutely no “deep” meaning behind it. But still, we saw the Liberty Bell! We weren’t as ignorant to the American history as we were half an hour before. Anyway, we then went to discover the Independence Hall and learned more and more about the American history. However, it was ironic to see that 90% of the people visiting those same places were actually Americans. This made me realize that Philadelphia is more of a city where Americans can learn about their own history rather than a place that tourists can visit. However, I still was happy to learn more about my host country’s history.

Anyway, right after Independence Hall, we were all really excited to go see the US mint! At least, we were excited up until the moment we realized that it was closed for renovations and was not going to be open again until summer (in other words, after our departure from the country). However, we weren’t going to let this news ruin our day. We took the metro (which is by the way a lot more efficient than the one in DC) and headed towards 15th street where we were supposed to find the best cheese steak in the country. Turns out the cheese steak places were located on 9th Street. It was getting colder and colder but our motivation was stronger than anything else. We ate what turned out to be a delicious sandwich and headed to see the last and most important thing: the Rocky Stairs!

We couldn’t feel our legs anymore, we wanted to sleep and it was now snowing. But Rocky was waiting for us (or at least its statue)! We walked for an hour and finally saw the legendary stairs. I personally couldn’t believe we finally made it. So, we all ran those stairs, feeling stronger than ever. At the top, one of the most wonderful views that I’ve ever seen was facing us. We took some pictures and headed back to the metro station. However, the snowflakes started to fall faster and faster and the temperature was now 25 degrees (Fahrenheit of course!). So, after we had a hot coffee while we were waiting for the snow to stop, we did the most childish thing ever: snow fight! Turns out our dear Singaporean friends had never seen snow before (who knew it was always summer in Singapore!). For a few minutes, everyone forgot how cold it was, how far away from home we were or how hard each one of us missed his/her family. For a few minutes, we just let go. We received freezing snow balls right on the face, we fell, we smiled and we laughed. These few minutes were absolutely magical.

However, those few minutes almost cost us our ride back to DC. We were too busy playing and forgot that we had a bus to catch! Thank God though; we made it to the bus station exactly 3 minutes before its departure. Was the snow fight worth the risk of spending the night in the freezing train station of Philadelphia? Definitely!

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Five courses, five different professors and five different vibes... this is how I am spending my exchange semester at George Washington University. This is how I spent all of the previous semesters at Al Akhawayn University. However, even though the system is the same in both my home and host universities, the learning style not only varies from AUI to GWU, it even varies from one professor to another. Both AUI and GWU offer courses in English with professors from all around the world with different teaching methods and various skills in specific fields. Therefore, if despite all of these similarities I can still feel that there is a big difference between the two universities, it must be because it is mainly due to the different cultures and not only the different learning environments.

Let’s start by one major difference between AUI and GW before specifically discussing the difference between the classes. Even though both universities have amazing campuses, they are completely and a hundred percent different. GW’s campus is impressively huge. It has so many buildings with a minimum of five floors each and these buildings are spread out around Foggy Bottom’s area. If I want to go to class and be there on time, I would need to leave my room at least fifteen minutes earlier if the classroom is in a building nearby. Sometimes, I need less time (because I run!) and other times I need more time (either because I wear heels, because the building is located in some distant street or because I need to take a bus to actually reach the location of the classroom). The campus is located right in the middle of the city, the streets are full of cars at any moment of the day and there are actually traffic lights inside the campus. In other words, anybody can walk in or out of the campus since there is no actual difference between GW’s buildings and any other building nearby (except for the dorms for which you we actually need a card to be authorized to come in). Campus is just a word used that infers to the university as a whole instead of a closed area where only GW students, faculty or staff can be found.

On the other hand, AUI’s campus is pretty small compared to GW’s one. Its buildings have between one and four floors and they are all pretty close to each other. You could easily walk through the whole campus in less than fifteen minutes. It usually takes me five minutes to get to the classroom (when wearing heels!) and the only way you can be inside the campus would be for you to be a student, a faculty member or a staff working within the university. The university campus is a closed area where students can be sure that no stranger can come in. Therefore, even if university is about becoming adults and responsible of ourselves, parents always make sure that their children are in a perfectly secured place where there isn’t the slightest chance of something bad happening. As for the courses, attendance is mandatory and each student who fails to meet a certain amount of classes fails the entire course. So, even if attendance represents only a small portion of the final grade and students are supposed to be able to make their own choices, being absent for more than seven classes means failing. Assignments are usually just a way for the professors to torture their students and midterms and finals have percentages as high as 30 and 35 percent.

In George Washington University, there is no such thing as failing a course because of attendance. Professors assign a certain percentage of the grade to attendance and the more absences the student has, the more that percentage comes closer to zero. Some sections contain so many people (up to 200 students) that attendance is not even part of the final grade. Each student is responsible for his own choices and decisions. Assignments and projects represent a big chunk of the final grade and have usually the same weight (if not a bigger one) as a midterm or final. In other words, the university offers to the student an endless amount of resources and it is up to the student to decide what he/she wants to do with them.

These differences may seem somehow superficial, but for a student who needs to adapt to a new system for five months and then go back again to the previous one, they can be tricky. However, as I said previously, those differences between AUI and GWU actually reflect the part of the differences between Morocco and the United States of America. While Morocco is a very collectivist country, the US is more of an individualistic one. The ideal would be to have a mix between those two characteristics and live in a world where Morocco, the US and any other country of the planet learn from the differences that make this world so unique. Unfortunately, that would be dreaming about a utopia that will never happen.

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Okay, fine! I’ll admit it, I completely lost track of these groups that I initially made up. This one is supposed to be “rock,” but honestly the bands I have left are way more diverse than that. Woe is me! My solution in this case will be to simply modify the group name a bit. Please don’t send me angry letters, such as the example provided below:

“Dear Thor. I was casually going through my regular schedule of rummaging through the depths of the interweb when I stumbled onto your blog. “Oh dear me,” I thought, “what a delight! Rock is indeed my favorite genre of rhythmic tonal contraptions.” My delight was short-lived. You can scarcely imagine my utter despair when I discovered the extents of your fallacies. For several dark minutes, I stared into the bleak, piercing eyes of the beast that is “Lack of proper categorization of musical genres.” For this crime against humanity, I thoroughly hope your day will be bad. Also I hope you bump into a low coffee table, and hit your shin really hard.

Sincerely,

Ned.”

I made that up, but I feel like those guys are always named Ned. Just like all the bros, that fist bump and wear their caps backwards, are all named Jeff. Ned is the kind of guy who reads the news with the sole intention of finding grammatical errors, just so he can send the editors angry emails about it. This particular Ned, I imagine, also owns a cat. The cat is equally arrogant. Let’s commence.

Part III – Rock and other music with sounds

Agent Fresco

Agent Fresco is part prog-rock and part alt-rock, with heavy influences from jazz and funk, and a characteristic polyrhythmic style. That’s a mouthful, I know, but listen to their debut album through and it will all make perfect sense. If you end up going to the Iceland Airwaves music festival someday (which of course you all are), I cannot stress how important it is that you see these guys live. Their songs are so instantly catchy that without exception the crowd will start singing along with the chorus. Not just the few old guys that got too drunk at Burnt out Classic Rock Band concerts and annoyingly blurt out the lyrics, but literally the whole crowd. I’ve seen them many times, and as great as the big, loud concerts are, my favorites are the acoustic ones they do off-venue each year at Iceland Airwaves. They go all-out on the acoustic thing, even abandoning microphones.

If you end up giving any of the bands I’ve mentioned a try, I really hope you pick Agent Fresco. Find their album (gogoyoko.com is a great place to start), listen to it all the way through and then tell me what you think. Listen to the transition from hard, rhythmic prog-rock to slow, hauntingly beautiful piano ballads. If you don’t like this, you’re probably broken. I hope you kept the receipt.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMoNIUGkMxE&h=25]

As much as this will probably push some people away, I’ll also include a video of them playing a song at Iceland Airwaves 2011. Notice how the crowd responds and takes part in the song towards the end. That’s amazing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLc1OErsXOg]

Hjaltalín

Hjaltalín draws its influences from many genres, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just call them indie. The band is fronted by a strong male/female vocal duo, the male singer being the charismatic Högni (previously mentioned in relation to Gus Gus). This post is getting way to long, so I’ll just let the music speak for this one. This is Hjaltalín performing with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra in 2010.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbAOrDfjuqk]

Of Monsters and Men

You might actually have heard this band on the radio without noticing it. Their song, Little Talks from their debut album My Head is an Animal, has gained popularity fantastically fast. No wonder, really, it’s ridiculously catchy. They’ve been described as the Icelandic Mumford and Sons and even “the new Arcade Fire” in the Rolling Stone Magazine. Big words, certainly, but not far off. The songs are big, fun and the kind of catchy that just impregnates your mind with humming for days on end.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghb6eDopW8I]

Notable mentions

Hjálmar

It’s an Icelandic reggae band. They’re fantastic. There’s really nothing more to say about this one. They have a big repertoire of fantastic songs, but the one I’ve included below is one of my all-time favorites. It’s one of those songs that make me want to sit in the dark with my headphones on, just swaying my head along with the rhythm.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Lxg13UL60&h=25]

Mammút

Mammút is a young, mostly female band. What definitely sets them apart is the eccentric, strong vocal style of the lead singer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PxO9eA_ao4&h=25]

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Note: this article is meant to be humoristic and not at all offensive. I do know that difference is what makes the beauty of the world and I am happy I was able to experience (and adapt to) what makes the US such a unique country.

Just like any other girl in the world, I like taking care of myself. I like knowing that the external image that I project to people reflects my inner personality. So, just like any other girl in the world, I regularly and closely monitor my weight.  Therefore, yesterday, as I was getting ready to take a shower, I noticed a new item in the bathroom, something that my roommate had bought without realizing that she was bringing me both my best friend and my worst enemy:  a bathroom scale. Both excited and worried, I stood on it hoping that the previous month that I spent in the US would have magically helped me lose some weight. Instead, horror! The scale was displaying a three numbers’ weight! I knew I couldn’t possibly be 150 kilograms. So, I decided to do my own little investigation on the web. This is how I discovered that everything about the United States is different.  This is when I realized that there is a secret clash between the US’ and the rest of the world’s standards.

The whole world uses the gram and the kilogram as a measure of weight. Well, the US decided that it was too common and would rather use the ounce and the pound.  And while the rest of the world considers the kilogram to be 1000 grams, the United States finds it easier to use the pound which is 16 ounces. The logic is different but I figured “Hey, who am I to judge”? I decided that it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I would just have to adapt for the four months remaining in here. I was particularly happy though to realize that 150 pounds meant that I lost a couple kilograms. However, surprises kept coming at me from everywhere. I found out that US people don’t do meters and kilometers, they prefer to use inches, feet and miles. And while once again the number 1000 is the magical number to convert from meters to kilometers, the American calculations are a little bit more elaborate. 1 foot actually equals 12 inches, 1 yard equals 3 feet and 1 mile equals 1760 yards. Why? Can somebody please explain to me how people can come up with such complicated calculations instead of simply being like the rest of the world? Don’t you people like the number 1000?

Anyway, just when I thought that my nightmare was over, I realized I actually had to change my conception of temperature too if I wanted to survive in the United States. I am literally freezing here when it is 30 while I am almost burning in Morocco.  So, what is the difference now? Well, I found out (without any surprise anymore) that while the rest of the world uses Celsius degrees, the Americans thought that using Fahrenheit would be better. But the problem here is that I don’t simply need to adapt, I actually need to change every single concept that I’ve learned in physics. My whole childhood now is upside down. I’ve been taught throughout my whole life that water freezes at 0 degrees and evaporates at 100. Well now, I have to somehow put in my head that water freezes at 32 degrees and evaporates at 212. What is that?  Why? Where is the logic? Show me the logic. I need the logic! I want my zero and ones! Give me my zeros and ones!

In addition, as if this was not enough to turn a sane person into a completely crazy one, I had to adapt to another thing, something that makes absolutely no sense wherever you go in the world except in the United States. Why do you people write the date starting by the month? DD/MM/YYYY! That is how it works. This is how I do it, how the rest of the world does it, but Americans simply don’t do it! What is wrong with having the same norms and standards everywhere we go? It’s hard enough we have to adapt with a different culture wherever we go in the world let alone changing our whole mathematical, physical and logical concepts. I’m going crazy here!

Fortunately, today, I was supposed to watch a normal American football match. I knew it was a national event here because everybody would watch it regardless of the age or the gender. So, this would be my dose of “normal stuff”. I start watching the game and… wait what? They are wearing helmets? They are using their hands? What is that? This is NOT football! Football is by definition about using your FEET not your hands! Where on GOD’s earth is the logic here? The worst part is discovering that what the rest of the world calls football is called here “soccer”. It’s enough Americans don’t want to be like the rest of the world, but don’t you people dare change the name of my country’s national sport! You guys are a hopeless case…

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Two weeks ago I went to my first GW basketball game. I had missed the first ten or more games because of papers, cold weather and… lack of motivation. But I finally decided I needed to go, mainly because my roommate told me it was probably the last game “our” team would win.

Of course I was late as usual so I missed the very beginning of the game. Yet, I did stay until the end so I was able to draw a few conclusions:

1)    You’d better not play at another university: After 5 minutes of games, the cheering and booing gave me a sense of the unbalanced situation: 95% of the people who came to see the game were for GW, the last 5% were for the other team. You could easily do the math: the other team was going to have a hard time. In the last minutes of the game, I was even for the other team because I felt sympathy for them. When the “enemies” tried to make a shot, everybody was yelling and making noise so that they would fail. When GW was making a shot, everybody was silent except for the 5%. And if they tried to make some noise, the 95% would start yelling at them.

2)    GW loves t-shirt: Not much to say about that except I had never seen so many people wearing yellow and blue t-shirts in the same room.

3)   George Washington is a little bit scary: Even though I have a problem with the name of the team being “colonials” considering… what it means, I’ve always thought the George Washington mascot was rather cool. Yet, at the game, he became a little bit scary, raising his fist and doing some foot tapping or something of the sort.

4)    It is hard for a feminist to watch cheerleaders: I tried to be opened to my friend’s arguments that there were some male cheerleaders but I am still skeptic. First, why do they change clothes three times a game? Second, it is hard to see men play and girls dance, no matter how you try not to perceive this as sexist.

5)    College sport makes people really aggressive: I was not surprised by the aggressiveness because people can get really passionate at soccer games in France too. Still, some people take the game really seriously. Maybe my perception is biased by the fact that I had a very angry supporter right behind me who kept kicking my seat and yelling insults at the other team. Yet, I think I will probably never understand the stakes in college basketball and to be honest I didn’t really care about who was going to win.

6)    At a basketball game, you have to deserve food: $4 a slice of pizza, seriously? This may be a strategy to fight against overweight but at 8:30 I started to be really hungry and a dilemma came to me: do I pay $1 for a bite of pizza or do I starve myself to death (that is to say until 9:30)?

7)    You can here “Billie Jean” played by a band (which doesn’t happen often): Some might say you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a Michael Jackson song played by saxophones, trumpets and other wind-related instruments. I don’t want to oversell it so I am just going to say that Michael Jackson himself would not have done better.

8)    I still don’t understand the part when guys danced with bayonets

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Part II – Folk

Folk isn’t really the proper genre of this category, but rather a description of a shared origin in traditional, Icelandic music. Of the three bands listed here, I suspect only one – Mugison – will appeal to any substantial audience. I’ve tried introducing my foreign friends to Þursaflokkurinn a few times with less-than-great results; my friends say the meanest things sometimes. I could have picked many bands for this made up pseudo-genre of mine – Steindór Andersen, KUKL, Þeyr, etc… - so the ones I have chosen represent my own taste more than anything.

Mugison

Mugison is at once the artist that comes closest of these to being folk, and the one that is the furthest away from what I described above. His roots in Icelandic culture lie, not as much in technique and structure, but rather in poetic lyricism and context. I’ve touched before on the rich music scene in Iceland, to the point where it seems as if anyone can pick up a guitar in Iceland and become a musician. In my mind Mugison embodies exactly that (and in fact his first records were recorded in solitude in his bedroom). Mugison’s style has changed and evolved through the years, ranging from heavily distorted electro-troubadour to rhythmic rock to melodic folk. For a musician, there are few things worse than becoming stagnant in one’s art; Mugison is in no danger of this happening.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs5krAcyHrw&w=420&h=25]

Þursaflokkurinn

You might as well just skip this section. You won’t like it. Here is a progressive rock band that heavily implements traditional Icelandic folk music, jazz and classical music as well as lyrical scenes from Icelandic folklore. They heavily rely on an oboe in their songs, are you gone yet? The band split up in 1984 after six years of active playing, with many suspecting the decision was in large part fuelled by their lack of success abroad. Listening to their music again now, it’s not hard to see why they did not succeed in conquering the World. Theirs is a niche carved out in Icelandic ground – small, even for Icelandic standards. Nonetheless the band symbolizes an important cultural step, in that they were the first real attempt to modernize (to some extent) the ridged world of Icelandic folklore and ancient sagas. It’s sad that most won’t be able to enjoy the off-beat lyrics, but in case someone connects with the musical aspect… enjoy!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUIbgnVQeKU&w=420&h=25]

HAM

HAM never managed to reach a substantial audience during its initial period of active playing but have since gained a cult-like status in Icelandic rock-history. In 2001, HAM was revived once again with great success, and has since been a steady act at music festivals and most recently releasing their first album with new material since 1995. It’s hard to describe the band’s style. They are often said to be heavy metal, but the band (and I) don’t entirely agree. My best attempt would be something like; operatic heavy alternative rock. The music is an energetic clash of sounds, featuring two singers; one with a deep, powerful baritone providing the backdrop to the raspy growls and screams of the other. It is raw and chaotic, but behind it all lie the roots of Icelandic musical traditions; from the rhythmic structure to the conflicting vocals, resonating in parallel fifths. As great as HAM are, they are a band best enjoyed live. I’ve seen HAM a few times and it is always amazing. My most memorable experience was at Iceland Airwaves 2010, in the iconic venue Nasa in downtown Reykjavík. It was completely packed, it was so hot that the collective evaporated sweat in the room was verging on forming clouds above us and there were at all times at least four people crowd surfing. After the first roaring track, front man Óttar Proppé modestly introduced the band in his raspy voice; “we are the band HAM.” As if we didn’t all know… Below I've included one of their more famous songs, as well as a short clip from the concert I mentioned above. If you look closely you might see my head somewhere in the front, to the right of the stage...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7n61sA1Gg8&w=420&h=25]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmEMB8GCKtw&w=420&h=315]

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A dorm party in the United States of America? That’s what I call living the American experience!  However, there is only one slight little problem. How can I describe what I’ve seen? How can I assign words to an experience that can only be felt and lived?  Well, in those cases, you can only try and explain to people (those who are not American of course, because I obviously already seem like an idiot to the American college students who live this experience every week) what  these parties are about and how they progress throughout an evening. Let the fun start!

Besides my roommates, I had no idea who were the people that were slowly filling our living room. The party started at 9:30 PM and I decided that hiding in my bedroom for as long as the party lasted was the best strategy to adopt. Here I was, sitting on my bed, wearing my prettiest dress, afraid of confronting the external world. Slowly, as time went by, distinguishing the sound of music became a harder and harder task. All I could hear at some point was a constant unpleasant sound of people talking. I have to say that, with my bedroom’s door closed, it sounded more like a swarm of bees attacking our room than actual people having civilized conversations.  Suddenly, the best thing that could possibly happen happened. My roommate barged into our room, feeling slightly tipsy (Yes! She is more than 21) and dragged me into the living room pretending she didn’t know most of these people herself.

As I stepped outside of my safe zone, I was amazed by the amount of people that can actually fit in this tiny living room. People were everywhere! The unpleasant sound became less unpleasant as I could now differentiate between the different sounds. I could see people desperately screaming hoping the person they were talking to would miraculously hear what they were saying. I could hear people laughing, that unique joyful laugh that happens only once in a while. But most importantly, everyone was smiling. Every single person in that room had that serene smile drawn on their faces. At that precise moment, I realized that people were truly happy to be here, to share unique moments with their friends, to let loose for once without worrying about classes, responsibilities or life and its adventures in general. This kind of gathering is what makes people lower the pressure by just embracing and enjoying the present. And so, I decided it was about time for me too to stop worrying about what happens in Morocco and make the full out of what happens to me in the United States of America.

I met new people. I had different conversations with various individuals; some lasted for half an hour and others for less than five minutes. But the point is that I actually had contact with real people instead of my usual (but precious and beloved) computer. Some of these people might forget about me. Others will politely wave at me when walking on the street. Very few of them will choose to stop and have a short conversation with me to ask about updates in my life. And probably, none of them will actually ask me to do something interesting someday to spend time together and learn more about each other in order to become friends.  Does it bother me? Not the slightest! Not because I don’t want to have friends here but because I am sure that if friendship is meant to be between someone and me, then it will! I just have to patiently wait for the right person to show up and not worry about anything but enjoying my stay in the US as much as I can.

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The more attentive readers here may have noticed in my first post that I absolutely love music. Because I wanted this blog to sounds really intellectual, I went to wikiquote.org and searched for “music”, as one does. There are many excellent quotes about music there but for this particular piece I have chosen a quote from the famous misogynist Friedrich Nietzsche who once said “If a woman seeks education it is probably because her sexual apparatus is malfunctioning,” probably while slowly stroking his moustache and pausing intermittingly for dramatic effect. However he also said that “without music, life would be a mistake.”  I don’t agree, really, but let’s pretend for a moment that all is good, and that this is a great introduction to an intellectual, contemporary piece on the role of music in the modern world.

For someone that really loves music, Iceland is a great place to live. For a nation so small it is really nothing short of amazing how active the music scene is. If you’re a Buddhist I highly recommend raking in some good karma so you can be reborn on Iceland in your next cycle. If, however, you are not Buddhist then I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do for you. I digress.

Seeing that this is a somewhat cultural blog I figured it would be a good idea to give some insight into Icelandic culture.  Specifically I want to write a bit about Icelandic music. We all know about Björk and Sigur Rós (if you don’t, you and me have a problem) so I’ll try to focus the attention on bands that are less known, but should most definitely be famous. This is a rather sizable task I’m setting myself so I’ve decided to split it into four parts. Roughly these are as follows; electronic, folk, rock and Icelandic Airwaves. Without further ado, here is part one.

Part I - Electronic

Gus Gus

Gus Gus is one of those titans of the Icelandic scene that seems to have been around forever. They always put out solid stuff. I remember that they played once at a dance in my gymnasium in Iceland (almost the same as high school) and they actually sold out faster than the world famous Ratatat that also played at one of our school dances that year so yeah, they’re pretty solid. Personally though I’ve always felt like there was something missing, they were great but just not quite in the zone. Last year they put out a new album and this time they’ve added a new singer; Högni. Högni is also the lead singer of mega-group Hjaltalín, which I’ll mention in Part III of this series. It turns out that Gus Gus + Högni = electro magic. Their album from 2011, Arabian Horse, is one of my favorites of the year. Enjoy!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRzupZkTGeg&w=420&h=25]

Apparat Organ Quartet

AOQ is an odd ensemble. It’s composed of five members, who are all well known within the music industry for other projects, amongst them Jóhann Jóhansson. Jóhann Jóhansson is probably the name on this list, most likely to sound familiar to readers, as he has become quite famous within the neoclassical music-sphere. AOQ, though, is entirely different from his more somber music. The band uses a vast array of outdated synthesizers, organs, cheap electric pianos and vocoders to produce songs of, what can hardly be described as other than, hard electronic rock. Their albums are complex and demanding, but the melodies and drops of powerhouse ecstasy are amazing. They’re also truly an experience to see live.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_VhDG130Ak&w=420&h=25]

Ólafur Arnalds

From Jóhann Jóhansson to another giant of the Icelandic neo-classical scene; Ólafur Arnalds belongs in this section because he not only produces amazing neoclassical soundscapes, but he couples then with intellectual electo-beats. His albums are at once hauntingly beautiful and heavy head-banging bass-orgies. The kind that makes you sway, frown your eyebrows and think “daaaaamn, this is it, right here.” In reference to Part IV of this blog-series, Ólafur Arnalds is also one of the acts I look forward the most to seeing at Iceland Airwaves each year.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38n8V0IUDuA&w=420&h=25]

FM Belfast

And now to something completely different. It’s hard, really, to put the energy of FM Belfast into words. The music, as confessed by the founding band members, is engineered to be perfectly suited to young, sweaty parties. The music is fast, uninhibited and joyful. That’s only part of the experience though. Seeing FM Belfast live, at a good venue, is nothing short of amazing. Everyone dances, everyone is drenched in sweat, no one cares at all. It’s amazing.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mquCq54Lmp4&w=420&h=25]

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By gwblogabroad

The time to register for classes began last month. The sacred “add/drop” weeks have followed. For the past few weeks all GW students have had to ask themselves:  "what classes do I choose?"

I don’t want to brag but it is not the first time I register for classes at GW. I already did it last semester and I can claim to be almost an expert on how students make those choices. Let me present you my – some would say very sophisticated – sociological analysis on that subject.

The main argument at the core of my homemade theory is that the student specimen chooses his/her classes negatively, that is to say, by elimination. Yet, there are several types of specimens and, as a result, different ways of choosing classes.

1) The “Easy A” choice  (AKA the “I am buying my degree” choice): The principle is very simple. Some students will try to get As (or Bs) the easiest way possible and will thus choose the easiest classes the University offers. Through this decision process, the student specimen (AKA the GW student) will be helped by other “Easy A classes” hunters or by websites such as ratemyprofessor.com. Someone fitting in that category might for example take the class rated 5/5 on easiness with the comment:” if you go to class Easy A”. Considering the price of education, some evil minds might say it is equivalent to buying a degree without working. But I am not this kind of person… (or maybe I am).

2) The “I-am-taking-your-class-because-nobody-can-be-good-at-it-except-for-me” choice: I have to say I hadn’t run into this specimen before last week. Concretely, when asked why he/she is taking this class, the student specimen will answer: “I think absolutely nobody does a good job at this (this includes the teacher) so I want to learn it myself”. When you get rid of the polite phrasing it means: everybody suck at this, including you; that is why I am trying to raise the level of the field. This approach rarely guarantees you to be liked in the class.

3) The “I need 12-credits and I don’t want to socialize” choice: Some students just don’t know what they are interested in but they know one thing: they already have friends and they are not here to speak to anybody. This specimen is particularly interesting if you are in a sociology class.

4) The “I need an internship” choice: Very pragmatical, this choice hinges on the following assumption: some teachers are brilliant professionals and they will probably help you find you an internship if you are very nice (or/and if you bring them cookies). This category is very specific to GW, or at least to the United States, and you have to be very strong not to be tempted to take advantage of it. Being very weak myself, I did.

5) The “I want to learn” choice: Very noble intellectually, this choice is motivated by a will to progress and to learn something out of a semester of study. Even though this choice seems to be the best from an academic point of view (once again, considering the price of education, you expect the student to at least want to learn something), it is often in contradiction with another variable: you actually don’t want to spend your nights working. As a result, the “Easy A” choice often wins this battle.

6) The “Everything was closed” choice (very popular among exchange students): Sometimes the choice is not a choice. If you register last and you don’t go often on GWeb to check if some classes opened, you will have to choose classes by default (instead of looking for the best classes, you’ll look for the least worse). That is how you can end up studying: “Famous harmonica players in the Nineteenth Century”, “Psychology analysis of princesses in the Middle East” or “Special topic in Engineering: Rubik’s cube”.

7) The “I need the class to graduate” choice: This case is particularly interesting to study from a psychological point of view, especially if the specimen is a senior (like my roommate, but this is completely fictional and absolutely not inspired by her registration for an economy class). To make it simple, the student specimen has to take a specific class to graduate and is consequently particularly eager to take this class. He or she (or it) will do everything to get into the class (even take a Japanese swordsmanship class – which has nothing to do with it but I wanted to mention at least once that we have those at GW). You would thus think that this motivation will last but human beings are human beings so … no.

There is of course a last kind of choice: the “I am interested in this class” choice. Yet, it is overall pretty rare since, let’s be honest, we are all students in a private very expensive university.

Unless otherwise indicated, the content and opinions expressed on this web site are those of the author(s). They are not endorsed by and do not necessarily reflect the views of the George Washington University.
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