The absolute true diary of a part time human living in a glacial dominated environment

Heya folks, it is me. This entry is more of a collection of various events, experiences and opinions so readers discretion is advised.

Living in a polar environment has its challenges in various difficulty settings ranging from the cold and windy 30-minute walk to UNIS, writing a blog entry, finding the mysterious ghost who seems to be drawn to my milk in the fridge, finding Chicken Nuggets in the supermarket and mapping the local geomorphology.

 
 Shopping here in Longyearbyen is an experience I wouldn’t even whish onto my worst enemy, sadly I have been told that the consumption of food is a necessary part of the human experience and a healthy diet can’t be substituted with cornflakes. My regular shopping experience here can be described in 4 stages. During the first stage I enter the shop with hopes, towards the frozen food aisle and skip through the costly fresh green and sweets section in search of the heavenly dish named chicken nuggets. The 2^nd stage is classified by a high-pitched internal sigh when I see that they still don’t have anything vaguely related to chicken nuggets, but I will continue with my search and keep you guys updated. After recovering from the shock, I head back defeated to the pasta aisle, buy some chopped tomatoes and walk past the crisps section and sneakily drop a bag in my shopping bag, a problem for future Nick to solve, this is classified as the 3^rd stage. The 4^th stage begins when I approach the checkout and notice a bag of crisps hidden below the usual stuff, while I silently judge past me, I put my goods onto the rolling band, making no move to return the crisps package to its original location and wait for my turn. After everything is scanned I look onto the computer showing me the total sum of my purchase and I start to think that I really should have participated in bitcoin farming.

We all have a subject we can never be friends with. Sadly, most of the human student’s population decided to gang up on poor old mathematics, but here I am now offering a new viable candidate to dethrone mathematics from its undeserved place. Have you ever heard of a program called Arc GIS and of the term geomorphological mapping? If not, you are truly a blessed person and I hope I can prepare you with the upcoming safety information. In short it is a mapping program which haunts students and professional since the early 2000s and the other term refers to the voodoo practised by geologists during field excursions which haven’t been deciphered by society yet. The most predominant theories about the origin of the software are that it was thrown out by my fellow extra-terrestrials due to its ability to create errors out of thin air or it was created during a secret meeting of programmers/ system administrators who swore vengeance upon us normal humans for making fun of their job. Whatever you believe in this software is currently providing me with hours of entertainment and thoughts about become a shepherd on some lone flat island without any mappable features. I am using Arc GIS in combination with my little knowledge about glacial morphology to create 2 different maps for my term time project.The first map is an overview map of the beautiful Adventdalen area in the scale of 1:100000 and the 2^nd map of the beginning of Endalen in the scale of 1:10000. Both areas provide me with mysteries even the famous Sherlock Holmes would have problems solving. But how some of you might ask do you even map and classify those areas, the answer is simple with a mixture of in field observations and the joys of remote sensing. During the field observation you carry a so called Toughbook with the Arc GIS software installed and create points on the map where you think the morphology changes. Changes could include things like different sediments, slopes, colour of stones, anthropogenic features and many many more which seem to have eluded my mind. After your screen is dotted to your personal satisfaction you can leave the outdoors and try the more daunting task of copying the data from the Toughbook to a USB. After you successfully praised all known deities and sold your soul multiple time to various great old ones you are ready to look at your orthophotographs and try to decipher your hastily created map points, the local morphology and why you still haven’t booked a plane ticket to an uninhabited Greek island to become a shepherd. Spotting geomorphological features isn’t the hard part in itself. The hard part is to try to justify the existence of marine sediments on an 80m elevated feature based on the singular data point saying something like “sbb marine flat, n diff gr” or deciphering shortcuts closly resembling ancient Japanese symbols of the 8^th century, whoever wrote those should answer for his crimes. Other interesting “features” and “experiences” of geomorphological mapping are that you start to think you know what is in front of you. The more you look at the landscape the more you can appreciate where it all came from. Just like how Plate tectonics is a universal answer for everything geology related in the sea, glaciers have the same function up here in the north. Sadly when going by this logic for your map it appears to not solve the fundamental issue of not recognising anything and you are asked to get more detailed, in terms of glacial origin and processes. But not everything is as dark and grim as I make it ought to be, when you look at how far you progressed and how much you could differentiate the different features small amounts of pride and happiness form at the lower parts of your eye and are released in a small drop shaped liquid.  After you pressed the send button in you preferred email program you are relieved that you can rest and bathe in the glory of your accomplishment, then you hear it. A slow starting chant, the repetition of one word over and over again. Did someone lose their mind? Is it already that time of the semester where a student's mind experiences the equivalent pressure and stress like the deep sea creatures of the Mariana Trench. You listen closer. Nah this doesn’t sound like the mindless blabbering you have heard before. You listen again and can make out three letter G – I – S. You feel a shiver coming down your spine, the adrenaline is kicking in now, it is Fight or flight, every student for himself. The chant becomes louder and louder it is now at its maximum intensity. You decided to stand your ground and face the enemy head on, then you see it. A Van Gogh of mapping on your neighbours computer screen. How??? What has he given? You prayed to all the deities you know of. His answer. “GIS is love, GIS is life”.

 On to the last thing I would like to mention in this blog entry, I know this has already been an extensive one but I hope you will keep your visual and receptive organs open and banish most of it into the depths of the human cortex. Some of you might wonder what we humans do up here in the arctic to have fun. The activities range from chasing the elusive white whales which only ever appear when you are in a lecture or at the other end of town, over practising the lindyhop, exploring ice caves, observing mysterious lights at night time to the consumption of various ethanol complexes in combination with rhythmic or unrythmic movement, dependant on your ability to metabolise those compounds, in the northern most club in the world called Huset. For you the reader to visualise what I am talking about just think of a space like the SAMS café filled with the entirety of the Sunday morning (1am) crowd of the Lorne quite a spectacle to behold. Another thing which keeps us sane here is the intricate weaving of fabric with two sharp and elongated objects to create wearable accessories like hats, scarfs, mittens, socks and in my case I began with a scarf but currently I think it should be exhibited in a modern art gallery as a visualisation of the struggles of a single human to find his path in life. It looks rather intriguing.

Thank you for your attention span but I sadly need to get back classifying various slope deposits, sediment types and finding a cheap ticket towards an uninhabited flat island. 

I hope you enjoyed it.