This is salmiakki, a salty black licorice popular in Nordic countries.
When I hear the word salt, I generally think of table salt like this.
But in chemistry, salt has a more broad definition.
A salt is a neutral ionic compound that results from the neutralization reaction of an acid, and a base.
And if you are not a chemist, as I am not a chemist, that sounds a little overwhelming,
but all that it means is that you have a positively charged ion, or a cation,
coming together with a negatively charged ion, an anion,
and forming a neutrally charged compound.
So table salt is sodium chloride; it's a positively charged sodium ion,
coming together with a negatively charged chloride ion, to make sodium chloride,
so it's NaCl, sodium chloride.
But the salt in salmiakki isn't sodium chloride, it is ammonium chloride,
so that is a positively charged ammonium ion coming together with a negatively charged chloride ion.
So, I love black liquorice, and I love salty and sweet things,
but ammonium chloride is apparently an acquired taste.
Hmm.
You know, well, hmm.
It tastes mentholated, actually.
I think I chose the wrong one, I think that this one is, like, mostly menthol,
and not licorice and salt, okay, hold on, I picked up another one just in case.
It's very mild.
I thought.
You know, I mean, it's black licorice, and it's kind of got that salty sweet vibe going on.
And it's not bad, but, I think I'll stick with my lemon-filled ones.
So why am I eating salmiakki? Well because:
Science is International.
[Music playing]
My lab currently has members from all around the world.
We have scientists from Scotland, Canada, and the US, Iran, Israel, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and China.
On an average day sitting at my desk, I generally hear three to four different languages,
which is super cool.
Some of these international lab members have come to the US to stay,
and others are only here for a short period of time or a few years.
Now if I were to expand that list to include prior lab members, that list would also include Finland.
Our lab had a postdoc for the past two years from Finland,
who very sadly left us at the end of last year, and as she was in the process of wrapping up and leaving,
she asked me if I could come to Finland, and help her new lab set up cell culture that I do all the time.
And on the spot, before I had considered anything, I said yes, yes, absolutely 100 percent yes.
And so now, I am in Finland, I am now the international researcher.
So I am here for the next 6 weeks at the University of Helsinki,
and I am super excited about being 'a visiting scholar'.
And if you are here with me in Helsinki, and I'm going to try vlog a little bit about, you know,
what it's like to be that visiting scientist, and what it's like in Helsinki,
because I've never been here and I'm super excited.
Hyvää päivää, nimeni on Alex. Hauska tutustua.
My Finnish is real bad.
[Music playing]
So I've been in Helsinki for two weeks, so far, which has gone by super fast,
it's blown by, and I have three observations, as a scientist, a traveller, and a scientist traveller.
Also as a vlogger that I'm uncomfortable vlogging in public.
So first, as a scientist, I came here to do science, and we started right off the bat,
we started warming up some cells the second day that I was here,
and we got things running and experiments going and we finally had our first success.
So the whole reason why I came here to this lab in Helsinki
was to try and help them turn stem cells into heart cells,
and this is a thing that I do every single day in my lab, and I've done it for years,
and so they brought me here as some kind of expert, which feels crazy to me.
I'm no expert there are people who are way better at this than me,
but I was so worried that it wasn't going to work, that,
you know, that we were gonna have a bad batch of reagents,
or maybe the cell line wasn't going to work, because each line is a little different,
but officially, today we have our first beating heart cells in the dish,
and it worked, and now we are going to scale up and there's still some optimization to do
and some things to work out, but it's working, and I don't feel like a failure,
I was so worried it wasn't going to work and then I was going to come here for six weeks
and the lab was going to have spent so much time and money on me, getting me here, and on all the reagents
but it's working, and that is such a good feeling, that, yeah, I can do this thing I do everyday,
so, have a little bit of confidence.
Then, as a traveller. This city is beautiful.
My main obligation when I'm here is to do science,
that is why I'm in Helsinki is to be a scientist.
But I also feel like I have an obligation to myself as a human to also experience as much as I can in the city.
So I'm, you know, working full days in lab,
but then really trying to take my nights and the portions of the weekends when I'm not in lab
to also just explore and there's so much outdoors to explore here.
I've been outside so often.
If I walk out of my apartment and turn right, there's water.
If I walk out of my apartment and turn left, there's water.
There's water everywhere.
I spent the first weekend on an island exploring the old fortress of Suomenlinna.
And then I spent last weekend on a different island
wandering around and exploring and just everywhere is beautiful and gorgeous,
and I am really trying to take advantage of the nature and the outdoors,
and just being here and seeing the city, and trying to do as much as possible while I'm here.
And finally, as a science traveller.
So in that moment when the postdoc asked me to come over to Finland
and I was enthusiastically saying yes, I did also note the fact that I don't speak Finnish.
And, she assured me that everybody speaks English, at least in Helsinki.
And I kind of thought that she was hyperbolising a little bit and that most people would speak English,
but no, everybody speaks English.
I would say that about 95 percent of the time when I go into a store or a restaurant
and I try and order something, and I say 'yksi kahvi ja korvapuusti, kiitos',
the person responds with 'okay, a coffee and a cinnamon bun, thank you'.
And I totally understand why people are switching into English,
because they hear my terrible Finnish and it is faster in that interaction if they just switch over to English
and we just continue that way versus me just trying to figure out what they're saying.
But it's a little disappointing to me, because I tried to learn the basics of Finnish, you know,
I can say 'please', and 'thank you', and I can order my coffee and my cinnamon bun,
and I got a Finnish book and I was listening to Finnish podcasts and listening, exercises in Finnish,
but I'm not really learning that much here other than little words that I pick up here and there.
And I recognize this as a super privileged position,
because I couldn't be working in the lab the same way if all the lab business was conducted in Finnish.
I wouldn't be able to communicate,
I wouldn't be able to understand what's happening in lab meeting,
and so, I so appreciate that it's happening in English, and I'm also recognizing how different this is
to people who travel to the US for science
because if English isn't their first language, they're having to do science in a different language
which is kind of crazy and hard, and I have so much respect for that.
I don't know, it's really cool to again be in this place
where there are so many people from so many different countries,
and I feel super privileged that my first language is the one that everybody is
speaking around me,
because I give so much credit to everybody else here who is accommodating me
by switching into my language when they're talking to me.
But I appreciate it, and I recognize that it is not the experience that most people have.
But I'm going to keep trying my bad Finnish, here and there, where I can.
Moi moi.
How do I say 'go forth and do science' in Finnish?
Mennä eteenpäin ja tehdä tieteen.
Maybe that's 'go forth and do science'.
Also another huge, huge thank you to all of my patrons on patreon who are supporting
this craziness coming out of my brain.
I promise there are some more normal things coming at you soon.
But also maybe other cool Helsinki things.
I don't know, we'll see.
It'll be science, and me, and Finland, so, yeah.