So that wasn’t just a case of foodpoison I guess! This was the worst week, healthwise, of my life! I know guys tend to complain alot when their ill, I don’t. I just say “I’ll live, it’ll pass” and it always does. In 20 years I’ve never been admitted to a hospital (I think anyway). I had a trip to Africa planned right after I got back from Scotland. That’s really the best way to get away – Africa! Only place I’ve been able to go without a computer for 7 days without giving it a second though. Anyway, I still felt bad on sunday evening so I went to our local hospital in Huddinge. They did some tests and weight me in at 113 kg. That’s all the beer I drank in Scotland. Anyway, they thought I was fine so off I went. Before I even landed in Kinshasa (Congo) I felt worse and a nice nights sleep at the hotel didn’t help and the night between tuesday and wednesday was so bad I was really starting to wonder if I’d ever make it back home. Seriously! I mean being in Africa feeling worse than you can ever remember feeling before, that’s scary thing. And 40 degree fever will do things to your head. So I had to go to a hospital. And going to hospital in Congo is nothing you really joke about, is it? They took some blood and I passed out. Not because I can’t stand blood (I am a blood donor remember!), but because of my temporarily terrible blood preassure. Then they weighed me in at… 107 kg! 5 kgs in 4 days. OUCH! After the testing the doctor quickly stated I must have one bad infection somewhere (which turned out to be in my throat) and gave me a ton of pills (all in all I eat 13 pills per day now!) and sent me on my way.
And now it’s thursday and I’m starting to get back to normal. I’ve started eating again anyway. Funny how you can’t eat when you’re sick which makes you weaker and less able to fight off an infection which kinda makes you wanna eat even less and it just spirals down. And I look back at these past three days as a nightmare ’cause it was really really bad there for a while. Totally delerious and… well, sick. And this wasn’t really what I had in mind with my “let’s get away” thing, now I want nothing else then to go back home to my warm bed and mother’s home cooking!
Guess it’s true.. there’s no place like home.. or we could say “home is where the heart is” but enough clichés, I got 5 kilos to gain!
And I’m just back from that trip to Scotland to honor my sisters 30th birthday!
We began on wednesday outside the airport when Marina (AC’s best friend) & Christer (Marina’s husband) jumped her and scared her quite a bit. Atleast I think so, I was inside to surprise her when she got that far. And man was she surprised! And now she realised that we were actually gonna follow them on their trip to Glasgow. So off we went (btw, Ryan Air has the worst leg space ever!). And at the hotel – next surprise! An old neighbor of theirs had driven from Finland to paaaaartei.
And then on thursday when she was off shopping – there’s Paul’s (AC’s husband) sisters! And a couple of hours later… here’s AMY! I’m not sure if she was overwhelmed yet but we took it easy and went out clubbing. And on friday took it pretty easy, shopping and stuff and at 4 the party started again! By now we had gotten Paul’s parents, uncle with wife, our three cousines, aunt and just about anyone else who might know us and want a good time. And me and Paul saw everything we had made and it was good! Although I hadn’t met some of these people at all, some just once, others infrequently at family occasions, it didn’t matter, we all had a blast and although AC’s 30th was the reason we were all there, it turned out to be a real family event!
But on saturday, all our ammunition was spent so we just took it easy. And I guess I shouldn’t have done that because that’s when I got some weird food poisoning or something, felt like crap all the way back to stockholm, BUT SO WHAT, the weekend was great! Ok, I guess I could have gone a little bit easier on my body, not drinking beer from 11 am to 2 am without any breakfast, and perhaps I shouldn’t have had 5 red bulls with double vodka in one night, BUT SO WHAT, it was great!
Credit for the weekend goes to Paul for outstanding arrangement (with a little help from me), Lauder’s for letting us party in their Pub, Alec for just being Alec and everyone who showed up for showing up! Definitely once in a lifetime thing and she’s bound to remeber it for a long long time!
Now the big question is how to pull off Operation 3-0 CHARLIE in 19 months! Might not be so easy to surprise the surpriser 🙂
I saw “Rock the Vote” on CNN the other day. As the name suggest, it was an attempt to be political and hip at the same time. A debate program with the 2004 US presidential candidates taking on the youth of America. One thing that surprised me was how they all agreed on how to solve the current problems in Iraq. If it’s a workable solution or not, I have no idea, but everyone agreed that the US should let the UN take charge in there. Everyone agreed that was the best way to handle it. The only one who still thinks it’s the best idea for US & UK to stay on top of it is… well, Bush…
Have we had enough Bush-bashing this week? Sorry, it’s just that when watching CNN so much it gets pretty easy.
UNREAL! “They” did it again! Read my update on April 26th… are you done? Well, the saga continued when it was appealed to our second highest legal institution, “Svea Hovrätt”. And guess what? “She didn’t appear too drunk or drugged out of her mind and the guys thought she wanted to have sex – with all four of them”. Unbelievable! But it makes what I said yesterday a little clearer. The weird thing is that the 5 that acquitted them were all women! Although 2 of them voted against the verdict, the majority wins. I’m ashamed to be swedish now.
Is the american jury system better with “normal people” deciding guilty or not? Although I’ve never experienced it myself (and hope I don’t!) I wouldn’t think so based on all the TV shows and movies I’ve seen on the subject. ‘Cause in a country that executes people that are found to be guilty of murder in the first, I’d REALLY want the people deciding to be competent in the legal field, not Jeo-blow!
About yesterday’s entry, you might be asking “how tha hell did that Patriot Act go through congress!?”. Sarcastic answer to that would be “it’s unpatriotic to stop an act ordering people to be patriotic”. And I’m not sure that’s far from the truth. After 9/11, what politician in the USA would dare to go against an Act that was designed to prevent it from happening again? Who would dare to oppose the president at a time like that? And doesn’t that point to a huge flaw in democratic society? That a politician have to do something he or she feels is wrong, only to please the voters? To avoid comitting political suicide? It’s happened sometime in Sweden too that popular opinion has forced some bad choices. Any solution? Appointing a group of people who weren’t publically elected? The other side of the coin would be the Swedish court system. The judges only go by the letter of the law disregarding public opinion and sometime common sense. Like that “she didn’t look 14 and dressed older, so it wasn’t ‘sexual abuse of a minor'”-trial a few years back.
I usually don’t complain if I don’t have a counter solution, but this time I don’t. ‘Cause I prefer living in a democracy that makes some mistakes than in say China.
I saw an interesting mini-documentary about the so called “Patriot Act” that was passed after 9/11. It basically gives alot of agencies in the states alot of power to do alot of things to their citizens and even more to people “just visiting”. People who, from the “governments” point of view, is un-patriotical (remember that old “you’re either with us or against us”-speech?) will be put on “look out” lists that makes it diffcult for them to for example take an airplane. And there’s no way of appealing that either, so it’s not an official agency handling stuff like that. And now there’s a Number II coming that will “encourage” civilians to report un-patriotical behavior to the authorities. Meaning neighbor will spy on neighbor.
This is pretty scary if you’ve seen Babylon 5! Over the course of the first 3 1/2 years of that show it showed the Earth government doing just this! Setting up special agencies to deal with patriotism, setting up a Homeguard and “encouraging” people to report un-patriotical behavior and so on. Pretty scary how 7 year old storytelling seems to come true. “Land of the free” my ass… And now I guess I can forget about flying to the states anytime soon if “they” were to see this place with all the bush bashing. Because it’s not only limited to Americans! Right after 9/11 “they” set up a list of people & organizations the felt were supporting terrorist activites. And somewhere in that list was a tiny little organization in Sweden that helped imigrants and also helped them to send money back to their families in the middle east. But because they were on that list they weren”t allowed to do anything at all. And same problem with appealing… “to whom?”
Well today I did something I’d never thought I’d do – I went out to join the Hash House Harriers for a run in the african jungle. Yeah, you heard me, I was actually running in the african jungle! Seriously, who would’ve thought it 1 year ago that I would be running…
Sorry. Nothing to report. Not mot much is happening over here. Not that I can talk about anyway 🙁
And like a month ago when Anna Lindh died, I’m not even in the country to attend a memorial or anything. Although I’m terrible at those things, I’d still like the option of attending.
So Bush have done it again. Come up with a great quote that might have sounded good in… well, somewhere like in an empty head – “no civilized democratic country would develop weapons of mass destruction”. Says the man in charge of the only country to ever have used Da Bomb. For military purposes anyway.
Two things about my personality that has recently come under fire – 1) My lack of “taking charge” and actually do something about that thing I’ve wanted to fix for a while. And 2) I’m a terrible interior decorator (so much for me being gay!… ok, that one was prejudicial, but I’m trusting you see the humor in it!). As most of my friends will tell you I usually need a good kick in the ass to to do something. Doesn’t matter if it’s deciding which restaurant to eat at or to change the wall my bed faces (hey, that’s one underestimated issue to think about!). And if there was a swedish version of the Fab 5 they’d have their first mission right here! But since we don’t my friends took it upon themselfes to just swing by here on a calm saturday and literally drag me to Mio and buy some new shit for my place. And I’m grateful they did because I probably would never have gotten out of the apartment today had they not shown up. Not to mention my apartment looks a liiiiiitle bit better now. And when it comes to my living room, the old styling saying of “a quick look and get rid of the first thing that you notice” wouldn’t work since the first thing I notice is my TV and my speakers since their kinda too big to NOT notice. So I guess that size does matter… and we’re back to being gay again…
Can you tell I’ve been up way way too long with far too little sleep by the way I’m babbling now?… thought so!
Well that “haven’t been in a car accedient” luck that I was living all year was bound to come to an end. Once again it was in a round about, I was in it and a guy didn’t see me (?) and just smashed into me. Car is f*cked up, but guess what? I’m TOTALLY ok with it! “Why?” Because I’m a down to earth guy and I knew it was only a matter of time until I was gonna collide with someone. I’ve just been waiting for it to happen, trying to avoid it. And as I said, this time it wasn’t my fault, which takes care of my insurance problem. And what’s even better – noone got hurt! Since it was in the middle of a round about there were no high speeds to talk about, just pure inertia based on weight so there wasn’t any real danger. So I’m totally ok. After all, it was a friday, I’ve just gotten the Dead Zone DVD box and UFO – Aftermath so I’m still happy.
Speaking of Dead Zone, it now dominates my “hottest comments” of all time:
1) “Let’s make a hockey team!” and 2) “Resistance is futile.”
Ok, so you probably have to see the episodes in question (“1” is from the pilot and “2” is from “Date with Dana”) to get the context. But trust me, they were hot! Speaking of hot – how about this!
So who would have thought that Sweden would ever beat Brazil in football? I mean in real life football, not any cyberversion? I never thought that’d happend. But yesterday “we” did! And I’m proud to be a swede when they did it. Hockey WC gold in all honor, but beating Brazil in a quarter final felt a hell of a lot better. And the way they did it… way to go girls!! (or do they prefer “women”?) Now let’s see if they’ll be greeted in the same way when they come back as the guys in 1994 were. Even though Sweden is a model of equality between the sexes (we even changed our constitution so that a woman can and will inherit the crown!), I doubt it. Unless ofcourse they win the entire thing. Which they will!
Best quote of the year – “Leaks of classified information are bad things”. Wow, what rocket scientist said that?… noone, it was the President of the US of A… that Bush guy continues to surprise me, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I don’t consider myself a political person, but when it comes to him I just can’t lay off it…
Sad day today. It may be friday, it may be day after pay day and I might have a great weekend ahead of me. But… Robert Palmer died the other day of a heart attack. At 54. And both “Addicted to love” and “Simply Irresistable” were some of my favorite tracks. So sad.
But on a happier note : The US vs France war of words continues.
I like shopping over the web. It’s much more relaxed, you can do your research and there are fewer chances of spontaneous unecessary purchases. But then there are the very bad things, like when I decided I needed a DVD recorder. Costs about $550. Then I also needed a new scart cable for it and that was only $30. And today I got the e-mail saying it would be delivered in mid-november!? Only because they didn’t have that freaking cable in stock the system holds the entire order. Actually had to call their customer service to fix that. I guess programming that little additional intelligence was too much for them…
Today was the memorial service for our Anna Lindh. Beautiful event, although I think they could have been a little more low key than shutting down half the inner city. And I had just made it back to Arlanda and got in my car and turned on the radio to haer the live broadcast. I gotta give it up to Eva Dahlgren, who’s music I’ve never been a huge fan of, but to be able to stand there and sing those songs without breaking out in tears, which I did and I wasn’t even there!, absolutely fabulous. (And if someone could get Jewel for my funeral, that’d be great…)
So no to the Euro, huh? Damn, was kinda hoping that somehow all the polls would be wrong and the rest of the swedes would actually say yes to the Euro. I’m a trekker and hence for all attempts of globalization and in the wonderful world of Star Trek money isn’t an issue. Not to humans anyway. So discarding one global currency would be a lot easier than trying to get every country to discard their currency. Byt anyway, to snap us back to today, what will this mean for us swedes? Well, it can’t make things better, right? No anti-Euro person ever said having the SEK would make things better, just not worse like they thought Euro might be. Me, I’m a gambling man so I’d rather take the chance of getting things better than stay the same.
And oh yeah, we get to keep control of our economy here in Stockholm instead of down in EU HQ Brussels. And here I thought one of the lessons of 2001 was that the financial world is intertwined and what happens in the States will affect us here in Sweden. And everytime there’s a price increase for gas here in Sweden they blame it on the dollar, but yeah, I’m glad we get to have control of our finances here in Stockholm. And noone will dismantle our great social security net that the anti-Euro people were talking about. And here I thought our social security net was more a state of mind, more bread into the Swedish consciousness than it was bound to our currency. Thanx for destroying that illusions on a “might”/”if”/”perhaps”.
Soon shopping at Arlanda airport will be like shopping in Copenhagen airport – you will be able to shop with both the local currency and the Euro only to confuse the customers left and right.
But what do I know, I’m just a good little worker ant.
Today I did something I knew I had to do but didn’t think I’d get the chance – visit a concentration camp! “Schindler’s List” is one of my favorite movies and “Surviving Auschwitz” my favorite book so I felt I had to see one for myself. And just outside Gdansk is Sztutowo with the “Stutthof” camp. Very emotional just being there! Most of the place had been tored down but some of it was still there, a few barracks and ofcourse the gas chamer and the cremation building. And I have to disagree with whoever said the holocause was one of mankinds biggest mistakes because to me, mistakes are acidental and not pre-planned. And places like this was the very opposite of that, very cold calculated brutality. Definitely mankinds darkest hour though.
Not only is it the 2nd anniversary of what happened in NYC & Washington, now September 11th will be a day of mourning here in sweden as well. One of the few politicians I’ve had the most respect and admiration for passed away after being stabbed yesterday. And she might not have been the best politician around since she was so… good, decent, well mannored and alot of things politicians shouldn’t be. And she would have made an awesome prime minister one day already having worked up the respect of international politicans. But because she decided to do what alot of other people take for granted – just going out shopping – we’ll never know.
Anna Lindh – here’s hoping you’ll atleast get to rule heaven.