I usually don’t dream alot in my sleep. Atleast not that I can remember. But since I started on this project I’ve started to dream alot more and remembering them. Atleast for a while. And I don’t like it. I don’t like having my sleep disrupted at all! Most recently I had a weird dream that we were taking off from Arlanda in a Lufthansa Jumbojet but not having enough power to get off the ground so the pilot ditched the airplane in a field. And I, after insulting a stewardess (!?), ran back to the terminal to make sure I got on the next flight because otherwise I wouldn’t make the deadline for the new computer installation I was going to!? I don’t know if that is my subcionscious dealing with all the problems I’ve had at work or what. I do know it’s definitely telling me I’m taking my job a bit too seriously. And I’d never insult a stewardess (or whatever they wanna be called)! If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t get my sleep interrupted every 30 minutes with “do you want something to drink”, I wouldn’t get my knee hit all the time by a very robust cart, I wouldn’t have to listen to the satefy tips (let’s face it – noone knows what they’d do in an airplane free-falling 10 000 meters into the ocean! And would it matter if I knew where they lifevest was!?)… But other than that, I like stewardess’!
Wanna hear something frightening though? In about two weeks time, I’m actually boarding a Lufthansa Jumbojet flying to South America. But we’re not taking off from Arlanda so I’m not worried. I think…
This is a quote from the tourist guide we got, written by women : “March is generally known as the woman’s month because the weather is said to be as moody as a woman’s mood swings (cold harsh winter/warm and pleasant spring)”. I’m not making it up! And speaking of women, the women here are really nice, above expectations! And it’s mostly the “good looking? Who, me? Nooo!” or “I may be hot but I have no need to show it off” attitudes which is still much better then the “I’m so hot, you can even see my ribs, that’s how thin I am!”.
Remember when I was talking about the old swedish tradition of honking your horn at the trucks with students celebrating their graduation? Well they seem to have a similar tradition here in eastern Europe – honking your horn at newly weds and their entourage! Seen (and heard) it in two eastern countries.
And I barely got to enjoy Sweden before it’s time to go away again – Bulgaria. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? I already know the hotel is gonna suck, but as long as the office, and the staff, doesn’t suck I think I’ll have a great time!
And this weekend (on thursday actually) Helena got married. If you don’t know who that is, check my update about this time last year and you’ll see. She’s the pro dancer with a boyfriend called TIMMY!!! Naturually I wasn’t invited, for the obvious reasons that a) we were never that close (which really is my loss!) and b)… well, I was barely in the country. I say barely ’cause I landed on thursday morning at 1 am and just stopping by and take the first plane to Gotland… nah. And c) I don’t do these kinds of things that well. I either go overboard and become a bit too friendly or I end up sitting in the corner feeling “I wish I’d meet someone that would make me look as happy as them”. And we don’t want that, now do we!? But I got to see the video anyway, looked like a blast and that Timmy seems to be a righteous dude so I wish both of them the greatest of luck in the future! (and in the back of my mind I’m singing “Another one bites the dust”.. but that’s a long and personal story…)
Finally back in Sweden! They had an interesting mishap at the airport. They parked the airplane at the wrong gate 🙂 And it was easier for “them” to change the gate-assignment then moving the actual aircraft. But man did that create problems for “people”. Ran around like confused ants when all they had to do was move 30 meters to the left. “A person is smart but people are dumb” indeed. But now I’m back. And working ofcourse. And tomorrow I’m going to my folks to “celebrate” midsummer’s eve. Problem is I don’t really celebrate it since it kinda marks the “if you think your allergies are bad now, just wait, we just got started!”-season. So not a good reason to celebrate. But what the hell, get to meet my family again 🙂
Today we went north of the town to small little place called Szantandre, about an hour north of the capital. VERY nice place! Nice people, nice atmosphere, nice things to buy, nice everything. After 5 hours there (two of which was spent drinking beer) we took a boat back to town and here I am, awaiting the start of the F1 race from Canada!!! I’m pretty impressed that I’ve always been able to see the F1 race, no matter where I’ve been. As a matter of fact, had I been in sweden I might not have been able to see it live!… and just as I was writing that sentense, Rai Uno went all blank here. All other channels ok, just Rai Uno. Isn’t that typical. But I guess they aren’t allowed to broadcast the F1 races internationally like this…
Today we took a tour of the city. Buda to the west, and Pest to the east. Pretty educational, lot’s of history and nice things to see. Well worth the two hours and the money it cost. Then we strolled around town, the girls did some shopping, I did some beer-ing. Then we found this nice little place by the Danube that we just sat down at and had some beers. That’s what life is all about 🙂 And then we went back to the hotel for the same old story with the bitchy bartender.
I don’t know if I’ve been out of the country too much lately or why, but today I enjoyed Stockholm and Sweden more than I have ever! Although I had to work a full 4 hours (meetings and reports to go through), the weather, the atmoshpere, everything was absolutely amazing today! Another thing that helped to make it great was that it was graduation day for alot of high schools here in sweden. And one old tradition is for the students to board trucks and any other big vehicle and drive around town honking the horn. And everyone else honks their horn in a “congratulations, kids!”-manner. It’s probably one of the few times I can honk my horn at 18 year old girls without feeling like a dirty old guy 🙂 Check my pics for… pics…
And I don’t know what happened to the updates I had written over the past week, I’ll try to find them…
Jetlag is a funny thing. I’m writing this at about 5.30 am. This place is 6 hours ahead of swedish time which I thought would make it hard to fall asleep early and hard waking up at 7 am. But it’s the complete opposite – I’m falling asleep at 10 pm and now I woke up 4:45 am and I can’t sleep. It’s not causing any problems or anything, it’s just weird. But considering I went from Guatemala (swedish time -8) to sweden to Singapore, that’s 14 hours adjustment – the “wrong” way! Meaning the one that makes you lose alot of hours, it’s supposedly be a lot better the other way since you gain 6 hours on the flight. And about that flight – I’m lifting off at about 11 pm next wednesday, and touching down at 5.30 am. And that’s WITH the 6 hours I just “gained”, so that’s a 12 1/2 hour flight. And then I should land in Stockholm at about 9 am. And what do I do then?… GO TO WORK! 🙂
Wanna here a new “this is life!”-comment? Cruising through downtown Stockholm on a warm sunny day, windows open and listening to “Brown Eyed Girl” while drinking a Cola. That was nice.
I think this is the first time in my life that I can take the blame for a failed relationship! This woman I just started dating finally decided it was over after keeping me in a state of limbo for 2 weeks. When we started dating, this travel-the-world thing at work was only some project I had signed up for , but it wasn’t anything certain and I didn’t have any specific details. When I finally did get it confirmed and the details, the first thing I did was talk to her about it. And she was pretty disappointed I hadn’t let her in on the loop at all. And she’s right – I hadn’t. And it hadn’t slipped my mind or anything, a colleague at work pointed out that “how does your new girlfriend feel about this”, I just never mentioned it because I didn’t really know what was going on either with the project or our relationship. But she didn’t appreciate the fact that I had hidden it from her, and the fact that I was barely gonna see her for the next 2 months wasn’t a good start to the relationship. So that’s over. Which is really sad ’cause this woman was someone special. First girlfriend to disprove the “women hate it when the guys watch sports on TV”-point in my “Bad things about girlfriend”-list.
Unfortunately she added a new one to the list when she couldn’t decide if it was on or off, took her 2 weeks and hours and hours on the phone to come to that conclusion. I don’t like not knowing, and I dislike it even more when there’s nothing I can do about it.
Shit! It’s happened again! Once again the Swedish judicial system has proven it is incompetent, paragraph-abiding, archaic and lost in the world of normal life! Get this – 6 guys goes out for a night in Tumba (little suburb to Stockholm). One of them meets a 35 year old mother of two. She has alot to drink, they dance a little and he offers her a ride home. And there she has consensual sex with all six of them. And the court bought that story. It couldn’t have been rape, or even sexual assault, beause the woman was a) not defenseless (i.e she wasn’t physically bound in any way. So what if she had an alchohol level of 2.5!) b) by her own admission she was a flirty kind of person (… so?) c) Dressed very sexy (!!) and d) she had willingly accepted the ride home and got into the car herself. I mean, what tha fuck is wrong with that picture!? I didn’t know these kinds of things still happened, that the court would use stuff like “she was asking for it”! I don’t know who I’m most upset with, the 6 assholes that raped her or the 5 assholes that acquitted them! Damn this kind of thing ticks me off!
This is so weird! I woke up this morning. And I felt good. Totally replenished, ready for another hard days work. I never do that! I always wake up and the first thought is “oh no, not again!” followed by a “I wanna sleep just a liiiitle bit longer”. But this morning I woke up 5 minutes before my alarm went off and just popped out of bed and did my morning routine and now here I am at work feeling all good and shit. And I blame drugs! Because yesterday it was time to take some vaccination shots in preparation for going to South America and Asia, and that’s the only reason I can think of why I’m feeling this way. Or perhaps it’s a combo of that, the fact that it’s Friday, it’s payday and the sun is shining.
Another weird thing… you know I have an over-appreciation for beauty, especially when it comes to women, right? But one feature that I’ve never paid too much consideration to is lips! That is until I saw these lips. Unfortunately there is more to that picture than you may think. But I’ll let you enjoy the picture for a few days…
At this point on my life I found out I had been selected to be one of 4 hired PC technicians for a government project to update the computer systems of our embassies. It was a big deal for our company and I almost passed since I’m the guy that doesn’t wanna disturb my routines more than I have to. But after some convincing from my friends and family I got to go around the world for 14 months. Unfortunately it was classified so I couldn’t talk about it anywhere or with anyone since I had such high access in their network so I couldn’t post about it while I was travelling.
But afterwards, when my security clearence was revoked and passwords changed, I posted everything.
Another sign that I’m pretty immature for my age. Today we were talking about pension, insurance and those kinds of “adult” things and I couldn’t even work up the energy to pay attention! I know I should care about it. I should care about my retirement plan before it’s too late. But from where I’m sitting it’ll take a miracle for me to make it to 65! And if I do, I’d like to think money’s not gonna be as important as it is right now. Hopefully, in 40 years we’ve reversed that process, atleast a little. And being a person who’s never spent more than two consecutive days in a hospital, I’m not really bothered about health insurance. And life insurance to take care of my spouse or kids if I die? Yeah, right…
As I said, I should care about all these things. The same way people who smoke know it’s bad for them but they do it anyway. Or people driving too fast even when they’ve got plenty of time… wait, that’s me again…
My mother wanted me to post a “I am not homophobic, I am a very tolerant person!” defense speech in response to my Thursday-entry. And that is so wrong! Actually, half the point I was trying to make was how hard it is to disprove the theory you may be gay – without sounding like a homophobe! If you in your reply sound the least bit condescending towards the gay community you’ll end up being labelled a homophobe.
So just to clarify (again) – I’m not gay, I’m not homophobic and neither is my mother. She’s a very tolerant person. Except when it comes to people talking on the cell phone in restaurants. And her children’s desire not to be embarrassed in public. And people smoking in public places. And people who can’t be quiet at the movies. And the buss company. And intolerant people. And politicians with a twisted sense of reality…
As a matter of fact, I only know one really homophobic person. And he knows who he is. Strangely enough he doesn’t mind two girls going at it. Then again, what guy does…
Click here. Damn that’s funny!
Btw, I think I’m gonna set up another page on this site with “My Pictures” kinda thing. One contribution to that archive will be this picture taken at last year’s Lucia (Dec. 13th). Is it just me, or do I have a small (but loud) mouth!?
So how many people, beside my sister, misinterpreted the comment “I haven’t been in a man-woman relationship for over a year” to suggest I was gay?! Usually I wouldn’t get upset over that, I mean there is room for interpretation there. But I did because 1) she knows me and what I’m like around women better than anyone else (girlfriends excluded) and 2) it’s not the first time people have thought that! Even my mother, even my sister’s-husband’s mother (which makes her what to me?) suggested that, and some friends have had to ask to clarify it. I feel a little bit like Chandler – why would people think that? I wouldn’t be upset being called gay if I were gay, I wouldn’t be upset being called “short-sighted, close minded asshole!” if I was. But I’m neither! And the usual “only a gay man would deny that!” and “I think you’re overcompensating with your obession about chicks!” amateur psychology doesn’t help! So, just to set the record straight (that was quite funny!) – I’m not gay (not to my knowledge anyway!), I love women and water is wet!
As usual, no update yesterday so nobody will confuse my life with an April fools… which it kinda is sometimes… Anyway, what’s on my mind? Commercials! Since I have a british mother, I’ve spent some time over there early in my life and one thing that really seperated the english TV from swedish is commercials!
We haven’t had TV commercials in sweden for that long, maybe about 15 years now. And I think it took them this long to learn how to do it nicely, in a funny way, so funny you’d want more and start visiting their website to learn what’s new… I’m ofcourse talking about Vasakronan who started a fake reality-show called “The Office”! “No space, no coffe, slow Internet connection, no smoke-section”, LOVING IT! A guy even voted out his own wife 🙂 They have a website here, Kontoret.nu. Hilarious! Maybe there is hope! But I don’t know, all these bad detergent-soap-toathpaste commercials have left alot to make up for!
I’ve got a new definition of contrast for you : A dolphin, looking happy and as cute as only dolphins can, brings a smile to my face. Right before it swims back into the Gulf in search of mines… I like contrasts. I’m the kind of guy that’ll order peperoni and pineapple on a pizza! Most of my clothes are black and white. And it’s one of the reasons I loved the movie Leon!