So the guys planning the public transportations aren’t the only ones who can’t really see a problem coming a mile away! Yesterday I had voulenteered for some taxi duty when my parents were flying to Scotland and later when …. cousin-in-law? (my sister’s husband’s cousin) came to town. And going there and home for the first time was quite adventurous because they hadn’t gotten out the trucks to put sand or salt on the roads yet! One truck had tipped over just a minute before we got there, so when we were getting out of the car to go and help the road was slippery as hell! But later in the night when I was picking up the cousin it was all clear. Were the people who are suppose to decide when to salt & sand on skiing vacation or what happened there!?
They are doing it again! The Bush-led government has taken it open themselves to decide that every plane passing through the states has to have an american armed security agent on board. With September 11th fresh in mind it might sound like a reasonable idea. But common, what if every country who’s had about 2.000 of their citizens killed by terrorist attacks insisted on this? Imagine a British Airways plane going from Tel Aviv passing through Heathrow going to New York. That’d be three security agencies wanting to have people on that flight! Another case of them enforcing their laws on other countries which kinda was the whole background why September 11th happened in the first place. I guess they didn’t get the message. And let’s be practical here – what kinda job would that be, sitting on airplanes all the time going from a to b not being allowed to sleep, constantly being vigilant!? Not even diplocatic couriers have it that bad.
The other day I heard something I had no idea about. Something that at first is a pretty sweet thought, but later just transformed into evil things. Every year the Swedish postal service receives thousands of letters addressed to Santa Claus. They just stack ’em and read some of them for fun. And some of them are sweet – kids telling Santa what they want for Christmas, other just informing Santa that she has moved and here’s her new address and some asks for forgiveness for that little evil thing they did and still wants to get presents. Pretty sweet, huh? But look at it from the other side – there are millions of parents out there, lying to their children every year. Going to extreme lengths to uphold the illusion of a jolly fat guy dressed in red who knows if you’ve been naughty or nice. And there are obviously thousands of them who’s done such a good job that their kids are sending him mail! To quote the Matrix – “It’s just another method of control”. To try to keep kids nice, especially during the Christmas… But if you wanna laught it off, go here.
So 2 days before Christmas and it starts snowing. Who’d thought?! Not the people planning the public transportation system in Stockholm – every year when the snow comes they are caught with their pants down and it takes you 30 minutes longer to get to work. You would think they could plan a little better, and buy better equipment since the snow and cold comes every god damn year, it’s not a fluke, it happens every year! Why tha hell can’t they ever make it work!? Today it was so bad that I actually set my timer 30 minutes earlier because I knew it was gonna be hell getting into work. And I was right. You’d think that if I can forsee the problem, so should they. They are even getting paid for it! “If they ever have kids… I hope their dog dies!” (quote from “Ford Fairlane” that has finally been released on DVD!)
Good news – my apetite is back. Bad news – … my apetite is REALLY back. Now I even eat past the point where the stomach says stop. Fortunately I lost a few pounds in the past week I guess I can take it….
Do you know I’m a sucker for traditions? No, neither did I! But in the past week I found myself motivating not going to the new “Lord of the Rings”-premiere because it’s my tradition to see it on 1st of January. And then when I had to say no to hanging with buddies with the motivation it’s my tradition to do last minute shopping on saturday before Christmas, that’s when it kinda hit me – I really am a sucker for tradition!
Am I the only one who doesn’t get the point of having a camera in your telephone? What’s the point? I’d get it if it was a good 4 mega pixel camera that would replace a normal one, but it’s not! They are all sucky, bad quality and way too easy to scratch! I’m a gadget freak but it just doesn’t make any sense to combine a phone and camera?
Today I was reminded how relaxing it can be to commute to work using public transportation. Just sitting on the train, knowing there’s nothing you can do about anything basically, and just let the mind wander to wherever it goes. I used to be so good at it I had to set my cell phone to remind me when it was time to get back to reality and get off the train. I miss that, can’t do it in a car for obvious reasons.
Can you get nauseuos due to bad music? Perhaps it’s my current medical condition, but again I accidentally flipped through channels and was exposed to something that should be labelled “psychological warfare”… C21’s version of “One Night in Bangkok”. It’s … so awful, it may be the worst cover of a classic – ever! They should be banned from making any more music! Is nothing sacred!? Sir Tim, Benny & Bjorn are kicking in their graves and the dudes aren’t even dead yet! What an awful start to the weekend!
You know, this year have been pretty good to me. Most things have gone better than I hoped, work-wise I’m having a blast and financially everything is ok. Which makes me wonder why things had to end so badly (although technically it’s not over yet). And the funny thing is I can pinpoint the exact second my luck turned. We had a small little party at a casino in Stockholm and me and Palle (an old friend from work) stood in front of the roulette table and he put down 500 on black and I countered with 500 on red. And guess what happend?… Green. What are the odds of that!? (1 in 37!) After that things have gone downhill. But as I said, it ain’t over yet. Still got a little over two weeks of this year to go and I’m going back to work tomorrow!
And now I’m disappointed. REALLY disappointed! I recently got the new Moby “18” DVD and I wasn’t in any big hurry to go through everything since I’d seen most of it. And today I saw the last part – the Glastonbury performance. As you may remember from my July 11th update, one of my favorite parts was when he apoligized for “having such a f*cking idiot as our president”. I liked that. But do you think that part was on the DVD? Nope, they’ve edited that out! DISAPPOINTED!
Salmonella, huh? That’s what the latest tests show – I’ve got a bacteria party in my intestents. Pretty gross, huh? It sure explains my lack of apetite lately, do you know how depressing it is loving food and not being hungry – ever!? And add to that the fact that the sun goes down at 3, and the holidays are closing in and I’m still single – even more depressing. But I was assured by the good doctor that this little depressing attitude was related to the illness so no worries there. Still on sick leave though…
As you may have picked up I’m more of a VH1 person than MTV. Don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or the modern music today sucks or what, but I prefer VH1. And they have their Top 10 lists, and sometimes even Top 100 lists. Usually I disagree on a few of the choices in those lists but never anything major. Except yesterday. As I was flipping through stations I came across “Top 100 Men”, which wasn’t a gay show or anything, a list of the top 100 male popstars. And when it came down to single digits it became pretty interesting. They had already listed Freddie Mercury, Elvis, John Lennon and Michael Jackson and the #1 spot was yet to come. So over the commercial I was hard at work trying to figure out who tha hell could beat them? Couldn’t figure it out. And when it was announced I… I actually got pissed off. It didn’t make any sense what so ever. Robbie f*cking Williams?! What tha hell?! Is it time for me to start watching VH1 Classic now or what!? I find that totally unacceptable!
Do you know I watch an average of 5 movies per week? And that’s a slow week with few DVD releases and 40 hour work-week. So guess how many movies I see now that I’m just sitting at home all day 🙂 So with a couple of movie channels I see alot of different movies, some I’ve already seen, some I missed when they were in theaters and some I never heard of. And those I’ve never heard of are usually crap. But every once in a great while a movie I’ve never heard of pops up and just floors me. And this great while it was “Tape”. Three people in a motel room and it’s all dialogue and all good! Don’t think I’ve ever liked Uma Thurman as much as I did in that movie. I highly recoment it!
I tried going back to work yesterday. I really tried to work but I simply didn’t have enough energy and even worst – motivation. What kinda illness effects you in this weird way, that you just feel apathetic, lack of interest? People keep saying “over worked” but I don’t feel over worked or stressed out. It’s weird. But for the first time (and I can always wish it’s my last time!) I’m on… sick leave. Only for a week until next examination at the hospital. So what do you do when you’re sitting at home not feeling like doing nothing at all?… Nothing I guess….
So after my little trip to Congo with my health problems, it sure was nice to get back to Sweden! Already at the airport it felt good. Picked up my car from the parking lot and started driving the long drive home… when it totally quit on me. Something wrong with the fuel injector, nothing to do but call a tow truck! Set me back some $300, and then we’ll see what the repair will be. My car has really been visiting the shop alot! Fortunately I got a pretty good salary last week so my economy will probably hold, but it wasn’t the way I was suppose to spend it! Oh well, going home to my parents for a typical swedish thing – advents fika 🙂
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 🙂
Operation 3-0 BRAVO : Haven’t been able to write anything here since I’ve faked being out of the country so my sister AC will get the biggest surprise when we’re going to Scotland! Remember in January 2001 AC and me went over for Operation 3-0 ALPHA which was to surprise my other sister. This time it’s our turn. And it’s set to be a helluva party! But she’s on the bus now and I’m off to start collecting the surprise party 🙂