Did you know I studied spanish for 2 years in high school? Well I did, I chose it because it wasn’t as complicated as French when it comes to pronounciation, and the grammar wasn’t as complicated as german. I was suckered on both, spanish even has a twist on verbs that occur regularly! Anyway, I got like a D becuase I was so charming (lord knows what I would have gotten otherwise) and I never thought I’d have to use it. Well, here I am in sunny Guatemala with 100’s of restaurants, 99% of which only have menus in spanish and spanish speaking waiters. And it took me a couple of days but now I can deal with that too!!
We went on a guided tour of the old guatemalian city of Antigua today. It used to be the capitol of Guatemala until the big quake of 1773 (I think?) when some of it was destroyed and the rest damaged. Because the spaniards didn’t have that much consideration or experience building things to stand for an earthquake. Fortunately I had my digital camera with me so you can expect alot of photos as soon as I can upload the pictures.
When in a strange country – try the local beer! Took me about 3 hours, but it’s “Gallo” (pronounced “gayo”), tastes like… well, beer. Not unique in any way, I prefered Kenya’s “Tusker”.
One little interesting thing about this place is their traffic system. The capital is devided into Zonas, and the streets are a grid, like Miami’s, with horizontal “Calles” and vertical “Avenidas”. And most streets are one way, the first one in one direction, the next street in the other. And nobody respects pedistrians and there are hardly any traffic lights, everbody just honks when they approach an intersection. And funny enough – it actually works 🙂 And I just got asked if I wanted to do a special job in July in South America… poor me…
I had an update ready to post but I simply didn’t have enough time before I left for South America. And we just got the communication up with Stockholm so I thought I’d post a little “Greetings from South America” thing here!
The weather down here is just perfect for me, not too hot and humid enough for my skin to love it. And the food is excellent. Everything is pretty nice, although we haven’t had time to go out much for some tourist stuff, but hopefully we’ll go to Antigua or something this weekend.
My departure to South America seems imminent. I’ve got the flight tickets in my hand, valid passport and my dollar$. And I should be very excited, right? Hm… I didn’t even wanna do this thing because I saw all the practical problems and the risks. And even before I’ve boarded the plane there are big financial problems to solve, as well as a slight clothing-problem. I don’t have a suit that I can wear with a serious face, and they pretty much ordered us to bring one “just in case”.
So, as usual, just when I’m about to get my economy together something like this pops up. And today we had a good talk about security and some “Do-s and Don’t-s” “just in case you have a gun pointed at your head”. That was really exciting. NOT!
But I’m certain I can see past all these problems and turn it into something amazing!
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.
You know I don’t take alot of things in life seriously, right? As a matter of fact, there are very very few things in life that I can’t joke or laugh about. I’m not sure if that’s a good trait or not. But I saw the inverted versions on the TV the other day. People that can’t take a joke. People that enforce the political correctivness-rules. It was another E! “True Hollywood Story”, this time about the Dice-man, Andrew Clay. You know, “Ford Fairlane”, “Dice-man Cometh”, “No Apologies” etc, one of the most hilarious people on the planet, one of the few comic acts than can sell out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row. His jokes are … well, vulgar, extreme and coarse. But he does it in a hilarious way. How many people can get away with a comment like “Sorry I made you clean the bathroom, but who did all the work in bed?”. And then there are the people who can’t take jokes like that, who think it’s immoral. One woman even, quite seriously, said that you can’t listen to his act and NOT be influenced. Riiiiight.
Just when I think I can’t dislike J-Lo more than I do, I flip on MTV and … well, I’m shocked! It was her latest video, “I’m glad”…. have you seen it? I’ve never, ever seen any worse cover or rip-off of something I like as much as this! I happen to like “Flashdance”, ALOT! I’d put it right up there of the “10 best movies ever made”! Even after a little bit of the magic disappeared when you realised Jennifer Beals wasn’t dancing, still loved it! But this is far worse than Nikki French’s attempt at a dance-version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (a song I’d put right up there of the “3 best songs ever made”).
Got another lecture in tolerance and being open minded (I’m pretty good at both). Saw the “E! True Story” of Ginger Lynn. Most of you will say “who?” because most of the people I know either don’t watch porn or deny that they watch pornos, but now we’re talking early & mid 80’s. And if I wasn’t a huge computer game freak (she was in Wing Commander 3) and if I didn’t have this huge space in my head that I fill with useless info I wouldn’t know who she was either. But seing this was 10 times more interesting than seing any “E! True Story” with Julia Roberts or someone booring or plain like that. And just about anything featuring Ron Jeremy is hilarious by definition!
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.
This has to be the best music-related story I’ve heard all year! Who said computer freaks lack a sense of humor!? I thought those suits and marketing execs would have learned not to go around asking for trouble with hackers?! I wonder if they are now considering the actual costs of fixing that website compared to the not so measurable cost of MP3 spreading. Was it worth it?
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!