Another thing I’m getting quite tired of are the constant updates about how the swedish hockeyplayers are doing in the NHL league! I like hockey, it’s one of the very few sports that I actually follow. And we have our “elite series” here in sweden, and if some player has a great season he’s bought and transferred to NHL. You may call that a sell-out or whatever, I really couldn’t care less about that. But what I do care about is when the first thing they do in the mornings sports news is reporting how many points each swedish players in the NHL league scored (if any). I really couldn’t care less about how many assists Forsberg got, or if Markus Näslund is the top scorer in NHL! Either I am not patriotical (that is actually a word!) enough, or perhaps I just don’t see the point of it? I think the top news today, especially in hockey, should have been which teams managed to advance to the playoffs in the swedish elite series, but that’s just me.
Payday here in sweden again. And that’s usually something to look forward to. Because for one day, or maybe even a week, you feel almost rich. Then all bills are paid and you’re snapped back into reality again.
But this payday is one I have been dreading. February 25th… a day that will live in infamy for me and my friends. Because it’s exactly a year now since my best friend passed away. It’s a year and two days since I was egoistical enough to go to a dinner at Fridays when my friend really needed me at home. It’s a year ago… and I have the same feelings I had 6 months ago – first a sense of “is that all” followed by a “it feels like yesterday”. ‘Cause it does, I can still remember those weeks as if it were yesterday. And this afternoon we’re suppose to have a meeting back at work, but I really can’t work up the effort to go there, I feel like handling it the pathetic way – go to the nearest bar and have a couple of beers.
Remember back in october last year when I mentioned my two favorite tracks at the moment, one of which was Norah Jones? Well I guess I must have atleast some good taste because she got 5 Grammy’s! Five 🙂 Congrats!
As you may know I’ve come to hate… loath… reality shows, or docusoaps. I’m so totally tired of them. But keeping up my “like to be proven wrong”-theme I gave another show a chance to prove me wrong. “Joe Millionaire”. The very talked about show in the states that took a $19.000/year construction worker and turned him into Mr Slick that had just inherited $50 million and was looking for a woman to share his life and money with. At first I thought it sounded really unfair to the chicks who thought they’d hit the jackpot, only for the guy to tell them “hey, I’ve got no money” but after seeing two episodes… shit, those girls seem to deserve it. You may have picked up on the fact I love women, but in this show they’ve really been able to bring out the worst in them. All the back-stabbing, catfights and “does my ass look big” was there. I ended up hating every one of them… except one, but that’s because I have a thing for chicks in charge… And then Jay Leno proved once again why I never watch his show (except when I zap through the channels). He compared the “sorry babe, I’m actually not rich” to the reversed role for a woman to tell a guy “sorry, these breasts aren’t real”. I mean, common?
I’m certainly not one for breast size, and I’m very confident no other guy anywhere has ever fallen in love with any woman because of her breasts! Although I’m not sure how many women have fallen in love with a guy’s money either, but I still didn’t like the comparison! I guess because both of them makes us sound primitive and goes back to the old animal instincts inside everyone – “a female is looking for a male that can provide for her and her offspring” and “a male is looking for a female who can nurture his offspring”. Oh well, I’ve never been one for animal instincts, I’m totally defying the instinct for breeding!
After the recent days of soul-searching I realized that there are alot of fundamental things I preach that I actually do exercise as well. The three most important ones are :
1) respect for other people, other religions and other opinions. Some people have mistaken some points that I’ve been making when discussing things that they think I’m a racist and/or immigrant-hater. But I’m not, and every time that happens I have to point out that my mother is an immigrant. And when I started working at a fast-food joint (Clock) when I was 15 at least 50% of the people I was working with were immigrants. So if I was a racist, I’d be one lonely loser!
2) Protecting the freedom of speech. Although there aren’t that much I can really do about that, and it does go hand in hand with point #1. Yesterday I saw a little VH1 special featuring “Madonna’s Greatest TV Moments”, and it featured some people who had a lot of problems with some of her videos (like “Erotica” and “Like a Prayer”) and how immoral she was. I dunno about you, but that’s one thing I’ve always liked about her. Not that she’s immoral, but that she does what she does regardless and is allowed to.
3) Appreciating the moments. The people that work with me are probably laughing as they read that because I’ve become quite the little effectiveness-specialist (Borg-like!). But that’s at work, and even then I can take a little pause to enjoy a moment. But even if I’m stuck in a traffic jam or interrupted at home watching a movie by a black-out, I’m still able to make the most of it. And oh, I still don’t have a watch 🙂
You mind if I go really deep here for a while?… I don’t live like I preach. In my conscious mind I’m this reckless, “let’s go for it”, “take a chance”, “you only live once” and “what’s the worst that could happen” kind of person. If you ever ask my advice you’re bound to get either of those quotes. And I like it. But I don’t live by it myself. I’m way too boring, predictable, routiny (no, that’s not a word) kind of person who takes the safe route, who doesn’t upset the status quo. I don’t like it, but I’ve come to face it, that’s who I am. I wanna change it, my mind wants to but I really can’t.
I’m one of those people who can take, and actually appreciate, being proven wrong. I don’t know if it’s because of my “I have to constantly learn/discover new things”-drive or what. Most recently it was UIP who proved me wrong! UIP is a movie distribution company here in Sweden. They distribute movies for Paramount amongst other. And Paramount make the Star Trek movies. So we have to be friends with UIP. And last weekend we got a preview screening of the new Star Trek movie, “Nemesis”. That was a pretty nice surprise, but what wasn’t such a nice surprise was the bad quality of the translation in the subtitles. It was pretty obvious that guy wasn’t a trekker. So we complained about it, but so what – what’s done is done, right?… wrong! They invited 3 of us to come to their office and go through the movie and correct everything we felt was wrong and to suggest what should be there instead. I never thought they’d do something like this, I was under the impression that that kind of thing didn’t happen… “re-subtitle a movie just because the die hard fans don’t like it”… but it did. Now of course they have to live up to the challenge and actually change it before the real premiere.
Another nice surprise I got, this one also in the realm of flexibility, was when I was putting together a server for one of our customers. I’ve been tinkering inside computers for about 13 years now, and there are some facts you just have to accept – changing/adding CPU’s is a mess, changing/adding power supplies is a mess and putting in hard drives is easier said than done. The computer manufacturers have put in a lot of work to make it easier for us, but I’ve never been impressed by it. Until yesterday when I was putting this HP/Compaq 380 server together. I was suppose to add a secondary CPU, add a redudant power supply, insert 3 extra fans and put in 5 hard drives. Guess how long that took?… less than 15 minutes. And everything worked right off the bat. So I guess I owe a big thank you to some engineers at HP/Compaq for thinking a couple of extra steps – nice!
Do teeth have a mind of their own? I think mine does! I haven’t been to the dentist in about two years quite simply because I haven’t felt anything wrong in that department for a long long time. And teeth are kinda like my job – the less it’s noticed the better. But last thursday I got a mail from the dentist saying “time for a check up!” and I just shrugged it off with “nah, my teeth are fine!”… then on saturday as I was eating candy while watching “Star Trek : Nemisis” all of a sudden I got that annoying feeling you get when you have cavity. And it won’t go away, so I guess I’ll have to take her up on her offer and go for an examination, I just think it’s real weird timing, it’s like… they felt neglected! And so much for getting my economy back in order…
No, I’m not depressed, stop saying that (3 people have already!)! What do I have to be depressed about, I’m doing pretty fine. I’ve got my health, a steady job, my economy is almost under control and I’m not going through any heartache. That’s more than any of my friends can say (I’m a dangerous person to know). But me – I’m doing alright. Although my mother would fill in “but you’re still single, on Valentine’s day!!”.
But you know what? No biggy for me, I’m quite used to it. ‘Cause now that I think about it, I’ve only been in one relationship that coincided with Valentine’s. Ok, 1 1/2 but that’s a completely different story!
And about that Jewel video – I know I’ve said that music should be music and not videos, and her music is great, and that track was pretty good. But I just couldn’t help but to be disappointed over it because every video with Jewel have been… different, odd and deep in ways I probably don’t understand, but this one??? Rolling around in bed in her underwear? Seen it, been there, done that…
One week and two days later, and what goodness do I have to report about? Not much, but here goes ; My female best friend’s husband and daughter was involved in a serious car crash (that ended with them upside down), but doesn’t have anything to show for it except a wrecked car. I’m not sure if that is bad or good news, but since they’re OK I’ll file it under “good”. My american buddies are coming back to town tomorrow. This is surprising since it means they have been here 4 times in the past 12 months, and I haven’t been over there once during the 6 years I’ve known them! And I can still be surprised by small little restaurants that serve great food (“Asperia” in southern stockholm, great Greek restaurant). So that’s something to be glad over, right?
Compare that against ; two good friends are getting divorced (from eachother!), two really good friends are still unemployed, another friend with some bad news I can’t talk about but it got me depressed, losing a space shuttle and the world is on the verge of war again. And on top of that – Jewel’s latest video was more like a “Victoria’s Secret” ad than an inspirational video! Yippi I’m so happy.
SHIT! It seems that the more I write here that things are going to hell the worse it seems to get! Seriously, 2003 is now officially just as bad as 2002, and it’s only Feb. 4th! So here’s a promise – I won’t write any more updates until I have something great, wonderful, beautiful, funny or just nice to share with you and let’s see how long it takes! (and no, sweden winning the Swedish Hockey Games doesn’t count!)
My sister, who is content staying here on Earth, was questioning why I got so depressed over this Columbia thing. She means that if I got that depressed over 7 people dying in this accident, I should be suicidal when children are dying all over the world for one reason or another. Why don’t I get depressed over that? The austronauts atleast knew the risk of doing what they were doing and had accepted them. The innocent children dying a little all over the world didn’t. And I can’t argue against that. But somehow this just felt worse. I felt really bad. Just think about it – now “we” only have three shuttles to take care of the rest of the IIS building, and if there’s any chance of building a vessel to go to Mars it’ll have to be built in orbit, and with just three shuttles that’ll take a while.
So with the risk of sounding a bit cold-hearted – it’s more the setback to the exploration of space that I was being depressed about, not so much the 7 astronauts.
“If we die we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business,and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program.The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”– Gus Grissom, killed in an accidental fire in Apollo 1, January 1967
I was wrong. 2003 is shaping up to be just as bad as 2002. Not only did Sweden screw up in the handball championship, and not only have two friends of mine divorced, now “we’ve” lost a space shuttle with all hands lost – Rick Husband, William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Michael Andersson, David Brown, Laurel Clark & Ilan Ramon. What I mean by “we” is all of us who are very interested and enthusiastic about the space exploration program. “We” who have to convince everyone that it’s still a worthy cause. So I wonder what February has in store…