Happy new year everyone! Personally I’m not sure how I can ever beat 2008 but gonna try 🙂
Not sure I should be apologizing here for being so busy I haven’t had time to update it in weeks. So many things going on, from Warcraft to adapting to living with someone 24/7 to redesigning NataliePortman.com and ofcourse celebrating christmas. Again. And again. Cause me and Helena actually celebrated it thrice – once at her brothers place, once at my parents place and once at her parents place. Lots of good food and stuff that got me bloated. But I love it cause I still love christmas!! 🙂 And ofcourse I still love Helena 🙂
Speaking of movies, we saw a pretty interesting movie the other day called “The Man from Earth“. It was one of those low-budget movies where everything was dialogue. It was about a guy that was moving away and his collegues and friends, most of which were professors or scholars of some kind, was throwing an improvised farewell party. And he dropped the bomb that the reason he was going away cause he had to before people started noticing he was weird and didn’t age. It’d been like that for the past 20.000 years. And they spent the rest of the movie toying with the idea. Great fun and interesting concept, can really recommend it!
Also saw “Get Smart”. Surprisingly funny movie. I couldn’t stop laughing at the answer to the question “how did you get here so fast!?”, good stuff 🙂
Yesterday me, my girlfriend and my two best movie friends Ricki and Eva tried out a movie-quiz night at Pet Sounds Bar in stockholm! It was basically small video or audio clips from more or less famous movies and guessing some trivia about them, like directors, oscars and stuff.
And we didn’t even get close to winning! I was afraid that we’d either crush the competition or the questions would be about Hungarian independant movies and we’d end up with 0 points. But we finished in the midfield which I thought was quite ok.
(what wasn’t ok was when I saw a question about christmas movie and the question was “what building?” I said “Die Hard, Nakatomi!” a good 30 minutes before we even got to that question, but hey, it’s one of my favourite movies!)
Got a new definition of love for you – my girlfriend serving me coffee, gingerbread and a whiskey while I’m having a blast with my friends in the World of Warcraft, even though she hates it when I’m playing… that is love … Damn I’m a lucky guy!
Got a good feeling this morning as I was walking to work in the snowstorm. Damn I’m lucky right now. I got it all! My family is overall doing great as far as I know, I got a good job and I consider myself a bit overpaid, and I’m still happily and crazy in love with an amazing woman that loves me! Things are great right now!! Sure I could whine about my tinnitus, my 15 kilos overweight and my allergies that are still acting up, but overall, things are really great! Me so happy!!
Yeap, I’m going back into the deep abyss of Warcraft again! Gonna try to level up asap and then chill as much as I can and my girlfriend will allow. Feels … pretty good and pretty bad… Good that the expansion is here, always fun with new stuff. Bad that my girlfriend will go around feeling ignored 🙁 Hopefully we’ll land somewhere in the middle.
Last weekend was a bit of a bummer for a nostalgic person like me. I moved in with my girlfriend a few months back but now it was time to clear out my old apartment since it was just draining cash. So after my family helped me load everything into self storage I had some professional cleaners come in and clear it and now the contract has expired so after 9 1/2 years I no longer live there at all.
When I moved in there back in 1999 I was the chief of our little department at Min Dator. Since then I’ve changed employers a few times, seen the world, lived the bachelors life, did all my WoWing there, my home cinema system and generally had a very good time there. But now I gotta try to have even better times in our apartment in Barkarby which I still think is a bit small, but what tha hell, I get to share it with the woman I love and that is by far the most important thing.
On thursday, friday and saturday we had something of a kickoff at work. Intended to get all the projects underway, get everyone onboard and motivated to kick ass and have fun at work.
It failed.
I came home with a terrible “I don’t really wanna work there anymore” feeling. I’ve always loved working there for alot of reasons but after all this I don’t. I’m hoping that feeling goes away or the people in charge starts taking my complaints and suggestions seriously ’cause I don’t wanna go job hunting again.
This weekend I’m taking what is probably the greatest risk I’ve ever taken in my life! I’m giving up my apartment and really moving in with my girlfriend!!
The biggest gamble I’ve done so far was when I signed up for the project at the state department and travelling around the world. But in that case, had it not worked out I’d told my boss I don’t wanna do it and everyone would have been hugely dissappointed but that’d be it. Now, if it doesn’t work out I’ve lost the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me and I’ll have no place to live!!
Ofcourse I am totally comfortable and sure that we won’t split up, but there’s only so much I can control. I can’t control that she won’t wake up one morning and realise what a boring person I can be sometimes and that she’s the one with the balls in this relationship, I don’t know.
Here’s hoping I’ll never find out!!
I forgot, there was a small point to that road trip – testing my new HTC smart phone with builtin GPS! Although it was never a problem finding anything it was a good test run and it worked perfectly 🙂
Just wish they could make better batteries!!
Ullared is a very very small town in south of sweden known for one thing – “Gekas”, a huge outlet with very cheap prices on alot of stuff. I never heard about it until my girlfriend asked if I wanted to tag along when her mother, brother & his wife were going. “I guess…”. I didn’t know why considering we live just next door to an outlet that makes that place look like an anthill. But off we we went! At the very least I’d get a good road trip!!
So on saturday morning at 2 am (!!) we got into a rented car and drove 5 hours there to find a queue of around 100m. At 7 am!! And so the opened, we did our shopping and it wasn’t that good prices, except on jeans (but I’m waiting to find out what quality you get for that amount!). We checked out at a bit after 10 after paying $300 for stuff we never needed (and the others paid even more) and had a quick burger at BK and then I saw the queue that was well over 500-600 meters! It was huge!! And for what?? It’d take hours for the people in the back to queue there, and it wasn’t that cheap!?!? And then we drove home.
And I still don’t know why? I like road trips but if I’m gonna spend 16 hours in a car (3 hours to her brothers place and 5 hour down, and then the return trip) it’d better be worth it! And this wasn’t. But it was a good laugh and if it’s one of those things you have to do as a swede, I can now check that box.
Seems like the past 2 weeks have been total terrible for the global economy ever since a bank fucked up in the states and everything comes crashing down because everyone seems to think everything is crashing down. I love the psychology behind stuff like that, how it seems everyone is just reacting on doomsday analysis.
And unfortunately this time it is affecting me since me and my girlfriend were starting to look at houses but it seems getting a loan will be the tricky part today so we’ll just put that on hold for a while. We shouldn’t be complaining in our little corner of the galaxy, we’re happy as long as we have each other 🙂
Yesterday I was going about my daily life at my new home when for no good reason at all Helena threw me out. I was a big box of question marks but I drove to my old home a sad panda and called her and she answered the phone with “hey, wanna come watch a movie?” “.. huh?” “Oh it’s you..” CLICK!.. Me very sad panda. So I log onto my computer and start to write a sad blog entry when I say to myself “hell no, this can’t be happening! this must be a dream! I better wake tha hell up!!”… and I did.. and rolled over and held her tighter than I’ve ever done before!!
I hate dreams…
We had a few IT issues with our Brussels office a few weeks ago which proved just how much we’ve neglected that office so we decided to go down here and check it out. I’m here with a collegue from our Malmö office. As you may remember I was here about 5 years ago too (yeah, it’s neem THAT long!!) but it hasn’t changed much. The Vinge office is in the exact same building as the embassy so I’m familiar with the area and where to eat 🙂
What was interesting was the little 7-eleven like store in the “Sweden”-building (it’s called that because of all swedish business having their offices there + the embassy) and they had made it “their thing” and offer a whole shelf of swedish products, like “Dill-chips”, skumbilar, Stockholm-beer and stuff. Pretty funny stuff to see in Belgium.
Gonna be doing alot of cleaning in the server room and last minute “anything IT related I can help you with?”-questions to the staff before we go home at around 17.
I miss travelling, staying in hotels and eating at restaurants all the time. But then I also miss my girlfriend.
My and Helena went out with a couple she knows and we went to the movies, since all of us enjoy a good movie. But since we’re not entirely synced what everyone has seen it was decided we’d see Wall-e since noone had seen that. I went in with almost no expectations…
… but it was the best goddamn film of the year!! At some points I was laughing so hard I cried, it was hilarious! And “sweet” in a very cute way!!
What I found most fascinating, and this is my friend Ricki’s fault!, was how very little was said in ways of verbally but how incredible the communication was with body language and tone .. and they were robots!!!
It was awesome, go see it!
We celebrated 6 months yesterday me and my Helena. I think that’s a record for me.. but everything is going so good now, even better after our trip to Gothenburg!! We’re just all kinds of cute and cuddly right now…
And then Warhammer Online comes along and risk driving in a wedge between us 🙁
What a lovely day 🙂 And what a kick ass weekend I’ve had! Me and my girlfriend Helena packed the car on friday to drive down to Gothenburg (6 hour drive!) on saturday morning to meet her brother, his wife and their son for a weekend of Liseberg, zoo, botanical gardens, shopping and eating. Things got off terrible with my alarm not working, switching cars but we made it down there at noon and we started off with lunch at a steakhouse. Then off to Universeum, which is like a small little zoo next to the theme park Liseberg which was just perfect cause then we spent hours there and by the evening Helena didn’t feel that great so we went back to the hotel. Then on sunday we went to the Botanical Garden where we just hanged out for a while and enjoyed some coffee and then into the car and back hom, stopping by Gränna which is a really small little village famous for their candycanes and arrived home on sunday evening when we went out… jogging! (seriously)
Awesome!!! And this week looks like it’s gonna be awesome too!.. life is good!!
Pictures are here, but you will need to login. Username is “guest” in swedish and password… well that shouldn’t be too hard to the people that know me 🙂
Still enjoying the good times here. It’s all good. So good that I forget about this place sometimes. Over the summer I’ve been working mostly with the occasional break for sci-fi convention and a 24h cruise with my sisters & brother and last monday me and my girlfriend woke up and after stating we had nothing what so ever to do that day we got in the car and drove 2 1/2 hours to Söderköping to enjoy the icecreams at Smultronstället. Absolutely awesome icecream!! Well worth the drive let me tell you!!
Click here for pics.
Took one more step to adulthood the other day. We went passed Ikea and just said “lets buy a bed”. And so we did. Even had to hire a car to load everything in from the gas station. Almost made me feel like a grownup. Except grownups wouldn’t have decided to buy a bed for $2000 right there and then like we did 🙂