I don't think, for example, that the picture that serves as an illustration for this post does a good job of conveying how cosy it is here in Solrosen tonight.
I might have not got around to having a meal after breakfast today, 'till I got here. That's not very smart, it does nothing for one's mood or one's stomach, which has already suffered enough. But now, I'm here in the warm, surrounded by the pleasant sound of gabbling strangers, candlelight, good and nutritious food in my belly. Hard to beat.
I may soon swap it for the environs of The Dubliner; crowded, a queue to get in, expensive, so loud that you shout yourself horse and go deaf hearing no conversation, and have to watch your belongings like a hawk. We won't go into the toilets. And then a queue to get your coat and go home.
Or I may go home and miss out on meeting Håkan and his Belgians, cementing my reputation as an antisocial beesteward.
As a favour to a friend, I'll be showing some guys from Belgium around town. They chose a perfect time. I don't know anything about them, so I've not made any plans; usually when I have visitors I drag them around some museums and galleries, but Håkan reckons that they'll want to look at girls. I'm not sure that they'll need my help for that! "Yes, the Haga area features a student scene, whereas on the Avenue you'll find the party hotspots." I've never been what's called a ladies man! Although most of my friends are girls. (Hi girls! Hi Henry! Yeah Conor, I know, you want to kill me and use my corpse to kill your enemies. So nineties.) So I have no idea how this weekend will go. I do know that there will be no eating of live monkey brains on my watch! Funny how one often one knows one or two things about a country. France, frogs legs. Germany, bratwurst and nazis. (No, not fair, but true). Egypt, pyramids and pharohs. Ireland, the potato. Holland, hash and the red light district. South Africa, Queen Bianca and apartheid (no relation). One would think that in the internet age that general knowledge would have broadened out?Or am I wrong? Has it?
I must go and clean Queen Bianca's throne before she arrives in the My Opera throne room. I step now into the unknown. This message ends... now!
Tonight I went to Anna Ternheim in Pusterviks Stora Scen, Järntorget. She was great. She has a great feel for sound, and she's really charming, but her music is the music of loneliness. It spoke to me in the last year when I was with Karin, when she was there and yet not there, and it speaks to me still. It's just her and an instrument usually, a piano or a guitar, occasionally a backbeat, once just her hands. Pleasant and raw as your soul, at the same time.
I happened upon a character as she sang, a character with not so much a story as a scenario. He probably won't go anywhere. But he interests me, a mixture of solitary and a need for an audience to define him, a man responsible for guiding the action but who sees his main purpose as restraining the unfocused excesses of his subordinants, who follow him despite a mutual dislike. Hmm. Maybe I no longer need to write the story! Forgive my waffle.
It seems that I am back in a mood of creativity, after a substantial period of being crushed by events at work.
Hoping that you are all having a lovely evening, and MUM. SERIOUSLY. STOP READING MY BLOG. Or I'll start writing about my sex life. Which means that I'd have to go out and get one.
Today, I have been up the hills of Slottskogen, which I have writen about here before, showing Håkan and his Ugandan girlfriend, Lisa, the animals; elk, seals, penguins, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, goats, pelicans, and fantastic views over the city. Slottskogen (The Castle Forest, although I have seen no castle).
And then I was out in the forests of Västra Frölunda with Atos, having feasted on take-away food from Solrosen with Kaija. It's wonderfull out there, although a tad dangerous once it gets dark; lots of cracks in the rock, drops of several feet. Once, I walked across a thinly iced lake because I didn't see it in the snow. But I've been lucky so far.
Not entirely as I planned it; I had hoped to visit Bo, my ex's dad, in hospital. But not at all a bad day.
In two weeks, it'll be a year since Karin left me, and she'll be thirty-five. I miss her. Hopefully, she's happy. She really is a great person and deserves nothing but the best.
Yes, that title promises a roller-coaster ride of a blog entry, I know.
I was thinking (always a mistake) about Britain's plan to increase the pension age to sixty-six, to save money. I think it's a false economy.
Increasing the pension age in a time of high unemployment shouldn't reduce the number of dependents on state aid; the people not being pensioned should, one might assume, have otherwise been replaced by people who were unemployed, at least, they should have created a job vacancy for some-one previously unemployed.
Being a pensioner doesn't at all carry the stigma of being unemployed. Pensioners don't need harassing by public servants to change their status, or retraining programmes, and hopefully don't become unmotivated and suicidally depressed.
I think that they should take it the other way in times of high unemployment. It would also makes cuts in the public sector less painful.
It's been fun. My brother and his wonderful wife insisted that I move out of the hotel and in with them, so I've spent a lot of time making goo goo faces at Aoibhe, who hit her first month as a free range human yesterday. She's not very aware of the world around her as yet, but R. & T. seem to enjoying her a whole lot. I'll have to come back here often to keep track of her. If such travel remains possible in the future; it's certainly shaping up to be more expensive, as well it should. My train from the airport to London cost less than the flight.
I feel like a very different person off of coffee. I've been off for a couple of weeks and a bit now. I suspect that I had a withdrawal period which was a lot of fun for those around me. But I feel calmer. T. told me that she gave it up during her pregnancy. I wonder where it fits in on the class system for narcotics?
And still I have done no art cards. I have to do this soon, it's starting to really bug me. I just haven't had any time. Too busy gurgling at baby. Very, very cute.
Now I shall go out and do something with my last day on foreign shores! Peace out.
Tomorrow, I fly to London to see my new niece, Aoibhe; the first child in our branch of the family, and, of course, her parents.
I'd thought that I was flying at 18.00 tomorrow, but it turns out that the more correct time would be 8.50. This is a little unfortunate. I really had hoped to clean the apartment before I left. But it'll keep... hopefully! I do this not infrequently; this time, it's due to my having bought two sets of tickets, one set for a couple of weeks ago, when I was flying at 18.00. I really have to stop doing this!
So my plan of a little late night laundry followed by a lie in has turned into an all-nighter... again. Oh, well. Hopefully my clothes will be dry in time for me to pack some of them! At least I found out in time to actually fly.
Maybe I'll actually have a chance to do some art cards!
I use public transport, and I usually have not much of a sense of smell. I usually don't make an association between those two factors, but occasionally my sinuses clear, and I notice that a lot of people don't wash, but that's beside the point; that people get on the bus, and go to work, with stinking colds.
Inconsiderate assholes.
If I can smell a cold at four metres, there's a good chance that I, and the eight or so people with-in the same radius, shall partake of that cold. Also, whomever that person works with.
Stay in bed!
Okay, there are some jobs where one has to go in. But if one can at all, shouldn't one enjoy a lie-in?
It was fun. Now I'm tired. And so fired up for work tomorrow. Yes!
Schmuk is the German for jewellery, according to Ken.
I'm still kicking myself that I didn't have my camera when I passed this place a week or so ago. At that time, they were advertising Anus cocktails. Tempting.
The back of our apartment building.
A shop front that I liked.
One of the many bear mascots of Berlin, all decorated differently, but otherwise identical.
I just like these ones. Karl Marx Tor, I think it was.
A €1.2 billion train station.
Trashy Our Lady paraphenalia, o yeah
An antique version.
Another cool shop front.
They have the waterpipes outside, all over Berlin. Temporarily.
Berlin was nice, and very cheap in some areas, and had the most confusing public transport system I've ever seen. Bus, trams, trains and undersground, all in one gargantuan network. I'll be back.
This is my fourth day in Berlin. The weather, until today, has been baking. Ken and I don't really have the same daily rythmes, my job has made me an earlier riser, and I generally plunge out into a city and just explore; whereas we've been taking it fairly easy. This is probably a goog thing; until now, the temperature has stuck at around thirty-five degrees centigrade, which is warm for me.
Our apartment is lovely.
We're with-in a few minutes walk of several internet cafés (although I haven't wanted to leave Ken twiddling his thumbs and have more or less abstained), have a Lidls right across the road and an excellent bakery right next door. There's even a vegetarian restaurant about two hundred metres away.
The trip has not been with-out hiccups. I was stung by a bee a couple of days ago.
The swelling, which goes down nearly to my elbow, finally seems to be subsiding.
Before I came, I loaded my Irish credit card with most of my cash, and then discovered after getting here that it has a lower cash withdrawal limit than it used to; with left me short for the rent. Lukily, our landlord is quite cool, so, though it lead to a stressfull few hours, it was not fatal. And no-one coshed me and made off with the cash, always a plus.
And I have not yet succeeded in acquiring stamps.
I may head out tomorrow and get Ken to ring me when he's out. I have a bit too much energy for all of this sitting around! And my system finally seems to righting itself.
Otto Von Bismarck, essentially the engineer of modern Germany.
Two of my cabin mates on the train, from Kalmar in Sweden and Columbia. Of course, I don't remember their names. But they were both very nice.
I've been looking forward to this for months. But if I hadn't roped Ken into coming to, I think that I might have stayed put. Travelling when sick can get very tricky, and that I'll be paying for the apartment at a private place, in cash, well. But I'm sure that everything will go swimingly, and that I'm just a grumpypuss. And I'd have been sorry to miss this.
Ken and I met when we were four, and immediately discovered a mutual love for designing robots and duffel coats. He later moved school, and we didn't see each other for ten years, and when we hooked up again, our tastes had moved on, but in the same direction. He's an honourable and extremely intelligent man, and a little more circumspect than I. So this should be fun! Culture and music, and possibly even cuisine.
You know, if I don't get coshed on the head tomorrow.
Grr. But I called the state telephone doctors (who knew?) and they say that even if what I have isn't innocuous, which is probably is, I won't be infectious by friday, so I can travel. Yay.
So I shall delay the creation of art cards 'till I'm on German soil.
I left work half an hour early today, feeling distinctly rummy. It occurred to me, of course, that it might be swine 'flu', which would have been a real pain in the ass as I'm supposed to take a train to Berlin on Friday.
I don't think that I've ever been relieved before to find mould on paprika.
So I find myself on my ex-mother-out-of-law's couch, with a book by Robin Hobb, whilst Kaija sleeps a chemical-induced sleep. She chose not to move in with me in the end, so there is somebody here almost continuously. I wonder how long this can last, but the bed which I made up in my apartment is still there. So we'll see what happens. This is, I must say, not unpleasant.
Also, a relationship that has long been a burr in my side has ended. A lady had requested contact on Skype a bunch of times, over months and I had always refused her. But I felt guilty about it. So, one night, I said "Hi" back. It was a huge mistake. I agreed to assist her in her planned exodus to Sweden. I told her that there was no chance of anything romantic happening. She said she was okay with that. And she kept calling. Every night. Even though there was nothing new to discuss. Even though our conversations consisted of long silences, because we had nothing to talk about. We completely failed to connect. I began to dread going online.
And then lightening season came, and I had a valid reason not to. I didn't want to fry my €1,100 computer. And then Kaija had her heart attack, and I've had my hands full since. I could have sent word to the lady, but I didn't, not for three weeks from our last contact.
And then a couple of nights ago, she contacted me, and I got it with both barrells. She didn't believe anything that I said, not the heart attack, anything. Thank God she had found out what kind of man I was before she had gotten in too deeply with me.
I don't believe in God, but I echo the sentiment. I should have politely ended this months ago. She had built a cathedral of hope of a new life with me around hours of pained silence. Thank life that she now despises me and hopefully will rebuilt her cathedral on solid ground.
I feel guilty about her wasted time, and worse, possibly damaging her impetus. I should have forcably resisted contact long ago. But mostly, I feel relief that she has moved on.
Good manners will be the death of me. I hope that if ever I'm that much of a pain in some-one's ass, that they will let me know.
One might need it it one lives around here at the moment .
I completely failed to get out of the house yesterday; whatever funk grabbed my system on Friday still hadn't left, and, despite having slept from 18.00 'till 6.00, I managed to take an extended nap on the couch. But I'm no longer bright red, so progress.
Today, I shall see if me chums are up for a bit of cinema, and, failing that, I might go to Hagabion on my own. Lightening or no!
Or perhaps I'll launch a probe to see what's happened to Sun out there. Is it being interfered with by aliens? Are they bathing in our rightful rays?
And at least thirty degrees celcius. This is a definite improvement.
It makes it altogether too easy to sit here and chill, but soon I shall go home and tidy my bomb site. It's easy to let things go when one lives alone, especially when one lives far enough away that no-one visits, and I have. But I don't want to live in a bomb site any more. And that's the full extent of my voyage into adult life.
I took Simon, age ten, to it yesterday. I hadn't liked the look of the trailer, but the film disappointed even those expectations. Unlike the first one, it lacked charm. It had a lot of scantily clad, highly sexualised women, explosions, shouting, loose threads, casual murder, portentious dialogue and racial stereotyping.
Not the worst film ever, but very far from the best.
I'm uploading about fifty of the seven hundred odd photographs that I took, it's all a bit random, I'll add text during the week. I'm also going to do sections on the zoo and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (thanks, Zaphira, for correcting me on the founder's name ), just because they were so damn cool. The zoo is small, but very well done.
I don't know what the temperature is here; it was 25 degrees (does any-one know where the special characters hang out in Opera?) when I got here, and I don't think that it's gotten cooler. I went walk-about yesterday, completely failing to find my workmates who were also here for the Depeche Mode concert. And then I walked to Parken, the football stadium where the concert was being held; it was a bit further away than I had planned for. I shocked myself be finding it with the aid of a map. This does not happen in my universe. Maps are a secret and arcane science. Anyway. By the time D.M. got started, I had been on my feet in very warm weather for several hours, and was probably a bit dehydrated to boot, and got a bit dizzy. I can now therefore tell you with some authority that getting dizzy when near the top of a very high, very steep football stadium is not a good idea. I nearly fell a couple of times. If I had, a position would have opened for a blogger at my.opera.com/garlingmatthews.
The concert itself was strange, and not just because of my altered state. I had my trepidations. Dave Gahan is a consummate performer, but I don't think that most of D.M.s' music really lends itself to the stadium milieu, especially their later work, it's too intimate. And so it was. The concert warmed up towards the end, which concentrated on hits from earlier albums, but it took a while; and there were a couple of songs in the middle where Martin Gore was left alone on stage with a couple of songs, and he is not a consummate performer. He has a haunting voice, but no stage presence.
All in all, we got a synth band playing rock gods, a few years after their peak. But still, it did sound great, and the presence of a very loud live drummer filled out the sound nicely; and Dave Gahan is a rock god.
Isn't a little funny that all of the music (after the first album) of one the world's two biggest synth bands (Pet Shop Boys) is written by their bass guitarist?
I stayed in my room for most of today to recover, so it must have been a great concert, right?
I can also tell you, to my great discomfort, that there is a lot of open prostitution right in the middle of Copenhagen. On every street corner between the Tivoli and my hotel, in fact.
I could get lost in a teacup. It's partly deliberate; it's the only way to really get know a place. If you zip around Paris on the Metro and hop off at the tourist destinations, you see the Metro and the tourist destinations. But if you walk 'till you damage your leg and it trails behind you, you might also see where people live and work. It's fun. Except for the damaged leg. But that heals. Eventually. I hope.
On that basis, I left my hotel and my map behind me and set out into Copenhagen. If one gets too badly lost, one simply hops on a bus to the centre. I wandered for maybe forty minutes, 'till I found a nice looking restaurant called Bosch, or Bosch Bosch, which made a thing of using ecological ingredients as much as possible. I was hungry. And I might have needed a loo. One does not kick serendipity in the face. They think that prawns are vegetarian, but nothing is perfect.
So I had an excellent carrot and leek soup, followed by stewed rhubarb and flavoured sour cream with ground biscuit; holy moly it was good. I have pictures, but no cable, so I suppose that there'll be a Danish photograph section soon. And then I found Coop right beside it, so I have ecological plums, apples and chocolate... so I wander away randomly again, still going forward. Maybe forty-five minutes later, I happen across the hotel. And I look down the street right beside it... and see the restaurant. In the opposite direction to the one I walked in.
I'll be trading Viking lands for the week, swaping the second land to take a flag for the first. Hopefully the pollen count will be lower there! I was there once before, with K., and really liked it, but for some reason took no pictures; so expect a 'photo essay on Copenhagen!
If you ever find yourself there, you must visit a museum called the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek. Mr. Carlsberg used the money he made from his famous beer to amass an incredible trove of art and antiquities from around the world. The Louvre in Paris is wonderful, but there is so much there, it would take probably weeks to do it justice; the Glypotek covers much of the same ground, but on a scale where it's perfectly doable in a day.
I'm probably just going to wander this time, and see Depeche Mode (for which I have an extra ticket, if any-one is in the vicinity on Tuesday 30th June, 2009, tomorrow), and not drink the awful coffee. And not think about tidying my apartment on my return.
On the screen, happy people were placing their photograph on a credit card. Outside the screen, there were no happy people. This room was full of people sitting on comfortable furniture, waiting, an apparently unhappy activity. Waiting to conduct their business, waiting for the clock to strike six so that they could begin the final tally and get home to their own comfortable furniture and screens, putting off going to bed even though sleep definitely improves the quality of life, to get up tomorrow and do it all over again. People are funny.
Oscar waited. As he was listening to the same music here that we would have been listening to at home, this caused him no great pain. He sat on the comfortable furniture, listened to his music and watched the numbers on the screen slowly rise towards the one printed on the little piece of paper in his hand. The people on the screen were evidently enjoying themselves, as they kept doing the same thing over and over. There were obvious advantages to being simple, Oscar contemplated.
A face forced itself into his field of vision, featuring crazy blue eyes and a rapidly moving mouth attached to a generously proportioned but not voluptuous female body which was holding a gun. The gun, like the eyes, was pointing in his direction. He removed his headphones, in the middle of one his two favourite tracks by Ellen Allien, and hoped that he'd turned off the coffee machine.
"I sorry, I didn't catch that?", he prompted.
"Put your gun on the ground, you rent-a-cop!", she suggested in a voice that did not inspire confidence that this was a precursor to a pleasant conversation.
Oscar looked into those sky-blue, crazy eyes. An inspiration came to him that this was not one of occasions where truth and logic would prevail. Oscar was used to these situations. Oscar was human.
Oscar slowly raised his hands, dropping his queue ticket, and slowly, pantomime slowly, placed his right hand under his t-shirt. He resisted the urge to scratch while he was under there and instead drew out, very slowly, his imaginary pistol. He displayed it to her, slowly uncocked it, and placed it on the ground.
"Kick it over", she instructed.
Oscar did as he had been bade.
"You're fucking mad!", decried a young man from across the room. Oscar sighed inwardly, despairing for the species that he had been born into, and not for the first time. The blue eyes had acquired an arc-light quality. However, they were not pointed at him. This young man had taken the initiative. Oscar could assume that he knew what he was doing.
But not with the same confidence that he could assume that a bus would come as per the timetable. Oscar sighed inwardly again as the crazy lady with the gun and the foolish man with the big mouth squared off.
"Excuse me", he exclaimed, with much the same feeling that he imagined he would have experienced directly after jumping off of a high place with a bungee cord attached to his foot. Imagined, because he would never actually do anything so foolish. Agitated and confused blue eyes locked with his. The gun followed them. "I didn't catch your name", he continued.
But her attention was entirely focused on his back-up imaginary gun which she had foolishly not checked him for, and which was now aimed at some point between the eyes.
"Put the gun down!", she screamed. "Put it down!", she repeated, for emphasis.
"Your name." She was almost crying now. Big mouth was still exercising his democratic right to be an asshole. Oscar ignored him. He could hear that his iPod his moved past one of his two favourite Ellen Allien songs. He wondered if there was any interesting post waiting for him at home.
"Never mind the asshole, he's clearly mad. We're having a conversation here. He's just looking for attention. The more you feed him, the more he'll want." His voice was a calm as an Irish motorway during a world cup football match between Ireland and England. Her eyes were locked on the back-up imaginary gun. They were less calm.
"Put the gun down!", she sobbed. The happy people were still placing their picture on the credit card. He envied them.
"I'm going to call you Agnes,", he offered. Confusion. Well, it had been a long shot. "Agnes, the gun in my hand is only a cue. A pointer. Have you ever known cops to work alone, Agnes? Even rent-a-cops?"
Doubt crept across her face. The gun shook marginally.
"That's right. And banks get held up all of the time. Now, I don't know that that's what you're doing, trying to do, to rob the bank. Perhaps you have a grievance with the bank that you wish to air. But banks do get held up all of the time, don't they?"
The head supporting the teary blue eyes nodded.
"You know banks, Agnes. They have lots of money. They have so much that they have to constantly foist vast amounts of the stuff off on their executives just to stop from drowning in the stuff. It stands to reason that they'd spend a bit of it protecting the rest, right?"
The nod was firmer this time.
"Well, they do, Agnes. They came to the conclusion that there wasn't much point having two rent-a-cops adding to the hostage count, so for every bank in the every city, there is a window."
She looked confused. This was, a reasonable response, as it was hardly news that banks have windows. It's a feature of buildings in general. One might refer to it as a given.
"A window on the opposite side of the street. Overlooking the bank. That's where my partner is".
She was listening.
"She's currently crouched behind the sight of a high-caliber rifle, which is pointed at your head. Perhaps you can see her?"
Agnes scanned the street.
"No? Well, it's hard, it's designed to be inconspicuous. But she's there."
Doubt.
"We kissed for the first time last night", he informed her.
"It was a good kiss. It was a long time coming. We've both been waiting for that kiss for a long time, Agnes. You know what that means, don't you, Agnes?"
Agnes gave him a look that indicated that she did not and would be grateful if he would inform her.
"It means that a lady who is probably planning on having sex with me tonight, who has probably prepared the perfect meal, who has bought scented oak candles and arrayed them carefully around her kitchen, who is probably wearing sexy underwear that she spent an hour having a shop assistant talk her into paying two days wages for, who is, as said, hunched behind a loaded, high-calibre rifle, is wondering why the lady is holding a gun to her man's head."
The hand holding the gun fell to her side.
"Careful! No sudden movements!"
Agnes was crying freely now. "What will happen to me now?", she whined.
"Well, I'd imagine that the bank will probably close your account and refuse to do further business with you, but really, it's not a very good bank, is it?", he soothed, sidling up to her side. She fell into his arms, sobbing. "I mean", he continued, "The queue number on the screen hasn't moved in at least half an hour. He passed her gun into the care of an older man behind her. "It'll be all right, Agnes. These things happen."
It was a long hug. He anticipated that it would be a long day, with a lot of questions. He looked longingly at his iPod, and began waiting like all of the other proles.
He supposed that his electricity bill would have to wait.
...and I have to say, I'm a bit leery. I mean, sharing my music with other computers sounds dodgy from a copyright point of view. Not that it works for me anyway, most of my music is in A.A.C. format, and the Opera media player only supports M.P.3. Although it'll be useful for accessing my files remotely. I suppose that it's time that I set a real password here. Who knows who might be interested in misappropriating my family pics
One week to Copenhagen. I should be stoked, but somehow... eh. It's probably a side effect of my recent insomnia, which, finally, seems to have broken. I've slept for nine hours two nights in a row now. I feel jack-hammered, but alive again! So, watch out, vegetarian restaurants of Göteborg.
...I shall not upload a picture of the very fine chocolate and blueberry pie I had to balance out my very healthy dinner. Instead, I hope that you can content yourself with this digital cup of coffee.
Tonight, I believe that I shall actually turn on the T.V. and watch an episode of the classic sixties series, "The Prisoner". It's interesting, and unsettling, watching it now, against a background of increased acceptance of surveillance in society, both physical and digital. The F.R.A. law here, allowing uncontrolled monitoring of electronic communication across borders, moves to curtail the legality of incryption; where will it end? Are we supposed to simply trust those responsible for the monitoring? An historically dubious position. This is at least as dangerous as the activities it is designed to curtail.
I met Stefan N. yesterday for a natter. We aimed for Vasa Källare, but they were closed; yesterday was Sweden's national day, a fairly recent invention that the Swedes haven't learned what to do with. It's such an integral part of their culture that I'd completely forgotten about it. There was nothing in town to remind one; the most nationalistic event on display was a football match between Denmark and Sweden on a humungous T.V. at Kungsportsplatsen. Sweden lost. There was no riot. This is a good thing. It means that Swedes are secure in their identity as Swedes and don't feel a need to beat their chests about it.
I find reflexive conformity disturbing. We got taking about the recent trends in training. I have nothing against training, being healthy is good. I find it a little worrying that everybody starts going to gyms at once, and then questioning people who don't why. And then everybody starts running.
He told me about a teacher in America who had been talking to class about national socialism, the Nazis, and the class had been talking about how the Germans were idiots.
So he'd later invented a movement called The Wave, to help students be better students. They would exercise, sit up straight, and wear a little symbol on their arms. Great. And they would start reporting on fellow students who were engaged in non-Wave-like activities. And then the teacher started losing control. There's at least one film about it.
Reflexive conformity. Sucks. That thing resting on our shoulders isn't just for decoration, pretty as it might be.
Then later we bumped into Sofia, Jojo and a friend of theirs, just by chance. They chatted, we chatted... it was fun . Even if I had forgotten my glasses and consequently felt as if I'd drunk a Pangalactic Gargleblaster by the time I'd gotten home. Hey, people usually pay for that effect. Myopia rocks. Yeah, baby. Myopic me.
...having enjoyed chocolate and raspberry cake. Which I shouldn't have, I've been eating a lot of cake lately, but hey. The cake here is not to be sneezed at.
I'm planning on going to another French film in an hour or so, though I may just go home and do all that less cultural stuff, the dishes, throw out the rubbish, transfer money around the place, fill out forms, stuff I should be doing probably. I've been neglecting the hum drum in favour of fun a lot lately; fun being mostly the cinema. It's getting to be embarrassing to tell people what I've been up to. But it's what I enjoy, and I've no-one else to cater for at the moment.
The films that I'm considering are "Paris 36", although it doesn't look like a film that I'm in the mood for; it looks like a film that one could use some company for; and "Pour Elle", which starts at 18.45, and finishes probably 20.20. Almost late for me! But probably I'd be more sensible to see it on Sunday, I need to be in town an hour after it finishes anyway. Lots going on! Hmm, it seems that I have come to a decision. My thanks for being a part of my decision making process, and my apologies for a blog post that's probably only of interest to me
It was good to get out, even if I won't, after all, be going to the pictures. Perhaps I shall see "Le premier jour du reste de ta vie" tomorrow.
Does any-one else think that it's funny that Opera 10's inbuilt spell checker isn't familiar with the word blog?
I was reading this article on Swedish Radio's web site, about how the head of L.O., a union organisation, let's her husband stay in her hotel room when she travels abroad on business conferences and was overcome by a feeling of... so what? It feels like the press are conducting a witch-hunt at this stage.
I was out for a walk today when I saw this; It doesn't show very well, but there's a sapling tree growing out of a crack in the rock, reaching for the sky at a nearly ninety degree angle. Not an ideal position! And yet there it is, doing it's best. There's no better metaphor for life than life!
My ramble was pleasant, and as usual I was out for longer than I anticipated; I wasn't lost but I might not have known exactly where I was I wandered through forest, and would come across a little bench in the middle of nowhere, or the remains of a wall, reduced to a line of moss-covered stones. It was grand. The only thing missing was some fast-paced company
(Vasa Källare) to write. So far, I've written one, very bad poem in Swedish (now on http://www.sockerdricka.nu/) and chatted. Technical help, advice on courses... I should open a bureau! But at least I got out of the house. The battery on my laptop is worrying low, possibly owing to drainage by the mobile modem, but I have to say, this is FUN! Shall do more often. I feel like such a loser just sitting at home all of the time accomplishing nothing. (Yes, I know, I'm always giving out to someone else for feeling like that... so I can't take my own medicine, sue me! ). One needs to sit at the keyboard in order to write, and to write is what I wish to do. Write and, apparently, drink a lot of organic coffee; fifth cup so far.
I've been working on the same story for years now. The problem has been that, in writing it, I've come to question the assumptions that lay behind the philosophies of the characters. One carries a lot from the books one read when a much younger person with-out really reflecting on it, a lot of macho crap. But I've finally come to a place where the thing I'm writing is about that journey, and the story is developing.
(Another probably random Skype message. Hum.
rebecca_ohema 18.26 hello Gavin Sheedy 18.27 Hi. Do I know you? rebecca_ohema 18.27 ok
Huh? It COULD be someone from here, my Skype details are on my private profile somewhere...)
Now I just want to write the thing and move on. Where to, I don't know. Probably another bloody story. Hopefully the next one won't be as sad.
...from London, so I spend the whole weekend chilling with him. The computer was on for a grand total of seven minutes over the whole weekend, I think. It was fun; we walked around town, Slottskogen, went to the pictures, ate out, chewed the fat, and watched three films at home. We just did the whole brother thing. He's taking the chance before the birth of his first child in August
The films we watched at home were "The Big Nothing", which is a film that probably looked good on papper, but just didn't work; "Southland Tales", which I was optimistic about because it's by the director of Donnie Darko and stars Dwayne Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar (who can really act), but holy cow it was bad; gibberish. There was a plot, it just have much to do with the film. One minute it was riffing John Waters, the next David Lynch, but never actually bothering to make much sense. And "Eagle Vs. Shark", which we enjoyed.
But I just made it up, was missing ingredients, and only made three layers. We shall see. I shall inflict small pieces on my friends tomorrow. Soya mince, of course.
I should have bought them pieces of his delicious chocolate and blueberry cake, while it was available. I bought the last piece for Robin today. It may be the best cake I have ever tasted. Solrosen, of course. Those guys can bake.
Sweden's democracy, in it's current form, was paid for in demonstrating worker's blood at the beginning of the last century. The workers day demonstrations on the first of May are taken more seriously here than elsewhere (I'm not even sure than we have such a march at all in Ireland, I associate the day more with the pagan festival Bealtaine, which means May in Irish). The demonstrations in Göteborg were far smaller than usual, possibly due to a scandal revolving around absurd pension payments being made by the union to the guy who used to run their pension fund. But they were still fairly impressive.
(Don't get too excited, it's just the name of the film that I saw yesterday).
Yesterday was a toasty warm day, so naturally I went to the cinema. Belovedfool had alerted me to the existence of a french film club every Wednesday at Hagabion, but I'd never remembered on the day before. I had an internal debate about going when the weather was so unusually nice, but just sitting in the sun, while nice in small doses, just doesn't do it for me.
The film is great. It's sort of a romantic comedy, but the emphasis is firmly on comedy; it revolves around the main characters fear of flying, and his relationship with his slacker best friend, and women... and other stuff. It's great. If you get a chance, see it.
Next week's film, the last in this season, isn't subtitled. *sigh*
...or sort of ambling through them would be a better description. I was just getting into Iain M. Banks's "Matter" when I was in Ireland, but, of course, forgot the book in my dad's car. So I haven't properly engaged with anything since, even though Gibson's "Spook country" and Gaiman's "Odd and the Frost Giants" are both extremely good. "Låt den rätte komma in" ("Let the right one come in") is good, but a tad depressing... my system takes depressing books personally. I've still never finished Vonnegut's "Player piano". That guy had prescience.
I especially recommend "Spook country". It's not a massive departure for Gibson, excepting perhaps that the world that it depicts is somewhat more like the world we live in than usual, but that's nothing to complain about. A rare example of a sci fi writer who's getting better with age.
It is hard to read lots of text on a computer screen, but her posts are usually fairly voluminous and still very readable. I'm often surprised by how short mine are. They seem longer when I'm composing them on my mobile 'phone I'm essentially posting M.M.S.s most of the time, although technically they're emails, because it's cheaper. Posted while on the bus or walking around town We are borg.
Overtime and insomnia are a bad combination. It's the tail end of a lovely, sunny day here, one I meant to spend outside, but I ended up napping on the couch after work. Work is good. Work gets one out of bed. I think that I would disappear from human society with-out work. How do people who work from home cope?
So off to the cinema I go! To "Män som hatar kvinnor", or "The girl with the dragon tattoo", as it's called in the english-speaking world. I have my doubts that it'll be good, which means I might be pleasantly surprised and am unlikely to be disappointed.
And R. and I seem to be friends again, which is one weight off my soul. But... if I make everything right... what will I have left to accomplish?
Sitting in Solrosen again. It's a vegetarian restaurant http://www.restaurangsolrosen.se in the Haga, an area of Göteborg populated with odd shops. I spend a lot of time here. It nice, a cosy atmosphere, friendly, good vegetarian food and pie to die for. And it's not expensive. If anyone feels like having me bumped off, just hang about outside Solrosen at about five on a weekday. It beats the hell out of sitting at home in front of the computer, which I've been doing far to much of for the last, oh, nine years, and I always feel so much better for the food.
Last Friday was the seventh anniversary of my moving to Sweden. Perhaps that explains the extremely strange mood that I've been in for the last few days. That and a lot of other things. Life. Simple and complicated. I love all of my friends, but I have complicated relationships with all of them. We're all oddballs. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's probably why we're friends. But it takes it's toll sometimes.
To echo a friend; whatever.
I've just seen Nausicaä från Vindens Dål, no idea what it's called in English, but it's a Studio Ghibli film from the 'eighties that's only made it to Swedish cinemas now. It's a bit technically primative compared to their more recent efforts, but it was great. The characters were so great that I even forgave the heroine for being a princess. It was beautiful, and terrible, and filled with a love of life and hatred of war, of the violence that lies with-in us. And the people sitting behind me were vocally pissed off with the kid with the loud breathing problem beside me. Sure it was annoying, but what's he supposed to do, stay home so he doesn't annoy people? Life is filled with strange contrasts.
Anna and Sofia have turned sixty his year, between them. We had a little party for them yesterday. Being the wild and crazy bunch that we are, this consisted of an excellent spread of cold foods (including organic beans for me, yum!) and a barbequed meat for every-one else, chatting and playing on Anna's new Wii console. That was a lot of fun. I am, unfortunately, not allowed to display any pictures
It's nice having friends whose idea of a good time doesn't include getting smashed. So, one last time, happy birthday Anna and Sofia.
This is the first day where there's no nip in the air. Hard not be happy on days like this, even if one does work in a giant, unventilated tin box So stop sitting at your computer and GET OUT THERE AND PLAY! Local variations may occur, your part of the planet may not be experiencing sunny weather or may think it's nothing special. Personal taste may differ. Only one weather per person.
What would you like your last experience to be? Probably it won't be anything that you expect. The border behind is a known quantity, but, if you're lucky, the one ahead is a mystery. We could take comfort in the fact that this experience will not have time to become a memory, a trauma, at least, not for you.
(At least 'till I probably get a huge pay cut in September). So I learnt from Shallowmuse. Which means that I could probably save up the money in three months. Why on Earth haven't I traveled more?
Partly because I keep blowing my cash on tech stuff, I suppose. And music. I was going through my various cables today, and there are a lot. Time to do a clear-out; and no more electronics! No more impulse buys. It's silly, what does one really need?
I miss K. We might not have had a functioning relationship in some time, but she has a sharp, compassionate mind and a wicked sense of humour. Our end might have been inevitable, but she'll always be a part of me.
Yesterday was a beautiful day, which I spent in front of the computer. That pissed me off. So I've had a serious think about what value the various online activities I engage in add to my life, balanced against the time they cost. And subsequently deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. And my never used Orkut account. I couldn't figure out how to kill Yahoo! 360˚.
Facebook was the harder of the two; I keep contact with a lot of people on Facebook. I've been playing scrabble on it, and have a digital pet. And it does keep one updated on people who are further away. But it eats time, and and keeps people that you don't necessarily want updated on your life in the loop. I'll call that deletion provisional.
But Twitter I can't see the point in at all. If you want to know what I'm doing right now, text me or call me. I don't bite. Except under extreme circumstances.
Who knows, I may actually have time over to do stuff now.
I thought that The Sounds were really big, but here they are, playing virtually on their home turf, in a room that can hold perhaps three hundred, perhaps less, and it's not sold out. Kol has played a venue as large with his first band. Also, I think I'm the oldest person here. And I'm bloging on my mobile. I feel so cool. Strangely, I feel less out of place than I used to. The awareness that everyone else is mostly concerned with whom is looking at them. Ah! An older, or at least bearded, guy! I think that I'll add to my coolness factor my buying some coffee.
This ought to be good. When did I move from industrial music to girls singing about relationships? I can't say why, but I relate. I've been listening to Anna Ternheim a lot lately; Anna Belovedfool thinks she depressing, but I don't really agree, and I can't say why. Even though some of her songs cut a little close to the bone. I suppose that I don't believe in hopelessness, as long as one isn't actually about to die, and even then... that's going to happen some time. Every second is precious. One could waste a lifetime worrieing about what might or might not happen. Fuck it. Live!
...totally unnecessary, but fun! And a lot quicker than typing on my mobile 'phone.
I've just been to see Bo, K.'s father. I see him at least as much as K. does. Her family hasn't stopped being my family because of our breakup, which is a relief. I never could understand how people could just cut out such a huge part of their lives when relationships end, though perhaps it's usually necessary. Most relationships seem to end acrimoniously, and life goes on, new relationships form, and probably new partners don't especially like one having too close contact with prior relationships; but what a shame. What a waste.
Hmm, maybe, having caught up with my email on the tram, I'll leave the computer off when I come home and actually go to bed. Chance would be a fine thing! It's something I've never understood; one gets so much more out of a day if one has had a good nights sleep, but still one cheats on sleeping and screws up whole days for the sake of an hour and a half . We are clearly crazy as a species. I don't know, perhaps you have perfect discpline . Maybe I should put a poll on this page...
I arrived back in Sweden yesterday, and my job today, as planned. It feels like I've stepped out of one world into another. My lives in Ireland and Sweden are not cut from the same cloth at all. In Sweden, I'm a free agent, with my own apartment and life; in Ireland, I'm part of the Sheedy clan, and we're close knit and very self sufficient. I could disappear in that house; I suppose, before K. came along on Yahoo! Messenger nine years ago, that's what I was doing.
My decision to not fret about life in general seems to be working, which is strange. Can one simply decide not to be angstfilled? Why not? It serves no purpose. But still strange.
Meeting K. has been the best and the worst thing in my life; it's given me a new life, but torn me from the old. It's a dichotomy that I doubt will ever disappear. I suppose that that's normal.
To bed! I have a lot of sleep to catch up on. Good night one and all, I hope that the day brings you closer to your hearts desire, whatever that may be.
I'd forgotten how stressfull living in a laid back country can be. Buses that come when they like, and permanent rush hour (which is a funny name for sitting in stationary traffic), mean never knowing when you'll get there. Which is tricky when you want to meet people, or don't have a deadline. I've lost count of the number of times I've set out for the cinema and not made it. I've seen students from abroad stranted in the countryside because the daily bus came half an hour to early. It's getting better. There are two tram lines in Dublin. The T.V. cable company is building out genuine broadband, so soon one may be able to load a page in under five minutes.
Maybe we should stop this, maybe we're destroying the charm of the place. Heart attacks are a small price to pay for a relaxed attitude
Time has run away again, as time does. Nineteen days sounded like a lot before my Irish holiday, but as usual the days have evaporated into the haze. It shouldn't surprise me, life is like that, and life here doubly so; it takes so long to do things here that days go nowhere. Which has it's good and bad points!
Stefan and Jonas arrive tomorrow. It'll be good to see them; they've expressed a desire for pubs over culture, which shouldn't be a problem as pubs are our culture. Perhaps we should put the museum displays on conveyor belts so that the pass through pubs and coffee houses, and people can view them in conditions which they find comfortable. But they must see the Viking display, in any case. It's better than anything I've seen in Göteborg, which isn't surprising, as Dublin was actually founded by Vikings. We only knocked down their original parliament about a hundred years ago. But it does put on the pressure a little; I still have lots to do! We'll just have to see how it goes.
As usual, I'm torn. Göteborg is a great place to live, and is also home to all but one of my friends. I have a nice apartment, and a job. But it feels like a betrayal of my parents every time I leave Ireland.
Practicality decides the issue, in any event. My life is in Göteborg; I'd be starting from scratch again here.
...that I've composed a blog on my mobile 'phone while in Ireland, forgetting that, inexplicably, I can't send emails directly from the email programme while in Ireland, despite being able to surf. You'll just have to wonder forever what pearls of wisdom are trapped with-in it's confines. Painful, I know.
Truth be told, I haven't so much to report. When I'm in Ireland, I hang with my folks, because I generally can't when I'm not in Ireland. I am, as always, eating too late, and not sleeping 'till five in the morning. Being home has that effect on me, I can't explain it. Life stands still. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, although my angst levels go up; life is short, and one only knows how far away one is from the start, not the end. Things to do. Things that I would regret leaving undone.
Meanwhile, for the faction of my family living in London, things are not standing still! R. & T. were here for the weekend. It's going to be a big adjustment for every-one when T. drops the baby (hopefully) in August; it'll probably mean an attention shift for my parents! And I suppose that I'll be spending a lot of time wherever my pending nephew's- or niece's- parents end up living. Future circumstances allowing. The economy, the environment... perhaps we'll have to become digital entities to escape it all :/
Psychology could take on a whole new meaning. Drinking to much digital booze? Algorithm. Feeling cold and unloved? Algorithm. No, it doesn't sound likely to me either.
...when we went on a jaunt up the Wicklow Mountains (or very high hills, as every-one from abroad thinks of them); beautiful and spectacular. We had sunshine and snowstorms... the weather has been tumultuous all day. We had sun, snow, heavy winds, calm, thunder and lightening, all with-in the space of fifteen minutes. I went for a walk yesterday in the sunshine, and half an hour later I was walking in gale force winds; invigorating! It's the kind of weather one rarely sees in Sweden. Funny what one misses...
I don't miss the insane traffic, though. It's rush hour all the time here. There are a few places between here and Dundrum where one has to cross heavy traffic with no pedestrian crossings... I always think about the elderly when crossing them. We're strangely cavalier when it comes to road safety. Probably keeps pension costs down.
It's possibly going to be a very strange place to live this year; every-one is getting pay cuts; if I still worked for council, I'd be paying €1,500 pension contribution, on top of my pension contributions. It's a nice way of saying pay cut, and it's not working; every-one is going on strike! Even the politicians are taking a pay cut. It's so strange, Ireland has been through an insane seven year bubble, and it's disappearing overnight.
I may end up moving my folks to Sweden after all; I'm sure that I have room for two more
I'm getting increasingly annoyed by the ever stricter measures and constraints being levelled against smokers. Harder fines, not even being allowed to smoke on balconies, not being allowed to smoke durring working hours. Yes, it's a nasty habit, but what happened to trying to get along? Shall we start punishing all annoying and/or unhealthy behaviour? There's been talk of a sweet tax in Britain for years. Talking on the bus can be quite annoying. Hmm... It seems like society is becoming like the grumpy old neighbour who complains about everything.
Finally booked a time with the optician to replace these too-strong glasses that have had me starring crazily at people; it's only taken me a year
Anna and I have been discussing the importance of eating for some time. Not even necessarily eating well even, just remembering to put something nutritious in your gob. I've just had a stark reminder.
Half an hour ago, I was feeling very depressed. And then I made a shake out of a pear, an orange and some protein powder, and some pancakes (with wheat drink instead of milk, simply because that's what I have in my cupboard today), and now I feel marvelous. I'd only had toast and coffee before.
The above article is about how the E.U. is on the way to banning the selling Plasma T.V.s on the ground that they eat energy. Which is good as far as it goes, but I always wonder why they go after small stuff in the home when industry and business is responsible for 80% of energy usage; my suggestion that some extremely energy consuming equipment be turned off when not in use fell on deaf ears at work, and our company is pretty good with such things. And little stupid things, like my neighbour using the lift every fifteen minutes because there's nowhere to smoke closer than outside... there's a certain balance lacking. I don't think that institutions are the answer on this one. I think that maybe we need some old-fashioned illogical mass hysteria and witch-hunting. Perhaps it's time to move out in the forest...
I wonder if the feeling will persist. Hopefully! The last two days have been awfull, I've felt like a zombie. Next Sunday, I shall take myself out and do something strenuous, so that I can sleep like the dead!
It's hard to believe that it's the same the same world that it was on Saturday. The snow is more or less gone, it's warm enough to dispense with the hat, the buses are running late again... now if only my nose would stop driping!
It's strange. I'm a thirty-five years old, support myself and have supported another, have my own apartment, a job, et cetura, and I still feel like I'm playing at being an adult. I did laundry today, whoopee! It's not a bad feeling. But it's a bit strange. I think it's the realisation that, well, no-one really knows what they should be doing any better than me. We're a world full of grown-up children.
I hosted my first adult party yesterday; no, I don't mean an orgy, or that we were all naked but the first party I've organised, well, ever. I messed up the providing food part, but Stefan N. Stepped in and saved the day. Stefan the supercompetent adult It was a whole heap of fun. And people brought presents, which was unexpected and, well, nice. Thanks to my favourite girls, I now have a Care Bear! Who'd have ever thought! Thanks to Robin, I have a hole in my window and my own, personal piece of sci-fi hardware.
The Melodifestival was fun as well, although I thought that most of the acts didn't deserve the level of production that S.V.T. lavished on them; only B.W.O. produced a song that I thought sounded professional.
And then every-one went home because of the snowstorm. Walking down to Angered in a snowstorm with Anna, Sofia and Jojo was a fine cap to the evening, although Stefan and Robin had a hairy trip in the car. There are a lot of idiots out there who make no concessions to road conditions.
Thanks to my fellow big kids, nights like last night make life worth living!
I went to bed for a nap at eight this evening. My freshly washed blankets visibly sparked against each other and myself, which looked cool and had me wondering about spontanious human combustion. They must be made of the finest quality nylon or something. I don't care, they're pretty and they're warm.
But I've been awake again for some time, which bodes not well for Monday! Getting up at five A.M. every weekday becomes a factor that sits on everything one does. But I guess that it's the same with all regular jobs, and it's good to have a reason to go to bed.
Tomorrow I shall fold clothes and perhaps go to the pictures. I haven't really decided. We shall see. We shall see when I wake up again!
I wonder how different life would be if one had children.
I've screwed up the most important relationship in my life during the last eighteen months by dithering. No, sure it's not all my doing, but I should have put myself 100% behind fixing things back when I realised things weren't where they needed to be, if it were possible, and I didn't, time after time. In the end, I put other feelings first. K deserved better. She deserved my honest best.
The damage is done. I have no idea where to go from here, and no desire to start over. But I've got to start deciding on a path, or I'll just dither my life away.
This open diary format does get one writing about whatever comes to mind. I think, consequently, I may be losing the ability to filter my verbal ruminations. I should make a positive effort to make my life more interesting, so that I have something to blog about. According to the Marvel method for writing comics, the key to an interesting story is conflict. So I should get into conflict; join a gang, rob a bank, become addicted to drugs. But this is likely to be a short carreer if I blog about it.
More evidence that I'm not a gourmet chef. This is as far as I got (and it took a while!) before I released that my onion was dead. After I'd already broken off once to run out and buy a squash. Hum. I suppose I'll be hitting Coop gain then But I'm determined that I shall have a pie at the end of this...
(Thanks Masken, I might never have tried otherwise).
I'm a bit tired today, and possibly hungry; paying the price for giving in to chocolate yesterday. I gave in on the way home from Jona's, where I'd been interviewed on my experience of moving to Sweden. I'd forgotten how hard it was. Swdes are extemely inviting and friendly, but one does need conversational Swedish to get by. It's worth it for the lack of religious influence on everyday life, though
And it was snowing very cutely on the way to work... perhaps it will actually stick this time!
I seem to have spent the whole night in gangster dreams. It started out with me being as a successful actor refusing to sign a handwritten contract with my agent, giving him merchandise rights on me against The Usual Compensation.(Apparently, being a solicitors son has left deep marks on my subconscious. Vague contracts are the stuff of nightmares ). It turns out that my agent is a mobster, and he and the other mobsters summarily condemn me to death, so I go on the run. (I'm always going on the run in my dreams). I get found by one his henchmen, but he sympathises with me and helps me hide in the forest, where I can see my beshotgunned hunters, curiously feeling no fear.
Then my memory skips, the whole night I think, and I'm in a house with two corrupt cops and an innocent little girl, and that ends up with us (the little girl and I) getting the upper hand, and turning one of the cops. We meet him after he has burned his partner to death. Then the girl and I go to the home of a very old lady who cares for us and treats every-one under eighty like children.
Not at all odd.
I was about to try and add pictures from my dream. Might be a little tired. Breakfast.
Stefan and I met at the Hagabion. I had thought that we might see "Les Grandes Personnes", but Stefan was automatically suspicious of a French/Swedish film. Swedes are generally leery of Swedish films, and with cause, one would be obliged to say. The percentage of Swedish films that are good is probably at least as high as the percentage of Hollywood movies that are good, but as so few are made, it can be a while between the good ones! So it feels as if they're all terrible. I recommend Tjenerna Kungen. Perhaps I can convince Anna to join me for L.G.P.
So, in the end, we settled for a couple of coffees and a slice of very delicious pie each, and chewed the fat for four hours. Hagabion has a nice ambience that I can't explain. I'd imagine that it'd be the perfect place for a date. It might be as well that I never date!
And then we walked to Frank's Coffee, via Centralstation and talked for another hour or so over so chocolate pie. We both had a reaction to a stairwell to a basement in there, an inexplicable feeling that it was not a good place, as if belonged in a David Lynch film and not Göteborg. The angle was too steep or something.
It was great fun, and Stefan is great company, but I was definitely high on sugar and caffeine by the end, and felt hung over this morning. Not at all up to folding laundry So I'm back in Hagabion. Life is hard
I'm out for the sake of being out; trying to shake a Sunday headache. I was out with Stefan N. last night, and apparently I can't handle my pie. Or maybe it was staying up 'till nearly one. Professional hazard of working in the distribution industry. Hellraiser!
I had planned on a long walk, but it's a bit colder than I'd reckoned with, so; out! To Göteborg! Yay!
Forget dating. I've never gotten what was supposed to be cool about treating the opposite sex like pages in a catalogue. The really cool thing about bachelordom is being able to place two chairs in the middle of the sitting room, depending a clothes hanging yolk between them, and then hanging clothes on it... with-out complaint. Har har har har.
I turned an enormous pile of dirty clothes into smaller, dirty piles and an apartment filled with clean clothes. I get such a sense of achievement every time. Laundry rooms are a great idea, but it's a lot simpler when one has a washing machine in the house, as my folks do. Through in a load before you go to bed! Done! Laundry rooms are a whole other level of organisation!
It's still snowing, yay! I love snow. Let the world disappear under a blanket of white. I may be the snow-orientated equivilent of a pyromaniac. Not quite as dangerous.
I've no idea why, but I'm so tired that all I want to do is to go to bed. Perhaps the laundry room computer will eat my time again My friend Anna is complaining in her blog about feeling detatched from the world; I'm feeling it a bit too keenly today. It took willpower to not just go home... I suspect that I was a pain in Sofia's ass. But this will all pass with a good nights sleep or ten thousand.
It's odd that one yo-yos like that, emotionally, but it's probably hormonal; men as well as women are on a monthly chemical clock; in fact, the human brain has several separate chemical cycles, five I think it was, according to a documentary I saw on T.V. many years ago; which is why one day one will be inexplicably tired, and the next bouncing out of ones skin. I'm probably at the end of that cycle. I like that better than the more likely explanation
To the laundary room! Perchance to clean. Look both ways...
This ensued from my answering Raymond on how my weekend was. I didn't expect sympathy, I just usually try and answer the question. Probably tiresome! I could have said great; I could borrow a page from Anna's blog (ha, Opera thinks that I spelt blog wrong) and do a list of things that made me happy this weekend. All the list really needs is, I didn't cry myself to sleep. I'm feeling like myself in a way that I haven't in long time. And having to replace a load of stuff isn't entirely negative I might be a bit girl-like when it comes to shopping. Today I bought two of these for fifty kronor each; about five Euro, or four U.S. dollars, or 61 Rand (hi, Shallowmuse). It's nice sleeping under a few layers. Happy Gabh I bought other stuff too, but I'm not old enough to think that this is of interest, yet. honestly.
I did a major clean-up in my apartment over the last couple of weeks, which in retrospect was pretty silly, as K is moving out tomorrow. Now the apartment is filled with black bags and boxes, and shelves are being denuded. Lots of things are disappearing. One of the bones of contention that Karin has with me is that I'm a hoarder, but it's coming in handy now although I see a trip to Ikea in my near future. Perhaps several. It's handy working beside an Ikea! I wonder if I can bribe Masken to help me with the assembly...
Today went not entirely as planned. I have a bit to do in the apartment, cleaning my side on the computer, clearing the desk it sits on, putting things in boxes; however, my day started with a trip to Robin's, as he forgotten some stuff in my rucksack when we saw "The Unborn" yesterday (a sort of Jewish "The Exorcist" I'm not a huge fan of horror films, but was above average). And we got to watching manga, and eating pizza (him), falafel and his favourite cream cakes. And then I called Bo, who lives a few hundred metres from Robin, and asked if he fancied a fika (coffee break). One of the pictures appended features his idea of a fika! Bo always spoils me something rotten possibly to make up for thrashing me at chinese chequers most of the time; which he did twice today. So it's quarter past seven and I haven't even started my chores yet :O but I doubt that it's anything I can't handle tomorrow. I may even go straight to bed.
I have good friends. Today Robin and I were due to go to the cinema, but late communications from K put this somewhat in doubt; so I rather left him hanging. At 19.40 I gave up on being able to make it; and five minutes later changed my mind when K announced her intention to throw in the towel for the night! He was next in line in the queue for a refund. And he's been totally cool about it. Robin rocks.
I have good friends. Last night was Disko-Daggarna with Sofia and Anna. I can safely say that it was the best animated film about worms that I've seen. We were still singing the songs and shaking our booty today. It was fun.
When I bought the tickets, the cashier asked me if any of were under twelve, and I said no, the youngest is twenty-eight. "Interesting..." It's fun having friends whose taste also leans towards the under twelves category They can groove, to boot.
Then it was pizza, which was a little weird, but entirely edible. Followed by a quick swing around central library. 'Twas, all in all, enormous fun. Sofia and Anna rock.
I hope that things went for Anna tonight. I have both my thumbs crossed!
And today I bought a new Canon printer... at Netto...
I realised, as I was going to bed last night that I hadn't eaten a proper meal since breakfast. And then I didn't sleep. And today I felt a bit strange. It's not hard to forge a connection. I wonder if I should start programing my 'phone to remind me tn eat! It's important, and easy to forget. I'd probably have gone to the flicks with Robin, if not for my bad eating habits. So today I'm going to have a proper meal, at Solrosen, as I'm planning on getting a haircut in that area anyway. Or perhaps Suzanne will call remind me that we arranged to go to the cinema today. D'oh. So, quick but sizable meal at Andrun, opposite Nordstan, followed by coffee and cakes with Suzanne and Martin, whom I haven't seen in an age. And then home to sleep, if I'm lucky! I have to be fresh for Disco-Daggarna with Sofia and Anna tomorrow! And then the cinema again on Friday with Robin. When did my life become so busy?
Yesterday was Robin's 26 birthday, so of course we had to do something for it. Anna, Sofia and I bought him dinner in an Italian restaurant on Kungsportsplatsen, two doors up from Pizza Hut. The menu consisted, not surprisingly, mostly of pasta dishes. Tasty. And then we hit the billiards hall.
Now THAT was fun! None of us are exactly sharks. I, however, managed to outdo myself my ending perhaps six games by sinking the black ball either in the wrong hole or in the wrong order. They played scissors, stone papper in the end, the loser being my partner in the next game! Swine. The nights events included such fun as Sofia lifting Annas skirt with her cue whilst Anna was playing, and me having my nose painted blue. Twice. Apparently, it's not as fun when avenges with nose-painting.
'Twas, all said, the most fun I've had in a good long while.
I only hope that Anna starts speaking to me again one day
Despite not having gone to bed 'till after half past one this morning, I've been awake since six. I've just posted an entry on my other blog, on blogspot, on what I've been doing in the two hours since then. Time flies when you're messing with machines. It was interesting, though; I discovered that Gmail has two separate and different mobile websites, http://m.gmail.com and gmail.com, alongside the mobile 'phone client which they provide.
Google is a strange phenomena. They have lots of services that one can't find by following links off their own website; one has to find out about them. This is perhaps due to most Google products being almost perpetually in beta, but still, it's an odd promotion strategy. They have some fantastic stuff, but I find it unfortunate that they've moved away from providing services that work on older, slower machines and slow connections; both Gmail and Google Documents complain when I try to run them on my parents 30 K.B./S connection, although, in fairness, Gmail does provide solutions, in the form of making older, less demanding versions of the web page available, and a simple H.T.M.L. page solution.
Still. what I liked about their strategy from the beginning was that it opened up the 'net in a new way to a whole new constituency, much as Opera does. Lots of people have older computers, and lots of areas don't have broadband; web 2.0, with it's heavy dependence on Java, Flash and soon doubtless Silverlight, is a slow and frustrating place. One of the features about Opera that I loved when I was working on a Windows 95 machine was the turn off images button!
However, I found a partial solution when I was last back in Ireland; use the mobile web in your computer browser. It has limitations, but it's a whole lot faster; Opera, Yahoo and Facebook all have mobile pages, and lots of media organisations too. Although they lack features available of the regular web pages, they're a whole lot smaller, and feature no demanding plug-ins. No (fluff)friends on Facebook, but you can read your messages and not require blood pressure medication.
So, come on all of you technologically handicapped, join me in the third world of the internet, the mobile web. Population seven million and rising.
Today I saw Gomorra, an Italian film about the Maffia, with Stefan. It was about as far from a Hollywood film as one could get; it seemed that it's main object was not to entertain, but horrify. It certainly horrified me. Stefan told me that the author of the book that it's based on is under constant guard because of death threats, but not the director. Anna has the book on order, it'll be interesting to compare notes. Will she be reading it in the origianl Italian, I wonder?
The film was a little confusing for those of us not embedded in the local politics. There are factions, and I wasn't quite clear on who or what they were. But it painted an unglamourous picture of a society where violence and money rules, life is cheap, and scruples come at a premium. Stefan pointed out that a lot of the characters had the same name as their actors, which made me wonder if they were actors. I'd google it, but I'm too tired
Stefan and I both enjoyed it, although it was a little grueling. And too slow for some; there were snores to be heard!
Stefan and I have something of a competition going on who can get there last. I've become fairly punctual during my time in Sweden, more or less, but for some reason things always go wrong when we meet, for both of us. Tonight was his turn; he missed his first bus by seconds, and the second didn't come. He was then delayed by a drunk. I played my part too, though; I was in time, but I managed to get the cinema wrong. This still wouldn't have been a problem, as I had plenty of time to spare due to Stefans travails, but first my card didn't work in the ticket machine, and then the queue to the manned counters took forever owing to the film festival that's taking place at the moment. It was worth it to have my accent slagged by the lady behind the counter, though.
Still, we made it, and we had a good time. Although I started feeling distinctly seedy during the film, possibly owing to Julmust. It seems I've lost my tolerance for sugar somewhat.
And now I shall attempt entry into the realm of Morpheus. I've had such vivid dreams lately that I've realised that they were dreams at all when it became apparent that the events therein were at odds with reality
I have lots of things to do. I have to really scrub the apartment, because the landlords are coming on Tuesday to check that K hasn't wrecked the place, prior to my name replacing hers on the contract. Which is a bit of a pain. And I'm not sure where to start. I also have to sort out our stuff a bit in preparation for her moving out. And I'm finding it very hard to work up any enthusiasm. I hate this whole thing.
But I have started getting on top of some things. I have informed the electricity network that I need an account. I have written another email to my landlords. (The whole changing names on the contract business is turning out to be tricky). I rang my bank with reference to a charge that Rix video in Angered made against my card despite having refused to accept it with-out a P.I.N. code after I'd swiped it; I had my I.D. card, haven't had a P.I.N. in months, first time I'd had a problem. 396 kronor. The bank sounded less than happy, but what can one do? I've been charged for nothing, and they accepted that charge with no code or signature. I'm sure it was a mistake on the part of Rix, but I'll bet it'll be a fight. I called my folks. Registered some bills. In other words, I've found excuses to sit at the computer all day!
Time to get to work!
Last night was After Work; ten or so of us met at The Bishops Arms at Järntorget. It was a lot of fun! Although we were all very tired. Sofia, Anna and I had dinner at a nearby café first, and later we all drank alcohol, which is a fairly rare event. I had three beers, including a pint of Spitfire, which I was rather amazed to find outside of Newick, England; it's a seriously local beer! Hellraisers that we are, we headed home at about nine. We start work at 6.30 A.M., in Annas case 7.30 A.M. this week; regular social hours are not an option! Of course, I took no pictures.
It's a pretty day to be waiting at Klareberg for fifteen minutes. The snow is actually sticking! Natives tend to complain about the snow, because they're so used to it, although I've noticed that they express a concern not entirely related to global warming when it doesn't appear. Seven years in and I still love it.
I'm a bit irritated with myself; I'm going out with work tonight, and I didn't get to bed 'till quite late. Just as I was about to go to bed, having already chatted with John L. later than I really like, my little brother called from France. I could have explained to him that I really needed to go to bed, but we don't talk that often, so I didn't want to. So the upshot is that I'm going out tonight and I'm already really tired.
I'm a tad wrecked today. I haven't slept enough all week; unlike last week, and the couple of months before that, insomnia was not the culprit; the late Stieg Larsson was. I've gotten stuck in his Millennium series of books. It's been a while since I fastened in books to such a degree that I couldn't put the feckers down; Robin Hobb, which was a year or so ago, I suppose. Which is also why I haven't bloged. Or listened to the news. Or gone to the cinema. Or eaten very much. Or called or visited any-one. Oops. Books are baaad. Very baaaad.
It's strange how one can get so immersed in a story and yet still be critical. The first book was simply excellent. The second had a tendency towards black and white with regard to character. Lots of men with no redeeming qualities. Not always, but it was there, and it was irritating. But it was still excellent, gripping. I've been told that the third and final book isn't as good, but we shall see. So far it's managing to cost me sleep!
Of course, in English a sandwich is two pieces of bread with a fillings, but I've been living in Sweden long enough to be corrupted to their way of thinking To the left you can see a very expensive (79 kronor per kilo) olive bread with ecological, I mean organic, more Swedish infection, baby spinach leaves, picnic paprika and plum tomatoes over a none-organic mature Grevé cheese and organic butter. On the one hand, it's at the low end of the scale of food preparation; but on the other hand, it tasted great and was loaded with nutrition. So I feel a little proud of myself. I do more than occasionally completely forget to have any kind of dinner.
I've got a free trial of Spotify from Bredbandsbolaget; it's a musical streaming service where you can play any of the music that they have, with no restrictions. I've used it to listen to Anna Terheim, whom I thought I'd like and do at first listen, and Markus Krunegård, who did "Jag är en Vampyr", which I love... but the album didn't grab me in the same way on the first listen... but anyway. I'm not sure it's worth 99 kronor a month when I already have such a large music collection, but it's a nice way to try out new music, and, unlike emusic, it has stuff from the major labels. Which is occasionally nice!
So, all in all, life is proceeding at a rip-roaring pace! As I don't have to get up tomorrow, I have a feeling that I'll be finishing "Män som hatar kvinnor" tonight... tomorrow, I shall try and write something myself.
Looks great, but misses the mark. I think the problem was tone. The Spirit comic was playfull, but the film is silly. Sin City was a series of comics that Frank Miller had done over a number of years brought life with a faithfullness that I wouldn't have thought possible. It works because it evokes a tone. The Spirit feels muddled and overly flippant. It has it's moments, but overall, eh.
On a personal level, I've decided that it's time that I become more focused. I lost my focus for a while there, maybe some time ago; but life is short. It's time that I achieve some of my goals.
I'd forgotten how cold it can be here in Dublin. My fingers are a wee bit numb.
Yesterday, I hung out with Niall, a fellow traveller on the path of cultural obsession. We're nerds. We hung out and talked, and caught the movie "Gonzo", a film about Hunter S. Thompson. He had talent, but seems to have gotten sidetracked by his image and a love of the high life. 'Twas fun hanging out with Niall, but I felt a bit handicapped after having read 'till six the previous morning. Damn you, Larsson! One could say that I'm living in Dublin and Hedeby at the moment.
It takes a little getting used to, not being in contact all of the time, but really, does one need to be online all of the time? Even if one does like to be available if friends want to talk.
My dad has tried several different internet connections, but we're too far away from the nearest exchange for most of them to work, so ultimatelyhe plumped for 3 mobile broadbandhttp://www.3ireland.ie/broadband/index.htm. It's slow, 30 K.B./S, and prone to breaking down completely occasionally, but it's by far the best of those we've tried so far. The national telephone companyhttp://www.eircom.net/vas-pages/, long since privatised and passed around various short-term profiteering financial groups, offers expensive broadband (€55 a month) that breaks down every seven minutes or so; and virtually everything else available is simply reselling that, in this area in any event. Did I mention that Sweden rocks? It took five hours to download updates for this computer yesterday; the same updates took less than ten minutes at home!
(Hyperlinking is apparenty not working today).
It's made me realise how much of my life is online. I feel out of touch with my friends, who are probably too busy to be online in any event. I miss them! Lots of Christmas love going out there.
Otherwise, not much to report. It's cold here. It's good being in the same house as my folks and li'le bro'. Because I'm stayng longer than planned, we'll have the whole family in the house for a couple of days, if all goes according to plan. What once one tookfor granted is now a special treat
Now I shall return to "Män som hatar kvinnor"http://www.stieglarsson.com/The-Girl-With-The-Dragon-Tattoo, which is now apprently available in English, with a different title. Hum! Why? Men who hate women was too controversial? I'm really enjoying it in Swedish. I wonder if works in English. Translation is tricky business, and a lot of the references are very specific to Swedish culture. Maybe I'll reread it.
Rambling... well, fits with name of the blog Time to cold turkey from sugar again. I think my mum must have had a starring role in Hansel and Gretel.
So here I am once again in Göteborg City Airport, formerly known as Säve. I've always been a bit jealous of the guy with the laptop surfing the net, but now that i'm here with my wireless laptop, I find that it doesn't work. I wonder when I'll get to post this, the internet is not as ubiquitous in Ireland as in Sweden, and my movement somewhat more restricted. Very minor bummer.
I managed to miss the first of the three buses with I was due to take to take from home, don't ask me how. I was cleaning all morning, very ineffectively. I saw it go. So I high-tailed it down to Angered on foot with eighteen minutes 'till the forty bus was due o leave... and made it with two to spare. It used to take twenty-four. So that was a fun start to the journey. But anyway.
The next stage of my trip was bus thirty-nine, followed by bus thirty-six; one must call and order these buses at least an hour before they're due. Västtrafik and experimenting with doing this on less popular bus routes in order to save money; a good idea, but it adds an element of stress! For example, if one misses a bus.
In any event, a couple of minutes before it was due, a small van turns up; one of those small taxi buses for those who can't use regular buses. I was the only one travelling today. The driver was an extremely nice man who, first, invited me to finish my lunch in the taxibus, and, secondly, decided to drive me directly to the airport. He even unbooked the thirty-six. Brilliant. We chated about football, and Jamican English (his wife hailed from Jamica)... have I mentioned that I like Göteborg? So friendly. Which also meant that I arrived at the airport an hour before my itinary had planned; which was just as well, because it's busier here today than I've ever seen it. I don't doubt that I would have made it through security, but would have been stressfull, and unnecessary stress is to be avoided. So I essentially got a free taxi from Klareberg! With less hassle than the airport bus. And I didn't even get his name. Thank you, mysterious bus driver!
It's strange, Säve is visibly busier than previous years; the number of destinations has exploded; but the airport itself hasn't expanded at all. I wonder if it will survive the governments decision to cut back from sixteen state run airports to ten. It would be no fun to have to start travelling with S.A.S. or K.L.M. via Copenhagen or Schipol every time, and expensive to boot.
I should probably consider going through security! I shall see you on the other side!
Fraught. Confusing. Painful. But better than the transition from lover to enemy. Still. She doesn't answer my messages, I don't what she's doing. It's strange. I probably know the least of all her friends.
I'm going to stop thinking about it soon, honestly.
Saving the world, perhaps. The opportunities are there. A clean, renewable energy source, a political idea that makes wars seem as futile as they are. Not accomplishing these things makes me feel lazy. These and not cleaning the apartment. But I suspect that, even then, one would feel as if one was underachieving.
...sang Emilíana Torrini. True words, but the fact that they resonate so strongly in me is symptomatic of the problem with a break-up; everything I see or hear can bring a tear to my eye; "The Little Mermaid" (excellent), a song by The Sounds, comic books; suddenly the culture is a mine-field of pain, previously innocuous or even vacuous statements take on a whole new resonance. I wonder if one is ever truly free. We're too immersed in each other. I gave up on the delusion that one can stand alone with-out going a bit strange long ago. I don't know if one needs a lover necessarily, but definitely companions on the path of live.
In the mean time, I need to start being careful about what I read for a while
And kudos to Opera for adding a spell-checker in Opera 10, the alpha of which I'm currently using. Fast as well. Me like.
I haven't had a bout of insomnia that's gone on for this long in a long time. I've had one good nights sleep since my brother's wedding, the first of November. Otherwise, it's been not sleeping 'till two, waking up at four, and walking up in the middle sometimes. One can do that for a while; one is less efficient that one can be, and the world takes on a dream-like quality, but it's not so bad. I'm now at the stage of physical effects; pain down one side of my body, and my brain feels like a sponge that's just been squeezed. But it will go over.
I was at a glögg (mulled wine) party at Anna's yesterday, with Robin, Sofia, Sofia F, Alvin, Agnes, Jojo and, um, one other (Sorry, I'm terrible at names). It was fun. Basically we sat around and nattered 'till midnight, and I played with Alvin for a while, causing him to nearly brain himself; Anna's apartment is lovely. Soft light, a tree with red and white balls, and a one-legged, fluffy flamingo on top. I suspect I wasn't much fun, Robin made me eat on the way home; he asked when I'd eaten, and it had been over seven hours, except some sugary morsels and half a litre of cider. It's a bit scarey to be so transparent. I get narky when I don't eat; actually, downright unpleasant. So today I'm hung over, aching, and irritable! It probably didn't help that I didn't get home 'till 2.30 A.M. A lot of hanging around at Brunnsparken, and, boy, was it cold.
So today I'm going to stay on the sofa under a blanket and watch Disney movies, courtesy of Sofia.
That was a long moan To quiet Sundays.
Still it cried 'Sleep no more!' to all the house: 'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.'
It's nice, it's small, it works. I've already had my first technical problem, but it turned out to be ignorance on my part. There's no mouse button, just a pressure pad, and I'm used to tapping the pressure pad on K's ancient Dell laptop; but on this computer, one pushes the pad down. I had to call the technical help line to find that out. It's a thing of beauty, but most of what one wants to do with a computer these days requires an internet connection, which I haven't had access to yet. Strange how one can get so excited about a thing.
I was going to add a 'photo, but that doesn't want to work. Later!
I was home and awake for about seventy-five minutes during the week, and next is shaping up along the same lines. Usually I like a bit of breathing space, but I'm not drowning yet. Next week I have, probably, cinema with Robin, cinema with Sofia and Anna, French, Bo, the Christmas dinner; and I have to take a look at Sofia's computer too. For a fairly antisocial person, I get around.
I have tickets to see Melissa Auf Der Maur tomorrow, and I really want to go, but the situation is moderately complicated by Karin's Bo Kasper tickets. Which she'd like to sell, but I suspect that we've left too late. We shall see.
And I bought a Macbook today, in the Black Friday sale. Which I'm moderately excited about.
One of the reasons that I like hanging out with Robin, besides the fact that he's a very cool guy, is that he causes me to expose myself to elements of culture that I wouldn't ordinarily. Such as today, when we saw the film "Twilight". I'd have hyperlinked that, but I'm bloging from my 'phone.
I wasn't expecting to enjoy "Twilight". I knew little about it other than it was an American horror flick, a genre that has, to say the least, stagnated. But this was good. It more flirted with conventions than obeyed them. It had teen film elements, but twisted them enough to make it interested. It was very romantic, but again, in a way that flirted with conventions. I enjoyed it more than Robin; he thought it was a chick flick, and I guess it was. I think that it resonated with me because I believe in crazy, no holds barred love, but don't believe that life or love are straight forward. Passion, frustration... I recommend it heartily to those of us who are hopeless.
And then, of course, I told Robin too much. You think that I tell you too much? Robin knows things I won't tell you. You're a blog. He's a friend, a word I don't use lightly. Get over it.
I don't think, for example, that the picture that serves as an illustration for this post does a good job of conveying how cosy it is here in Solrosen tonight.
I don't know anything about them, so I've not made any plans; usually when I have visitors I drag them around some museums and galleries, but Håkan reckons that they'll want to look at girls. I'm not sure that they'll need my help for that! "Yes, the Haga area features a student scene, whereas on the Avenue you'll find the party hotspots." I've never been what's called a ladies man! Although most of my friends are girls. (Hi girls! Hi Henry! Yeah Conor, I know, you want to kill me and use my corpse to kill your enemies. So nineties.) So I have no idea how this weekend will go. I do know that there will be no eating of live monkey brains on my watch! Funny how one often one knows one or two things about a country. France, frogs legs. Germany, bratwurst and nazis. (No, not fair, but true). Egypt, pyramids and pharohs. Ireland, the potato. Holland, hash and the red light district. South Africa, Queen Bianca and apartheid (no relation). One would think that in the internet age that general knowledge would have broadened out?Or am I wrong? Has it?
Very, very cute.
chocolate... so I wander away randomly again, still going forward. Maybe forty-five minutes later, I happen across the hotel. And I look down the street right beside it... and see the restaurant. In the opposite direction to the one I walked in.
I wandered through forest, and would come across a little bench in the middle of nowhere, or the remains of a wall, reduced to a line of moss-covered stones. It was grand. The only thing missing was some fast-paced company 
We are borg.
. We are clearly crazy as a species. I don't know, perhaps you have perfect discpline 
I might be a bit girl-like when it comes to shopping. Today I bought two of these 
I bought other stuff too, but I'm not old enough to think that this is of interest, yet. 
honestly.
WIDGETIZE