Hyperism

So much talk about peoples poor diet on the news at the moment. Kids in the UK are getting fatter, but I doubt this is unique for the UK, same thing seem to happen in Sweden too. I wonder what they serve in Schools in Sweden these days? I was amazed to hear what they eat in the UK, burgers, pizza, chips. In my school we never had anything like that, we mostly had stews and things with rice, boiled potatoes and such. All in all pretty healthy but tasteless stuff, but since you weren’t allowed to take food with you to school and no-where to get any snacks, you ate what you were given or went hungry, which I would do every time they served pasta, as they just couldn’t cook pasta for shit. I still feel sick thinking of their slimy lasange. Brrrr. But still I think this is the way to go rather then spoil the kids with junk food.

Another strange thing in school about food is that food is like fashion, or music, you are meant to like certain things, in my school that would have been meatballs or pancakes. And food you are meant to hate, like black pudding and any fish dish. If you liked the wrong thing and kids would see you stacking the black pudding up for instance you’d get teased to no end. Which is why I think schools will have troubles if the introduce a healthy choice as well as the crap food, as the kids choosing the good stuff no doubt will get teased.

In all honesty this teasing doesn’t end at school, it stays with you. I think I have always been slightly ashamed for food I like. I love black pudding, I like fish-roe paste, I like liver-pate, I enjoy horse meat and the list goes on. A lot of people that turn their noses up to this type of food, never tried it. This is a thing that annoys me. I was a very fussy eater as a child but my Dad made me try all kinds of food at least once. This made me like things other kids didn’t, like smoked salmon, lots of different type of fish and roe. Don’t get me wrong there is/was lots of things I didn’t stand. I can’t eat any type of beans, the texture makes me hurl, deep fried food is blergh, sweet corn makes me think of old ppl’s teeth. But at least I know this because I have tried it. A few year ago when Jamie Oliver had his program about school dinners, I was quite disgusted by seeing kids refusing to try things like chicken stews, and fresh strawberries, the only thing they wanted was chips. Brrrr.

I often stare at ppls shopping whilst waiting at the till. So many people just buy brown and yellow food, heaps of white bread (don’t get me started about the poor option of bread in the UK and yet it is better than when I fist moved here then there was isle upon isle of only white toasty bread), frozen dinners, pies, chips, crisps, etc. So it is not so strange we are a fat nation.

It is also quite sad that it is cheaper to get junk food then good fresh food. If you would go to an organic food store for your weekly shopping you’ d eat much better but to triple the price. Crazy.

Yet food snobbery annoys me also, even though I know I am doing it when I look down on peoples bad choices. Nothing worse then if you are tucking into something you like, and someone looks at it and goes erghh disgusting, it destroys the whole meal.

ok I’ll end this rather pointless rant. But it is good to be open minded this made me try Bubble tea even after I thought it sounded disgusting and I loved it.

Oh one last thing. Isn’t the term “making love” kinda like sitting down at a table with a crisp white linen cloth, picking up your expensive silver knife and fork and tuck into a bucket of Kentucky fried chicken?

PS…I have never actually had Kentucky fried chicken so maybe I should have said big mac…

Lovely Black Pudding…

yes who could have thought it possible that the German language could be…but listening to the way the singer from melotron says “r” makes the little hairs on my arms stand up. It is like he growls it, like a cat…purrrrrrr

I have been in such a stinky mood this week so far. The fact I have been sick more or less since I came back from the Dominican has made me into Mrs Grumpy Pants, and I feel fatigued and very fed up. It feels like it is lifting a little bit now, so I hope I can shake of the bad mood and the tiredness. I haven’t been to the gym for two weeks, which is not helping the fatigue at all, but since I more or less get tired just to walk into work, it hasn’t been a good idea to try to go there. I might have a go at it tomorrow and see how it goes.

The height of my bad mood was reached this Saturday, when I tried to buy a coat in a shop, I had been sent a voucher for 10% off for a jacket, coat or knitwear from this shop, so armed with this voucher I tried to purchase this jacket, but it didn’t go to plan. The girl at the till tried to read the the paper and didn’t understand it and then looked at it again and said you have to buy a coat AND a knitwear to get the 10 % off. I just looked at her, couldn’t be bothered to argue handed the jacket to Steve and said well OK no thanks then. Then she tried to sell me a storecard…I walked out. At a restaurant later Steve looked over the paper again and said I had been right, no where on the paper did it say AND. I manged to buy the same jacket in another store yesterday without any problem. So of course what I should have done was to try to just adopt the more American approach to customer service, and not given up and nicely walked away. But I find it very hard to do such things.

When we were in Seattle at one point at a restaurant I got a bit of plastic in my salad, Chris and Bev instantly flagged down the waiter who ran out to the kitchen and got the manger who came out and apologised. It was all very effective, we got my meal for free, and another person even came and said sorry, this person put her hand on my shoulder and said ” I am so sorry”. At this point it was just a little to much for this very typical do not want to make a fuss Swede, and I just wanted to go hide. But of course this is the way it should be. Sweden has probably even worse service than England does. Last time I went to Sweden, I had some run-ins with grumpy baristas who were angry when I told them I had ordered skimmed milk not full fat. So I guess I am changing somewhat too, not sure if that is for the better or worse.

This weekend we are off to Dublin. I have travelled quite a bit this year, been to Sweden twice, Finland, Dominican Republic, US and Canada, so we thought we add one more before the year is over. I went to Dublin last year for work, but didn’t see anything of the town itself, just some boring industrial estate. We were thinking of some other places to go to, but in the end we just wanted somewhere you could get to rather quickly without having to pay lots of money. Sadly traveling within England itself is rather pricey so we thought we might as well go to Dublin for some leprechauns and Guinness to be sure to be sure.

This thing is a bit funny, it has some new Swedes in training to become “proper Swedes”. The thing in the middle with the neighbour…i do that…always!

One of my deep dark secrets, well not a very good secret is that I love the extremely cheese soap opera “days of our lives”, I got hooked whilst a uni when they did the whole Marlena is possessed by the devil storyline. I was watching it yesterday when her and John (who has yet again been brainwashed by Stefano) were talking about what song were “their” song. Got me thinking about songs that I have with different people. When I was a uni I used to see this guy for awhile but we really disliked each others music tastes so the only thing we ever listened to was the sound track from Clockwork Orange. So we never had a song.

Me and Steve got several songs, but if I were to choose one it would be “Are friends Electric” by Gary Numan, it played in the café were we had our first real date. It is a fitting song if you think about how we met.

My very good friend Alexander who more or less was my other half during collage, we shared “Opportunities “ by Pet Shop Boys, and later “Popularity” by Sparks. We had some narcissistic egoism worship going on there.

Karolina and me spend ages listening to music and playing musical games where we would listen to the radio and one person would shout out a name of some random person we knew and the other person had to improvise a song about that person to the next song that came on. Highlights would be a song about a boy with a head like a football to “la isla bonita”. But if I were to pick a song for us, It would be “Pretty Vacant” by Sex Pistols after the summer when we sat on endless busses listening to “never mind the bollocks” in our home tie-dyed t-shirts and grungy jeans.

“Change” by Sparks would be the song for me and my former flatmate Michaela. She had a well dodgy cd collection of mostly bad compilations from the early 90’s. But she started pinching some of my music and started getting into some Depeche Mode. But she really liked this Sparks song, and used to play it a lot when we would go on our road trips across Sweden transporting my furniture from my mum’s house to our flat.

Susie and me have two songs, one is our travel soundtrack “Sixteen Tons of Hardware” by BWO. Which played on Karolina’s stereo the first time me and Susie went on a trip together. And then “Dick Around” by Sparks which is more of our life philosophy soundtrack. Seeing that song live with her was great.

I don’t think I got a song with Johan, we do share a lot of similar musical tastes, but at the moment he is total guitar-metal-wank-mode so I can’t deal with that ;). We’ll have to work on having a “our song” in the future instead.

Do you have a song? What is it? And why?

Stole this idea from Avitania her word was cheese, I guess mine is “Like”, like totally! I am abit more worried about the blood thing. I know I talked about it in my hospital post…but still!

Do your own at http://wordle.net/

This summer it will be 10 years since a very bored student me stepped into the irc channel #Industrial on altnet. I was very dubious about the whole chat room thing and such. I had lived with a girl who was spending more time in front of her computer chatting than she saw ppl irl. That wasn’t going to happen to me…oh well. On altnet I met people I am still good friends with today, like Xtal and Kan. I also met my beloved Johan who I don’t know what I’d do without. And of course I also met that person who is now in our kitchen sorting out our dinner. Later I moved on to the undernet #industrial and met shed loads more people many of them I have now met in person, spent lovely holidays with and some people who I have never met but I am still in touch with via twitter or online somehow. I never really expected that boring summer at university that my whole life would change…oh very cheesy ending but nevermind!

Nom eating a Lara Bar, they are so tasty, but I don’t see them around much, someone in the US need to hook me up with a key-lime one or a coconut pie one, they sound nom-tastic. I really should have had a look for them when I was in Seattle.

So trip in to Lister Hospital in St Evenage went ok. We actually manged to be well timed in getting the bus both there and back and also in getting into the nurse who took my blood. So they are testing for a few things, I stupidly kinda assumed they could do several tests on just one vial. I never look when the draw blood, as I am extremely squeamish. I don’t mind the needle going in I just don’t looking at it. Which will be fun once I start with disease modifying drugs, I guess I’ll have to get used to it if I am going to do it myself, or I’ll have to get Steve to inject me, but the thought of that just seems a bit weird. Hrmm. Anyway back to the blood, when she was done. I turned my head and looked at her marking up the vials. All 5 of them, and the thought of all that blood made me feel a bit light headed. Brrr, do not like. Then she told me about how crap some doctors are at drawing blood, and how the sometimes mess up veins…brrrr…blerghhh…just trying it makes my skin crawl.

Anyway I get to wait a week or so to see if I got some fun tropical decease or whatever is wrong with me. I still think it is something to do with my sinuses, today they hurt like a mother, and are very blocked up. I sound like Pootle from the flumps, To Steves amusement….I aim to please.

Went to the doctor today. This guy is not my normal GP but I have seen him once before when I went with Steve to the doctors. I also read an article about him in the local paper, so I know he is younger than me. His name also sounds an awful lot like Dr N00b. It is funny when people like doctors or policemen are younger than you, it somehow feels wrong. Like how can he have had time to study medicine for 5 years when I am so young, and then it hits me…I am not so young anymore. Oh well.

Dr N00b was very nice, he started talking about my accent and where I was from, and then spent most of my appointment talking about places in Sweden he has been to. He thought Malmo was a dump. Seeing this would probably be the part of Sweden We’d move back to if we ever went back, made me almost a bit offended. Made me wonder what he saw, if he maybe went through Rosengard, or the more concrete bits. Malmo for me is a very pretty town with lovely lush parks, a nice city centre and some love beaches. But who knows maybe he had only seen this nicely edited film clip from fox news…oh I don’t know these kids today, doctors or no doctor, Malmo is not like this!

He couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me either, but I am going to Lister Hospital tomorrow morning to have some blood tests done, so we’ll see how it goes.

I am fed up with this silly infection, or whatever it is. Doc said I had a sinus infection and gave me antibiotics, headache cleared up more or less, and I felt mostly fine apart from not being able to sleep while we were in Finland. Although the lack of sleep could be down to talking to Susie all through the night and most part of the mornings, “playing the would you rather” game. But since I’ve come back I have felt very worn out, and my throat has been sore since Tuesday, now the headaches are back, snot is startung to flow, and I cough like a smoker. They told me to go home at work today, so I was a good girl and did so. Tried to have a nap but didn’t really manage to. Starting to be a bit like Christian Bale in the machinist, today I felt very confused as to what was going on, and couldn’t really follow conversations. I told Steve I forgot to buy ground hogs when I meant ground almonds.

I got a doctors appointment tomorrow so maybe they can let me know if it is still the same crap kicking around or if it is something new. Most of all I’d just like a good nights sleep, I think that is all of a miracle cure I need.

With regards to my old post about language…Steve just showed me some of these. They are all funny and shit, yeah…

more to be found on youtube