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!
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.
My favorite Swedish word is fika , ok maybe not my favourite word, but my favourite thing to do. At University there was a group of us that could spend hours just dicking around in cafes, surviving on only black coffee and gossip. Since leaving University and Sweden, I haven’t had that much of that life. Steve gets the concept but I don’t think lasts more then an hour or so, I suspect he is more keen on the coffee and perhaps a cake, than the endless talking. When I found Susie in 2004, I found a Fika-soulmate. We have whilst working and traveling together spend hours Fika-ing, talking everything from total trash to religion (maybe that is the same).
People you can fika with are often also people that are good to travel with. People that just goes with the flow and don’t run around and always need to run from one place to the next. Each to their own, but I am more of a lazy traveller than a tick the box yes-now-i-have-seen-bigben-off-to-the-next-spot traveller. That might mean I miss certain things when I go to new places, but oh well. I have just come back from a wonderful trip to Helsinki, me and Susie stayed with a friend of a friend, and pretty much just did whatever we felt like without any plans whatsoever. We did go out to a club one night, our friend Niko was DJing, it was fun, I haven’t been to any clubs for ages, but I have to say the times are gone when I want to stay out to 4 am, I prefer a cuppa at home instead (boring yes I know but that’s just the way it is these days).
On the Saturday it almost felt a little like stepping back to the uni Marathon sessions of fika, when me Susie and newly found friend Emmi, ended up going from a sushi place to a cafe to Emmi’s flat and then finally to a Greek food place, a meeting we all thought was just gonna be lunch ended up being a fika (well yes it was more than coffee here…) that lasted for over 10 hours, and it was great, a perfect day for this lazy traveler.