Idiosyncrasies

I am not even going to say hello, for fear no-one will notice; my voice sending aimless waves of sound into the great unknown - only to be returned by soulless echoes. I am alone. I have yet again managed to completely ignore and disrespect all wishes and anticipation of those who actually care about what I have to say. I know. I have not updated my blog, my portal to my past, the umbilical cord that attaches me to familiar memories and loved ones of once-upon-a-time, for over two weeks. I hang my head in shame and shall chastise myself until the end of...February.
Yes.
But what have I been doing in the mean time, you ask, your little orbs darting with curiosity. I am happy to report that I have not spent these past weeks idling. I have fallen ill, recuperated, seen some of the island, bought cigarettes for desperate minors, had lunch, had dinner, fell two times on separate occasions without having consumed a drop of alcohol, and managed to secure a trip to Stockholm, possibly two. Now that´s what I call an eventful fortnight.

On a more personal note, my mind hasn´t been sitting still, either. Doing all this research has done no favours to my mental state, for I have now found myself fighting off the constantly nagging temptation of consuming everything that has even the remotest of ties to Anime, and I am not kidding. Especially the hit series Cowboy Bebop has me enthralled to the very point of obsession, prone as I am in my feeble mind to taking healthy fascination where it really shouldn´t go. I have no idea why this happens. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my current soundtrack to the whole Sweden experience is Amon Tobin's ´Proper Hoodidge´, a track that wouldn´t sound at all too out of place in your run-of-the-mill Cowboy Bebop episode. Or perhaps the motivation can be traced to the fact that I currently seem to share the main protagonist´s hairdo for some reason. Except mine´s a reddish brown, instead of a mossy green. But, hey.


Now just compare this to a recent photo of me and tell me you don´t see the resemblance.

I can let myself go completely and rant on about the utter genius that is this series, but no. I will constrain myself. I need composure, dignity. Must not let on that I have only seen 1 episode, but seem to revel in admiration nonetheless.
Moving quickly on from this completely inappropriate and useless tidbit; besides noticing the fantastically superfluous fact that I have Spike Spiegel hair, I have found myself in a bit of a bind of late. Call it a rut. Yes. You heard me. I, undisputed ruler of all things and people that can be called fickle, have come to the conclusion that my brain needs teasing. It´s not that I don´t have enough things to entertain myself with, what with the research internship and all the cultural novelty surrounding me and all. I just need to...do...something...
Thing is, and I continue to object to any muffled expressions of the words ´pompous git´ by the way, I have found that what I lack is a way to really express myself here. Not being able to do something creative (temporarily discounting being imaginative with theoretical discourse and using my hands and feet trying to explain myself verbally to the locals) has done me in in a serious way in the past, and it is slowly but surely creeping up on me now. I just feel frustrated, my focus shifts inward, my head feels numb and heavy.
But lo! No fear! For I have discovered something truly magical! A childhood friend, long since forgotten, has been reintroduced to me. Meet my sweet, trusted, crusty old pal: writing.
Yes, writing.
And yes, I am fully aware that what I have been doing for the past 15 minutes is also writing. Numbnut.
But what I mean, and tell me if I am getting disproportionally excited about this, is that I have discovered creative writing. No boring (excusez le mot) papers, no witty comments on my daily activities, just thinking up stories. It´s like a magical combination of pretending that you´re someone else (as in acting), and using your own voice to describe it (as in singing).
Plus: it´s remote! If it´s stupid, I can always blame it on a very systematical and surprisingly coherent series of typos!*
* This strange tendency of mine towards distance has settled its tendrils in other areas of my life for as long as I can remember. It´s the same reason I hate phone calls but just love the delicate art of text messaging.

So, what to do with this new-found knowledge? Start writing. Possibly fan fiction first, to get the general drift again before I create some characters of my own. I cannot believe how happy this is making me. Perhaps I´ll even invest in a course on the matter. Imagine writing storylines for games... Just thinking about the things that need to be considered (such as a strong arc and multiple story lines allowing for the choice of the player) is scintillating to my senses.

Besides, this cold and windy piece of rock floating in the middle of the Baltic Sea is quite an inspiration all on its own. It´s like one of those cities in RPGs that is perpetually covered in a thick layer of snow, the locals having adapted to the cold in very weird and mildly disturbing ways - so that they strangely enough dress in just T-shirts and other items of summer clothing under their incredibly thick winter coats, snow boots, woollen hats, insulated gloves and ski poles. Occasionally the odd pedestrian comes sliding by on the insanely steep streets, having slipped on the lethal combination of flattened snow that has in some parts melted and turned into ice, lightly dusted with more icy fractals. Bulldozers gracing the streets on a regular basis, ploughing through the snow and heaping it into huge black and brown piles on the side of the road, this place holds the delicate balance of post-apocalyptic earth entering a new ice age, and a picturesque RPG wonderland where you feel you should barge into every home you walk past to ask if they have any clues how you can best save the earth using your Mana.

I is truly happy now.
Maybe I´ll even write some Cowboy Bebop fanfics. Set in Sweden.

Mardi Gras!

It´s Shrove Tuesday. Apparently. And whilst the German, Dutch and Belgian parts of the planet like to dress up, throw candy at each other and get ludicrously drunk, and the Americans like to get evenly hammered and take their clothes off, the Swedes prefer the Christian approach.
Besides, they do all that other stuff in their spare time already.

Shrove Tuesday, better known as Fat Tuesday, is a weird tradition. Being the last day before Lent, the basic idea is to start eating all the foodstuffs you can get yer grubby little mitts on that fall into the high-fat, high carb category. Basically, everything the good Lord forbade. And, just for the record, these people look at me like I am the epitome of bad health when I mention that we, in the land of Normal People, like to put chocolate sprinkles on our bread. Really.
Lent, by the way, is the day that fasting starts - for those godforsaken heathens of you still in the dark: that´s when people from days of yore stopped eating. Until EASTER. In a brave and slightly idiotic attempt to still uphold this somehow lovely naive tradition, some Swedes do actually cease digesting food, or at least try to. But, as always, when you have to give up on something, you had better damn well make sure you are filled to the absolute brim, and preferably on the brink of severe nausea, before you start. Better hate and part than love and part. Or, as I like to put it, snack fest 2005. Binge tot the Maximus!

Yes sir. It really starts with one (or more) of these little buggers, called ´semla´:


hark at the local delicacy comprised of a sweet bun, whipped cream and almond paste. enough to give your teeth a bit of a jiggle. not to mention your heart rate . and if that´s not enough, in some parts of Sweden they put these things in bowls of simmering milk.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: Semla, future ruler of mankind. Do not laugh at his appearance, for he can turn on you quite easily, transforming the normally oh so pleasurable practice of eating into a path of hardship and turmoil - increasing with every bite. This little bub comes in various shapes and sizes, and today I encountered a big one. Being an eager devourer of all things new and cultural, I decided to get me one of these babies, which were being distributed in the cantine I very conveniently found myself in at lunchtime. But little did I know that old Semla here isn´t the easiest of snacks. Let´s just say that he is certainly no Pringle. In fact, I´m not even sure he doesn´t top me in the food chain.

My God, I am still stricken with intimidation at the thought of another one of these. In one of my usual bouts of childlike enthusiasm - which almost never turn out well - I decided to take on the miniature mountain positioned on the paper plate before me, and put it straight to my mouth. I didn´t regret this choice at first, as it started out reasonably well: the bun itself isn´t so sweet, the bucketload of whipped cream isn´t either. So far so good, or so I thought.
But sweet jesus, when you´re halfway reaching the centre, you realise that you have in fact come to the little axis of evil of the pastry world, where almond and sugar have mated - only to produce wretched little lovebabies of glucose horror. Holy mother of God! And they´re having a party with the rest of the ingredients! Don´t take me wrong, it still tasts relatively ok, but there comes a point where each of us, no matter what personal inkling you may have towards sweetness, has met his sugary match. It´s a disconcerting feeling knowing that your body takes over before your mind fully realizes what it´s eating, leaving a nasty feeling of subdued nausea where your original bravery, enthusiasm and appetite used to be. This was when I switched to the supplied spoon, which I could now totally understand the meaning of, and carefully resigned to scoop a few additional bites out of the now grotesque looking Semla. I don´t know if it was a result of slight hallucination due to severe glucose overdose, but by this time the piece of hollowed out pastry resembled a huge, widely opened mouth with teeth made of splatters of rich cream and strings of almond paste-ridden crumbs. I made the very wise choice to leave the table before it started talking or - not unimaginable - devouring itself.
In light of my recent experience I would therefore publically and openly like to bow to Semla, King of Pastry, for slaying yet another feeble-minded and weak-stomached earthling. It won´t strike me at all as odd as one day in the not-too-distant future the evolutionary buck will be passed to one of these mothers to take over the reign of the ecosystem of the earth.
I pray I never in my life will encounter one again.

Looking back on it though, it does seem like a well-suited farewell to food. All food. Generally. For about a week.

I think I´ll call my first-born Semla, just out of sheer respect.

snow is your friend

hello dear all,

So much for the blogging impetus, eh? Well, I guess I am as much to blame as anyone, but this internship o' mine is just plain hard graft! Sure, it's located in this beautiful Disney-esque little city, but look closer and you'll see that those sweet little cobble stones are nothing short of sure-fire traps of doom, who's sole purpose in existence is to take you down to their level, and take you down hard. So far my mortal coil has not yet seen these little harbingers of destruction from up close, but I have up to now experienced an average of 5 near-slips per day: with the added dread of plummeting to the earth carrying such appliances as MP3 jukeboxes, mobile phones and -let's not forget- the laptop. One can understand that being on the streets thus gives a whole new meaning to the word breathtaking.
In all of this I have learned a very valuable lesson: snow is your friend. It may sound silly, but in Scandinavia you need those little white fractals of ice firmly and amorously embracing the soles of your shoes. When walking along a pedestrian track you should therefore always reciprocate by carefully placing your feet on the patches of snow, lovingly ignoring their grubby appearance. You may be tempted by the clean spots of clear street, but beware! Do not go to the light! These apparently safe zones of paving are in fact completely invisible mini glaciers, solidly frozen to the surface of the road so as to lure you into believing in their false sense of security. I imagine they have on their conscience many a broken bone, the little bastards.
And so, my reader(s): today's advice is to rid yourself of the thought that clean is safe! In fact, the grubbier the path, the better: so as not to pollute the Baltic sea with salt, they just throw around sand (and its big brother: gravel) in a random pattern in this corner of the world.

Do avoid the yellow patches, though.

Swedish television, for those of you who were waiting for that post, will be discussed at a later date, due to the writer's current disposition of trying not to fall to her untimely death at the age of 23.