Slovene overload

I have absolutely nothing against the Slovenian language, and I absolutely love the country, and pretty much every single Slovenian person that I've met has been very nice and friendly. But I cannot stand having to listen to it anymore. After a while it really does get on your nerves when two or three men are standing in your room, speaking loudly in Slovene and you have little to no chance of ever finding out what they are talking about. It makes it hard to focus on what you're doing, and if I have nothing to do it makes it hard to just go on facebook, because I don't want them to see that.

And I'm sick of everything on my computer being in Slovene, and of all the documents that come my way being in Slovene, which leads me to never know what it's regarding, thus I never know who to give it to. And today I was trying to access my hotmail, but all of a sudden it had turned into Slovene and some message came up that I couldn't understand and couldn't get rid of either. After som random clicking around I finally managed to change it back into Swedish, but it really shouldn't have to be so damn hard.

And every time they call from the ministry in Slovenia, I pick up the phone and say Slovenian Embassy. And yet they release this flood of words in Slovene that can't be stopped, and despite my efforts to interupt them and ask if they speak English, they just keep going. When they've finally finished talking, I ask them if they speak English, they sound slightly annoyed and repeat what they just said, but in English. And they never enunciate very well, I always have the hardest time picking up their names, which causes me a great deal of distress at the office when people get mad at me for not being able to say exactly who's calling them.

Another person who definitely didn't enunciate was the woman who called a little while ago. She sounded Finnish, but I'm pretty sure that she was using Swedish words. She talked for about 3 minutes and I didn't understand a thing. I did hear something about opening hours, and the word embassy, so I think she might be coming over. I do wonder how I'll manage to fend her off. Hopefully she understands Swedish better than she speaks it.

Broadening my horizons

R&B normally isn’t my cup of tea, but I’m really feeling Jenny Wilson’s latest single, The Wooden Chair, and I’m contemplating downloading the album from which it was taken, Hardships, from iTunes when I get home from work. And just before I left this morning I downloaded Duffy (it was on discount) so that means I’ll have some good tunes to listen to while I clean my kitchen and start preparing the salmon I’m going to cook tonight. Good music and good wine are essential when Malin cooks, or she just doesn’t cook at all.

Money in the bank!

I never thought this day would come. Never have I been so short of money as this past month. Too many quarterly bills, a French course to pay for and a Bruce Springsteen ticket that in itself made it worth living almost below the poverty line.

But now my bank account yet again holds some money. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that, as always, they won’t be there for long. Despite my efforts to live cheaply, it somehow never works out. No matter what you do, it costs money. I’m going to have to start making budgets for each months – and stick to it.

Either way, today I’m with money and two of my favorites are coming over for dinner and copious amounts of wine tonight. I cannot wait to get out of this godforsaken office and pour myself a nice, large glass of Periquita!

Change of heart...

The papers this morning were filled to the brim with the royal engagement. And after reading and hearing about it all night yesterday and all day today, I’m beginning to realize just how huge this is. Not just in Sweden, but for Sweden abroad, it will certainly put Sweden on the map, if only for a short period of time. And I am happy for the two; it can’t have been easy for her to be with a man of the people, against the wishes of her family, and for him to suddenly find himself in the spotlight, with all eyes on him, watching his every move.

It annoys me slightly when there are talks about the succession order and how now that he’s not actually a Bernadotte, the family won’t live on through them, and instead her younger brother’s children will be the real Bernadottes. So just because she’s a woman she can’t carry on the family name? Thank goodness our prime minister repudiated such statements and said that when the succession order was changed, it was changed to make our society more equal and that this should not be any kind of problem today. Hear, hear!

And although I’m still pretty indifferent towards the monarchy’s being or not being, I’m still very much looking forward to seeing all the lavish dresses at the wedding!

No thank you!

Well, as could be expected, here’s now my first post about Hanson. Come on, we all know I wouldn’t be able to go too long without one. But, surprise, surprise, it’s not a very positive one. I still like their music, I do, and obviously their newer stuff more than their old teeny-bopper pop. Their latest album, which is now two years old, is still played pretty frequently on my iTunes.

But now Taylor apparently has some sort of side project with some other guys, one from Smashing Pumpkins and the others from god knows where. They call themselves Tinted Windows. When I first heard about it, I thought that it might be kind of cool, different sound, different people and just altogether fresh. I do find it difficult to understand how his wife and four kids can be ok with it, though. At least I wouldn’t be too happy if I had a husband who was away from home most of the time, either on tour or in the studio, and then when he finally has some time off he goes and joins another band, instead of spending it with his family.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that the music sucks. Big toe. The lyrics are lame and I hate to say it but it kind of sounds like the Jonas Brothers. Or worse. It’s definitely very different from the Hanson music that I’m used to listening to, and I don’t think it’s a far off guess to say that what Smashing Pumpkins used to sound like was nothing like this.

Oh well, to each their own. As long as I’m not forced to listen to it.

A nation of sluggards

Saab isn't doing so well, as we all know, and the government isn't going to take over, thank heavens. I don't feel like paying for a company that has been making losses for 20 years. I understand that a lot of people will be affected and that as many as 15 000 people might lose their jobs, and now they're all expecting the government to solve all their problems.

And my question is this. Why is it only people working at big companies who demand and receive all this help? What about people who get laid off a small agency that nobody has ever really heard about? Or what if like me and many of my friends, you return to Sweden after some time abroad, and you look for a job for almost six months before you find one? Why don't we receive any help?

And why do people always ask what the government can do for them, but not what they can do for themselves? Why are Swedish people so helpless? Yesterday I read about a couple who both worked at Saab and they had both been doing so for years and years. They had two teenage children, and now that they were probably going to lose their jobs they said that they obviously can't move because their kids have all their friends where they live now.

Excuse me? How is it ok to cut your income almost in half and live off of tax payers money because you don't want to take your children away from their friends? If you can get a job somewhere else, something that pays at least somewhere close to what you made before, how can you even hesitate? Of course you move. And how to do you expect to get a new job in a town where one of Sweden's biggest companies just went bust?

I do understand that older people who've worked at the same company all their lives need more help than younger people. But when a 20-year-old on TV is asking what the government can do for her now that she's lost her job at Volvo, I just want to punch her face and tell her to think for herself for a change. Go to university, move abroad, move to a different city in Sweden if abroad is too scary. But for the love of god don't just stand there like some pathetic loser, completely unable to manage your own life.

Princess marriage?

Apparently Crown Princess Victoria just got engaged to her long-term boyfriend and now it's the major news of the day. And apparently nine million people are now very excited and have great expectations on the couple and their ability to reproduce. I believe that we expect them to have 3-4 children.

First of all, the woman is almost 32, I do not expect her to have 4 children! Second of all. I don't care. At all. I mean good for her if she's happy, but it's certainly not something that just made my day.

It's not that I'm against the monarchy, I'm just very indifferent towards it. Their being or not being is totally irrelevant to me. And I'll probably watch the ceremony, because it's bound to be beautiful. But I don't appreciate being told what kind of expectations I have on a couple that I've never met, nor will ever meet, before I've even had my morning coffee!

Sorry, but it's just not there

Ok so today my friend Ida brought me along to a fitness class that I don't normally go to. It was some sort of mix between boxing, aerobics and some yoga crap or whatever else you can call those slow things that are supposed to be relaxing. It was all fine up until the end, when we were told to take the energy between our hands and make it into a ball and then gently push the ball of energy into our stomachs. I mean, come on! Between my hands, there was nothing but air, no energy, zilch, nada. Who believes that kind of crap anyway? And then he told us to meditate, to practice just letting our thoughts flow through our heads without actually catching them. But seriously, I'm a thinking human being, human beings think, that's what we're supposed to do, that's what makes us different from most other animals. How can blocking my thoughts help me in any way, why would it make me feel more relaxed?

When I work out, I want to work out. Not listen to some guy who tells me that I have a ball of energy between my hands that can somehow mysteriously be pushed into my body, through the skin and all. All I could think while I was doing that was, god a beer would be nice.

friendship with foreigners

Studying and living abroad is amazing in many ways; you meet people from all over the world, you face challenges that you never could imagine, you learn how to conquer most of them, and you alway come out stronger than you were before. And while at first making friends with people from cultures far different from your own can be tough, it's so extremely rewarding once you do, and after a while you stop seeing the differences and start seeing the similarities. They become you're very good friends but their nationality is never an issue or something that you even think about. The only time when it's brought up is when you share your memories from home, or teach your friends about your country, and is there really a better way of learing about other countries than to experience it first hand through your closest friends?

The downside of it all is that eventually it all inevitably comes to an end. People go back to their countries, or they move on to a different one. In England, I was one of the people who stayed for a while, but then I became one of those who moved back, something I wouldn't have thought possible even just a few months before I actually moved.

And although when I was abroad I missed the friends at home, people that I can now see every week, I now have to miss a ton of people spread out around the world, knowing that I may never see them again. When I was living abroad, I always knew that my friends in Sweden would still be there when I came home to visit, and they would be there if I ever decided to move back home. But the friends living abroad, some as far away as Australia, Indonesia, America, others still in Europe and not that far away, how can I know that I'll see them again? I'm sure I'll go to visit some of them, but how often will I go to Indonesia? And how often will a person from Indonesia go to Sweden?

It really makes me sad to think about people that I shared my life with for a pretty long time, good times and bad, knowing that they're so far away now, and that we'll never ever have what we had again. It used to be the people that I met in America that I missed, I would compare everything to my time there. But I was there for such a short period of time that I can't honestly say that I knew them all that well. Some more than others, sure, but it's the Bournemouth people that I miss the most now. I spent a year with most of them, even longer with some. In such a long period of time you manage to establish a solid friendship that won't just fade away with time, like it did with most people I met in Arizona. I never shared the mundane everyday life with my friends in Arizona, I only experienced the grandeur of partying and traveling. In Bournemouth it went so far beyond that. Yes we partied together, but we also stayed in watching movies together, had dinner at each other's places and cried in each others arms.

In the end, that brings people so much closer together than the greatest party of all.

Sweden's best

Yesterday, after a rather dull day of going to the gym and then pretty much doing nothing, I went to my friend Matilda's place to watch "Melodifestivalen". Now, I guess most people who live or have lived in Europe have heard of the Eurovision Song Contest, and Melodifestivalen is just the Swedish tryouts for this. And to make it all the more fun an interesting (read: to make more money) they've for a few years now been making this into a whole series of shows, with people going through to the finals, or to the second chance, where another two songs will make it to the finals. Yesterday was the third week, and as always there were just so many fabulous songs that it was impossible to choose which one to vote for.

Wrong. There was one song that I liked, and one only. And I would never ever sink so low as to call in and vote for a song in Melodifestivalen. Melodifestivalen is a parody of what good music is all about. The only reason I watch it is to make fun of the participants and to feel slightly embarrassed about the deteriorating taste in music in Sweden. The host, a popular Swedish comedian, is the only thing worth watching. She's hilarious, and sometimes a bit cruel to the contestants, but being in the public eye, they really should know how to handle that.

I'd say that one decent song and one absolutely horrendous song made it to the finals, while one good song and one decent made it to the second chance. And I'll be watching, of course. Because no matter how bad it is, and no matter that I never cease to be amazed by the utter crappiness of the show, I still have to watch it, see who wins and then degrade the artist and the whole Swedish population for having such appalling taste.

I had a lovely time at Matilda's, though, with good company, good wine and a far too big bowl of chips right in front of me. Good thing I started off my day by going to the gym!

Too bad I can't say the same about today. I should go out for a walk or something, but there's snow on the ground and it somehow seems to be both raining and snowing at the same time and it's just not the most tempting weather to go out in. Yesterday I was trying on some spring clothes, getting in a really good mood when thinking about spring's imminent arrival. As I walked home in the snow that started falling last night, spring felt more distant than ever and it certainly isn't looking any better today. Maybe one more day of escaping reality and watching Sex and the City isn't so bad after all.

Drinks with an ambassador

I have to say, the ambassador's place wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. It had a reception room and a dining room for entertaining, but I can imagine that they never use those rooms when they're just home alone. The rest of the place just looked like any old aparment, nice, but nothing too extravagant. And better decorated than the reception room, which was a bit too old-fashioned for my taste.

I ended up having a much better time than I had anticipated. I was actually quite nervous before, I didn't know what to expect and I thought that things might be awkward, but it was all very relaxed. Those who had significant others brought them along, except for the new guy whose girlfriend is visiting but preferred to be touristing around Stockholm alone than accopany him to drinks with his boss. Somehow I understand her.

I ended up talking a lot to the other assistant's husband, who to my surprise was 80 years of age. She's just 65 and he looked as though he was around 70. He's British, but has lived in Sweden fora long time, but it was very clear that his heart was still in England. And he had very old-fashioned values, he said that when he was working his wife was home with the kids, and that's how he wanted it, but now he was at home and she was working and he was having a very hard time getting used to this. And boy was he a royalist! He was very upset about royalties marrying commoners, he thought it to be very important that they stick to the blue-bloods.

It's strange being at your boss' place, especially when he's an ambassador. He's supposed to be this important person, he's met all kinds of politicians and other high-flyers, and there I was drinking wine in his living room. It definitely made me see him in a different light. All of a sudden he was a father, a family man. They had pictures of him and his daughters when they were younger, he was hugging them and smiling happily. I guess even ambassadors are only human, and being an ambassador is just a job like any other, only you get to work in a bunch of different countries. But once you're home with your family, you're like any other person. Except you have a cleaner, a cook and someone who does your laundry. And money in the bank.

Dreams of spring

If I did my best to forget my numb legs and runny nose while walking to work this morning, and if I tried to ignore the woman who just walked past wearing a beanie and warm mittens, I could almost pretend that spring has come to town. The sky is clear blue, the sun is shining, although I can only see it mirrored in the fender of that pink bike across the street, and in the shadows cast by the cars parked on the other side of the street. The Slovenian flag that’s hanging outside my window is floating softly in the mild breeze, a far cry from the days when it was ferociously trying to escape the thrashing wind and rain.

I wish today weren’t Friday, because on Fridays the other secretary isn’t here and I can’t take my usual lunch walk down by the water and past all the other, fancier, embassies in the Diplomat City. Getting some fresh air, and more importantly, some sun, really does help me survive the weariness of most afternoons at this office. Yet, I guess a missed lunch walk is a decent price to pay for the week to be over.

Although I am excited about going to the Ambassador’s residence for drinks tonight, I’d much rather just go home and indulge in my Sex and the City addiction or even read the fabulous book that was given to me by Matilda on my birthday. A large glass of red, a good book and rattling rain on the conservatory roof, while cuddled up under a blanket, enfolded in a warm, big couch; that would be my ideal Friday night tonight. But I have no conservatory, I have no red wine, nor the money to buy any, and as a matter of fact I don’t even have a couch as I live in a tiny studio where such a piece of furniture would have a hard time finding a place to reside.

So when you think about it, going to a luxurious apartment to have drinks with an ambassador and various other diplomats might not be such a bad thing after all. Not when the alternative is getting home to my closet of an apartment, where the kitchen and the hallway have merged into one, sit on my bed which during the day serves as a sofa, and watch Sex and the City DVD’s on my computer, as I have yet to buy a scart cable to connect my DVD player to my TV. And at least tonight I’ll be getting drinks. I’m hoping for cocktails but will settle for wine. Red wine is always cool in my book.

I don't secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of their heads

as the group I've joined on Facebook suggests. On the contrary, I'm very open about my desire to punch, kick, scratch and yell at them. And seriously, what is it with these slow walking people who are very determined to get in front of you, only to pretty much stop dead the minute they've managed to squeeze in, bringing you to a sudden halt and causing you to spill coffee all over yourself?

And how can people be so totally unaware of what's going on around them? How can they occupy an entire sidewalk, and when you're trying to get past they don't move an inch, even though they can clearly hear your heavy breathing and discrete (or not so discrete) coughs, indicating that you want to get past them. But no, instead you're forced to step down on the street and risk getting hit by a car.

And what's with those people who just walk slowly, and even though they're alone they walk in the middle of the sidewalk. Any normal person would walk on one side, right? So you're trying to pass them, but somehow they mysteriously manage to walk slightly to the left just as you're trying to pass them on that side, only to walk slightly to the right when you're trying that side instead.

And these flat escalators, whatever they're called. They're clearly not escalators as, well clearly they don't escalate. Conveyor belt? Anyway, so why would anyone in their right mind stand still on those? Clearly they're meant to transport you faster to the other side of building, they're not a place for a rest. And those who do walk, but slowly and in the middle, do they really think that everyone else wants to walk at the same slow fucking pace as they are? Show some respect and keep to the right for the love of humanity!

Maybe I'm just an abnormally fast walking person, but I'm of the opinion that if I still have to get from A to B, I might as well do it fast. Could be because I'm extremely restless, no matter how exhausted I am from a workout, I always walk down the escalator, because I cannot stand just standing there. And if I have to wait five minutes for a bus that would then take five minutes to get me where I need to go, I'd rather walk the 20 minutes to that place than stand still for 5.

Knowing this, imagine how tormented I felt at that meeting yesterday, stuck in a chair which my ass did not leave in over three hours. Agonizing it was, agonizing indeed.

What about my shopping trip?

This whole financial crisis situation is really getting me down. It hasn't really been affecting me that much, or at all reallly, to be honest. I mean I have no money anyway, be it boom or recession. And I don't have a mortgage, but if I did I would probably be better off, what with the lower interest rates and all.

But, now I just realized that although I thought I could escape the crisis and get out safely on the other side, it will seriously affect my trip to America in August. Last summer, a dollar cost around 6 kronor, a bit less at times even. Today it cost 8,80 and it's expected to go up over 9. And the euro has gone from 9,50 to over 11. Damn those fools who said no to the euro, look where we are now.

Even though I'm not going to America to shop, I was still looking forward to the added value that it would bring to my trip. Many things will still undoubtedly be cheaper than they are here, but a hell of a lot more expensive than they would have been last summer. Why oh why did I have to be unemployed and broke beyond belief when the American economy was still bleeding worse than the Swedish?

Instead of shopping for clothes, perhaps I'm just going to have to shop the bars for a tall, handsome American man. Or a cocktail. Or perhaps these days you can get them two for one, I've been told that sales are huge right now.

all the weirdos gathered in one room

Why is it that some people are just so goddamn perky? Went to a fitness class today, and this one girl, this tiny, cute little blond thing, was jumping around, smiling from ear to ear and basically just looked like a happy little rubber ball. How do you get like that? I mean I sort of enjoy working out, and it makes you feel good about yourself afterwards and all that crap, but seriously. It's impossible to enjoy a workout THAT much.

Then there was this other lady, probably getting close to her 60's, with long, braided, (definitely not natural) blond hair, with a bright orange top and lipstick to go with it. And another one with hair that just went way too far below her ass.

What's wrong with people these days? Is it really that hard to be normal?

Oh dear mother of god

I made a huge mistake today. I went to a political meeting in my town. Not only did I have no clue about most of the things they talked about, I'm a new member of the party and also very new in this town, thus many issues that were brought up were brand new to me. But to add to the misery, the meeting lasted for almost 3,5 hours! That's an insanely long time to have to endure when you've just worked all day. And I swear to god, out of the 30 or so people that were there, 20 of them will be dead by the time I have my first child. I was by far the youngest person in the room, a few people seemed to be around 40, but the majority really was over 70.

As many people my age, my wallet rarely has cash in it, and today was no exception. This caused me a bit of embarrassment when it was time for coffee break and everyone was required to pay 50 kronor for their coffee and cake. I just didn't have any money to pay with, so I just sat where I was, texted some people and pretended to be very focused on what I was doing. Luckily only one lady commented on my not eating cake and drinking coffee, and said that there was tea too, if I didn't drink coffee. So I lied and said that I had just had coffee with a friend and really couldn't have any more. I generally avoid telling lies, but little white lies to save your dignity are alright, aren't they?

Now I just got home and I'm pretty much ready to hit the sack. And tomorrow I will wake up yet again, not feeling rested because I went to bed too late. Then again, even when I do get my eight hours of sleep, I find it hard to get out of bed in the morning. God, whoever invented the alarm should be severely punished!

Why all the fuss?

So our Minister for Immigration and a few others just came out with a proposal on immigration policy in Sweden, basically saying that if immigrants are to receive benefits and help when they first arrive, they must learn Swedish, they must agree not to move to a neighborhood where too many immigrants have already settled down, but must instead move some place where they have a chance of getting a job. And if an immigrant commits a serious crime, his or her citizenship can be retreived and they can be deported.

And people obviously have a problem with this. People are calling them nationalist, racist and god knows what. And all I can think is, what is all the fuss about? We live in a country were not wanting to work is seen as completely normal, where it's ok to live off of benefits if you feel like it. So what if immigrants have to move to a smaller town where there are actually jobs to take, instead of living where half their country already resides and where 50 percent are unemployed? What good will come out of that, for them or for society? For the tax payers who support these people?

I'm not saying that immigration is bad, or that we should start deporting people. All I'm saying is that putting demands on people who are asking for our help is not wrong. Obviously they should get all the help they need to integrate into our society, to learn Swedish and get a job, but they will have little hope of doing any of that if they live in a large immigrant community where next to no one speaks Swedish fluently and more than half of the population is unemployed and frustrated with the Swedish society.

And as for the deportation of criminals, I think this is perfectly in order. If they behave, they can stay. But why should they come here and commit crimes and then be supported by tax payers when they serve time in prison? And we're not talking about people who've lived here for years and years, only those who've only just become citizens.

I think our society in general is so scared of demanding things from the people, Swedes and immigrants alike, that it will soon backfire. At least this government is trying to do something about it, through this and through other measures that they've taken since they took office.

If I haven't left this country before, I'll be the first one out of here when the left-wing opposition wins the next election in 2010.

big no no

I don't understand one thing. How do people get good, well-paid jobs in media, where they're required to write a lot, when they can't use the language correctly? I'm talking about the Swedish language right now, but it obviously goes for all languages. I know that I'm a language geek and I really can't stand obvious mistakes, even though I'm sure I make them myself every now and then, although definitely not as much in Swedish as in English. Certain words are just so basic, even a fifth grader should know how to use them correctly, yet I just spotted a very serious abuse of the Swedish language by a media person who misspelled this particular word. In Swedish, words should generally not be separated, fifth grader for example would in Swedish be fifthgrader. And I realize that everyone can make mistakes, it happens, but writing jätte mycket, which basically means a lot, something that you use quite a bit, is just unforgivable in my eyes. I guess it's pretty much the same as writing alot, which also seems to be a frequent mistake. Especially an educated person who writes for a living should not be able to make a mistake like that, it should be physically impossible to hit the space key between the two (inseperable) words.

All I want to know is, if people like that could get jobs in media, then why couldn't I?

You can't trust online booking

I was supposed to go to the gym today, as I always do. Mondays and Thursdays, those are my days. Today I was going to go to a different gym, closer to work, further from home. So I signed up for the class I wanted to attend, it said that I was registered for the class and that was all fine and dandy. Until I showed up at the gym and my booking had mysteriously disappeared. And the class was now fully booked. And so was the step class that started half an hour later. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and actually go to the gym gym. You know the place where the body builders hang out when us mortals go to bars? I hate gyms, I feel extremely uncomfortable and self-conscious the minute I set foot in one. I intended not to lift weights, but to use the cross-trainer, or even the treadmill if necessary. Those things I can manage, those and the exercise bike. Of course, this particular gym had about four of those machines altogether and they were obviously occupied when I came in. I quickly went back into the locker room, grabbed my stuff and embarked on a long walk to a train stop 45 minutes away from where I usually take the train. Definitely not the same thing as a work-out but better than nothing, I suppose.

It's so typical, I go to the gym twice a week, and I actually enjoy it, and this has to happen. Tomorrow I can't go, I have French class, and Wednesday is my only free night when I can properly study, and Friday is the day after Thursday and I'll be in too much pain. And normally this is a day when I'd be after-working. This Friday, however, I'll be flat broke and will probably go straight home to watch Sex and the City. Or I would if I hadn't just remembered that I've been invited to the Ambassador's residence for drinks. Too bad new cute guy turned out to have a girlfriend, who also happens to be visiting and is thus very likely to join him. Could have turned out to be such an interesting night. Or well, interesting it will be nonetheless, I've never been in the home of an ambassador before. Wonder if it's fancy...

Stepping out of my comfort zone?

What makes some people want to travel the world, experience different cultures, live in different countries, try as many new things as possible, while others are content where they are, living their small town life, hanging out with the friends they've always known, never asking what else there is to see in the world, never wondering what they are missing?

How did I become the former, a restless, hard-to-please person who is never satisfied with the easy, the comfortable, the familiar? I wasn't always like this, up until I was 17 or so, I was perfectly happy living the small town life, knowing every street and pretty much every other person that I met.

Does moving abroad change you? Could it be that once you start experiencing new places, mixing with different cultures, changing in every possible way, it's impossible to turn back, to become that settled down, content person again? Am I destroyed for life? Will I always be looking for the next fix, the next challenge, just like junkies look for theirs?

Comfortable scares me. I love being in a new city where I don't know anybody, where I don't know when I will get to know people, and how, and who they will be and how they will affect me. And I love it when I finally do meet these people, how different they always are and how interesting it always is to mingle with the unknown. To others this is scary, they wouldn't move someplace all alone, they are even scared of traveling alone. When it comes to traveling and moving, I'm not scared of anything. After all, everything always works out in the end, how could it not?

Comfortable doesn't only scare me in the sense that I don't like being too familiar with a city, it also scares me in the sense that I don't like things to be too good, too pretty, too well planned out. Like Sweden for example. It's clean, it's neat, it's not at all rough around the edges. There's nothing exciting about it, nothing new to to discover. And it's not really that I don't like Sweden, because in many ways I do. But I don't get any kicks from it.

Maybe next time when I'm going home after work I should not get off at my stop, and instead stay on for another couple of stations and get off in the ghetto. I'm sure I'd get some kicks there.

Bored out AND burned out?

So I just read this article about a phenomenon called boreout. Instead of working so hard that you burn out, you work so little that you're bored out. They listed ten things, and if you answered yes to four or more, you could be suffering from boreout. I answered yes to nine out of ten, something that I think pretty much speaks for itself. It is exhausting having nothing to do, pretending to be busy as you don't want your boss to know that you're actually spending most of your time on facebook. And people who suffer from boreout are not lazy, laziness is not the reason why we don't work. Lack of work is the reason. People who are lazy, who don't want to work, obviously don't suffer from boreout as they are perfectly happy with not having anything to do.

So I think that we can establish that I'm well on the way of boring out at work. But incidentally, I think that I'm also on the way of burning out. Even if I don't work very hard at work, I have so many other things going on outside of work, as I've already mentioned. This weekend I didn't do anything of importance, I just relaxed, apart from the gym class and some cleaning. No school work, no political activity, just Sex and the City. And a lot of the time, I felt so guilty for not being productive, for not using my free time to study. But I couldn't have studied, I was so exhausted from doing that every single night of last week.

If you start feeling guilty for relaxing on a Sunday, should you worry about burning out too? And what happens if you're both bored out and burned out? They say the effects of the two are more or less the same. Will I completely crash and burn? Or does one somehow take out the other? Is it sort of like maths, two minuses equals a plus?

I guess only time will tell.

gymming it

I'm very surprised at my newfound work out motivation. I can't say that I work out all that often, I mean I am working full time, studying full time, taking French classes once a week and I'm a little bit politically involved, so I average around two times a week. Last week I even managed to go three times, as my deadline for my two papers was on Friday, thus I had the weekend free to spend however I wanted to. Either way, even if I don't go every day or even every other day, I'm still very impressed with and slightly proud of myself for finally dragging my lazy ass to the gym and sticking to it. Not once have I felt that I'd rather just go home than go to the gym, on the contrary I actually look forward to going, I look forward to the feeling afterwards, the satisfaction that you feel after having accomplished something. I love the feeling of coming home and after having a shower and something to eat, feeling completely relaxed. I've missed that feeling, and now that I've finally started exercising again, I can't believe that I went without it for so long.

I will be lazy Malin no more.

You gotta love February

Grey sky, snow in the air, numb legs, runny nose. Doesn't get much better than that, now does it?

Dammit

Whoever came up with the idea of putting tiles on the kitchen floor never considered the effects of dropping a glass jar on it. A brand new jar of lemon curd to be exact. Now I have no lemon curd to eat, and a kitchen floor covered in little glass pieces. Just what you want to cheer you up when you've already sunk so far down in the ocean of Sunday evening misery that you can no longer see the surface.

still none the wiser

I'm 26 and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I realize that it's normal not to know exactly how you want your life to turn out, the path your career is going to take and where you will finally settle down. But my life is so up in the air that I don't even know which planet it will finally land on. I studied PR, thinking that fashion PR would be my dream industry to work in, that I was going to live this fabulous life filled with parties and clothes and luxurious trips. Then I worked at a PR agency, a rather terrible agency as it turns out, and that experience just made me swear off PR altogether. A mistake perhaps, not all agencies are the same, and PR can be done in many ways. Doing PR for something that you're actually passionate about is very different from just doing PR for some random company whose products you really wouldn't buy yourself if given the option.

So after spending a significant amount of time and far too much money in my strive towards becoming a successful PR executive, I completely changed paths, moved back to Sweden from London and started working at an embassy in Stockholm. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life, I mean there must be more to life than parties and fashion, right? So I thought I would apply to the diplomat program att the Ministry for Foreign Affairs here in Sweden. If I get accepted, I will have to spend at least three years in Stockholm before I can even think of going abroad. Now, only a few months after my decision to put all my efforts into getting accepted to the program, I'm beginning to reconsider.

Can I really stay in this country that long? When I was living in London I missed Sweden a great deal, I missed the higher standards of living, the cleaner streets, the architecture with buildings that weren't falling apart. But it seems as though I definitely appreciate Sweden a lot more when I'm not actually living here. It is nice and all, it has all those things that I missed. But it also has a lot of sides that I just kind of forgot, aspects that I don't particularly appreciate.

I live in Stockholm, Sweden's capital and biggest city. And when I walk down the streets, they're empty. Perhaps not the main shopping street, it's always very busy, but also incredibly ugly. I try to keep as far away from it as possible, except when I have some serious shopping to do. In Stockholm's defence, people do tend to stay indoors when the cold winds are blowing, and they certainly have been for a while now. It's grey, it's cold, it's windy. It's excruciatingly depressing.

So what do I want to do? That I still don't know. If I could choose, I would be a full time writer, hence the blog, but odds are that that will remain just a dream. I have no experience, and frankly I'm just not good enough. At least not yet. Here's my plan:

New York City, the city of cities, the place I have always dreamed of, the ultimate city where I was destined to end up. A city that sucks you in, captivates you, begs you to stay. A city where you feel that you're part of something greater, you're invisible, you're anonymous, yet you feel like you're starring in a movie. Because New York looks just the same in real life as it does in the movies. Breathtaking, majestic, enchanting. I have no choice, my entire being is filled with a desire to move there, to live the Manhattan life.

So I will keep blogging, I will do my very best to improve my writing, to find my own style, my own niche. Then when I go to visit my friend Misha in Boston in August, I will also travel down to New York for a few days. I will job hunt, I will track down every single company that might be willing to do the paperwork to get me a work visa, I will show them my (vastly improved) blog, which will showcase my amazing potential that they just cannot resist. They will realize that with some more experience, which I will gain from working for them, perhaps for a lower salary for a couple of months, I could shine as the star I was meant to be and that they would be fools not to hire me.

That is my grand plan. Do I believe in it? Not really. I want to, I really do, but I'm not sure if I believe that dreams really do come true. On the other hand, when you think about it, I really have gotten pretty much everything I wanted in life. I've had no major setbacks, except for the depressingly humiliating five months that I was unemployed last year before I found the job that I currently hate. I've never really had to fight hard for anything, it has always just kind of come my way, although I have to add, not completely undeservingly. This time around, however, it seems as thought I might have to fight a little harder. And I definitely need to be sure that this is really what I want, because once it happens, there's no going back. I can't keep going back and forth, I need to stay at least for a few years and establish a career.

I know that some people, or should I say one person, don't want me to go. She would probably do anything to keep me from going. For serveral reasons, I guess. For selfish reasons, such as wanting me close by, even though we're not actually living in the same city right now. For unselfish reasons, such as wanting me to establish a career, settle down, be a grown up, live life the way society wants me to. And it's not that I don't want to settle down, I do. But living in New York has been a dream of mine for such a long time that I can't even remember a time when it wasn't. And not doing something that I want to do, never knowing what it would have been like, not taking the opportunities given to me, missing out - those things scare me shitless. Even though a part of me wants to just save up enough money to buy an apartment here in Stockholm, settle down and be the grown-up that I'm supposed to be, a far bigger part of me panics at the thought of never trying out life in the big city. Of never knowing what would have happened if I tried.

So I guess that no matter what other people think, I need to do what my gut tells me. Because no one else will have to live with the constant stomach ache that is left as a reminder of what could have been. No one but me.

Sunday semla

After a morning of reading the paper in bed, followed by breakfast in front of my computer, watching the first season of Sex and the City, I'm not getting ready to head off into town. A friend and I are going to a café that's supposed to have the best semla in town. Semla, for those who don't know it, is a sweet cardamom bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream and topped with some powdered sugar. It may not sound very good, but it's absolutely delicious. I used to hate the almond paste, and always had to scrape it off before putting the cream back on again, but with age I've learned to appreciate it. The semla is traditionally eaten on February 24th, and is really the same as Shrove Tuesday, only we eat semla instead of pancakes.

First thing's first, though, and before I can go out and enjoy myself, I still have the Sunday cleaning to take care of. Life really is all work and no play.

Frozen fruit?

I went to the gym today, a minor miracle if you know me. I started working out only a few weeks ago, and up until now I've only gone to the gym twice a week and never ever on a weekend. Today, however I had nothing better to do, I have no money so I won't be going out, and I really shouldn't be out in town during the day because there are probably far too many tempting things in the stores that I shouldn't see.

So I decided to take a walk around Vasastan, had tea at a quaint little café where I read my book and soaked in the atmosphere. Then, after som grocery shopping, I hit the gym. Or an aerobics class to be exact. And it sucked. I didn't even break a sweat, and you have to take into consideration that I haven't worked out in over two years, except for the past few weeks, and really should be the first in the room to break a sweat. With my new-found motivation, I got on an exercise bike after the class to make up for the chocolate that I'm about to eat. The new me wants to feel that I deserve something, intead of just eating everything in sight like I used to. A reversed sort of bulemia, I ate and I ate, but never threw up.

To stay on the healthy track, I satisfied my sweet tooth by making a healthier version of ice cream - frozen fruit. Basically I just put frozen berries, half a frozen banana and a little bit of milk and brown sugar in a blender and it came out nice and thick and surprisingly creamy. Definitely something I will try again. A dessert and one of my five a day all in one.

But, it is Saturday night after all, and as I'm not out drinking, I'm not even in drinking, I am going to treat myself to some chocolate and a nice cup of green tea. Damn, I wish I at least had some wine. Oh well, too late now, communist alcohol store has been closed since three. Gotta love this country.

Friday fun

Last night I went out for a couple of beers with some friends. There's nothing I enjoy more than a few drinks straight after work on a Friday night. The place, Morfar (Grandpa) Ginko is the perfect place for just that, but only if you come early, which you undoubtedly do if you go straight after work. By the time we left, people were desperate to get a table and sat down at ours before we had even left it.

As I was waiting for the train home, and I had to wait for a long time so I managed to buy a magazine that I couldn't afford to make the wait more endurable, I was eating a chocolate bar, as the drinks straight after work had left me dinner deprived and very hungry. The girl I was sitting next to was drinking a Fanta and I couldn't help thinking that she really shouldn't be drinking that. She was definitely on the heavier side, and she wore these hideous denim colored leggings, which is beside the point but important nonetheless as she should seriously be arrested for wearing those. And all I could think was, why would someone so fat drink a soda in the middle of the night. But I know nothing about this person, just because I never go around buying soda, it doesn't mean that other people can't have a craving for a sweet drink every now and again. It really doesn't mean that she drinks soda every day. And who am I to judge, I was eating chocolate, and I could definitely do with losing a pound or two.

I guess I should stop caring about the people around me. As long as other people are happy with their lives, and as long as I am happy with mine, that's all that matters. Only problems is, I'm not that happy with my life, or the lack thereof. But hey, that's not the poor fat girl's fault!

Come let's pray for the weekend

It's Saturday, and moreover it's Valentine's Day. Which, as usual, means absolutely nothing to me. What is Valentine's Day, but an overly commercial day, encouraging us to spend ridiculous amounts of money that we don't have on things that we don't need. And no, I'm not bitter. Or I may be bitter, but Valentine's Day definitely has nothing to do with it. The fact that Sweden is supposed to be full of hot people, but is in fact not, has however made me slightly bitter. Wherever I go, I do see hot women, but what good are they? Where are all the hot men, that's what I want to know!



Walking around the streets of Stockholm, I've made a few, easy to spot, observations. People in Södermalm dress far too alternatively. Men in baggy skinny jeans will never be sexy. Skinny men should not wear skinny jeans. MEN should not wear skinny jeans, regardless of their shape. Men should also not tuck their skinny jeans into thick woolen socks. Men should not wear nerdy looking, black, thick-framed glasses, they should not have strangely shaped facial hair, and generally they really shouldn't try so damn hard to look alternative.



In Östermalm, on the contrary, people try their best not to look alternative. Here it's the I swim in money kind of look that is the rule of the day. The backslick has perhaps seen its glory days slip away, only to be replaced by some sort of semi-backslick where the hair is still covered in detestable amounts of wax, but sort of loosely combed back and left slightly curly in the back. It looks absolutely revolting.



Whatever happend to effortless? Whatever happened to jeans and t-shirt, to sun-bleeched, tousled hair, wax-free and all? Not that looks are everything, but the way you dress does, at least to a certain extent, mirror your personality. If your vanity is obvious, it's not very attractive. A complete and obvious lack of vanity clearly isn't the greatest turnon either. Normal. Normal is all I want.

Normal in general seems to be hard to find, be it men, shoes or clothes. Everything always comes with that extra twist, with a detail I didn't ask for. Nothing is ever plain, practical and easy-going.

All I want is the perfect version of me, but in a male package. Or in a shoebox. Until then, I guess I have to be the next-to-perfect version of myself. At least that's a version I can live with, my own little twists, I'm already well aware of.

Ca va bien, merci

Today I had the worst day at work. And no, no major mistakes, no stress, no nothing. I did nothing. All afternoon, I just sat there. Did a little bit of work on my paper, which has yet to be finished so can't say that I was very productive there either, even though I probably could have finished it if I wanted to. It's just so hard to focus when you're at work and should be doing other things. If I actually HAD other things to do. Why they hired me, I will never know.

After work I rushed off to my first French lesson. It was pretty cool, I really liked the teacher, not so much the rest of the group. I think my two years of junior high French will come in handy, but not as much as I had anticipated, unfortunately.

Now I'm home, been home for about an hour and a half, and so far I've written TWO paragraphs for my paper. Ok so I wrote a couple of pages at work, but I still need to add a few things because I don't think I've actually answered the question, I've just rambled on on about random facts that I found about Machiavelli, the guy I'm apparently writing about.

I'm seriously considering dropping out of this class. What's the point if I don't want to be a diplomat anyway? And is it really worth sacrificing all of my free time? I have no time for myself during the week, it's just work, gym, and school. And sometimes political meetings. As they say, life is short, I shouldn't be putting myself through shit I don't really want to do. I did spend enough time in school as it is, and now I'm sick of it. But I also have a lot of pride and don't like to give up on things I've set my mind on.

But just for one night, I want to be able to watch TV without feeling guilty!

New York City

I'm looking at panorama pictures of New York while listening to my favorite song, New York New York by Ryan Adams. Sometimes I forget that I don't actually live there.

But for the five days that I spent on Upper East Side just before Christmas three years ago, I was one with the city. And I've brought a little piece of it with me wherever I've gone since those magical days.

an actual party - for once

So yesterday my friend Ida had a party in honor of her friend Gabbi who came on a short visit. I wasn't sure what to expect of the party, how many people would actually show up and what kinds of people it would be. Turns out it was a fabulous party. A good mix of people, as it should be. Some of my friends, some of her friends. And one of my co-workers.

He was kind of accidentally invited. He just moved here last Sunday, thus I've worked with him for five days only. He's just here for two months, then he'll go back to Slovenia (oh yeah, I work at the Embassy of Slovenia..), so it's not like he's going to make any friends of his own while he's here. Anyway, so he asked me if there were any particular places in Stockholm that I think he should see, and if there are any good clubs around here. I thought that I can't let him go to a club all by himself, so I invited him to come along to the party. Although he did hesitate for a while, and even felt uncomfortable taking my number (did he think I was asking him out or something??) he did show up at the party.

Luckily it wasn't as awkward as I had anticipated. Him and I were perfectly comfortable around each other, and the other people at the party were all very nice and open and made him feel very welcome. A girl even went through the Swedish candy bowl with him, teaching him what he should and shouldn't eat. I appreciate relaxed people like that, who don't just stick to their own little crew and ignore everyone else. And I'm glad I didn't have to babysit him all night.

Instead I had time to play some charades with some of the other Swedes. It was awesome, I haven't done that in so many years. We all wrote down proverbs that we then had to act out, some of them were definitely harder than others, but it was more fun than just random sentences.

I'm glad I didn't go out after the party, though, and today I woke up feeling if not fine, then pretty damn close. Spent all day cleaning, doing laundry, grocery shopping and cooking. And of course watching the SATC movie. I also made some fruitless attempts to write a paper, but laziness got the better of me... As it always does.

Next stop the UN headquarters

I spent yesterday in a rather unusual fashion, or at least I'm not the kind of person who usually spends her Saturday taking a day long class just for the fun of it. But yesterday I did, and I really enjoyed it. I recently joined the Swedish UN association, and although I haven't been active so far, I thought that I should do something about it. Yesterday they held a class where they went through the history of the UN, how it works, its structure and where they work. The situation in Darfur was also brought up, as well as some other examples of where the UN has worked.

The more I learn about different things, the more confused I get as to what I actually want to do with my life. You'd think that at 26, I really should have figured this out, but clearly I haven't. After yesterday, I want to work at the UN, but I also want to be a diplomat and apply to the MFA's diplomat program later this year. If I did that, though, that would mean that I had to stay in Stockholm for several years, and I'm not sure that I actually want to stay here.

I've promised myself that I will stay in Stockholm until the end of the summer. I'm sure things will improve once the weather starts getting better, when days get longer and every day is no longer filled with an eternal greyness. But if they don't, I'm off to London again. Until then, I'll keep applying for jobs in New York, because if New York wants me, then New York cannot wait.

I just finished watching the Sex and the City movie, and I'm floating around on cloud 9, totally high on NYC and fabulous dresses. When will that life ever be mine? It's no a question of if, but merely a question of when. It's going to happen. I'm not destined for the dullness that is everyday life, it's driving me insane!

I hate Sunday nights.. I hate knowing that at 7 am tomorrow morning my alarm will go off and I will have to drag myself to my boring, unfulfulling job, spend 8 hours there, then drag myself to the gym for an hour, only to come home to a paper that has to be written for my political science class.

All I want is to have a job that I love, in a city that I love. And an apartment that I love, with someone that I love. Is that really so much to ask?

Cause I'm a blogger, yes I am??

By now, I've lost count of how many blogs I've started - and ended. Some have lasted longer than others, some have been buried before they even learned how to walk. So here we go again, I'm giving this one last try. Hopefully this blog will stick with me for a while. Or should I say, hopefully I will stick with the blog.

I just recently moved to Stockholm, and although the weather doesn't really permit much outdoor activity at the moment, I thought that I would still try to use this blog as a way to document my attempts to get to know the city. And my attempts to leave it. God knows if I'll every make it to NYC, it seems like mission impossible right now, but as they say: never say never. In any case, even if my moving to NYC will remain just a dream, there will always be London. Lovely London, my second home. Every day, I miss London more and I am contemplating moving back. But this time, it would be for a good job, not for the sake of living in the city. That rarely turns out well, and definitely didn't in my case.

But now,

I'm working on a dream, though sometimes it feels so far away!