Well, I can't really say I have moved in here yet because we just dumped all my stuff in the livingroom and the bed in the room I will use last night. Felt kinda weird to sleep at my parents place again, haven't slept here for 3 years except on christmas. But as long as I get to sleep in my own bed I will be happy. Mao Sai is noisy though and it smells kinda like cat food all over the place.
Going back to Lund now to do the final cleaning and throw some things away, I hope we will manage to clean it up nicely so we don't have to pay for stuff.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
First week done, and moving out...
Well, one week has passed, nothing really special has happened, I got to borrow home a P1 phone, was actually kinda forced to take it and play with it actually. During the week I have tried to learn what to do there, I'm still not entirely sure, but it seems my main task is to support anyone who needs it so I more or less need to learn a little bit of everything which suits me perfectly since I'm just there for experience.I'm starting to get to know the people there better too, some are less talkative but most are easy to talk to anyway, at least once you get a conversation started. I have one new hope before I quit, I want to make my own phone customization, which should probably be quite easy in a few weeks, I will just need a new cool phone first but I hope dad will get me that, haha.
Today I brought home another phone for the weekend, we get to borrow them a week if we want, but not more, there are some other test phones that I can borrow too but I didn't want to do that today. It's a W660i anyway, a walkmanphone, I don't know much about it though, just thought it looked neat and I felt like trying it.Well, now it's time to pack up, throw away and move out, the whole apartment has been looking like shit the last few weeks and now we are at the culmination of it. Today is the day we throw away most of the junk and my parents are coming with a trailer move all the big stuff, and finally tomorrow we are doing the cleaning, I'm not looking forward to that. After that we will celebrate, or have a party at least, it will feel weird to leave, but I've only stayed here for 2 years and a month anyway and coming back in a year anyway. Kei is moving away for good though, will be weird to have a Lund without Kei I think.
Links:
P1
W660i
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
First day at work...
I like my summer job, I like my co-workers and I like my mentor. They are nice people, I think most about everybody is older than me, some just slightly, some quite a bit, but at least they are all graduated. They are all very open and happy to initiate conversations, I did come in with quite high energy today, so excited about all of this despite the lack of sleep last night.
I can't help to compare it to my former summer jobs at the plastics factory, where everybody is grumpy all the time, old as young. And as many as not are younger then me there, mostly because of the high amount of summer workers. But even with the age in common I never felt any connection to anyone there, too much lack of ambition and technical interest I guess.
And believe it or not, there are actually quite allot of girls at Sony-Ericsson, and I mean at the very much technical department I'm in. I think at least 5 girls in less than 30 people (yes, it doesn't sound like much, but compare that to 5 in 150 that started electronics engineering with me in 2001, or 10 in 300 that worked in Amcor's factory), and at least 3 of them kinda cute, even one cute Asian girl, even though I haven't really spoken to her yet.
I think my I can do more there than I first suspected, today was about learning the system and vocabulary and stuff, but even at the end of the day when we started looking at the XSLT programs I found that I could probably start working with it first thing tomorrow morning. It's a good feeling to think that you are good at something you will work with, and I think I'm good at this, but I guess we will see about that.
Never again back to manual labour, haha!
I can't help to compare it to my former summer jobs at the plastics factory, where everybody is grumpy all the time, old as young. And as many as not are younger then me there, mostly because of the high amount of summer workers. But even with the age in common I never felt any connection to anyone there, too much lack of ambition and technical interest I guess.
And believe it or not, there are actually quite allot of girls at Sony-Ericsson, and I mean at the very much technical department I'm in. I think at least 5 girls in less than 30 people (yes, it doesn't sound like much, but compare that to 5 in 150 that started electronics engineering with me in 2001, or 10 in 300 that worked in Amcor's factory), and at least 3 of them kinda cute, even one cute Asian girl, even though I haven't really spoken to her yet.
I think my I can do more there than I first suspected, today was about learning the system and vocabulary and stuff, but even at the end of the day when we started looking at the XSLT programs I found that I could probably start working with it first thing tomorrow morning. It's a good feeling to think that you are good at something you will work with, and I think I'm good at this, but I guess we will see about that.
Never again back to manual labour, haha!
...and starting to move out.
Well, after work the day didn't get any easier, I wanted to say goodbye to Carol today, she is leaving tomorrow and I haven't seen her in a month. I won't see her though, she kinda down prioritized me I think. What I did all evening was starting to clear out the apartment, two turns to the junkyard with mostly chairs, and old cupboard and two really old 14" or 15" monitors. But scheisse, the apartment still seems just as full, how the hell will we manage to clear all this out before the weekend?
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Midsummer!
We started off with the smallest midsummer eve party gathering ever, just Rappe (Alexander), Kei, Katja and I grilling at my parents place in Bjärred (my parents where with my aunt and uncle at their place). It was really nice though, the meat was terrific and we managed to get quite on an buzz in just a short time. Beer, Bacardi melon with Ramlösa (mineral water), weird Vodka raspberry with grapefruit liquor and Sprite and finally the notorious and self invented Wannabe Irish Coffee, we didn't have any cheap whiskey so we used Stroh Rum instead (80% rum used mostly for cooking I think).
With a completely wrong order of things we never even had any traditional herring and nubbe (schnapps) , instead we started with the meat, simply because that was ready first, we did wait for the potatoes to finish before we started though. The meat was really good, standing ovations for Alexander and Katja who bought it, and the tzatziki sauce we had for it did it's part as well. We did manage to get it right with strawberries though, and whipped cream of course, and after that we played kubb, for those who don't know kubb it is a Swedish game of throwing sticks at things, it's really fun, especially when drunk. The King is dead!After dinner, playing kubb and enough drinking we took a taxi back to Lund where we joined Navid and his friends at a house party and the first thing that happened there was us playing kubb again (if we fail with some traditions we just overdo the others, less herring and more drinking and kubb). After that we just kept drinking and socializing, the whole thing was quite event free except Navid and his friend (I think it was Kofi) managed to break a glass-door.
Rappe and Katja gave up earlier then us, they borrowed my keys and took a taxi back to my place. Kei and I stayed a bit longer but the party was dying, everybody was just standing in the kitchen, chatting and eating from all the leftover food. I think I managed to eat a whole pack of ice cream with two others, I think it was another Johan and a cute girl called Linnea. Soon after Kei and I left too, at least I was quite disoriented so we walked slightly wrong, no biggie though. And on the way I traded my last sip of Southern Comfort for a cigarette, that was pretty stupid.
Friday, June 22, 2007
About a year ago...
Originally posted Jul 1, 2006 4:57 am
Last week was the summer solstice, for you who live further south this doesn't matter much, but the further north you come the more you can tell it's there. In the most northern part of sweden you will get the midnight sun, a night or a few nights when the sun never sets, it will feel like noon 24 hours a day. Here where I live it's a little different, mostly the days grows longer and the sun doesn't set until close to midnight, and when it does set, you can still see it lighting up the sky from below, having some kind of long lasting sunset-sunrise. There is something more that I never thought of before, but that I realized last week, the night after the solstice.
It was the evening before my chinese friend who has been staying here for a week or so would go back to china, I'm interested in her and we have been having something going on, very subtle though. So when I got back from work in the afternoon I asked her if she wanted to do something with me in the evening, and we decided to cook dinner together and then do some other things, some for preparation for her departure. But only 5 minutes or something after we had made this plan she got a phone-call from a friend that wanted to see her before she left, so she kinda canceled on me. I got quite upset, and instead of changing the plans to something simpler (which could easily been done) I totally ditched her, and some dinner with another friend and didn't even help her with her preparations. I still regret this very much. But as she came back from meeting her friend it was already late and there was nothing we could do to save our plans. But we were both quite sad about what had happened and reconciled. After that I decided to do at least one of the thing I had planned, but not told her about before, to drive out to my former hometown, a little town about 15-20 minutes drive from here, and visit the beach where I grew up.
The beach there has a bridge, actually the longest bridge in Sweden and maybe even europe, it is longer than the Eiffel tower, almost 500 meters straight out to the water, ending at a small restaurant and a bathhouse. It was almost midnight when we got there, the wind was blowing hard against us when we walked out, but the setting was still kinda romantic in a way. The sky was "back-lit" from the north, and totally dark to the south, and the bridge has small soft light posts set every 2 meters or so. Walking there and holding her hand for the first time I realized how special that night was, the sky was perfectly clear, and looking to the north you could see as far as the horizon, and the clouds that looked like mountains because they seemed to be so low, and just turing around to the south to the pitch black which was only broken by the city of Malmö and the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark.
It's the contrast in these two things that felt unique, if you go further north the whole sky will be either lit up or have the sun risen, if you go further south you will not get the "back-lit" sky at all. And also because we were out on the water, on a bridge that goes from the east to the west so we only had water far to the north and south.
I've lived here all my life, and never seen it like this, and I'm happy to have seen it now, and shared it with a close friend.
If it would have been possible I would have taken a picture of it, but as the view was 360 degrees in angle, and the light condition were both very bad and very different in different angles, it would just have looked stupid.
Last week was the summer solstice, for you who live further south this doesn't matter much, but the further north you come the more you can tell it's there. In the most northern part of sweden you will get the midnight sun, a night or a few nights when the sun never sets, it will feel like noon 24 hours a day. Here where I live it's a little different, mostly the days grows longer and the sun doesn't set until close to midnight, and when it does set, you can still see it lighting up the sky from below, having some kind of long lasting sunset-sunrise. There is something more that I never thought of before, but that I realized last week, the night after the solstice.
It was the evening before my chinese friend who has been staying here for a week or so would go back to china, I'm interested in her and we have been having something going on, very subtle though. So when I got back from work in the afternoon I asked her if she wanted to do something with me in the evening, and we decided to cook dinner together and then do some other things, some for preparation for her departure. But only 5 minutes or something after we had made this plan she got a phone-call from a friend that wanted to see her before she left, so she kinda canceled on me. I got quite upset, and instead of changing the plans to something simpler (which could easily been done) I totally ditched her, and some dinner with another friend and didn't even help her with her preparations. I still regret this very much. But as she came back from meeting her friend it was already late and there was nothing we could do to save our plans. But we were both quite sad about what had happened and reconciled. After that I decided to do at least one of the thing I had planned, but not told her about before, to drive out to my former hometown, a little town about 15-20 minutes drive from here, and visit the beach where I grew up.
The beach there has a bridge, actually the longest bridge in Sweden and maybe even europe, it is longer than the Eiffel tower, almost 500 meters straight out to the water, ending at a small restaurant and a bathhouse. It was almost midnight when we got there, the wind was blowing hard against us when we walked out, but the setting was still kinda romantic in a way. The sky was "back-lit" from the north, and totally dark to the south, and the bridge has small soft light posts set every 2 meters or so. Walking there and holding her hand for the first time I realized how special that night was, the sky was perfectly clear, and looking to the north you could see as far as the horizon, and the clouds that looked like mountains because they seemed to be so low, and just turing around to the south to the pitch black which was only broken by the city of Malmö and the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark.
It's the contrast in these two things that felt unique, if you go further north the whole sky will be either lit up or have the sun risen, if you go further south you will not get the "back-lit" sky at all. And also because we were out on the water, on a bridge that goes from the east to the west so we only had water far to the north and south.
I've lived here all my life, and never seen it like this, and I'm happy to have seen it now, and shared it with a close friend.
If it would have been possible I would have taken a picture of it, but as the view was 360 degrees in angle, and the light condition were both very bad and very different in different angles, it would just have looked stupid.
The horrible game of RISK
Another designated risk night. Mats and I had been talking about it for a week and we opened the subject to Manuel and he was on. I called another friend, Navid, and he was game too, and luckily Kei woke up just in time for us to begin.
It was the first time we invited Navid for playing, and it got emotional and messy as always. Kei got killed off first, he probably had a good plan but was unlucky with the dice, I failed to kill him because of bad luck and Manuel took the scraps after I was done which gave him a major upper hand. Quite soon after Mats killed Navid, but Navid managed to save one area that I could kill off so I got the cards, which unfortunately didn't really save me in the end.
With only Mats, Manuel and me left in the game there were simply too many pacts, Mats had pacted with both me and Manuel and kinda had to screw us both over to keep it fair, due to some pact technicallity he got to take all of Asia (I had half) and take one area in Europe while Manuel and I where fighting over scraps in North-America, always screwing each other over as much as possible.
In the end Manuel and I hated each other so much that we just begged Mats to kill the other before one self and whatever he did he shouldn't let the other win. Manuel gave aways his Europe and Mats could easily have killed me in a turn or two as well, so I gave up too.
It was the first time we invited Navid for playing, and it got emotional and messy as always. Kei got killed off first, he probably had a good plan but was unlucky with the dice, I failed to kill him because of bad luck and Manuel took the scraps after I was done which gave him a major upper hand. Quite soon after Mats killed Navid, but Navid managed to save one area that I could kill off so I got the cards, which unfortunately didn't really save me in the end.
With only Mats, Manuel and me left in the game there were simply too many pacts, Mats had pacted with both me and Manuel and kinda had to screw us both over to keep it fair, due to some pact technicallity he got to take all of Asia (I had half) and take one area in Europe while Manuel and I where fighting over scraps in North-America, always screwing each other over as much as possible.
In the end Manuel and I hated each other so much that we just begged Mats to kill the other before one self and whatever he did he shouldn't let the other win. Manuel gave aways his Europe and Mats could easily have killed me in a turn or two as well, so I gave up too.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Random drinking and memories of Prosit
For some reason we decided to have some drinks the other night, lack of anything else to do I guess. We did drink some last night as well, the heat of the day and somewhat warmth of the evening always feels like it's enticing us to drink something.
We poured some spirits drinks that tasted more or less like crap (don't ever try to mix with light soda, it just doesn't work) and just sat down watching TV. I don't really know why, probably because of lack of sleep and strain from workout, but the drink hit quite fast and hard, it was the red Absolut after all, the one that's 50% vol, and I don't really know how much Mats poured into the glass, and two drinks and a beer later I found the really dull TV show being quite fun. This reminded me so much of that Prosit night me and Mats had a few years ago when I still lived out in Linero (quite much further away from central).
We had been been to the cinema, I don't even remember what we saw, and was heading home, on the way we figured we should stop somewhere for a beer, but instead we just took the bus back to my apartment. About half a year back I had been to Germany and I bought some crazy 60% vol vodka that I never really dared to try before, but it was already quite late and we were more or less in a hurry to get tipsy before heading out to nation club, it was a Thursday so we were going to Lund's.
It was only the two of us, so not many possibilities to play drinking games, and the shows on TV were really crap, but we watched some shit on MTV anyway, some cartoon thing that didn't make much sense at all. But after a drink or two (they were really strong) the show started to get funny, and within half an hour or so we were laughing our heads off.
I think we managed to finish about half that bottle in about 1½ hours before we headed out to the nation. Lund is always quite dull, but somehow we managed to have a blast, I think I won half the money I spent that night back on blackjack.
So that's how we invented the Prosit-impulse-party, good times!
These days we just have a drink and then more or less pass out, I guess I won't do that anymore from next week when I have to work.
We poured some spirits drinks that tasted more or less like crap (don't ever try to mix with light soda, it just doesn't work) and just sat down watching TV. I don't really know why, probably because of lack of sleep and strain from workout, but the drink hit quite fast and hard, it was the red Absolut after all, the one that's 50% vol, and I don't really know how much Mats poured into the glass, and two drinks and a beer later I found the really dull TV show being quite fun. This reminded me so much of that Prosit night me and Mats had a few years ago when I still lived out in Linero (quite much further away from central).
We had been been to the cinema, I don't even remember what we saw, and was heading home, on the way we figured we should stop somewhere for a beer, but instead we just took the bus back to my apartment. About half a year back I had been to Germany and I bought some crazy 60% vol vodka that I never really dared to try before, but it was already quite late and we were more or less in a hurry to get tipsy before heading out to nation club, it was a Thursday so we were going to Lund's.
It was only the two of us, so not many possibilities to play drinking games, and the shows on TV were really crap, but we watched some shit on MTV anyway, some cartoon thing that didn't make much sense at all. But after a drink or two (they were really strong) the show started to get funny, and within half an hour or so we were laughing our heads off.
I think we managed to finish about half that bottle in about 1½ hours before we headed out to the nation. Lund is always quite dull, but somehow we managed to have a blast, I think I won half the money I spent that night back on blackjack.
So that's how we invented the Prosit-impulse-party, good times!
These days we just have a drink and then more or less pass out, I guess I won't do that anymore from next week when I have to work.
Friday, June 15, 2007
One down, two to go...
I really don't know if I deserve the faith they give me now. I got a phone call from Sony-Ericsson yesterday, I had really given up on that since they hadn't replied yet, with summer already started and the application I sent was in April. Already when we spoke on the phone I got a good feeling about it, she had practically already decided that she wanted me for the job. The interview today was even better, we just talked about what I would do, which was just about anything that I could do, and then she offered the highest salary possible for summer workers. I'm confused and happy.
Anyway, this does postpone my leaving a few days, since I will be working until 3rd of August, and with Johan's 25th birthday coming up on 12th with a big party on the 11th I might have to wait until after that, which screws up my plans to meet Sharmaine in Singapore on the national day.
Anyway, this does postpone my leaving a few days, since I will be working until 3rd of August, and with Johan's 25th birthday coming up on 12th with a big party on the 11th I might have to wait until after that, which screws up my plans to meet Sharmaine in Singapore on the national day.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Will it be Vietnam?
What am I doing here anyway? Is there any reason at all? Every single time I think about it I just feel that something is off, something is not right. So what is it? Am I in the wrong place? I usually think that leaving will do the difference, I wanna go to somewhere where I can feel happy, but is there such a place.
Self destructive and self inflicting pain, never physically but none the less real. Push away whoever tries to help. Jump into the abyss of nothing just to make sure that the one who actually cares gets hurt from helping you. (The one time I needed comfort there was actually someone there to give it to me, but instead of accepting it I pushed her away. Not only did I push her away but I intentionally hurt her. And the only reason for it was that I was feeling bad and wanted to feel worse.) Feelings of loneliness and abandoned by nothing and everything.
I guess it will be Vietnam after all, it seems quite fun.
Self destructive and self inflicting pain, never physically but none the less real. Push away whoever tries to help. Jump into the abyss of nothing just to make sure that the one who actually cares gets hurt from helping you. (The one time I needed comfort there was actually someone there to give it to me, but instead of accepting it I pushed her away. Not only did I push her away but I intentionally hurt her. And the only reason for it was that I was feeling bad and wanted to feel worse.) Feelings of loneliness and abandoned by nothing and everything.
I guess it will be Vietnam after all, it seems quite fun.
Friday, June 8, 2007
misär
A dark blue sky is covering all of Lund now, you can see a single lone star at the southern horizon. It is warmer than it should be, or maybe it really should be this warm, it's hard to tell how warm it really should be in a Swedish summer.
Fakking 103.7kg
Finally got myself a gym membership, though only for the summer, will leave before end of summer anyway so no point in getting any more. It was quite fun, muscles didn't work as well as they used to but that was no surprise, the surprise I got instead was on the scale, 103.7kg with clothes on, that's crazy, and I thought I lost weight sinze winter. Mattias tried to cheer me up by saying muscles weigh more than fat, it only helped a little.
Anyway, I have nearly two months to take care of it, and really nothing else to do so got plenty of time for it.
So three short time goals now:
1. Finish the TEFL course ASAP
2. Find a job in China as soon as I finish the TEFL course
3. Get fit
Anyway, I have nearly two months to take care of it, and really nothing else to do so got plenty of time for it.
So three short time goals now:
1. Finish the TEFL course ASAP
2. Find a job in China as soon as I finish the TEFL course
3. Get fit
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Saying goodbye
Today was, as so many times before, time for someone close to leave. And I don't mean the kind of goodbye that say see you tomorrow, or even next week or next Christmas, this is the kind of goodbye you say to someone who you might never see again. - You just stand there on the train station and don't really know what to say, then the train comes and you suddenly don't really have time to say what you wanted to say anymore so you just hug and say it as well as you can. But at least that is better than airport, where everything is just dragged out and it feels like you are torturing yourself with it. - My first goodbye like this was nearly 3 years ago, it was Karen from Singapore and Matthew from HongKong, I wasn't very close with either of them so it wasn't that bad. My next one after that was much harder though, it was Joyce, my girlfriend from HongKong, we had only been together for a few months and she had to return home.
Since then there have been so many more, just this week it was Nancy from Canada and today Duong from Vietnam, and there will still be many more to come, YanWei will leave on Tuesday, perhaps she will come back for a day in end of July but there will still be one more goodbye. And soon it is my turn, I will be the one who'll leave, who have to say goodbye to all my friend, of course I will return, but when I do I will have to say goodbye to whoever I meet wherever I'm going.
But as it turns out distance can be overcome, even though it at times can feel truly overwhelming. To have friends far away just makes a good reason to travel far away. I actually met Karen, the Singaporean from 3 years ago only a few weeks ago, and that was the second time we met since she left, we might not have been very close when she left but we are good friends now. And Joyce, we stayed together for 2 years, we have visited each other several times, even after we broke up. And Nancy left now because she came back to visit me after almost two years.
I don't believe in goodbye anymore, I believe in see you later, even though it might sometimes be much later. The world is growing smaller and I think I will meet both Duong and YanWei again before summer is over, and Joyce too.
Since then there have been so many more, just this week it was Nancy from Canada and today Duong from Vietnam, and there will still be many more to come, YanWei will leave on Tuesday, perhaps she will come back for a day in end of July but there will still be one more goodbye. And soon it is my turn, I will be the one who'll leave, who have to say goodbye to all my friend, of course I will return, but when I do I will have to say goodbye to whoever I meet wherever I'm going.
But as it turns out distance can be overcome, even though it at times can feel truly overwhelming. To have friends far away just makes a good reason to travel far away. I actually met Karen, the Singaporean from 3 years ago only a few weeks ago, and that was the second time we met since she left, we might not have been very close when she left but we are good friends now. And Joyce, we stayed together for 2 years, we have visited each other several times, even after we broke up. And Nancy left now because she came back to visit me after almost two years.
I don't believe in goodbye anymore, I believe in see you later, even though it might sometimes be much later. The world is growing smaller and I think I will meet both Duong and YanWei again before summer is over, and Joyce too.
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