Life from my point of view...

There's always something...

2011-09-06T22:19:00.001+02:00

I've been looking for a job pretty much every day since I graduated, but so far I've had no luck. There haven't been any instrumental teacher positions to apply for, and I'm not quite ready to start applying for whatever random job I can find yet - not that there has been many of those to choose from either. After six and a half years in college, I would like to try to find something that is at least related to what I studied.

So, basically, I have lots of free time right now, and it's driving me nuts. I have no particular reason to get up in the morning, no reason to leave my apartment, and no money to do anything even if I do. I have about a dozen or so new songs that I would like to record, but I can't really do that either right now. I managed to get myself double-sided carpal tunnel syndrome about two months ago, and the damn thing just won't go away no matter what I do. I've tried anti-inflammatory pills, Voltaren gel, acupuncture and just plain rest, but it refuses to disappear completely. So I can't book any gigs as long as it isn't gone either. I'm starting to feel like the only thing I actually CAN do is sit at home and stare at the walls, while trying very hard not to use my hands for anything. It's really starting to affect my mood, and not in a good way.

A trip to the land of Dracula

2011-08-26T01:58:00.000+02:00

A couple of friends from Romania got married recently and invited us to the wedding just outside the town of Buzau, so my wife and I got to spend four days in Romania. It was an awesome trip!

The first thing we noticed was the temperature. Compared to a drizzly Malmö, with temperatures of around 15-20 degrees when we left, Bucarest was a summer paradise, with temperatures of around 35 degrees C when we arrived. That was nice! The second thing we noticed was the way people drive there. That was scary. Apparently, many Romanians don't care as much about traffic laws and regulations as Scandinavians do. They're all over the place, driving way faster than the speed limits, zig-zagging between other cars and oncoming traffic, dodging both animals and people who randomly just appear in the middle of a highway. Fortunately, the guy who picked us up at the airport used to be a street racer, and was an excellent driver. He took it all in stride without so much as blinking, while the rest of us held on to whatever we could find with our hearts going faster than the car. It was an interesting experience...

The guests not from the area were all staying at a nice little hotel. There was a restaurant at the hotel serving traditional Romanian food. It tasted excellent, but I'm a little sceptical about the sanitary conditions in the kitchen, because several people got sick after eating there, myself included. Worst of all, the bride got really sick the night before the wedding and was up all night throwing up. In the morning, she was pale as a ghost and could barely stand, so they had to call an ambulance to come check on her. Nice start for your wedding day, eh? I'm not sure what the ambulance medics did to her, I think they gave her some shots of something, but she seemed a bit better afterwards, so we all rushed to the city hall. Apparently, in Romania you have to do both a civil ceremony and a religious one in a church if you want to be properly married. The civil one was interesting. There was literally a line of people waiting to get in. A guy told me there were 40 couples getting married that day. They even had a clerk getting people lined up outside the office door when it was their turn. Then the door opened, we were all more or less shoved in through the door to the sound of a very fast version of the wedding march. The wedding officiant started talking very fast, and after asking both the bride and the groom what I assume was the usual questions of "Do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded..." etc. they both signed a paper, and then the clerk more or less shoved us out of the room. The whole event took about three minutes. The weirdest part of it was the music. It started with an oddly fast version of the wedding march, but while the officiant was speaking, the music gradually got faster and faster, and eventually faded into this weird 90's disco beat. Perhaps it was a trick to get people worked up to leave the room faster when the ceremony was over? I don't know. But it was strange.

After a trip back to the hotel and some drinks, a minibus came to pick us up and take us to the nearby mud volcanoes in Berca. These mud volcanoes are the only ones in Romania, and consist of salt water and natural gases bubbling up from about 3000 meters down, causing mud and gas to erupt, forming cones that look like miniature volcanoes when the mud dries around the opening. It was quite interesting to see.

After going back to the hotel and resting for a bit, we then headed to the church for the religious wedding ceremony. It was quite different from anything I've seen before. In protestant Swedish weddings, the ceremonies are quite peaceful things. The bride and the groom walk up to the altar, the guests sit down, the minister does a bit of talking, the couple exchange rings and kiss, and everybody leaves. There may be some music or a prayer as well, it depends a bit on the couple getting married and on the priest doing the marrying. The guests usually sit very quietly until the ceremony is over. At the ceremony in Romania, which was orthodox, the whole thing started with a procession lead by two witnesses, who were carrying a huge candle each. The couple, the witnesses, and the couple's godparents went to stand in front of the priests. There were several priests leading the ceremony, and they were all singing their parts more than speaking. There was more ritual, with the priests putting crowns on the heads of the bride and groom, and they walked around kneeling in front of large pictures of what I assume were Jesus and other important figures. We were standing in the back of the church, so I couldn't really see everything very well. That was another thing: All the guests were standing up. And they weren't quiet either. People were talking to each other walking around taking pictures of the couple from all sides, and at one point the witnesses walked around offering sweets to all the guests.

After the ceremony, we headed back to the hotel, where the reception and dinner was held. That was the other big difference between protestand Swedish weddings and orthodox Romanian weddings. In Sweden, there's usually a dinner, and then people party all night. In Romania, there was food, then partying and dancing, then more food, followed by partying and dancing, followed by food... There were five courses of food in total, and by the time the dessert was brought in, I think it was about four o'clock in the morning. Romanians take their wedding parties seriously!

The morning after the wedding, there was a traditional soup breakfast for all the guests. We could choose between a chicken soup and a traditional tripe soup, both apparently created for the specific purpose of curing a hangover. The tripe soup was interesting. Not something I would like to have often, but not bad. It has a very distinct smell and taste.

After the soup, we headed back to Bucarest to look around there for two days before flying back home to Sweden. We stayed at Hotel Dalin, which is very near the city center, and a short walk from the shopping areas and the old historical part of town. The hotel was an interesting experience as well... The room had a regular queen size bed in it, but the room itself was probably the biggest hotel room I've stayed in. There was a fridge, a TV and air conditioning, and a bathroom with a shower cabin, and a separate room for the toilet. The way the room looked, I would have guessed it was built and decorated in the 60's, and then just kept in that condition. It was a bit like walking into a time machine. But the weirdest part was the tiny little room for the toilet. The door opened inwards, towards the actual toilet seat, and once you walked in there, you had to climb up on the toilet seat to be able to close the door, since there was less than half an inch of clearance between the door and the toilet seat. Also, the toilet seat was installed diagonally in the room, so when you sat down on it, you had to either sit sort of sideways on it, or have your legs sort of smushed up against the wall. I'm guessing they had to put the toilet that way to be able to open and close the door, but I couldn't help but wonder if it hadn't been easier to just make the door open outwards? The hotel was quite cheap by Swedish standards, so we were all happy anyway, except with the breakfast coffee, which was completely undrinkable. Gin had an omelette for breakfast, which was a mistake, because she got sick after that. Looking back, I remembered that I had also had an omelette at the hotel in Buzau, and that I had started having problems with my stomach after that as well. It got pretty bad on our second evening in Bucarest. I stayed in the hotel room that evening feeling really sick and running a fever. Note to self: Next time I go to Romania, I should stay away from eggs.

Double master

2011-08-17T03:02:00.001+02:00

I am now the proud holder of two masters degrees. One in performance of music and one in music education. I actually graduated a couple of months ago in June, but this blog has been so far down my priority list for the past year and a half, it didn't actually occur to me that I could write something in it again until now.

So yeah. Done with school. And let me tell you, it was madness. The theoretical classes from a 4,5 year program crammed into three semesters - the pace was just ludicrous. Out of our class of originally six students, only two of us managed to graduate on time. Two are maybe graduating for Christmas, and the other two seem unlikely to graduate at all. How I managed to graduate, I have no clue, but it took some serious effort. I'm incredibly happy it's all over, and I'm even more happy that I never have to set foot in that place again. The lack of organisation in that place is just mind-boggling. Apparently, the students are responsible for making sure they have all the information that they don't know the teachers were supposed to have given them. I kinda lost hope after the fifth time I went to ask a teacher about the starting date for a course, only to be met with a blank stare and the question: "Uuhm.... Am I supposed to be teaching you?" The administration doesn't talk to the teachers or each other, and the teachers don't talk to anyone. How anything at all gets done, I have no clue... But I'm done! Done, I tell you! I am officially done with my studies! I graduated, I finished all of it, and I never have to go back! Awesome!

So much has happened in the last year and a half it feels unreal somehow. Both my grandparents died, I got married, me and my wife moved into an awesome apartment, school happened, I played in concerts, went on a crazy road trip in Finland, and gave myself tendonitis in both wrists by sewing two underquilts and a mosquito net for our camping hammocks. I also managed to write a bunch of new songs, but I haven't been able to record them yet. My new apartment doesn't have grounded electrical outlets in all rooms, so I can't plug in all my equipment. I'll have to do something about that.

Psyched!

2010-02-07T17:24:00.000+01:00

I've been back in college for about three weeks now, and so far I'm loving it. There's a lot of psychology, a lot more than I was expecting, which is really cool! It's fun stuff. The book we're reading for developmental psychology is incredibly boring to read, though... It's more of a list of facts than a book. It states a fact, quotes the name of the author they got that from and the year, and then states the next fact. Repeat for about 400 pages. Add to that some mediochre translating and grammar mistakes. Blargh... Better than a sleeping pill.

I made a simple music video for one of my songs and put it on youtube yesterday. Loads of fun! The reaction I've gotten so far has been rather stunning. People seem to love it! I got asked to feature on a music channel and a music blog, and it hasn't even been 24 hours since I posted it. Pretty happy about that. I'm going to make some more videos. :)

Here's the video. Check it out and let me know what you think. :)

A house on a hill

2010-01-30T04:26:00.001+01:00

I find politics a fascinating subject. This is largely due to the fact that so many have such strong opinions about it, while so few of those who do seem to know what they are actually talking about. As someone who lives in a social-democratic country, I find it rather horrifying how many Americans keep calling the Obama administration "socialist" and voting against pretty much everything they come up with, even when it's completely against their own interests to do so simply because they'd rather be dead than caught supporting something that could even remotely be linked to communism. Socialist? Good grief, people... You don't know what the word socialist means...

Cop15 came and went, and as I expected, they didn't really achieve much, if anything at all. To me that proves once again that people don't really care about saving the planet, or making the world a better place for their children, or making the air cleaner, or just making any kind of change whatsoever unless they directly benefit from doing so. Look at the oil companies. We know cars pollute. Whether this contributes to global warming doesn't even matter at this point. Cars that run on gasoline spew out all kinds of toxic substances. "Oh, but they are so much more fuel efficient than they used to be" one might say.

Well... Yes and no. An engine made in 1970 consumed more fuel than an engine of the same size made now. But the problem is this: As the engines become more fuel efficient, what do they do? They stick a bigger engine in the car, so it still consumes the same amount of fuel! Sure, you get more horsepowers and you can accelerate faster, but you're still using up just as much gasoline! And you can still only drive the speed limit. Gahh...

I'm kinda fed up with people, politics and big companies, who all keep promising things, but never seem to actually get around to doing something about them. When the time comes to buy a house, I'm going to find one that sits on top of a hill that is at least 200 meters above sea level. Even if it is possible to do something about global warming, I don't believe for a second that the governments in the world are actually going to do something about it. They are going to be too busy with their pathetic pissing contests and refuse to do something unless everyone else does something first, or unless someone else pays for whatever needs to be done. Do we prevent the ocean from drowning every single coastal city in the world, or do we whine about how we don't make enough money if we have to spend some on preventing the cities from being drowned? Well, duh, that's a no-brainer. Of course we try to save money!

So... ice caps *will* melt. Sea levels *will* rise. I don't care if global warming is man made or not. What difference does it make? The result will be the same. Everything less than 65 meters above sea level will drown, it's just a matter of time, it seems.

At least my house will be ok, because it's sitting on top of a hill at least 200 meters above sea level.

Rain and packing

2009-11-18T14:57:00.000+01:00

The weather has been incredibly wet here lately, not at all the kind of weather you'd want for November... It's been raining and raining and raining and raining... There seems to be no end to it. How boring... The sky is covered in heavy, gray clouds, and it's always dark. I want either sunshine or snow, dammit! I'm sick of this rain!

In other news, I finally finished my album! It's called "The first dozen" and is now available for download. You can use the player on the right to listen to it, or go to my Rainhat website and download it for free, or buy it on my Bandcamp page. The next thing for me to do is to promote it and let the world know that it's there, so that as many people as possible hear it. If you like the music, tell a friend or download and share the music online!

I'm moving to Malmö soon, so I've started packing a bit. We got a bunch of cardboard boxes the other day and I'm trying to pack down all my stuff in them. The hardest part is to figure out where to start... I have lots of stuff, and it's kinda scattered all over the place, but I guess it will get done eventually. I can't wait to move...

Online overload

2009-10-21T17:14:00.003+02:00

I've been completely and utterly sick of computers and everything online lately, kind of like when you eat too much ice cream too often and just get sick of it and don't want to see another ice cream ever again. Not sure about the 'ever again' part in this case, but it's like I completely lost interest in everything online. I used to check the metrics for my websites at least once or twice every day, but now I just don't care enough to check more than once a week, if that. Seems pointless somehow, I know me checking the metrics isn't going to change anything anyway. I used to be fairly active in some online forums as well, but lately I just haven't seen anything worth commenting on. So I've been staying away from everything online, and doing more stuff offline instead.

I saw this thing on the news about a big blog award being given out. I couldn't believe my eyes... One of the people who was heralded as a likely winner of the award was this teenage girl, who in only 10 months had managed to gain 40 000 - 50 000 hits per day for her blog by writing about fashion and her colorful fingernails. It's an impressive feat, and well done and all, but seriously? Fingernails? I think another chunk of my faith in mankind just died. The most popular blog is not about science, ecology, society, or even religion, but fingernails? This planet is doomed...

I practised Yang style tai chi for a few years back when I had just started college. I did pretty well at it, I knew the Yang Cheng Fu style long form and practised regularly. Then school and stuff got in the way, and I never had time to go to the lessons anymore, so I quit the classes. Now it's been around 4 years since I practised, and I had forgotten a lot of it. Recently, I got interested in it again and decided to take it up again. With some help from Erle Montaigue's video tutorials on YouTube for remembering the moves, I'm back at it. Most of it is coming back quite quickly, I guess because I already learned the movements once before.

My Etsy shop

2009-09-18T03:54:00.001+02:00

I put some of the chainmaille stuff up for sale about two weeks ago on an auction website in Finland. It's a pretty small site, being available only in Finnish, so not surprisingly, nobody even looked at the items. Fortunately, the site is completely free to use.

I've heard some good things about Etsy, so I set up an account there a couple of days ago and put some stuff up for sale. If you liked the chainmaille rings I wrote about in my chain rings post, I suggest you go take a look at the stuff I have up. There are some rings, a bracelet and a necklace available. The address to my Etsy shop is:

http://squigglebird.etsy.com

If you like what you see but can't find a ring in your size, don't worry. I can make you any kind of ring you see there in whatever size you want. Just let me know.

Riding the monkey

2009-09-12T19:40:00.000+02:00

So, a couple of weeks ago Gin and I went to Finland to visit my grandparents. It was nice to see them again, it had been a couple of years since I had been there. They have a nice little red house next to a lake, far from everything. It's a very quiet and relaxing place to be. There's a big workshop where I spent a lot of time as a kid. I learned a lot about woodworking there, always building all kinds of stuff. I once made this little wooden submarine. It was hollow and had these little fins on the side that were angled slightly downward, and it had a little hook in the front so that I could tie a string to it and pull it behind a rowboat on the lake. The little fins would pull the sub down under water if I pulled it with the rowboat, and when I stopped it would float up to the surface again. Loads of fun if you're 10 years old. :)

My uncle is always building stuff too. He's good with cars and motors, and he always has a couple of more or less odd projects going on. He recently bought a monkey chopper motorbike. A monkey bike is like a motorbike, but tiny, like if you took a full size bike and just shrank everything on it down to a smaller size. There used to be these monkey mopeds that were quite popular for a while too. This monkey chopper that he bought now is not street legal, I'm actually not really sure what it's for, but it's hilarious to ride around the garden. It's like a real chopper bike with a fairly long front fork, a low seat and pretty fat back tire, but it's much smaller, so you look pretty ridiculous sitting on it. I have no idea what he's going to do with it.

Chain rings

2009-09-01T21:33:00.006+02:00

Due to popular demand, here are some pictures of some of the chainmaille rings and other stuff that I've made. I've been meaning to put these up for sale on eBay or something, but I haven't gotten my ass in gear yet.

This first one is a ring made out of titanium, bronze and silver. I made up the pattern and used three different metals as an experiment. I think I like the way it looks.

This is a bracelet made of titanium and steel. I found the pattern for this online, I think it's called Dragonback or something like that. It's a pretty dense weave, so the bracelet took forever to make and is quite heavy, even though it doesn't really look it. The chain is about ½ inch wide.

This third one is a ring made out of stainless steel. The chain is called half-persian 4-in-1, I think. It's not very difficult to make once you get the hang of it, but joining the ends to make it a ring is really tricky. It's a very dense chain, so you need pliers with very thin tips to pull it off. The engagement rings that Gin and I have are made out of this chain, but they are titanium on one edge and rose gold on the other.

Gin has started making rings and stuff too, and between us I think we have around 20 rings, and a couple of bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. It's fun stuff to make. :)

Would you like to learn how to play the flute or the guitar?

2009-08-13T23:26:00.003+02:00

I've been unemployed for a while now, and though I've been looking for jobs, there really aren't many that I would have a chance of getting. I'm working on my music with Rainhat, but though that will hopefully take off seriously pretty soon when my album is finished, it's not going to bring me much money anytime soon.

Then one day, in a discussion in a forum, a friend told me she was teaching someone how to play the guitar over Skype, and I went "Huh? Hey, that's a great idea!" I immediately started building a site for this purpose. I scraped together 8 bucks for a domain, installed another instance of self-hosted wordpress with the host I already had, and after a couple of seriously intense days in front of the computer, the site is all set up and I'm more than ready to start teaching anyone who wants to learn.

So, if you're interested in taking flute or guitar lessons, I suggest you go check out my site:

http://www.musicbywire.com

Thank you Melinda! :)

I also suggest you go check out Melinda's blog: Melindaville. It's awesome!

Cooking pasta

2009-08-07T00:43:00.005+02:00

I cooked today. I help Gin with cooking whenever she cooks and needs a hand of course, but I'm rarely the "main chef" who starts the thing and has the ideas. I used to cook a lot more, but I've been lazy so it hasn't happened all that often lately. Besides, Gin likes cooking, and she's an excellent chef, so I rarely need to. But today I felt inspired to do some cheffin', so I made tagliatielle with a creamy bacon and broccoli sauce. A pretty simple dish, and not the greatest thing I've ever made, but it was food so meh. Here's how I made it:

Heat up water for the pasta.
Chop garlic and one yellow onion to small pieces and fry them in a frying pan with some olive oil.
Dice two tomatoes and about 2 cups of broccoli and add them to the frying pan.
Chop up some bacon and throw it in as well.
Chop up some sun-dried tomatoes in small pieces and add to the mix. I was going to do this, but my sun-dried tomatoes expired two months ago. Bummer.
Let it cook until the liquid evaporates, stir every now and then so it doesn't burn.
The water should be boiling by now, so throw in the tagliatielle.
Pour about a pint of low-fat cooking cream over the stuff in the frying pan. I used the 4% fat kind.
Add a dash or two of soy sauce and stir well.
Add black pepper and salt until it tastes good.

That's it. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

We went shopping for some groceries today. I bought some reflective stickers and put them on my longboard. It looks pretty groovy, and I will be clearly visible in the dark as well now. Safety is never a bad idea. I also bought a badminton net for about $2 and played badminton with Gin in the garden when we got home. I suck at it, but it was fun. :)

New website layout

2009-07-31T17:20:00.002+02:00

I installed self-hosted Wordpress and put the entire Rainhat website on it, along with the Rainhat blog. It was a bit of a hassle, but now it's finally all done and I'm pretty happy with how it looks. The only function I wish wordpress would have is to be able to put up link and archive widgets on only certain pages, like only in the blog part and not on the static pages. The way it seems to be now is that if you put up a widget, it automatically appears on every page, unless you add separate sidebars only for the pages. But I'm not that great with coding, so I'm not even going to try.

We drove out to a forest and picked blueberries yesterday. The area looked like someone had already been there and cleared it of berries, but we managed to pick around 2 liters anyway. We decided that was enough and drove home and made a blueberry pie and Crème Anglaise. Fresh berries straight from the forest and into a pie. Delicious! :)

The neighbors seem to have stopped hammering, so I think I'm gonna try recording a bit.

Intermediate stuff for complete beginners

2009-07-25T14:40:00.004+02:00

I logged into my Twitter account yesterday and noticed that the amount of followers had suddenly dropped from 25 to 12, but now I can see all 12 in the list of followers. It makes more sense now. I guess the whole thing with the invisible followers was just a bug...?

This summer has been pretty crappy so far. It's been raining a lot lately, and it hasn't been very warm. Even in these parts of Sweden it should be more than +13 C in July... There was about one week of nice weather a couple of weeks ago, but the rest has been just rain. Bleh...

We have this tent-like thing in the garden. It's like a frame of metal tubes with a soft plastic shell over it. The roof and the corners are a flimsy kind of plastic and the actual walls are made of a very fine kind of net. The point of the whole thing is to be able to sit outside and enjoy the fresh air, while keeping the bugs out, and with a roof to keep you dry if it rains. Unfortunately, this thing was very cheap and the quality matches the price. The roof is leaking a bit and the shell is just a bit too small for the frame, so the mosquito net walls don't actually go all the way down to the ground. Now, I like rain, so last night I got this idea to go out into this tent thingy with a couple of candles and lanterns and just chill with a book while listening to the rain. When I got out there, I noticed that the place was just crawling with red beetles. Apparently they had found their way in under the walls and thought it was a good place to stay dry. There were hundreds of them. I went back inside the house and watched TV instead.

I finally figured out how to format links in different ways for different content boxes with CSS. I wanted the links in the main text box of my website to be red so you can see them. I also wanted the links to be black in another box, because red links just looked bad in it. But I couldn't figure out how to have both at the same time. After looking through a ridiculous amount of websites about CSS coding, I finally found one that explained this particular thing. Not surprisingly, it was quite easy to do. I just had to define each box I wanted to format as a different span class in the html and then define the format of the links in that class in the CSS code. Easy enough to do, once you know how.

With all the millions of tutorial sites out there, it's surprisingly hard to find a site that actually explains everything well and from the very start. Even on sites for beginners, most of them seem to either assume that you know stuff already and start with stuff that actually isn't so basic, or just leave important steps out, probably because they seem obvious to the writer. If you really, truly do not know anything whatsoever about the subject, those kind of sites are pretty useless.

Artistic integrity, I guess

2009-07-16T23:42:00.003+02:00

Heh, it seems I have gotten two new followers on twitter after my last post. So now I have 21 followers, but there's still only 7 followers visible in the list. Weirdness...

I'm getting bored out of my head with being at home all the time. I still haven't found a job, so I'm as broke as ever. Freakin' Swedish bureaucracy... I can't have any unemployment insurance either, because apparently the 2,5 years that I was working in Canada was too long to be abroad and it made me ineligible for it back here. So I haven't had any income at all in about 7 months now. Sucks @$$. On the bright side, I've had plenty of time to write and record music. I've recorded 8 out of 12 songs for my album. Lots of fun, but I'm not making any money off that yet either.

I have written around 45 songs lately, but in my opinion most of them are crap, so I don't want to use them for anything. Counting all the songs that I think might be good enough to perform, I have about 45 minutes worth of music. I will keep writing more songs until I have a full 60 minutes worth of songs I think are good enough. Then I will start looking for gigs. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I refuse to do a concert with songs that I don't like. If I don't like the songs, I feel they don't represent me, and so I don't want anyone to hear them. I'd rather wait until I have something I can be somewhat proud of than try to make money with something I would be ashamed of.

Tweetin' and stuff

2009-07-15T22:32:00.002+02:00

Twitter confuses me. I have an account where I post random stuff and updates about Rainhat. At the moment I have 19 followers, but when I click on the link to see who's following me, there are only 7 users in the list. For the seven that are visible, I can if so choose block them from following me. Not that I have any reason to do so, but theoretically I could. But what about the other 12 followers? If I for some reason wanted to block them, I couldn't, since I can't even see them. Doesn't make much sense to me. Also, how can the 12 not be in the list? I've never seen any option that would allow me to follow someone secretly. Do the 12 even exist at all? Who knows.

Anyway, feel free to follow me on Twitter if you like. My username is Rainhat.

I've been having fun with tweaking the layout of my other blog. I found some interesting websites with info on how to add a third column and such. All kinds of fun layout editing. After all the messing around with my website, I think I'm starting to kind of understand how html and css work. There's always more I could learn, of course, but I got it to do what I wanted, so I'm happy.

Vampire mode

2009-07-08T16:23:00.002+02:00

I'm very good at turning the days upside down, staying up all night and sleeping all day. Especially if I have no particular times to keep, which I don't right now, since I don't have a job. There just aren't very many of those buggers around. Me not having a driver's license doesn't seem to help either, since many job ads request those. Maybe I should finally get my butt in gear and get one... Only reason I don't have one yet is that I never really needed one. I always lived in places where I could get anywhere by bike, bus or train. The damn things are freakin' expensive here in Sweden too... Gah!

Oh, well. No job means lots of spare time, and I've spent pretty much all of it working on music, writing and recording songs. I'm not making any money on it (yet), but if I keep at it, maybe I will. I really need a new steel string acoustic guitar. The one I have is a no-name Epiphone copy of some kind that I bought in Hungary. It sounds like crap. But guitars are a bit expensive too, so it will just have to do for now.

Rum and beer

2009-07-01T23:43:00.003+02:00

It's incredibly hot right now. 30 degrees in the shade outside. Aaargh...

I went to the library a couple of days ago and borrowed some books. I found some books about working in the cultural field, with music, art, etc, how the taxes and such work. There was a book called "100 pages about bookkeeping for those who hate it", but so far that one was incredibly boring. It definitely doesn't make you like it any more. I also borrowed Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse five" and "The rum diary" by Hunter S. Thompson, but I didn't look at those yet.

We went to the liquor store the other day and bought a bunch of different kinds of beer, one can or bottle of each. I don't care much for the Swedish beers I've had before, so I wanted to try something new and see if there's anything I like.
Here's a short list of what we tried, along with completely subjective opinions about them:

Crocodile - It says on the can that it won a gold medal in the biggest European beer competition. There couldn't have been much competition going on... Not very impressive. Tastes ok, but is quite flat. Not much aftertaste at all.

Åbro sommaröl - This was a thorough disappointment. It didn't taste like anything at all. Seriously. Nothing at all. It was like carbonated water. No flavour whatsoever. Good if you don't care about the taste and just want to get severely drunk very quickly, I guess.

Sarek - This was slightly better, though not remarkable in any way. A pretty neutral, unoriginal light lager. Tastes like beer, not much else. No aftertaste at all.

Åbro sigill - An ecological beer. It was pretty decent, it has a bit more flavour than the average bland beer, but still nothing special. Bonus points for being ecological though.

Bellmann 6.0 - This one was pretty good. The best one out of the ones we tried so far.

Saku kuld - An Estonian beer. Not bad at all. It's quite mild, but without being tasteless. Quite ok, but pretty neutral.

Also: 4 cl of Captain Morgan spiced rum + 10 cl of Piña Colada mix + 15 cl of pineapple juice = a tasty and dangerously easy to drink mixture. Getsh you drrrunk quite eashily... (hic!)

Back in business

2009-06-22T14:35:00.005+02:00

Aah, the computer problem has been solved, so now I can finally start recording again. I wasn't quite happy with the guitar tracks on "It's all gone", so I re-recorded them and updated the song on my MySpace page and the website. Now there's also a shop up on the website in case anyone feels like buying the songs to show their support. So, what's left to do is figure out a way to get loads and loads of traffic to the website. As someone said about the music business:
"He who promotes the most, wins."
It's kinda true. Promotion might even be more important than the actual music.

I noticed that there was a typo in the link to the website in the link list on the right. Whoopsie! I fixed it now.

I've been carting and stacking some more firewood. It never seems to end. There's probably enough wood out there to heat up the house for several years. If the house was mine and I had some money, I would re-build the heating system in the house to make it way more efficient, toss up a few high-efficiency solar panels on the walls and put up a small wind turbine or two on the roof. Then I would sit back with a beer and never carry another stick. But alas, the house is not mine and I don't have any money. So back to the wood pile...

Rainhat website is up!

2009-06-18T15:23:00.002+02:00

Finally, after plenty of frustration over html and css coding, and my somewhat lacking skills with these, the official Rainhat website is online! Check it out!

http://www.rainhatmusic.com

I still haven't quite solved the problem with recording, but I'm working on it. After the midsummer holidays I should be able to start recording again quite soon. I have plenty of music left to record.

Midsummer is here. Fresh potatoes with pickled herring, partying and people picking flowers for midsummer poles all around, but the weather is still disappointingly chilly. It's mid-june and it's still only around 15 degrees C outside. Bah...

I've been helping my father carry firewood and stack it up in big piles for winter. There's loads of it. I had these white workman's gloves made of leather, and I've worn big holes in them. One could say that I've carried so much wood that I've worn a hole in a cow. There's this makeshift roof over the wood pile made of boards and a big tarp, but for some reason dad chose to make the roof only around 1,5 meters high, so you can't stand up straight under it while stacking the wood. And stacking it takes quite a bit of time... I think that could maybe have been planned a bit better. My back is killing me.

New song, finally!

2009-06-08T20:17:00.004+02:00

Now that I'm back home again, I have finally had the opportunity to record a bit. I finished one song, and it's now available on my MySpace page. Here's the address:

http://www.myspace.com/rainhat

The song is called "Falling out of love". Enjoy!

I'm going to record as much as I can, so hopefully I will have a new song up every 1 or 2 days for the next week or so at least. I have plenty of new material to record.

I know I just got back from the mediterranean, but still: The weather here in Sweden is freakin' cold. It's +11 outside right now. It's supposed to be a bit warmer than that in June even here. I hope it warms up a bit soon.

I went on a 7 km trip on longboard yesterday. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it now, but man was I tired afterwards... This whole exercise thing is something I haven't done in a while, unfortunately. I'm gonna have to do something about that.

Language

2009-05-31T19:25:00.003+02:00

Languages are funny things. Their main purpose is for people to communicate with each other, but there are all kinds of rules about the structure and spelling and such, which sometimes don't make much sense. Take English spelling, for example. The letter combination "gh" can be pronounced in different ways, like in "though" and "tough". There's a pretty well-known, and perfectly logical example showing how the word "ghoti" can be pronounced as "fish".
Languages evolve, so spelling standards change. I've been wondering... How would it be if you standardized English according to a kind of universal phonetic system, so that all the spellings for all the words were perfectly regular and intuitive? Here's an example. I shall write the rest of this post using such a phonetic system.

It mait seem streinch at ferst to riid text that is ritten laik this, but ai think yu mait get usd tu it after a wail. Inglish is such an irregulur langwich, the spelling of diffrunt werds siims almoust randum. Wudnt it bi sou much iisiur if spelling was purfektli lodjikul? It wud bi a pritti radikul breik from tradishuns, thou. It mait liid tu a lot ov konfjushun. Ivun well-noun things wud luk unfemiljur.

Hau match wud wud a wudchak chak if a wudchak wud chak wud?

Theur is alsou thu problum with ridgunul diffrunses in hau werds ar prunaunst. Yu wud hav to spell werds diffruntli depending on weur yu ar. Yu wud end ap with duzins of rittun langwiches ivun within thu seim kantri. That mait bi bad.

Countdown

2009-05-27T14:19:00.003+02:00

It's countdown time, and I'm counting down to a couple of different things right now.
I got the flight tickets home from Alicante; we're leaving this great place on June 5th. Time in Spain is coming to and end for now, and I must say I've had a great time! I'm still far from fluent in Spanish, but I understand it a whole lot better than when I came here, and I got some grammar books and stuff that should help me improve quite a lot even after I go home.

The second thing I'm counting down to is launching an effort to seriously become a self-sufficient musician. I've done a whole lot of research while I've been here, written a bunch of songs, and gotten a bunch of other useful things done. I've signed up with a couple of very handy online services and even made a website of my own, so I'm mostly set up and ready to go. There are just five things left to do when I get home:

Find a good webhotel service and put my website up.
Record the music I've written and put it on the website.
Start marketing myself like mad, all the time, everywhere.
Find gigs.
Get noticed by all the big music sites, win a couple of grammys, and become incredibly popular, rich and famous.

Actually, there is a number 6 as well, and that is to lose weight after all the good food here in Spain, but since it doesn't really have all that much to do with becoming a musician, I didn't include it in the list. Also, I suspect number 5 might take some serious effort, if it happens at all, but I figure why not aim for the stars while I'm at it? If I miss, I might land on the tree tops, which would be fine with me too.

Launching an attempt at musicianship in this day and age is a pretty interesting endeavor. There is so much stuff you can do with the internet that you never could before, so it's not as much up to knowing all the right people and sucking up to record label managers anymore. I'm quite eager to see just how far I can get with just creative thinking and hard work. Now, only 9 more days and then I get to go at it full speed. Wish me luck!

Bright orange

2009-05-23T02:03:00.004+02:00

I bought myself a nice, bright orange suitcase to put stuff in.

We flew to Spain with Ryanair, and they have these silly rules for luggage. Each check-in suitcase can weigh a maximum of 15kg, as opposed to around 20-23kg with most other airlines. I didn't bring much stuff on the way here as one of the main purposes of the trip was to bring back some of our belongings to Sweden, and I wanted to be able to bring back as much as possible. My old suitcase was quite broken after having gotten lost between Canada and Sweden and getting quite banged up on the way somewhere, so I decided to not bring any suitcase at all and just buy a new one here instead. It's bright orange with lighter orange patterns, so it should be a great deal easier to recognize on the conveyor belts than my old one, which was plain black.

Spain is quite warm this time of year compared to Sweden. It's not really all that surprising, but I've noticed that it's very easy to get dehydrated here. Since it's on average quite a bit warmer, you sweat more than you think. It's easy to forget to drink more to make up for it.

Note to self: Drink more water.

Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Alicante! Woohoo!

A new look

2009-05-21T01:17:00.003+02:00

If you've read my blog before, you'll notice that I've updated the layout. I figured it was time for something new. I kinda like this look. It's a bit more fresh and lively than the old one.

I'm still in Salamanca, Spain, and I'm having a hard time not gaining weight because of all the delicious food my fiancee's grandmother cooks for us all the time. She's quite the lady. I sometimes can't find the clothes I was wearing before, or a towel or something, and I turn around only to find the things I was looking for washed, ironed and folded on the bed. Whoa! And then some more food. "Would you like some tortilla? How about a steak? Here, I cooked some baked fish, filled eggs, steamed potatoes and made a big salad. I had three minutes to spare, so I thought why not. Are you hungry?" I'm feeling quite spoiled here. The food is awesome!

We're going to Alicante on Saturday to visit some more of my fiancee's relatives. I'm looking forward to it. I've heard a lot about palm trees, swimming pools, and great mediterranean paellas. Oh boy. I'm gonna have to go on a serious diet when I get back home...

Things that really annoy me, part MDCCXVIII

2009-05-16T16:24:00.002+02:00

It's time for another installation of complaining about things that piss me off. Today, I find Charity Organizations That Aren't Serious especially irritating. Let me explain why.

During my second day of walking around in Madrid, I come around a corner, and I'm instantly more or less knocked over by a young girl, probably around 16 years old. She jumps at me with a pen and a pad with a paper that says something about an organization for deaf and mute children. She waves the pen at me and keeps repeating "you write, you write" in English, but with a kind of accent that tells me she probably doesn't hear very well. Mostly out of reflex I take the pen and she starts blowing kisses at me. She wants a signature for some cause or another? Oh well, sure, why not. I write my name on the paper. She points at the paper and keeps blowing kisses at me. Now the address. Hm. I'm not very fond of giving my address to random people on the street, so I write a very general and unspecific address. Zip code? I skip that part. Then she points to the last column. Amount donated. Aaah, I see. I'm supposed to give her money next. It all makes more sense now. I feel like I've been walked straight into an ambush, but I reach for my wallet anyway. I guess I can give her a few euros just to avoid looking like a complete ass. I don't have any coins, so I give her the smallest thing I have. A 5 euro bill. She takes the bill, then shakes her head and points at the last column. "No, no". She points at the last column again. I don't get it. "Hmm-hmm". I look at her blankly. She says "Five no good. You must give twenty."

Excuse me? I'm suddenly quite a bit angry. I give money to a complete stranger for no reason at all, and she has the audacity to tell me it's not enough and that I'm somehow required to give her more. I tell her no. She reaches for my wallet. I move it out of her reach. "You give twenty." I say no again. "I give change." She must have seen the 50 euro bill in my wallet and keeps trying to take it out herself. Now I'm starting to get pissed. I say no a bit more firmly. She repeats "Five no good, you give twenty."

I'm not going to give her 20 euros. I have no job and no income of any kind, and I'm running low on money myself. I'm not going to just hand over 20 euro to someone on the street. "You give 20." I tell her as clearly as I can: "No, I will not." She turns around on the spot and walks away with my 5 euros.

What an unbelievable bitch. I don't care if she's deaf and mute, that's the most disrespectful behaviour I've ever seen from someone who claims to be collecting money for a charity. Is she a volunteer or a thief? If someone gives money to your charity, you don't fuckin' start complaining about it not being enough, and you especially don't try to take money out of that person's wallet on your own. If 5 euros is no good, then fuckin' give me the 5 euros back. I was seriously tempted to go after her and demand to have my 5 back and threaten to call the police if she refused, but I decided to ignore it and walked off in the other direction instead.

Unbelievable. This is not the kind of behaviour anyone working for a charity should engage in. If anyone runs into two people in white t-shirts with blue prints claiming to work for a charity organization for deaf and mute children in Madrid, I strongly recommend that you refuse to give them any money. The way they behave, I seriously doubt that they're actually working for any charity organization.

¡Madrid!

2009-05-15T22:04:00.002+02:00

My dear fiancée had a job interview in London yesterday and was flying there from Madrid, so I thought "what an excellent opportunity to see Madrid". So we found ourselves a nice hotel close to the airport and went there one day early to do some looking around.

Madrid is a pretty big place with about 3,2 million people living in the city. There are subways and buses everywhere, so getting around is quite easy and not very expensive. I'm a fan of getting around on foot whenever I'm visiting a new place, though. You get to see much more of the place that way. After a nice meal we went to the Reina Sofia modern art museum and spent a good chunk of the first day there. It's an enormous museum with plenty of very interesting works of art. If you're planning on going there for the first time, I recommend reserving a whole day just for this. The place is huge, and if you really want to see everything (I mean really see everything), you're going to need a whole day. There are four floors in total, of which two are reserved for the permanent exhibitions and the other two for changing shows. It's a modern art museum, focusing on art from 1900 and onwards, and especially Spanish artists. There are quite a lot of paintings by Picasso and Dalí, Juan Gris, Joan Miró, Man Ray and many others. The building is more or less square and has a nice garden in the middle with some interesting sculptures. I liked Joan Miró's "lunar bird" which stands just outside the entrance to the garden.

If you know Picasso mostly from his paintings of very strangely shaped people or his cubist works, there is a very interesting painting to see here from his blue period. It's a portrait of a lady, painted mostly in shades of blue like all his blue period pieces, but otherwise a lot more realistic than his later paintings. There are many paintings by Salvador Dalí here as well. He's probably best known for his quite surreal paintings, melting clocks, elephants with extremely long and thin legs, etc. but at the museum you can also see some of his paintings from before he got into all that. There is among other things a beautiful portrait that looks like it could have been painted by a renaissance artist rather than the surreal Dalí.
The most famous piece of art at the museum is Picasso's Guernica, and it sure is a great piece of art in more than one way, not least in regards to its size. The painting, which depicts the Spanish civil war bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in 1937, is an enormous grayscale painting.

After the museum, we headed to the Tryp Diana hotel, where we had a reservation for a room. It's a pretty decent hotel very close to the airport, and quite cheap for a four star hotel. My bed was a bit weird, though. It was quite hard, and incredibly loud for some reason. Every time I moved, the bed made a loud creaking sound, kind of like an old door in desperate need of some oil for the hinges. Gin had the job interview the following day, so she left for the airport at around 5 in the morning. I stayed in Madrid to look around some more and the plan was to meet up at the airport the same night when she came back. I checked out of the hotel at around 10.30 and headed for the city center. I spent the day walking around, looking at impressive buildings and other cool stuff. There is a huge park in the middle of town, called "Parque de El Retiro". There are huge trees and some ponds and stuff, and a pretty cool building called the "palacio de cristal". It's a big glass building with a small pond and a water fall in front. The pond has fish in it, as well as various kinds of birds and small turtles. There was some kind of art installation going on inside the glass palace, with a couple of speakers playing something that sounded like tropical forest bird chirping and a human-sized stuffed panda hanging from the ceiling. A bit odd.

There are bars and small restaurants everywhere in Madrid. One quite typical food is "bocadillos de calamares", which is a smallish baguette-type bread with deep-fried octopus rings in it. Very tasty! Bars in general in Spain very often offer tapas with your drinks. It can be anything from a small piece of bread with ham on it to small sandwiches with various stuff on them, to pieces of tortilla or other types of food like squid or sausage. They're usually pretty cheap, around 1-2 euros, though some bars offer them for free. Another good word to know is "caña" (pronounced "cahn-ya"). This is a small glass of beer, usually for about 1-1,50 euro.

There are plenty of things to see in Madrid; the royal palace, the big cathedral of Almudena, tons of museums and fountains. After walking around for about 10 hours my feet were killing me, but fortunately it was about time to go to the airport. Getting to the airport is easy. The subway takes you straight to the terminals, so no problems there. Gin's flight was right on time, so we met up and headed home.

Salamanca!

2009-04-25T00:34:00.002+02:00

I am now in Salamanca, Spain, and I must say I'm enjoying every moment of it! The weather is hot and toasty, like the warmest summer days in Sweden, and the town and surroundings are beautiful! The architecture of the old buildings in Salamanca is quite interesting and very different from anything in Sweden. Many of the buildings are built with large bricks made from Villamayor sandstone. This is a unique kind of stone that comes from a quarry in the nearby village Villamayor, and the golden glow that this stone has in the sun has given Salamanca its nickname, La Ciudad Dorada - the golden city.
There are two old cathedrals in Salamanca. The new one, Catedral nueva, was built between 1509 and 1734, and the old cathedral was founded in the 12th century. The new cathedral is quite enormous, and very impressive on the inside. The style is an interesting mix of late Gothic and Renaissance architecture.
Salamanca is also home to the University of Salamanca, one of the oldest universities in Europe, founded by Alfonso IX of León in 1218 as a "General School". This foundation did not last and the university was refounded by Alfonso's son, King St. Ferdinand III in 1243. The university, which has about 36000 students, has a famous facade with detailed engravings, among other things a small frog hiding somewhere among the figures of the facade. According to popular legend, travelers who can spot the frog will come back to Salamanca.
The food here is great as well. One of the delicacies include "jamón ibérico", a special kind of salty cured ham made from black iberian pigs. The ham is salted and then dried for several weeks. After this, the meat is cured for 1 - 3 years, depending on the producer. There are many versions of jamón of varying degrees of seriousness and quality, based on how long the meat is cured and what the pigs ate before they were slaughtered. I tried both the jamón ibérico and one of the more generic jamón, and it's tasty stuff! Most bars have tapas, small plates of various types of food to be eaten like a snack. I especially like the "pulpo a la gallega", which is made from octopus, and "croquetas", which are small bundles of a thick bechamel sauce with small pieces of jamón, ham or tuna in them, covered in bread crumbs and egg and then deep-fried. Yummy! I was kinda hoping that Spanish food would be more healthy and wholesome than my regular slouch-around-at-home diet, but I'm afraid I won't be losing any weight anytime soon...

The language is fun to listen to. I don't speak very much Spanish yet, but many words are very similar to English words, so you can sometimes guess what they mean, though not well enough to be able to follow a conversation. People also tend to speak very fast, which adds to the challenge. Listening to a conversation, I'm able to recognize some words here and there but not enough to understand the meaning. It's weird, but Spanish feels kind of like you could *almost* understand the language if you listened closely enough, but it's just far enough beyond your reach to make it incomprehensible. This complete immersion in Spanish (you don't really hear anything else than Spanish here, everything on TV is dubbed to Spanish too) is a pretty efficient way to learn the language, I think. Between a dictionary, grammar book, frequent questioning of my fiancée for the meaning of words, and just listening to people, I think I have improved my Spanish a bit already.

España

2009-04-18T04:10:00.004+02:00

So the Pirate bay trial is over and the guys were found guilty and sentenced to 1 year in prison and $4,5 million in fines.
It's insane. If you kill someone in Sweden you might go to jail for a few years and maybe pay $20 000 in fines. Except if you're a cop. Then you can pretty much beat a person to a pulp with your stick in front of a video camera and still walk away a free man. Not too long ago during a riot, three cops were caught on video discussing in obviously racist terms how they wanted to castrate and hurt an immigrant, whom they called "the fucking monkey". The police investigated the matter and decided that there was nothing wrong with this, so the cops were allowed to keep working normally. But I digress.

If you put up a website where someone else posts a link to 9 copyrighted movies, you go to jail and have to pay more than 200 times the amount you would for murder in fines. It paints a nice picture of what the priorities of the Swedish legal system are, doesn't it? This trial had nothing to do with actual law and justice, but was yet another example of Sweden being the lapdog of whoever yells at them the loudest. The US looks at the Swedish government sternly, and *poof*, all of a sudden a CIA airplane lands in Sweden and the Swedish government shoves over a bunch of prisoners who are then taken away to be "questioned".

There was no real evidence of much of anything in this case. The prosecutors had to basically fill in the holes in their case by guessing and speculating. The four guys on trial have broken no law, since there has never been any laws against what they did. They did not share any copyrighted material themselves. According to the prosecutors, they were guilty because they provided a web service where people could link to copyrighted material, and the court pretty much ignored the defence and sided 100% with the prosecutor.

Now, think about that for a moment. It's their fault because they provided a site where people can link to copyrighted material? Doesn't Google do that too? And Youtube? And pretty much every single search engine and major website on the internet? Wouldn't that kinda make the entire internet illegal? What's next? Is the Swedish copyright lobby going to start dishing out lawsuits against the internet service providers because they provided people with the means to share things online? This whole trial is just so idiotic it makes my head hurt... It's another painfully obvious indication of the fact that the Swedish government has no interest in working in the best interests of its population, but rather for sucking up to whatever political or commercial organ that has the most money. Why the hell else would the government decide that its OK to introduce mass surveillance of the entire population? It does not benefit the people. It only benefits the companies that have something to gain from it, i.e. the copyright holders, who are now free to slap anyone they want with a lawsuit and basically force them to pay insane amounts of money with no interference from the law or anyone else.

"Pay us, or we will make you pay even more. You are guilty because we say so, and you'll have to prove yourself innocent to get out of this, which you can't because we have frozen your assets since we think you are guilty. So pay up, or else..."

A free country? Yeah, right... Not even the police has the authority to do this! But a company with copyright interests does! A corporation has more power than the police to bully people! Am I the only one who thinks this is so fucked up it's not even funny any more? This kind of stuff belongs in nihilistic sci-fi novels, not in a modern society that is supposed to be democratic!
If a person did this, rather than a corporation, it would be called extortion and organized crime. So thanks a lot, government, you incompetent cowards who not only allowed this to become possible, but actually made it reality. I can't think of anyone who deserves a 40 000 kr + /month salary less than you guys.

I'm leaving town for a while. Tomorrow morning Gin and I are going to Stockholm for a few days to see my brother and some other people. After that we fly to London for a day, and then on to Spain to meet Gin's family. I've never been to Spain, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm bringing my Spanish grammar book and dictionary, and I intend to improve my Spanish quite a bit while I'm there.

Recycled pens

2009-03-25T18:57:00.002+01:00

I went shopping today, got some groceries and stuff, and had a look in a book store just for fun. They had these "bottle 2 pen" pens, which are apparently made from recycled plastic bottles. The pen is made from a clear plastic and is supposed to be refillable. You just unscrew the tip and replace the ink cartridge inside the pen. But after a look around, I noticed that there are no ink cartridges for sale in the store. Not a single one of any kind. Seems very stupid to me. What is the point of a refillable pen, if you can't buy the stuff to refill it with? Instead of just buying the cartridge, you would have to buy a new pen with a fresh cartridge in it when this one runs dry. This creates more plastic waste. But I guess that's the whole point. If you don't sell cartridges, people would HAVE to buy a new pen, thereby spending more money, making the pen makers a bigger profit. It wouldn't surprise me a bit. In fact, companies do this on purpose all the time.

Did you know that a ridiculously large proportion of all the things you can buy, are ON PURPOSE made to be disposed of within six months? Have a look at this website: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ It's a pretty interesting 20 minute video that explains a lot of stuff about consumers and resources.

Recovery

2009-03-15T17:32:00.002+01:00

It is now 11 days since I had my tonsils removed, and while my throat hasn't healed completely quite yet, it's getting to be quite decent. I can eat more or less normal food, though not very spicy or salty stuff and I still avoid really coarse stuff that would scratch my throat too much. It doesn't hurt very much anymore either. The first day or two after the surgery were quite bad, but it was OK with the painkillers and only liquid food. Then after about 4 days it got a lot worse again.
Normally, if you cut yourself, the wound closes up and you get this brown scab on it that falls off after a while when the wound has healed enough under it. That doesn't happen inside your mouth. Instead of a brown, hard scab, you get this white layer of soft stuff that looks more like a thick layer of mold than anything else. It falls off after a while, but the tissue under it is still more or less an open wound and it can start bleeding again. After about 4 days, this white stuff gradually started to fall off, revealing the wounds from the surgery. To tell you the truth, that's when it started to hurt like a motherfucker. Anything I ate made my throat burn like it was being stabbed by a thousand needles. The painkillers took away most of the ache, but it did virtually nothing for the pain of swallowing something. For a day or two, I ate pretty much nothing more than popsicles. The ice made my throat a bit numb so I was able to swallow. Now, most of the white stuff is gone, so I'm guessing my throat will be all good and ready for anything in about a week.

I've taken a bigger interest in ecology and the environment lately. I saw this show on the Discovery channel, Discovery Project Earth, where scientists and clever people build various prototypes for things that might help clean up the atmosphere and the planet. Some of the ideas, even though they work, seem incredibly far fetched and not very practical, but some ideas actually seem quite cool. One of the episodes had this big contraption invented by a guy named David Keith. It filters carbon dioxide out of the air by using a sodium hydroxide solution. Seems good, but where are you going to put the CO2 after it's been captured? Filtering CO2 is not a bad idea, but wouldn't it be better to make factories and other sources stop putting so much out in the first place? There have been so-called rules imposed against large companies, etc. but they are ridiculously full of loopholes and most large initiatives seem kinda inefficient. Take the Kyoto protocol, for example. A country can just decide to not sign it and keep doing things the way they want. Then what? Norwegian gas platforms in the sea off the coast of Norway have hefty fines to pay if their output of CO2 is over a certain limit. So they invented clever ways to filter the CO2 out of the gas they are pumping up, and put it back where it came from so that their emissions are within limits. Seems to me that that's the way to go. Necessity is the mother of all invention, so why not impose a 5 year time limit, and then apply fines of such a ludicrous magnitude that it would be financial suicide for a company to not abide by the limits. They would simply HAVE to come up with similar ways of decreasing their emissions. Companies try to make money. That's what they do. So if they have to invent stuff in order to save money, they will come up with the necessary stuff in no time at all. They are plenty enough of smart people in the world to make it happen. The only thing missing is a good enough reason, and to keep repeating the same stuff about CO2 being bad for the environment and that it causes global warming that will make ice caps melt and cause loads of trouble in about 50 years or so is just not good enough. Stock holders are making money now. They don't care about trouble in 50 years from now, especially if it means paying money to change something now.

Making things environmentally friendly can be tricky on a large scale. Even wind power has its problems. Imagine replacing all the power plants in your country with nothing but big wind turbines. It's a renewable source of power, sure, but energy doesn't come from nothing. The turbines simply convert the energy in the wind into electric energy. And any energy that is turned into electricity is reduced from the energy in the wind. So if you have enough wind turbines, they will inevitably slow down the wind. What does that lead to? I have no clue, but there is bound to be some kind of meteorological consequence. Still, it's a whole lot better than coal power plants if you ask me.

But not everything about being environmentally friendly is problematic. There are plenty of ways you and any one person can help the planet. Recycle if you can, use low-energy light bulbs, re-use things instead of throwing them away, take the bike instead of driving your car, get an electric or hydrogen car instead of a gas guzzler (if you have the money for a new car) and many other things. I do all of the above, (except for buying the new car, I don't have a drivers license). It doesn't take any extra effort, so why not? I also like building things, so I'm going to build a small but simple CO2 scrubber myself. All I need is a small airpump from an aquarium, an empty 2 liter soda bottle, some water and some green, sludgy algae from the nearest creek or pond. It doesn't cost much, and it will convert CO2 into oxygen in a perfectly natural way. Algae are the most efficient organisms in the world for this kind of stuff. They convert CO2 into oxygen by the loads, way more than trees do. Only problem is that there isn't enough of it to keep up with all the coal power plants and cars in the world. Did you know that in the USA alone, there are about 600 coal plants? Each one burns about 1,4 million tons of coal and pumps out about 3,7 million tons of CO2 every single year. It would take quite a bit of algae to keep up with that.

Sans golf balls

2009-03-05T16:49:00.002+01:00

Ah, finally back home. I had my tonsils removed yesterday at the hospital. I was a bit tense before the operation, since I had never been operated for anything before. I was the first patient of the day, and the operation started at around 8 am. The surgeon was quite impressed with the size of my tonsils... I think the thing that surprised me the most was how fast I fell asleep from the anesthesia. They put a plastic tube into my hand for the IV, and gave me two injections through it. The first one made me quite dizzy, the whole room started spinning. Then the nurse told me she was going to inject something that would make me fall asleep, and about two seconds later I was out cold. Next thing I remember is waking up after the surgery, still quite dizzy. A nurse came to see me with a big wet rag and told me that she was going to clean up my face from all the blood. She literally mopped my entire face with the rag, which seemed kinda funny. Was the operation that messy? They injected me with some painkillers, and I spent the next 12 hours or so mostly sleeping. I had to stay at the hospital over night in case my throat started bleeding, but it didn't. When I was awake, it really started to hurt quite a lot, so I got some more painkillers.
I had expected it to hurt mostly at the back of my throat where the main portion of the tonsils were, but it was actually much worse further down my throat. Talking was really painful. Also, I had some pretty painful bruises and cuts around my mouth. They put this metal thing in your mouth to keep it open for the surgery, and it's apparently a bit brutal.
Gin and my mom came to visit me at the hospital and gave me a whole pile of magazines to read. I didn't really have much chance to read them, though. I spent most of the time asleep even after that. The doctor checked my throat today and I got to go home at around 11. I got some prescriptions for some painkillers, so right now I'm doing pretty good. I had read online that your voice might change a little after a surgery like this, but so far I can't really tell. My throat is all swollen and looks like a real mess, so I guess I'll find out once it heals a bit more.

Overall, trying to drink yesterday evening was quite horrible, but today it's a lot better. It still hurts a bit, especially when I swallow or try to talk, but not as much as I had expected. I've had colds worse than this, so I'm pleasantly surprised. A week more and I'll be singing opera arias again. :)

Raptor visit

2009-02-19T21:27:00.004+01:00

Today, as Gin and I were sitting in the living room, lazily watching TV, there was an incredible boom from the window right behind us. We nearly jumped out of our skins. When we looked outside, there was a very dizzy-looking bird hanging upside down from our porch, with wings all spread out and his head on the snow. It was a pretty big bird, a goshawk. No clue what he was trying to do, crashing into our living room window like that, but judging from the impact he would most likely have crashed through the glass had he been going any faster. He looked a bit funny hanging upside down from our porch, obviously quite stunned. Mom was standing on the porch, looking down on him from only about two feet away, but he didn't seem to care much. After about a minute he took off and flew up in a tree, about 5 meters away. He didn't seem to be going anywhere, so I took the opportunity to walk over and take some pictures. He was sitting about 4 meters up so the pictures are a bit from a frog perspective, but he looks like a fairly impressive bird anyway. He was obviously not hurt from the crash, and flew off after spending about half an hour in the tree. I noticed afterwards that he left a bird-shaped impression in the pile of snow next to the porch where he was hanging.

I got the date for surgery now. On march 4th, I'm getting rid of my tonsils. Good riddance, I say. I can't wait to get rid of them.

I caught a cold from my dad, who had it last week, so I've been coughing quite a lot and feeling kinda beat in general. Not that I really need one right now, but it's a good excuse to just sit on the couch and read a book. I don't really have much to do anyway. I'm still waiting for my last paycheck from the job I had in Canada. Apparently there was a "mixup" with the payments, so mine never got sent. I got a letter in the mail a couple of days ago saying that it was sent out on February 7th. But that was 12 days ago, and I still don't have the cheque... Given the level of organization at that place, I can't say I'm too surprised. It was by far the messiest place I ever worked on, and the only place I've worked at where the management seemed to have no interest whatsoever in listening to the ideas of the workers. But obviously, if the dozen or so people in the higher management don't have enough good ideas, the 300 or so "grunts" couldn't possibly have any brains to contribute anything with... The few times that the employees took the initiative to try to come up with suggestions on their own, the effort was greeted with outright hostility from the management. A healthy working environment? Right.

A few weeks before I left, my fiancée and I were offered work with the same company in starting up a new office. But without any raises or promotions, the management wanted us to do exactly what we were already doing (the positions we had already resigned from) and for a salary worth less money. They couldn't possibly offer us anything else, since we would have to show some good results and dedication towards the company first. Obviously, in the three years that we had already worked there (never mind that we had each been promoted twice in that time, and had worked there longer than most others in the localization department), we had done none of that? Sorry, but that's nothing short of insulting.

Snip snip

2009-02-14T21:34:00.002+01:00

Now that I'm back in Sweden again, my stage name seems a bit out of place. I originally picked a stage name because people generally can't pronounce my real name very well. But being in Sweden, I'm most likely going to be doing most of my performances in Sweden, so having a completely anglicized stage name just seems pretentious. So I renamed my MySpace page, and shall from now on be associated with the name "Rainhat" instead whenever I do a show. Not so much a pseudonym for myself personally, but more of a project name for my musical endeavours.

I've written some new music, and my fingers are really itching to record the stuff and put it up online, but unfortunately it seems I can't do that with any satisfactory result at the moment. First of all, I don't have access to the kind of instruments I would need. I bought myself an electric bass that I'm really happy with, but the guitar I have is really not something I want to use for a recording. It works, it's easy to play, but it just sounds bad. There is no life or body in the sound. I pluck a string, and the result is just a vibrating string. There is no resonance of any kind. It sounds... dead. Dead and flat and lifeless, as if I was playing a brick with strings. Of course, I could make do with what I have and use this guitar anyway, but I would do so quite grumpily.

The second obstacle, and the one that really stops me, is my throat. I've been having problems with my throat lately. I have always had large tonsils, ever since I was a kid. The doctors kept saying that it was perfectly normal, and that they would shrink as I got older. Well, I'm 28 now, and they haven't. In fact, they have only gotten larger and larger, and quite rapidly as of late. Now they are large enough to make it difficult for me to breathe when I sleep. I have apneas and wake up at night with a pulse of 180, gasping for air. They are literally the size of eggs. That also causes some problems with my voice. I can't articulate properly and I sound nasal and stuffy, kind of as if someone was constantly trying to choke me. Try it. Grab your throat just under your jaw. Now squeeze and press upwards at the same time. That's how I sound. I don't want to record any vocals as long as I sound like this. My throat also feels incredibly unpleasant. I'd do anything to get rid of this feeling right now.

I went to see a doctor at the local clinic when I started having trouble breathing. He sent me to the hospital with a rush order, so I went there and met an ear nose throat specialist. He was quite impressed with the size of my tonsils and decided that they need to be removed quite soon. I didn't get a set date for the surgery yet, so I'm waiting for more news on that.
Having your tonsils removed is a pretty minor surgery, but I've heard that it's incredibly painful. Gin's aunt said it was like swallowing needles every time she drank something for about a week and a half after the surgery. Oh, well. I'd rather swallow needles for a week or two than have a throat like this for the rest of my life.

Downloading music

2009-02-09T22:51:00.004+01:00

Did you know that if a musician gets signed with a major record label, he's basically signing himself into poverty unless he happens to hit it really big? Like Maroon5 or James Blunt big, at the very least. Prices vary depending on where you buy a CD, but let's say a regular CD is around $15.

A record company pays for the time spent in the studio to record a CD. This alone can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. All the costs involved in creating a finished CD are recoupable. This means that the record company will take that money back from the musician out of his royalties on the CD. An average level royalty for a beginning musician is somewhere around 12%.

Now, 12% out of $15 is $1,80. So if you sell 10000 CDs, the musician gets $18000, right? Nope. When vinyl records were sold, before the CD was invented, the record labels had to count on a part of the records breaking, thereby not getting them any income. So they would calculate royalties on only 90% of the total amount of CDs, regardless of how many were actually sold. They still do. Even though CDs and mp3s don't break. There is no justification for keeping this method, but they do anyway because they make more money with it. So 10000 CDs actually only gets the musician $16200.

Record companies have also decided that while it's ok to pay royalties to the musician for each CD, they don't want to pay royalties on the packaging. So a 25% packaging deduction is taken off the price of the CD before the royalties are calculated. So out of $15, the royalties are calculated on only 75% of the price, that is $11,25. So now, for 10000 CDs sold, the musician gets only $12150 for the royalties of 90% of the sales.

If the musician doesn't produce the record himself, but has an independent producer do that instead, (or even worse, a producer from the record company) he has to pay the producer out of his royalties, generally around 25% of his royalties. So then the musician only gets a 9% royalty instead of 12%. That means $9112,5 for 10000 CDs sold.

The record companies also have a 25% deduction called the R&D deduction. This is a research and development deduction that the companies take off, because it costs them money to research and develop new technologies for publishing the music. Like when the cassette tape was invented. Or the CD, or the minidisc, blue-ray, mp3, etc. Nevermind that most record labels never spent a penny on researching or developing any of these. Anyway, what remains is now $6834,375.

So, around $6834 for 10000 CDs sold is a pretty welcome income, isn't it? Selling 10000 CDs can't be that hard, and it's a start, right? Nope. Remember that all the costs involved in creating the CD are recoupable. What if the production costs added up to $150000? That means that when 10000 CDs have been sold, the record company has already earned $132000, but the musician is still 143166 dollars in debt to the record company. The musician gets about 68 cents in royalties per CD. So he has to sell enough CDs to cover the $150000. If we use this example, he has to sell 219491 CDs before he ever gets a single penny in profit. How many musicians sell 220000 copies of their first album? Not many.

And yet, this is all a bit simplified. In reality, the musician may get way less than shown in this example. The cost of recording the CD is not the only cost. How about another $150000 for a promotional video? How about mp3s? The royalty rate is often the same, even though there is zero breakage and zero packaging. So how can the artist afford a manager and a lawyer? Pfff...

The alternative is of course to do and finance everything yourself, to do it the indie way. But man, that takes some serious money. Overall the music industry is in many ways a disgusting business, and in severe need of transformation. And who wants to pay up to $30 for a CD, as you often would in Sweden? No wonder people are filesharing like mad. The record companies get mad and claim to be losing millions of dollars and compensate by raising the record prices even more, making them even harder to sell, making people download even more.

Business has always been based on the simple principle of demand and supply. The people want something, so you sell it to them. The people want something else, so you adapt to what they want and sell that instead. The record companies seem to be kind of stuck, trying to bully everyone into buying their CDs by any means necessary, even though people don't want to. People download copyrighted stuff. That's not going to change, no matter what you do and what laws you make. And trying to bully laws into place, like the EU parliament seems to be doing with the Medina report, is just nothing short of disgusting.

The big trial against the guys from The Pirate Bay is starting on February 16th. The EU parliament has this thing called the Medina report, which is basically a long wish list from the copyright people. It is a list of things that they suggest that the EU parliament make into law, applicable in all of Europe. Check out points 30 through 33. Does anyone other than me find this a bit insane? They are basically asking the EU parliament to DECIDE that the court of law should convict the Pirate Bay guys and find them guilty! What the hell kind of justice is that? Innocent until proven otherwise, my ass...

I'm a musician myself, and of course I want to make money off my music and be able to make a living with it, but not like this. Filesharing is here to stay, so we need to find a way that lets the musicians make money off of their music through filesharing. Not by letting multi-billion dollar companies violate all reason and justice, while basically robbing the musicians and making insane amounts of profit on the very expense of the musicians.

In Sweden alone there are somewhere between 600 000 and 1,2 million people who engage in filesharing. Rather than making up one stupid law after the other to try to criminalize these people, something else needs to be done. I mean, seriously... It just doesn't make sense to try to turn over 10% of your population into criminals! What are you going to do? Put them in jail? All 1,2 million of them? Come on...

According a recent study that I read about today, done in the Netherlands, about 25% of the Dutch population downloads stuff illegally. But at the same time, those same people make up 45% of the people buying the same stuff legally. By downloading stuff you get access to a million times more stuff than you ever would if you had to buy it all first. So you find more stuff that you like, and then you go buy that.

Record companies lose millions because of file sharing? Sorry, but I honestly don't believe that for a second. What better way is there for a band to get heard? A band lives off the fact that they are known. They spend hundreds of thousands on promotion and advertizing. There are bands that have based their entire success on getting the word out over the internet. The more people hear your music, the more people are going to buy your CD, buy tickets to your tour, buy your t-shirt, etc.

But copying something that is copyrighted is illegal, according to the law. The very same law that promotes libraries, where anyone can go and borrow a book and read it for free completely legally. If I go to the library, I can read Harry Potter, and J. K. Rowling doesn't get a penny. If I download the book online and read it, I am a criminal and J.K. Rowling could file a lawsuit against me.

What exactly is the difference, I wonder? Seems very fishy to me...

1984 again? 25 years later?

2009-02-09T19:17:00.003+01:00

I moved from Sweden to Canada in June 2006 to work, and during my stay there I didn't really keep much track of what was happening in Sweden. Now that I'm back, I've found many disturbing things on disturbing levels. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark", as good ol' Bill put it. Very apt, except for the Denmark part. The thing that really bugs me is this:

Effective from January 1st this year, 2009, a department of the Swedish military can monitor and listen to or read all public and private communication that crosses the Swedish borders.

Since pretty much every signal from every kind of communication passes the Swedish borders at some point, (because the email servers are abroad, for example), this means that if a person in Sweden calls his buddy in Sweden or abroad on a cell phone, chats online, sends an email or a text message to someone, uses any kind of IP phone, or just a regular phone, the government can read or listen to every word unhindered. They do not need any suspicion of crime or just cause, they can listen in on all of it at any time they want. This law is called the FRA-law.
Sweden - kiss privacy good bye. It does not exist any more when it comes to communication.

The justification for all this is that the law gives the Swedish government a way to "detect and trace external threats". Well. If there was an external threat that was in any way interested in doing something to insignificant little Sweden, THEY WOULD NOT DISCUSS IT OVER THE PHONE! What kind of idiot terrorist would discuss his plans using Hotmail or a cell phone? Especially since this law is public knowledge, and any terrorist with half a brain would KNOW that someone is monitoring the call!

How many people and their phone calls would you have to listen to randomly before you stumble across a suspicious call? Way the hell too many!

The law as a deterrent? Does anyone actually believe that a person bent on carrying out some kind of bombing or whatever would just go "Oh, I guess we can't communicate secretly now. Better go home again..." because of this law? Seriously... I sure as hell don't.

This law is an atrocity and there is no valid reason to rob the Swedish population of their privacy in this way. I for one demand that it be revoked. If I call a friend, it's none of the Swedish government's damn business what we talk about.

I can't BELIEVE that this kind of law actually got passed. I simply cannot understand how anyone would want to be in favor of giving up their privacy this way? A common argument in favor seems to be the ever-so-popular "But if you have nothing to hide it doesn't matter if someone listens." or the variation "You are only against this because you have something to hide." It doesn't matter, eh? Let me tell you. If you had a person following you around all the time, listening to every word you said, not letting you make one single phone call in privacy, it would start bugging you really damn fast, whether you have something to hide or not! So what difference does it make if that person is there next to you, or listening through headphones somewhere else? It's the same damn thing.

In Sweden, a mailman can be fired or even go to jail for opening a letter addressed to someone else and reading it. But according to the law, the Swedish government can do that with any mail they want. Does this seem sensible? Hell no!

If you say something suspicious over the phone, you become a suspect and a potential threat to national security. If you do a search on the keyword "communism" or "al-qaida" on google, you are researching suspicious things and therefore suspicious yourself.

Has anyone read the book 1984? This is starting to sound freakishly much like the thought police. How much further can this be allowed to go?

During WW 2, the image and concept of the Swedish Tiger was created as a symbol for the vigilance campaign. The word "tiger" means "stays silent" in Swedish, and the idea was that all Swedish citizens should stay silent about anything that could be potentially harmful to a neutral Sweden, which at that time was surrounded by countries either at war or occupied by military troops. This concept seems to remain in a twisted way to this day. Swedes stay silent about everything. Sweden is the most taxed country in the world, and we're not really getting anything more for that tax money compared to other countries with lower taxes. Unemployment is rising, pensions are dropping, alarming numbers of cases are handed over to the bailiff because of unpaid debts.

Measured as a percentage of the GNP and compared to other countries within OECD, Sweden had a clear lead with 51,1% in 2005. As a comparison, the UK stood as number 12 with 37,2% the same year. Canada was number 17 with 33,5% and the US was number 22 with 26,8%.

Sweden has free health care. The US does not. Sure, our healthcare is free, but only if we pay 150 kr for the privilege of getting to see any kind of medical personnel in the first place.

So we are taxed out of our asses and our privacy is gradually stripped away in something that more and more resembles a big brother-state. How do the Swedish people respond to this? With silence. A big, fat, overwhelming lack of doing anything whatsoever. People whine about it at home, but nobody does anything to work against it. The Swedish silence prevails. On January 13th this year, a demonstration was arranged in Gothenburg agaist the FRA-law, the IPRED laws, the data storage directive and ACTA. The demonstration was arranged by 7 political parties and youth parties, as well as a network against the FRA-law. Gothenburg is the second biggest city in Sweden with over half a million people living in the city area. So how did the demonstration go? A whopping 200 people showed up. If that is the extent of people's commitment to actually want to do something about things, I think Sweden is really screwed.

We need to do something! We need to get off our asses and get involved! Join a political party and work against this, or at least vote for a party that is against this nonsense! Hand out flyers, write blog posts, send a letter to your government representative.

But! Remember to do it the right way. Violence and throwing rocks at politicians you don't like is never the right way. On the contrary, it'll just work against your idea.

Projects

2009-01-13T21:46:00.010+01:00

After borrowing some clothes and not really doing much, we got our luggage back about a week after we got here. As promised, they delivered everything right to our front door. Everything was in good shape; nothing was missing and nothing was broken, apart from a wheel that had fallen off one of my suitcases. No big deal, though. It was a pretty old and well-traveled suitcase, and I'm surprised it lasted this long.

I've always liked building things. Growing up, I spent every summer in a huge workshop at my grandparents' place, building all kinds of stuff and learning how to work with both wood and metal. During the 2,5 years I worked in Canada, I had no tools and no space where to work, so I couldn't build anything. It was actually one of the things I missed the most. So now that I'm back in Sweden, with access to a modest amount of tools and at least some space to work on, I got right back into it. I decided to build a longboard of my own. I read a bunch about it online and watched a crapload of videos on youtube of people who build their own boards with quite varying results. It seemed more than doable, so I got to it.

First, I got a nice sheet of 3 mm birch plywood and a bottle of wood glue. I made a plan and a template on paper, cut the plywood into 8 pieces and glued 4 layers together. Then I traced the template onto the plywood and cut and sanded out the final shape. I decided to make a drop-thru deck, which means that the metal trucks that hold the wheels go through a hole in the deck and are mounted with screws to the top of the deck, as opposed to a deck that is mounted on top of the trucks. A lower deck makes the ride more stable. The board is not that much lower on a drop-thru deck, but even an inch makes a difference.

Since I didn't really know how durable the birch plywood is, I decided to remove as little wood as possible for the hole, so I designed a template for a hole that will do just that and fit the trucks I have very snugly. The drawback is that I probably can't use any other trucks on this board than Randal 180's, but since those are good trucks, it's not really a problem. Besides, this is just a prototype anyway.

After cutting out the holes for the trucks, I attached the trucks and wheels so I could try getting on the board. Since I had no real idea about how durable the plywood is, I wanted to try standing on it to see if it'll hold my weight, or if it'll break right away. No sense in spending lots of hours finishing the board and making it look pretty, just to have it snap like a twig when I step on it. So holding on to the kitchen table for support, I very carefully stepped onto the board. It didn't break. Ok, so far so good. I carefully bounced on it a bit. It still didn't break, so I finally jumped up and down on it. No problem at all. The board is nice and flexy, actually quite perfect for my weight of 82 kg. It bends, but shows no sign of breaking. Excellent. Then to finish it. I sanded the surface and sprayed it with a clear lacquer, then spray painted two metallic black stripes on the back, and hand painted a logo on it. I decided to call the board "Pyry proto". Pyry is a finnish word that means "blizzard". There was actually a blizzard here when I started making it. Proto is just short for prototype. After a few more layers of clear lacquer, the board is all finished, and I must say I'm a bit proud of the result. I put some black and yellow grip tape on the top, and the board looks quite good, if I may say so myself. Now, if only the solid layer of ice that covers the streets here would melt so I could go out and try it for real...

For any longboard geeks out there: The deck is 120 cm long, has Randal RII 180 trucks and Abec 11 83mm 75a Flywheels.

Apart from making the board, it has been a couple of very nice and relaxing weeks of vacation at my parents place here in Sweden. Me and my fiancée Gin have thought a bit about what we're going to do next. The plan was to go to England and find something interesting to do there, but we came to the conclusion that staying in Sweden might be an option too. Gin has been studying Swedish while we've been here, and is actually advancing very quickly with it. I have no doubt it wouldn't take her long to be completely fluent at it, so finding a job in Sweden wouldn't be a problem for her. I guess we'll just have to look around and see where we find something interesting. To be honest, we haven't really been looking all that seriously for the last couple of weeks. It has been quite nice to just relax for a while. I had some vacation from work twice while I was in Canada, but both times I was completely swampted with stuff I had to get done, so it wasn't really vacation. I came back to work more tired than when I left.

We had a couple of interviews and offers for jobs earlier, but they seem to have flaked out. This one lady from a company in the UK wrote me and wanted a phone interview. We set up a time for it, but when the time came, she just didn't call and I heard nothing more from her. If that is the extent of their level of organization and courtesy I think I'd rather not work for that company, so I didn't pursue it any further either.

Maybe I should start making longboards? That could be quite fun... :)

The longboard I bought for christmas still hasn't arrived. It's been in the mail from Canada to Sweden for almost a month now. It's kinda funny that it took less time for me to build a new board from scratch than for a finished board to travel across the Atlantic.

Trials and tribulations part II

2008-12-24T12:37:00.002+01:00

After about 30 hours on the move, we finally arrived in Sweden. And true to the latest trend, the trip was far from simple.

We cleaned out the apartment in Montreal and left for the airport. We each had two large suitcases to check in, and one small carry-on bag each. Arriving at the airport, we used the Air Canada self-service check-in machine. It printed luggage tags and boarding passes for us, but no luggage tags. Only a receipt with the luggage numbers. Odd, but OK. Then we went through the check-in counters, dropped off the bags and proceeded to the gates. Because of traffic jams at the Newark airport, the flight left Montreal about two and a half hours late, leaving us two hours instead of four and a half between flights. OK, so we had to wait a bit, but no problem. Still plenty of time in Newark to catch the next flight. The flight went well and we landed in Newark. There we had to check in again for the second flight with Malaysia Airlines, since we only got boarding passes for the first flight in Montreal. The lady asked for luggage tags. We didn't have any, so we gave her the luggage numbers since it was all we had. She had no clue what that was, but wrote down the luggage numbers on a paper and gave us our boarding passes. We proceeded to the gate and the flight left on time. It was a pretty nice flight. The economy class seating area was quite crowded, being very obviously designed for efficiency rather than comfort. But the seats all had small video screens on the back so you could watch movies while flying. I was bored and couldn't sleep for some reason, so I watched Hellboy 2, Journey to the center of the earth, Wall-E and half of the latest Batman movie. Hellboy was entertaining. In no danger whatsoever of winning Oscars for anything at all, but a fun way to spend two hours anyway. Journey to the center of the earth was probably the most ridiculous movie I have seen in the last decade, with plot holes large enough to drive a boeing 747 through and suspension of disbelief to the point of breaking. Look! Already-cut-and-polished diamonds the size of eggs sticking out of a cave wall! *pluck!* Yeah... In shattering contrast, Wall-E was probably one of the best Disney movies out there. Great story, well made, a bit sentimental and sobby towards the end, as always with Disney movies, but overall a really good movie. Batman I had already seen, it's by far the best of the batman movies made so far.

After flying for 7 hours and 40 minutes we approached Stockholm. We descended for landing, but instead of touching down suddenly took off up again. Apparently the plane had a problem with the landing gear not working and couldn't land. So we circled around for another 30 minutes while the crew apparently managed to fix the problem. The plane made a second approach and landed successfully. We got off the plane and to the customs. It always amuses me to fly to Europe compared to the States. At the US customs you have to fill out all kinds of forms, visa waivers, give fingerprints every time, they take a picture of you, they check your passport and ask questions. "Have you participated in any acts of terrorism recently?" and "Have you operated any weapons of mass destructions lately?" Seriously... Even if someone had, does anyone actually expect them to answer these questions truthfully? If someone is going to nuke something, I very much doubt that they'd have any second thoughs about lying about it at the airport... Landing in Sweden, they look at your passport and go "Yup, you have one. Welcome to Sweden." and that's it.

After the 4 second customs inspection, we proceeded to the baggage conveyor belts. Bags came and went, but our 4 bags did not. I can't say that I was very surprised after the way the transfer was handled at the check-in in Newark... We filed a report about it at the service desk and the guy said they would track down the bags, retrieve them and then deliver them to my address. OK, seems cool. I hope they find them.

It seems the tale of the longboard is not over. The deck is in a package due to arrive in Europe in a month or two, while the trucks and wheels are in a suitcase, probably in the neighborhood of Kuala Lumpur. Jesus christ...

Trials and tribulations

2008-12-22T02:30:00.004+01:00

This here is my Christmas present to myself, a Landyachtz DH race longboard. If you are not familiar with longboards, they are similar to skateboards, only much larger. The wheels on this one are 83 mm in diameter and the board itself is 105 cm long. Longboards come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, with different shapes being more suitable for different uses. This shape is well suited for high speeds and going downhill. Downhill racing on longboards is becoming quite a popular sport, and top speeds can reach 75-100 km/h. Though I doubt that I will be going anywhere near that fast for quite some time yet. I'm going to start by learning how to stand on the board and how not to kill myself with it first. Needless to say, helmets and protective gear are a good idea. I'm going to keep track of my progress with the board here on this blog and see how things go, though I predict there won't be much progress yet for a few months. Half a meter of snow on the ground doesn't lend itself too well for wheels even of this size. But as soon as I can find some dry asphalt streets... Whee! So, to start: I'm 28 years old, I've snowboarded a bunch, but never stood on a skateboard before. After not having done any sports whatsoever in about a year and a half now, I'm quite out of shape and probably about 10 kg overweight. Let's see how things stand come June.

Getting this board in the first place was a ridiculous ordeal, to say the least. I ordered the board over two weeks ago after checking with the guys at the shop how long it would take for it to arrive. They assured me that I would get it with plenty of time to spare. I had been wanting one for a long time, but longboards are quite a bit more expensive in Sweden. I decided to order it here to save a couple of hundred dollars. So I ordered it, and got a confirmation email with a tracking number for the parcel. A few days before it was due to be delivered, I checked the tracking number and found that the destination was listed as Sainte-Adele instead of Montreal. I had ordered the board to be shipped to Gin's place in Montreal, since I wasn't going to be in Ste-Adele any more. I wrote the guy at the shop that I ordered the board from to see what was up. Turns out he accidentally gave FedEx the billing address instead of the shipping address, so the board was headed for the wrong place. In an apologetic email he told me that he had contacted FedEx and corrected the mix-up, and that the board should now be on its way to Montreal. It was supposed to arrive on Monday the 16th. It didn't. I checked the tracking number again, and now it said Tuesday. Again it didn't arrive, and the tracking info said that it had arrived at the terminal in Montreal.

On Thursday I called customer support at FedEx. The lady had no clue where the box was and asked me to call back later. I called back again and talked to a different person. He said that the package was due to be delivered the next day, on Friday. But on Friday I had a bunch of things to do, closing bank accounts, getting rid of a modem and internet connection, finish cleaning out my apartment, etc. so to avoid the risk of missing the delivery, I asked if I could go pick up the package at the terminal instead. He put me on hold for a few minutes, and then returned to tell me that I could go pick it up at the terminal in Dorval. I just needed the tracking number, and the package would be there waiting for me.

So Gin and I left for the terminal. I had an address, but no precise idea about where the place was. We took a bus to Dorval, and found a FedEx office. It was the wrong one, but they gave us a map to the correct place. The one bus was gone and the next one not arriving for quite some time, so we took off on foot. About two hours later, with wet shoes and freezing our heads off, we found the terminal. There was a security guard at the entrance, so I talked to him. He took the tracking number and called a guy in the main building. After a moment, he handed the phone to me. The guy at the other end of the line apologized many times and explained that he couldn't understand why the customer service would tell me to come to the terminal to pick it up, since the package was not there at all, but on board a truck somewhere and impossible to reach. With time running out, I told him that I absolutely had to get the package by the next day at the latest, since I'm leaving the country on Monday morning. He said he would try to find the package and call me later the same day. There was nothing more to do, so we went home again.

At about 8.30 pm the same evening, the guy called me back and said that he had the package, and that I could pick it up at the terminal the next morning. So the next morning we went back there and finally got the package. It took two and a half weeks for it to get from Vancouver to me instead of the one week as the guy at the shop promised. We took the package home and jumped around with glee for a while, riding the board back and forth in the kitchen. Then I started thinking... The board is actually quite big. At 105 x 30 x 15 cm in size and weighing around 7 kg, I started wondering if they would actually allow me to bring it on board the plane. I looked up the airline website, and found that of course it would be impossible. It is way too big and heavy. The only option would be to check it in as a third piece of luggage. Since you're only allowed two pieces of check-in luggage, the third piece would cost me $225. Oh, for fuck's sake... So the cheapest (and only) alternative is to mail it to myself in Sweden. To reduce the size and weight, and thereby the cost of sending it, I decided to take the trucks and wheels off and ship only the actual deck. Naturally, I didn't have any tools to do that with. So I went to Rona, bought a wrench and a screwdriver for about 20 dollars, and took the stuff off. I will need the tools for board maintenance later on anyway, so I figured why not. I packed the deck in a well-padded package, so now it's all ready to ship. It will cost me around 85 dollars to send it. Gah... It better ride like a freakin' dream when spring comes...

I've decided to name the board "Alecto", after one of the furies of ancient Greek mythology. The name means "unceasing" or "implacable". The mythological furies, or Erinyes, were three demonic deities of vengeance, or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. They persecuted those who had committed atrocious crimes and punished them by driving them insane. Seemed kinda suitable somehow. This board certainly doesn't give anything away for free.

Conclusions

2008-12-10T05:10:00.003+01:00

So, finally after 2,5 years of working in Ste-Adèle, I have only 3 days left. My last day of work is December 12th, and on the 22nd I'm flying back to Europe with Gin. It's been an interesting 2,5 years, and completely different from anything I imagined when I took the job. Having just graduated with my masters, my plan was to get away from a stale and academic world for a year and do something completely different, and then return and get serious about finding a job in music. I applied for this job in video game QA without really having much of a clue what it was about, and unexpectedly, I got the job. I didn't have anything else to do at that time and I had never been to Canada, so I took the job. On a three week notice I got rid of my apartment, got all my stuff packed, got a flight ticket and moved across the Atlantic.

It was a quite surreal experience to arrive at the Trudeau airport in Montreal, especially since everything happened so fast. I got the job, and three weeks later I started working on a different continent. I landed around 7 pm and it was way warmer than I had expected. Not really knowing much about Canada, I had pictured it as a place pretty far north where there are lots of maple forests, the climate is similar to Sweden and where everybody says "eh" all the time. A closer look at a map later revealed that Montreal is actually over 1000 km further south than the place where I left from... I was picked up by one of the ladies working in HR at that time and taken to my first Canadian home. (Or rather, my first Quebecois home. I learned rather quickly that many Quebecois don't consider themselves Canadian at all. The French heritage is a rather touchy subject it seems.) The place was a nice-looking house in Prévost, and I was to share it with three Germans. I ended up living there for only 3 weeks, after which I moved into another house in Ste-Adèle, much closer to work.

The work was pretty fun. Not really something I saw myself doing for the rest of my life, but definitely different from what I had been doing before. With 8 hour days and almost a complete lack of responsibility, it was a welcome break from an incessant flow of being up to your ears in things you had to do and things you had to remember. Here I could go to work, do my thing, then go home and forget about everything until the next morning. It was an incredible vacation for my brain. But one can only handle so much non-responsibility before one gets bored. At least I did. There was an opening for becoming a Lead Tester, so I applied and got the job. 8 months later I became a training agent, responsible for training all new linguistic testers. The added responsibilities and heavier workload were a welcome change. It was a highly independent position with many varied tasks, and it allowed me to do things pretty much from the bottom up on my own in many ways, which was quite enjoyable. I've always been more comfortable working on my own than in collaboration with someone. Even in 3rd grade I hated the assignments where we had to write essays together with someone else, sharing the task and the work. I much preferred writing the whole thing by myself, even if it took longer. It's not that I don't like working with people - on the contrary, I like it a lot. But (and this is going to sound really snotty) I found very few people whose work I was happy with. Most of them were unstructured, inefficient and slow. Whenever I had to share a task with someone, I found that the quality of the result would have been much better if I had done it alone. The teachers seemed to agree, as I always had higher grades on the assignments that I wrote alone than on the ones where I collaborated with someone. But I digress.

Working here has taught me many things about myself, about others and about people in general. I've learned that I am often too nice to people, allowing myself to be used or taken advantage of. I've learned that given a task that I enjoy and that I have an interest in, I have no problem working 16 hour days for as long as is needed to get the job done well. The challenge is to find something to do that I have an interest in, as I tend to procrastinate a lot if I don't like what I'm doing or if it doesn't interest me.

I've learned that people are much the same no matter where in the world you are. Europe, North America, Asia... Some people are really nice, some people are not. Some people will care about you and treat you well, while others will be selfish bitches who will do anything to exploit you. Some people take their thing seriously and do it well, while others are only looking for an easy way out. Some people have courage, some don't. It doesn't matter if a person is black, white, red, yellow, green or purple with pink dots. A good person is a good person regardless of color. An asshole is an asshole no matter where he's from. That's just life. The really tricky thing is that the assholes usually don't walk around with a sign that says "I'm an asshole".
Being a good judge of character is way harder than it may seem, and I've learned that I'm nowhere near as good at it as I thought. A person isn't necessarily a nice person just because he acts nice, and even after a year, what do you really know about someone? People who have something to hide are often very good at hiding it.

I think I've gotten back the spark to invest myself in something, to look at a task and really dig into it and get it done. That was largely missing before I came here. Most of the time I just wanted to lie down and hibernate for a couple of months and do nothing at all because I was so overloaded with stuff I had to get done all the time and with people pulling me in a million directions all at once. After having seen how shitty things really can get in a couple of different countries now, I think I have a more optimistic outlook on things. I know I can't change the world very much, so I'm not going to let the world get me down too much when things suck.

I've learned not to jump head first into unknown situations. Informed decisions may be less spontaneous and exciting, but when it comes to bigger decisions the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. The consequences of throwing yourself into something without looking could in a very literal sense kill you. There are plenty of opportunities to be spontaneous and daring with things that don't have as much potential for disaster.

the amazing sparky

2008-11-27T06:53:00.003+01:00

I hate metal doorknobs with a passion. For some reason I get an electric shock every time I touch a doorknob at work. I'm wearing the same clothes that I've used since last year and I didn't get shocked before, but I get zapped several times a day now. It's been like that for a bit over a month now, and it's really annoying. I'm starting to get conditioned into being afraid of door handles. Every time I go to open a door, I have an instinctive reaction that makes me pull my hand back just as I'm about to touch the doorknob, along with a sudden flash of fear. It's becoming a reflex to not grab the doorknob. So instead I stand there waving at the doorknob, looking like an idiot, before I finally force myself to grab the handle and get the inevitable static shock. It's quite painful. It's a zap big enough that it can be clearly heard. I sometimes get zapped even through my winter gloves.

And every single door handle at work is made out of metal. Seriously... I can't be the only one who gets electric shocks. Why can't they make the doorknobs out of plastic or wood, or at least coat them with plastic or rubber?

I also get shocks every time I touch cars, unless they have plastic door handles. It's becoming instinctive to never close a car door with my hand touching the metal. Instead, I push it closed by the window glass.

Under an umbrella

2008-11-16T01:47:00.002+01:00

It was a very rainy day today in Montreal. I went to see Quantum of solace with Gin. A pretty good movie, actually. Pretty short for a Bond movie, and not overly gripping, but entertaining from beginning to end. On the way home from the movie theater, we each had our umbrellas up. Mine is a blue one that folds into a package about 10 inches long. The canopy folds into three layers. As we were walking, I noticed that my face and my hair were getting wet. It seemed a bit strange, it wasn't very windy, so the rain should blow up under the umbrella too much. I looked up, and noticed that my umbrella isn't actually waterproof. It keeps most of the rain out, but a fine spatter comes through the canvas. I also noticed some small holes in the seams right were it folds. It was raining under my umbrella too. Not a very good quality for an umbrella...
I noticed during a walk a few weeks ago that there is a shop in little Italy that sells umbrellas of a slightly more unusual kind. They had different shapes that the traditional models, and some of them had nicely atmospheric paintings printed on some of the sections. I might go there tomorrow and see how expensive they are.

My knee is acting up for some reason. I don't remember doing anything in particular, and it was fine last night. But when I woke up this morning I had an intense pain just above my left kneecap. It hurts as soon as I bend my knee and put any weight on it. Odd.
Seems unfair that my knee is hurting without me getting to hurt it while doing something fun at least.

Oh, for crying out loud...

2008-11-11T03:19:00.002+01:00

Obama won. Who'd ha' thunk? I must admit I was quite cynically expecting all the covert dinner table racists, and right-wing extremists to tip the scale in McCain's favor, if ever so slightly, but I'm happy to say I was wrong. Maybe the US (and especially the southern states) aren't quite as stereotypically bigoted as they are sometimes made out to be. Good for them, indeed!

My cynicism wasn't entirely unfounded, though. What an incredible shitstorm of right-wing commentary has been sparked by the fact that Obama won... And in true right-wing nutjob style, most of it is so incredibly far beyond ludicrous that it's hard to even laugh about it. Are these people for real...? I performed a little experiment, just out of curiosity. I saw some blogs and articles talking about how Obama was becoming the next dictator, and about how he was bent on world domination and communism. Gee, I kinda thought communism and world domination by one person were kinda mutually exclusive...? Wikipedia defines communism like this:

"Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless society based on common ownership of the means of production and property in general."

Yeah. Doesn't sound like there's much single-person dictatorship going on there...

Some people even compared this election to Hitler being democratically elected in 1917. (Well, actually, Hitler only became the leader of the Nazi party in 1921, became chancellor of a coalition government in 1933, oppressed any resistance with violence and propaganda, and finally took complete power in 1934 after the death of president Paul von Hindenburg, but hey, who cares about accurate facts?) So I googled the expression "Obama dictator". It got 912 hits. How depressing... One famous radio host, Bob Grant, apparently asserted that Obama had created an Obama flag for himself to put up behind him when he appeared in public. Apparently the guy didn't know that the Ohio state flag has a white "O" on it. Whoopsie... Jumping to conclusions? What?

So many people are just outraged by the fact that a not-white person won that it kinda makes me wonder what century we're living in. Nutcases ranting about how he's going to destroy America completely, bring about communism, become a dictator, become the next Hitler, start up a new Gestapo, etc.

For fuck's sake, people... He hasn't even taken office yet! How about giving the guy the benefit of a doubt, and see what he does for a while? I don't care how evil and scheming the guy might actually seem to you, he's not going to abolish democracy, dissolve the senate and imprison the entire house of congress in the next few years even if he wanted to. The guy won the elections, for crying out loud! The majority of the American people actually want him to be president. So how about letting him take a shot at it, and if four years from now you still think that he sucks, then just vote for the other guy. But seriously... Don't start griping about what a bad president he is before he's even started working as one, ok?

Hot cold

2008-10-21T00:49:00.002+02:00

I haven't been able to record any new music for quite a while, since my fuckin' @$%&* bitch of an ex-girlfriend stole my microphone when she moved out, along with a bunch of other stuff. Since she also stole all my money, I was in quite a bit of trouble there for a while just paying rent and getting food, replacing the microphone was pretty much out of the question. Now I'm doing somewhat ok again, and I ordered two new ones. After a crapload of research online, reading forums and reviews, I went for two MXL v67g large condenser microphones. They are fairly cheap low-end mikes, but the general consensus seems to be that they can be quite excellent for recording lower male voices and acoustic guitars. I have a fairly low voice, and I would mostly be recording songs with voice and acoustic guitar through the mikes, so I went for it. What little I've tried them out so far sounds excellent. Unfortunately I managed to catch the horrendous monster-cold of doom the day after they arrived, so I haven't been able to record much right now anyway. But as soon as I get better, I'm going to record a whole bunch of new songs and put them online.

Natural (s)election

2008-10-18T01:18:00.002+02:00

I'm not American by any stretch of imagination, I'm not even from this continent. But I've been following the US presidential elections with some degree of curiosity, and I'm kind of flabbergasted by some aspects of it. Some of the things to come to mind is what seems to be 'inherited political loyalty', where people will vote for, and whole-heartedly support a political party for no other reason than that they and their family always did. There seems to be no brain activity involved in this. They don't seem to care what the party stands for, they probably don't even know what the party stands for. But my pappy always voted for 'em, so I'm gonna vote for 'em too.

*blink blink

WHY? Why in the name of Zeus's hamster would you do something that stupid? If you wanna vote for a certain political party, go right ahead, but for the love of God, at least find out what the party is all about and see if it makes any sense at all first! Don't throw your chance away to actually make a difference and make this planet a nicer place to live! You could be voting for a complete idiot who will make you regret every second of the next couple of decades! Think about what you are doing!

Another thing that stands out like an elephant in a Cessna is the Republican pick for vice president. There's been a lot of debating about whether Palin actually has any more or less experience with governing things than Obama. Among all the information and counterinformation and misinformation and stuff, I have no clue who to believe, and frankly, I don't really care that much. But after seeing the interviews done with Palin, I just can't help to think that no matter how flawed or inexperienced or [insert other negative assessment here] Obama is, please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let this person become the vice president of the United States of America. Have you seen the interview she did for CNN with Katie Couric? Seriously, this person honestly makes no sense at all. "Oh, but it's all angled to make her look bad because CNN is a liberal dog of the democratic party..." No, seriously. This isn't something CNN angled in any way at all, this is directly out of Palin's mouth, and she just doesn't make any sense. She's completely incoherent, to the point where I was just sitting there with my mouth open staring at the screen and wondering how come the world all of a sudden went completely insane and I didn't notice? What was McCain thinking? Go watch it yourself, it's all over the youtube. Just look up Palin and CNN or Couric or something. It's astounding.

Post-vacation

2008-09-23T04:05:00.004+02:00

Aaah! Today was my first day of work after 10 lovely days of vacation. I had quite the un-eventful vacation, not really doing anything in particular, just chilling out and sleeping a lot at my girlfriend's place in Montreal. I played some guitar, wrote some more music, and just relaxed. Quite nice!

I got back to my apartment yesterday at around midnight, and I've sort of made it a habit by now to just inspect all the corners for spiders before I relax too much. My apartment, being a basement apartment in an old stone house, seems to be a paradise for spiders. I find a new kind of spider almost daily. This time was no exception. I found this grumpy-looking fellow sitting on the wall right next to the entrance. It looks like a tegenaria domestica, or "barn funnel weaver", although it seems abnormally large. Females of this species are normally up to 11 mm from nose to tail, and males are typically much smaller. This fellow is a male, you can tell by the palps, the things that look like long fangs with knobs on the end. But this guy is 13 mm from nose to tail, not counting legs. These nocturnal spiders are very fast runners and very often the culprit in cases where a creepy-looking running spider scares the crap out of someone, but they are actually quite harmless. Although they can give a nasty bite, they are not dangerous to humans and will usually run for cover when someone turns the lights on.

Moving on

2008-08-28T03:13:00.004+02:00

I'm veeeeery tired. Work has been a major pain in the ass lately. I'm training people during the days, and doing linguistic testing on projects in the evenings. What's more, I've been the only tester available to test my language for a month or two now, since the other dude just up and quit. This all results in some pretty long days. I'm really starting to get fed up with it. I'm shuffled from one project to the next, always leaving work with the feeling that I did a shitty job with all of it. It's been quite a while since last time I punched out and felt that I was satisfied with the quality of my work. I'm starting to get the impression that I'm expected to be everywhere doing everything all at once, and I'm not even a tester anymore. Nothing takes the fun out of something as fast as two dozen people yanking your sleeves, constantly telling you that you "have to" do something. Work has stopped being something I enjoy, and turned into something I can't wait to leave every day. It's like I'm always waiting for another day to be over, rather than looking forward to the next one.

This is an all-round stupid situation. I feel like weeks and months are passing by while I'm just waiting for them to pass, and I'm not accomplishing anything at all. So, it's time to move on. My contract runs until christmas, and after that I'm leaving Ste-Adele. Where I'll go, I have no idea. Anywhere far away from this company. Perhaps somewhere else in Canada? Toronto? Vancouver? Maybe back to Europe? England? Spain? Finland? Maybe Australia or New Zealand? We shall see... Between myself and my lovely Gin, we speak Swedish, Finnish, English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, so the language won't be much of a problem. :)

In other news, I finally had my guitar fixed. The neck needed adjusting, and the jack where you plug in the cable was all loose and coming out of the guitar. Annoying that something so simple requires all kinds of special tools, so you can't just tighten it yourself...

Compact living

2008-07-31T02:00:00.002+02:00

I have an apartment of my own now, a very, very small two-and-a-half on the semi-basement floor of a house. It's quite nice, the rest of the house is inhabited by the landlord, a super-cool middle-aged lady who spends most of her free time riding around on her motorbike. She lives on her own, with two gigantic German shepherds and a tiny, white fluffy dog that looks kind of like a Maltese. It's a pretty quiet place, I don't see much of the landlord. The location is awesome, the house is right next to a small river, surrounded by lots of trees of various kinds. I even have my own terrace down by the river.
Only thing I don't quite like is the fact that the apartment is really, really small. There's a separate kitchen, a livingroom/bedroom, and a bathroom with a shower cabin. The kitchen has about 4 square meters of usable space, and the other room maybe about 15, but because of a long and narrow shape, and with all the furniture in the room, I'd be hard pressed to find a spot on the floor where I can actually lie down straight. I also have a nasty habit of accumulating stuff that take up space, like guitars and a keyboard, so the place is quite crowded. But hey - no place is totally perfect, and for the price I'm paying, this place is awesome.

I took my girlfriend to a spa last weekend in Morin-Heights. Aaaah... It was great! The place has all kinds of cool and relaxing stuff; a dry sauna, a steam sauna, jacuzzis of different temperatures, massages, etc. You can go to the spa just for a day for 30$ on weekdays and 35 on weekends. I recommend it, it's quite nice! They also have all kinds of packages of different prices. The food was good, but the restaurant was a bit sneaky. If you get a package deal, some meals are included, like the dinner. But when you get to the dinner and have a look at the menu, you notice that this, this, and that is either not included, or you have to pay extra for them. Also, the first impression of the spa is a bit weird when you get there and realize that it's located right next to the highway. Fortunately, you couldn't hear anything of the traffic, and once you're inside, you don't even see the highway at all, so it really didn't bother me at all. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that I was in the middle of a forest. Morin-Heights is also a pretty cute little place, with restaurants, bars and shops within a 5-10 minute walk from the spa. So if you have a few bucks to spare and you need to relax, this is not a bad place to go.

When we got to the spa, there was a lady who showed us around and explained what all the different things were. She told us that for relaxation, you should spend about 10 minutes in a hot sauna, then cool off in cold water for a few seconds, and then just sit around and relax for 10 minutes or so. Well, being of Finnish origin, and having more or less grown up in saunas since I was old enough to not drown in a bucket, I think that 10 minutes in a sauna is for wusses. So I stayed in there for about half an hour, then took a cold bath and went back in for another good 15-20 minutes or so. It was wonderful! I could easily have stayed in there for another hour. However... For my Spanish girlfriend, who is not quite as accustomed to spending hours on end in 80+ degrees Celsius saunas, I think it was maybe a little bit much. She started looking kind of dizzy and had to step outside. But after cooling down for a bit and drinking a bunch of water, she was fine again and jumped into the colder one of the two jacuzzis.

Hot dog dinners

2008-07-22T03:00:00.003+02:00

Things are looking up, methinks.

I've been dating a nice girl named Gin (to be pronounced [ghin], not [djin]) since around the end of May, and it's going quite nicely. She has an apartment in Montreal, so I'm going there on weekends as often as I can, and she comes up here to see me on weekends sometime too. I've known her since I first came here, but we've just been colleagues until now.
We went to see Quebec City a couple of weeks ago. It's a really nice city, especially the old part. Perhaps a little touristy, but oh well. The buildings are nice, and the food is good. We spent a weekend there just looking at stuff.

I'm not entirely dead broke anymore either. I've managed to pay off all the bills that the stupid fucking @$#%^ left me with when I kicked her out, so I don't have that hanging over my head anymore either. I'm in no danger whatsoever of being rich anytime soon, but at least I don't have to crack open the plastic mug and count 418 pennies so I can go buy the cheapest kind of hot dogs and pasta to eat any more.

This whole mess with my ex fascinates me in some way. I just can't for the life of me understand the trade-off inside your head in a situation like that.

"Hmm. I'd sure like some drugs, because life sucks. But if I do drugs, I'll have to steal money from my boyfriend, leave him with thousands of dollars in unpayed bills and leave him in debt because of me. But I'd sure like some drugs... Bah, screw him, I'm gonna do the drugs."

How do you justify something like that to yourself? I payed all the bills, worked all the time, borrowed money from friends and parents, made sure we never ran completely out of food, payed the rent, and she somehow decides that it's OK to just completely fuck me over. I'm not trying to sound like a saint or anything, I'm no more perfect than the next fellow, but it amazes me to no end how incredibly selfish you would have to get to do something like that.
It fits the escapist profile of a drug addict, though. Nothing is ever your fault. Life sucks, things go wrong, but no matter what, it's never because of something you did. There are no consequences to your actions, everything just happens to you because life is unfair.

Well, guess what? If you start stealing and borrowing money from everyone you know, never paying it back, and lying all your friends straight to their faces, it's not a coincidence that you don't have any friends left after a while. It's your own damn fault. I suggest growing a spine and actually dealing with stuff. Seems to work decently for the rest of the world.

Fresh start

2008-07-15T01:23:00.003+02:00

Ok, let's breathe some life into this blog again. Seems like the last couple of posts have all been attempts of revival for this place, but too much stuff has happened in the last six months, I just haven't had any time for writing.

So, I think I left off as a fairly newly appointed lead tester, with plenty of stuff to do at work. A lot has happened since then, it's almost comical in some way. These past six months have probably been the most stressful time of my life so far. Let's start from the top.

I had a girlfriend, with whom things weren't really going all that great. She had no financial brain at all, often resulting in me paying the bills and her spending money in accordance to a budget she thought she should have had. The Danish dude was still living in the house, and the three of us would share the bills, groceries, etc. keeping track of who payed what and then settling the bill at the end of each month. The Danish dude left and went back to Denmark in February, and my girlfriend insisted that we don't get someone to replace him, keeping the house only for the two of us. The house was pretty expensive, and for only two people it was a bit of a stretch. And since she never payed me back for any of the bills or groceries, it was even more of a stretch for me.

Things went downhill between us quite fast. It wasn't great to begin with, lots of fights, her spending money on stupid stuff, while I was working overtime and borrowing money to be able to pay bills and buy food. She was clinically depressed and was seeing a psychiatrist in Ste-Agathe. She attempted suicide once, I forced her to the hospital, but they sent her home again after she refused treatment, and her psychiatrist decided that she was no danger to herself. Over the next three or four months she would try to commit suicide several times more, almost using her suicide attempt as a weapon against me in fights, but I quite physically wrestled the pill can out of her hand, so she didn't succeed.

Her expenses were quite high, she claimed that her car was leaking gas again and that it was costing her a lot of money. I also noticed that money was disappearing from my bank account, so I went to the bank and asked them to investigate. They reimbursed me for the money that had disappeared mysteriously and said they would check things out. More money disappeared, even out of my wallet, and I started getting suspicious. One morning, the livingroom door was open when I got up, and money was missing again. My girlfriend insisted that someone must have snuck in while we were asleep, taken some of the money (not all of it) out of my wallet and left. Yeah. What kind of burglar sneaks in, leaves all the valuables and takes only part of the money in your wallet. Both doors were bolted from the inside, so how would someone get in? One evening she goes to get some snacks and is gone for an hour. By now I am pretty much sure, so I check my wallet and find that she has replaced my bank card with her own. I head down to the hotel bar and find her walking out of the front door. She tells me her car overheated and she had to stop and wait for it to cool down. Right. I took my card back from her and broke up with her there and then.

There were no expenses. She was doing drugs again, stealing money from me and using it to get crack. She was the one who had been stealing money out of my account and my wallet. She had stopped taking her medication and started doing drugs instead. I was borrowing money from family and friends and working all the time to be able to pay all the bills, while she was stealing money from me and smoking it up. I even took a cash advance from work, which didn't really help much. She admitted everything to me and got even more depressed. She attempted suicide again, this time taking well over a lethal dose of ibuprofen and locked herself up in the bedroom. When I notice, she refuses to open the door, so I kick it in, drag her out of bed and out into the car and get her to the hospital. She makes phone calls to her father, telling him I'm kidnapping her and beating her.

Ibuprofen is a really, really stupid kind of pill to try to commit suicide with. It doesn't kill you right away, it causes severe liver damage over a period of time, which eventually causes liver failure a month or two later, and your body literally poisons itself with toxins and you die a very slow and painful death over the course of about three or four days. Once your liver is damaged, there is no antidote.

She didn't die, the only thing that saved her was the fact that she was fat. 7 grams can cause irreparable liver damage in a normal person. She took over 10 grams, along with some other pills and cocaine. But she's fat, so the concentration in her system was lower, under the lethal dose. She refuses treatment again, and the psychiatrist again decides that she is no danger to herself and releases her. I will never understand this. After two trips to the hospital for attempted suicide, the psychiatrist decides that she is no danger to herself. What kind of fucking idiot of a psychiatrist...? The psychiatrist recommends that she get out of this relationship with me, because it is obviously a "psychologically and physically abusive relationship."

What the fuck...? Abusive relationship? She spent all that time, all those visits to the psychiatrist just avoiding any of the issues she had problems with, and made up lies about me instead?

Finally, she moved out to go stay at her father's place and I found a new apartment to move into. She left owing me close to 6000 $, I'm not expecting to get any of it back. If she has any money, she will smoke it or spend it on alcohol. She certainly won't go out of her way to pay me back.

I cannot explain how much resentment and hatred I have towards this woman. I spent more than a year and half with her, doing everything for her. She payed me back with lies, backstabbing and by stealing everything I had just to support her addiction. After more than two years in Canada, I have less than I had when I came here, and I'm not just talking about money.

A fresh start from zero, I guess.

New and improved

2007-10-20T17:49:00.000+02:00

Yeesh, it's been a while since I updated this blog. A whole crapload of stuff has happened since then. Where to start...

I got promoted to lead tester about two months ago. Pretty cool. High season was kinda busy for everyone (as usual) so my training was postponed a bit, but now that's done too. I haven't actually done much lead testery stuff yet, but I'm sure I will soon.

I also went back to Sweden for two weeks to clean out my apartment. I renewed my contract here for one more year. I had been subletting my apartment in Sweden, but now that I decided to stay here longer, I had to go back and get rid of it. The whole subletting stuff was a mess. Never sublet your apartment to a company. The amount of paperwork they insist on for every single thing is just ridiculous, and if it's a slightly unorganized company, the mess they can create with the paperwork is way, way, way beyond ridiculous. It's amazing how much you can screw things up if two people are in charge of something and they don't talk to eachother.
My parents drove down to Malmö to pick stuff up and help me clean out the place. We gave away most of the furniture to the salvation army store, and packed the rest into a trailer that they drove back home. It was really nice to see them. This was the first time I had been back to Sweden since I came here in June -06.

I've started taking guitar lessons again. I found out that a guy at work was actually a jazz guitar teacher. Feels great to be taking lessons again. I haven't really done that much with music since I graduated from college just before coming to Canada, other than written a bunch of songs. But compared to the more or less total immersion in music that I was used to back home, just writing songs every now and then is nowhere near enough to actually stay in practice. I've barely played the flute at all since I came here, and I haven't even looked at music theory. Now that I've started taking lessons again, I've really noticed just how out of practice I am.

In a way it's kind of depressing, I kind of feel like I'm wasting my talent and education by not playing more. I spent 16 years studying classical music, so not using it kind of makes everything I learned in those 16 years slowly fade away. On the other hand, it's gotten me thinking about it. Taking lessons again is kind of getting me back into the feel with music. Jazz guitar is very much about modes, scales and theory, learning about voicings and chord colorations. It's made me realize just how much I miss working with music.

I stopped playing just before I came here for a good reason, though. I was so fed up with the whole thing. Not because I was sick of the music itself, but because I was exhausted and fed up with the attitude towards music that we were force-fed with in college. There was always so much pressure on constantly achieving enormous loads of things, that I started to feel like I was made to achieve things for someone else's sake, instead of for the sake of improving my own musicianship. I do realize that when you're working as a musician, you're very often working for someone else, playing music that someone else wrote, etc. But it shouldn't be to the point where you start losing track of why you got into music in the first place. And at the same time, you're constantly being bashed with the idea that to play music well, you have to copy someone else who plays it well. If you're always made to hear something a certain way, eventually you start believing it. And I just refused to believe the idea that working with a creative art, it's more about copying others than actually creating something. I really needed to take a break from music, to digest everything and to get music and my own attitude towards music into perspective. And I think I've done that now. I feel like I'm ready to get back into it, and start making music again for the same reason that I got into music in the first place. Because I love it.

I've decided to take up practicing seriously again, and once I get my permanent residency, I'm going to start looking for music jobs. Working as a game tester is fun and all, but it's really not a job I see myself doing for the rest of my life. It's just not creative and challenging enough.

I'm a musician, and I'm going to create my own art.

Crankster

2007-07-26T05:27:00.000+02:00

I'm having trouble understanding how the hell a real estate company that rents out apartments to several hundred people can be completely impossible to get a hold of. I've been trying to get a hold of my landlord for several weeks now. I've called them ridiculous amounts of times, and there's never anyone answering. They won't respond to emails either. What the hell is going on? Don't these people have anyone working in their office? I'm supposed to move out of my apartment in a month, and I can't fuckin' get a hold of anyone to arrange the whole thing. It's really starting to piss me off.

I got plane tickets now, at least. I'm landing in Copenhagen on august 12th, and flying back here on the 26th. This will be the first time I go home since I came here over a year ago. I'm looking forward to seeing my family and all my friends, but I'm not looking forward to trying to get everything done that I need to get done while I'm in Sweden. It's going to be a busy two weeks...

I've been working some overtime for the past two weeks. Nothing excessive yet, but I'm still getting pretty tired. The projects I've been working on lately haven't exactly been all that interesting, so I haven't really been a big fan of work lately. I've been yanked around from one project to another so much, sometimes up to four different projects a day, that I can't help but feel that there is no way the result of my work can be anything other than half-assed.

It has also been getting to me that some people seem to have this predefined image of me being some kind of anti-social recluse just because I usually don't talk much. I have no problems whatsoever communicating if there is something I need to communicate. I've done craploads of public speaking in various contexts, I've been in musicals and theatrical productions both as singer, actor and director, and done more concerts as a musician than I even remember. Believe me when I say that speaking up doesn't bother me in the least. I just don't talk much. Firstly because I'm at work to work. If I have something to do, I focus on what I'm doing. I get payed to insure that the quality of the software I'm testing is up to par, not to sit around and bullshit. Secondly, I see no need to talk if there is nothing I need to say or add to a conversation. I participate in conversations just as much as the next guy, but I do so by listening and reflecting on what's being said, not by opening my mouth.

I've been having this weird hay-feverish feeling for the past week or so, which is weird, since I've never had that past May before. Nikki told me that Ragweed is pollinating like mad right now. Hm... Have I aquired a new allergy? That would suck.
Bleeeeeh... I'm tired and cranky. I really should sleep more.

Tam tam

2007-07-23T07:41:00.000+02:00

First of all, I put some more songs up on my myspace. Enjoy!
Recording is going well, but slowly. Since I play all instruments myself and only record one track at the time, recording one song usually takes me at least one full day. There's always the initial playing around with the tune to find the right arrangement, then a bunch of takes for each track to get things right... And I'm far from a great bass player, so it usually takes a while before I even get through the part without messing it up.

I went to the Tam-Tams in Montreal today. It was the perfect day for it, nice and sunny. I met some interesting people who did some cool poi spinning, and poied a whole lot myself. Fun times!

cold bass

2007-07-05T19:54:00.000+02:00

I finally got my bass yesterday, at long last. However, Murphy's law immediately messed things up, as it often does. I got a huge head cold, so I've been home from work for two days now. Sucks ass. I've tried it out a little bit, it sound pretty good, but I'm too exhausted to really play the damn thing. Bleh... Well, lots of garlic, vitamins and icky blue liquid decongestant will hopefully get me back on my feet soon. I hate head colds. Always makes me feel like I've been hit by a train. Bleeeh... whine whine whine...

Myspace and bass

2007-06-30T04:49:00.000+02:00

I got myself a stage name. My real name doesn't really work if I'm going to perform as a musician anywhere other than in Finland, since people can't pronounce my name. So after several pages of trial and error, I finally decided that I shall henceforth be known as Sam Rayne on stage. So, it's not the coolest name on the planet but hey, it's better than "Richard Blood-Eagle." And, it's also a name that is way harder to fuck up the pronunciation with than my real name.

I got myself a myspace page too at www.myspace.com/sammrayne. So far I only have one song on there, but as soon as I get my bass and get some serious recording done, I'll put up a few more songs.

The bass. Yeah. I ordered the stuff from Axe music, and let me tell you: Fast they ain't.
I ordered the stuff on May 26th and paid with my Visa card. Then on May 30th I got an email saying that it didn't work, because my Visa card isn't Canadian. So I went to the bank and paid with a direct transfer instead two days later, and called them the next day to let them know I had paid. Then I didn't hear anything from them until June 12th, when I got an email saying that one of the items I ordered was out of stock, but that because of a malfunction in their inventory system, it showed up as in stock when I ordered it. They offered to ship the other stuff ASAP and ship the out of stock item later for no extra charge. I took them up on that and wrote back the same day to let them know. They wrote me back right away and told me that the stuff would be shipped tomorrow. Some time went by, and I found it strange that I hadn't heard anything more, because according to their website, I was supposed to get a Purolator shipment tracking number when the shipment left the store. I finally got an email with the tracking number on June 27th. Tomorrow my ass... So now I'm just waiting for the shipment to get here. Hopefully it will arrive next week.

Life and death

2007-06-26T07:11:00.000+02:00

It has been said that to a suffering person, the thought of committing suicide is the greatest comfort.

It makes a lot of sense. Now, I wouldn't personally recommend suicide to anyone, it is far too often a very permanent solution to a temporary problem. But psychologically, there is still a lot of logic to that statement. The thought of suicide crosses the mind of most people at some point or another. I'm sure most of you have thought about jumping off while walking over a high bridge, or steering into the headlights of oncoming traffic. It is not necessarily any kind of conscious effort or rational thought, it's more of a "what if...", and most people never have any intention whatsoever to actually act on the impulse. A lot of people would never admit to having thoughts like this. In their minds suicidal equals nuts, only crazy people think about suicide, and they don't want to seem crazy. That is of course complete bullshit. Thinking about suicide and being suicidal are far from the same thing, and you don't have to have any kind of mental problems to think about suicide. Everyone thinks about life and death and one's own mortality at some point in life. Nobody lives forever.

So why is suicide comforting to a suffering person?

The most obvious comment to this is that by committing suicide, the suffering ends. You're free of it, and can go to heaven, or straight to hell if you're catholic, or wherever it is you believe you will end up when you die.

The second and not quite as obvious comment is that it is the option of suicide that is comforting, not the actual act of killing yourself. From a certain point of view, the greatest level of suffering comes not from suffering itself, but from the fact that you have no choice but to suffer. People like being in control of things, especially themselves. A person who has lost everything, his home, relatives, dignity, self esteem, etc. can still hold on to the fact that it is up to him what happens next. His life is his own, he still has free will and the choice to either lie down and give up or to keep going and rebuild his life. He is the master of his destiny. Now imagine this choice being taken from his as well. Reduced to nothing but a puppet at the hands of an external force, this alone is a pretty gruesome form of torture to many people. Of course, there are many people who might argue that one is never really in control of one's own life, and that free will is only an illusion, but that is a different discussion.
The idea of suicide can be comforting, not only as a means to stop the suffering, but as proof to yourself that you are still in control of your life. It is up to me how my life ends and when. And in the extension: If I am suffering, it is because I choose to suffer instead of killing myself, not because I have no choice. I might not commit suicide, but I have the option. The choice is mine, I am in control.

That said, don't go committing suicide. There are so many better things to do to yourself. Go to a spa, or read a good book over a tasty cup of coffee instead.

Hot summer...

2007-06-26T06:10:00.000+02:00

The summer has been pretty warm here lately, and today was another warm and humid day. It can get pretty warm back home too in the summer, though maybe not quite this warm, but it's the humidity that is killing me. I feel like someone poured a gallon of syrup over my head, I'm all warm and sticky. We bought an air conditioner for the bedroom at Walmart. They had this 5000 btu machine on sale for 99 dollars. It's a pretty small one, big enough to cool down a room of about 14,5 square meters, which is about perfect for the bedroom. Now, maybe a dehumidifier wouldn't be such a bad idea either...

I ordered an electric bass a few weeks ago, I'm still waiting for it to arrive. Who would have thought that it takes over two weeks for something to get from Edmonton to here? Anyway, it's a titanium white ESP B-50, and I'm looking forward to getting started with it. I have a bunch of songs I'm itching to record. I have a pretty clear idea what I want to do with them, I just need the bass to be able to record all tracks and get a full band sound. Up until now, I've recorded a few songs that are for voice and guitar only, I'll put them up online once I get a few more songs done.

In other news, I might have a couple of upcoming shows in the Montreal area, starting in September. Nothing is booked for sure yet, but we're working on making a few shows happen with myself playing some of my material, Nikki Brown doing spoken word, and Cozmos Quazar playing some of his stuff.

Breaking brakes

2007-04-24T04:56:00.000+02:00

Our car is starting to fall apart a lot faster than we had anticipated. Sure, it was pretty much a pile of junk when we bough it, but it looked like it would hold up for a while yet. Last week, the brakes finally gave up completely. We were driving around in central Montreal when we noticed that we barely had any brakes at all. Flooring the pedal as far as it would go barely made the car slow down, it was spitting out brake fluid all over the place. So we very cautiously drove the car to Nikki's father's place, where our roommate Kenneth (who is a mechanic) worked on it along with Nikki's dad and uncle. Soon after taking some parts apart, we noticed that the car is in far worse shape than we thought. The rear suspension is basically being held together by a metal bar that's all but rusted through, and the frame is cracked almost all the way through in the back. Driving too fast into a hard bump at this point is probably going to make the rear suspension and the entire wheel just fall off the car completely. The front wheels are also completely shot, they wiggle back and forth on their fittings and will probably come off on their own in not too long too. Oh, and none of the belts actually lock if you yank them fast. They come all the way out and only stop when the roll runs out of belt, by which time you would already be halfway through the window.

So yeah. We need a new car as fast as we can possibly find one. This one is not much more than a deathtrap on wheels.

Trim

2007-04-19T01:11:00.000+02:00

Aaah, so we finally have wireless internet at home again. Our router sort of just gave up on us some time ago. We still had internet if we plugged in with a cable directly into the modem, but with four people wanting to user the net every now and then, it's been a bit of an inconveniance. Nikki get her router from her house in Laval, so now we're using that. We don't have the key for it yet, so for now only her and my computers can connect wirelessly, but as soon as we stop by there to get the papers we'll all be able to connect. Until then, the cable still works too.

We went to Walmart yesterday and picked up some stuff, I bought myself a hair trimmer. Looks pretty cool, all kinds of comb attachments, hair clips, scissors and stuff, all for the humble price of 20 dollars. Not bad, if it works like it's supposed to. I haven't tried it yet.

We also have a new housemate. His name is Premise T. Cat, and he's almost five years old. He's white with black specks and acts more like a dog than a cat. We brought him here yesterday from he cat-sitter who's been taking care of him for the past two months. We were expecting him to be kinda weirded out about being in a new place, but he seemed pretty at home right away. He explored the place, had some food, then flopped over on his side on the middle of the floor to watch TV.

Capitalism with a capital C down your throat

2007-03-30T05:32:00.000+02:00

I was looking around online for some fun games to play. Baccarat is a card game I like, so I looked up some sites that had Baccarat. Most sites offered a program you can download that you can then play on, either for real money or just for fun. Most sites also offered hundreds of dollars in "free" bonuses for new players signing up. This piqued my interest. "What's the catch?" I wondered. Casino sites on the net are about one thing only, and that's making money. There's no way they would just hand over 700 dollars to every person who signs up. I looked up the Terms and Conditions. And you wouldn't believe how hard these were to find in some of the sites... And for good reason. Have you ever read one of these? It's basically a contract that you have to agree to in order to be allowed to play the game, and holy shit are they full of bullshit. One contract stated that "in order to make the game experience as efficient as possible" the owners of the site reserve the right to collect my personal data and distribute it globally to all affiliates, subsidiaries, business associates and business relations without prior notification to the user. So basically, they can give my personal information to anyone they feel like on the planet. Huh? How does this make my gaming experience more efficient? This particular section of the contract could only be found through a link AFTER running an installer program that you had to download and that couldn't be shut down by regular means, unless you actually installed the program first. Oh, and is it any surprise that the installer contained a bunch of trojans?

Another site had a clause in the agreement about the "free" bonus they offered. What it said was that the several hundred dollars of bonus money was divided into several parts. The first part meant that they would match whatever money I deposited into their game. If I deposit 40 bucks, they give me 40 bucks, so that I have 80 dollars to play for. The second part was basically the same deal but with them putting less money into it, about 7 dollars for every 10. BUT the condition for the second part to be applicable was that I first make the first deposit, then wager and lose a minimum of 7 times the deposited amount. After that I get to make the second deposit, but I have to wager that 30 times before I can make any withdrawals. And only certain games count towards those 30 times. Baccarat, for example, does not.

So... let me get this straight. If I deposit 5 dollars, I can play for 10 dollars. Then I have to lose 70 dollars, plus the 5 dollars, plus anything I've won with those 10 dollars. Then I can deposit another 5 dollars, lose about 255 dollars, plus the 3,5 dollar bonus the second time, plus anything I've won. After this, I can make a withdrawal.

Does this make any sense to anyone other than the site owner? If I want to actually win any money at all, I must first basically deposit 10 dollars, then give this dude an absolute minimum of 333,5 dollars, and then when I've payed that total of 343,5 dollars, I can finally deposit some more money and keep whatever I win. Sure! That sounds like an awesome deal! Jesus fuckin' christ on the cross, it's a miracle these sites actually have any customers at all. Their only hope is literally that either nobody reads these agreements or that nobody understands them. Not a single sane person would ever pay money into these sites, unless they were 124,7 % confident that they could win all that money back and more on casino software, programmed by the people they're playing against, on games where the odds are all without exception in the dealer's favor...

Oh yeah. Gimme more of that stuff...

Comeback

2007-03-22T02:48:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been a while since I wrote something now. About time to get back into it, I think. Lots of things have happened. My girlfriend is living with me now, due to a big lack of money and housing. She was supposed to move out to this great apartment she found in Laval, but things sort of went to hell so she can't. Quebec has some of the dumbest traffic laws I have ever heard of... One sunny day Nikki came to pick me up from work with our car. On the way home, the cops pulled us over for not stopping well enough at a stop sign. A pile of bullshit in my opinion, but whatever. The guy asked for Nikki's driver's license and then went back to the car to check on it. It took quite a while, and when the guy came back, he told us that we have to get out of the car because they're impounding it. Huh? Apparently, Nikki had an unpayed parking ticket that she got sometime in april last year. And by Quebecois law, the Saaq will invalidate your driver's licence if you don't pay your tickets. According to the Saaq they sent all kinds of reminders about that, but Nikki never saw any of them because they sent all of them to her old address, where she hasn't lived for a year. So they invalidated her driver's license. Now, the even dumber part: If you're driving a car without a valid drivers license, the cops will take your car away for a minimum of 30 days, and you have to pay them 8 dollars per day that they have it. What the fuck is that all about? It doesn't matter who owns the car, they will take it away because the person who is driving it doesn't have a valid license. Basically, if you own a car and you lend it to a friend who doesn't have a valid licence, they take your car away because your friend's license is invalid. I could repeat this to myself over and over for a decade, it still doesn't make any fuckin' sense. What the hell is the point of taking away the car? It's a fuckin' car! I get that a person without a valid license can't drive, but they wouldn't let anyone else drive the car home either, because they have to take the car away!
The reason Nikki didn't pay the ticket was that a: she doesn't even remember ever getting a parking ticket, and b: even if she did, she doesn't have any money to pay it with. None. She started a new job about two months ago as an insurance broker, but it takes a while before the revenue starts adding up, and hers hadn't yet. In order to be able to do that job, she has to have a car. In order to pay the fines to get the car back, she has to get to work and make money. But she can't go to work, because she doesn't have a car or a license. I mean... gah! This is the dumbest situation I have heard of. She's basically losing her job because of this. She can't make money without the car, and she can't have the car without money. It's moronic!
And without any way of making money, she has no way of being able to pay rent for this nice apartment in Laval that she already signed the contract for. So she can't get the apartment and has nowhere to live. So now she's going to live here for at least another month. She's been looking around for another job, and gone to a few interviews. This morning this one company called back and offered her a job in St Jerome. It's a customer service job for a company that leases out gym equipment. Not a great job and not a great pay, but with no money at all she'll have to take whatever job she can get. I've been paying for her too for the last months, and frankly, I have no money left. I can't afford to keep doing that, I have my own debts to deal with. I have to start paying back my tuition loan this year. If I don't, they're going to start repossessing my belongings. At this rate, I can't even think about applying for a permanent residency in Canada, I don't have the money for it. This really pisses me off. I'm working a full-time job, but I have zero money to show for it. But Nikki doesn't have any family who can give her money instead of me either, they're as screwed as she is. And I'm sure as hell not going to let her starve.
I applied for a position as lead tester at the company today, I really, really hope I get it. It would mean a little more money, and some more interesting things to do at work than just testing.

The untouchable subject

2007-02-06T05:43:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine told me that some time ago there was a students' club called The Carnivores, or something along those lines, I can't remember exactly what the name was. Anyway, this club was a kind of jab at PETA and the whole vegetarianism thing. They signed up to put up signs for their club just like the other students' clubs in the area, and chose to put up a sign with a picture of Adolf Hitler and the text to the effect of "Hitler was a vegetarian. Join the carnivores." Again, I don't remember the exact wording, but that's pretty close, I think. The point they were making was that vegetarianism, while nice and dandy if you're into that, does not have any superior moral value to it. It's a different lifestyle, not necessarily a better one. Not surprisingly, this sign got a lot of people pissed off. Now, why is that?

Firstly, the vegetarians didn't particularly like being associated with Hitler in any way, the jewish students were pissed because... well, you know. It's Hitler. This shouldn't need much of an explanation if you paid any attention at all in school. And a whole bunch of other people were pissed off because they thought the whole idea was just ridiculously insensitive and stupid. They do have a point, it was probably not the smartest idea to put up a picture of this particular fellow and compare him to the "opposition" team. It's bound to piss some people off. But if you think about it... Why is that?

Hitler has become one of those 'untouchable' things. In any debate, as soon as one side starts comparing things to Hitler, they're pretty much done for. They might as well hand over their heads on a silver platter. He has become a concept, more than just a psychotic fuckhead who convinced thousands of people to participate in absolutely insane plans. And a concept can't be touched, especially if it's an evil concept. Hitler has in a way become the personification, the very idea of everything that is evil and wrong with mankind. He has become an idea so horrendous that people would never think of using his name as an insult even if they were more pissed off than they've ever been before, because it would just be over the top.

"Shut up, you fuckin' Hitler!"

See? It just doesn't work. People would just walk away in disgust, enemies and friends alike. You just can't call someone a "Hitler" unless that person happens to be guilty of murdering about six million people. But you also can't compare Hitler to anything good either. He's just too evil to be good in any conceivable way. Saying something like "You know, Hitler was a pretty ingenious dude" would probably get you stamped as a neo-nazi and maybe even punched in the face, depending on where you said that. People can no longer see him as a man, because he's become this gargantuan monster that everybody loves to hate. But put that aside for a moment. Hitler really was a pretty smart dude. Absolutely insane and despicable beyond description, of course, but let's admit it: He was pretty good at what he did.

Have you ever looked up any of Hitler's original artwork? They're easily found online. You probably know that he was an art student way before any of the politics started happening. He applied to an art school in Vienna and got rejected. But have a look at the paintings, he was really a pretty decent painter. Lots of landscapes and very detailed paintings of architecture. Not bad at all.

Then things started going badly, he was rejected from art school, his mother died, he spent five years bumming around in Vienna, somehow convinced himself that everything was because of the jews, and things just went to hell from there and people started dying.

Here's an interesting thing. Have you ever thought to yourself: Where did Hitler find so many willing assistants to help him out with his evil plans? Surely the average person doesn't just naturally agree with something like the absolute necessity of killing six million people in order to get the country on the right keel again? The fuckers who worked at the camps, the military, they must have all been insane, right? Maybe the Germans were just a fucked up, evil kind of people back then? No, of course they weren't. This is where things start getting interesting.

Hitler was an incredibly carismatic leader. He was the kind of guy who could convice penguins that fish is bad for you, or sell ice to the inuits for twice the price of gold. When he talked, people just listened, because he was soooo good at talking. That is one part of it.
But what about the people helping him kill all those people? Did they realize what they were doing? Were they insane? That's the other part. They weren't. They did what they were told to do. It sounds like the lamest excuse ever, but this is the really interesting part.

In 1961-62 a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments at Yale University on the topic of behavioural psychology and obedience. The setup was this:

They recruited test subjects through newspaper ads and mail, and got a random assortment of people between 20 and 50 years old and with different backgrounds and educational levels. These people would be paid $4.50 whether they completed the task or not. They were then told that they would participate in an experiment on the effects of punishment on learning.

The experimenter was played by a stern, impassive biology teacher dressed in a technician's coat, and the "victim" was played by an accountant trained to act for the role, but the test subjects didn't know that these were just actors. The "victim" and the test subject were separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the victim made sure to mention to the subject that he had a heart condition.

The test subject was given a 45-volt electric shock from the electro-shock generator as a sample of the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment. The subject was then given a list of word pairs which he was to teach the "victim". The subject began by reading the list of word pairs to the victim. If the victim got it right, the subject would read the next pair of words. If he got it wrong, he received an electric shock. With every wrong answer, the voltage of the shock would go up, gradually increasing up to fatal levels. After a few shocks, the "victim" would start banging the wall, begging for mercy, complaining about his heart condition, etc. and finally go completely silent, as if dead.

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the victim. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the victim.

If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:

Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.

Text copied from wikipedia and from the Stanley Milgram website, edited and shortened to fit this blog.

The theory was that only an average of about 1,2 % of people, the sadistic ones, would complete the experiment and actually keep pushing the button until the "victim" was dead. The actual result turned out to be quite shocking. An average of 65 % of all the test subjects delivered the final and fatal 450 volt shock to the "victim". The experiment has since then been repeated several times in different variations and settings, and the result remains constant in all of them. Between 61 and 68 percent of people will kill a person simply because an authority figure in a white lab coat tells them it's necessary. There was no difference between men and women, nationality or other parameters. The average remained around 65 % in all similar experiments conducted.

Pretty freaky, huh? I bet you're thinking: "I could never do such a thing, I would have refused to complete the experiement."

Would you really? Deep down inside, would you really have refused? An average of about 65 % of you would have continued pushing that button. Kinda hard to swallow, isn't it?
It's very, very hard to refuse when an authority figure we have faith in convinces us that it is absolutely necessary that we continue doing what we're doing.

So to tie up this post: No. The Germans were no more retarded fuckers than you and I are. Hitler actually managed to make a whole lot of things better for lots of people in Germany, while making things a lot worse for others. But the ones that were doing better had no reason to doubt that he was a good guy. They didn't know people were dying by the scores at some desolate camp somewhere. They thought things were getting better. So they believed him. They were victims of a very, very convincing and charismatic authority figure who in the end fucked them over so hard not even their great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will forget about it.

Let's make sure no authority figure ever fools anyone like that ever again, mmkay?

Cachette re-run

2007-01-25T05:29:00.000+01:00

So... just when I thought the cachette couldn't get any weirder, it did. My best friend of 9 years, Manda, was here visiting me, so she, Nikki and I went to the cachette one evening to play some pool. There we met this somewhat intoxicated man in his 50's who asked if he could play against whoever won between Manda and myself. By a sheer fluke, I dropped the 8-ball on my second shot, so the man got to play against Manda. She broke, not dropping anything, so the guy made his first shot. It was an incredible shot, bouncing the cueball off the short side of the table and dropping a ball in one of the side pockets. This dude had definitely played before. However, after dropping another few balls, and figuring out Manda's distinct lack of talent for pool, his skills suddenly evaporated into nothingness. For the rest of the game, he played extremely crappily, while quite unabashedly ogling Manda's bosom between turns. Huh...

Shortly after this, a completely sloshed middle-aged lady wobbled up to us and started talking to us in French. Manda speaks all of five words of French, and mine is so far not much better, so the lady started talking to Nikki. She told us about her family. Turns out she has a couple of kids, a boyfriend and an ex-husband all living together in the same house. Apparently she and the ex-husband are still good friends and they decided to just stay in the same house so he could be close to the kids, while the lady's new boyfriend lives there too. She was quite happy with her life, she just liked going to the cachette to get smashed every once in a while. Huh...
Now, after a while, this lady started doing more than just talking... She started quite bluntly hitting on Nikki. Then she went on to hit on Manda and me as well.

Seriously, this has got to be the weirdest bar I've been to. The lady was quite unmistakingly hitting on all three of us at the same time. Geez...

Music machine

2006-12-10T04:20:00.000+01:00

The company I work for arranged this big christmas party at the Cafe d'en Face in St Jerome yesterday. There was food and drink and music and good times were had by all. They also had a lottery and handed out prizes to a bunch of people. I won a basket of skin care products. Pretty nifty, there was body scrub and bath foam and body lotion and stuff. I generally don't use stuff like that at all, I put conditioner in my hair after washing it if I'm feeling luxurious, but maybe I should. Nikki tells me this goat milk stuff is really good for your skin, so I might give it a try. There was also a really cool sponge that I'm definitely going to use. It has handles on both ends and it stretches so you can scrub your own back. Good stuff, that.
After the party Nikki and I went to a pool hall in Laval and played a few games. The waitresses there were a bit distracting, all wearing ridiculously short black miniskirts and tight, black tops. Sort of skanky but revealing, and some of them were quite hot.
What? So I'm taken, not dead...

We went out for breakfast today at this place near Nikki's house. They had pretty good cappucino. I had crepes filled with banana, chocolate sauce and English cream, and with a slice of melon on the side. Pretty good, though very sweet. I don't quite get North American crepes, though. They don't taste like anything, just flour. I like crepes that taste a bit like eggs or butter, sugar or even salt, but all the pancakes and crepes I've had so far on this side of the atlantic all taste mostly like wheat flour. They seem to go for taste only in whatever is on them, not the crepes themselves. Weird. But hey, when in Rome...

I bought a portastudio on ebay a few days ago, it was a really good deal for the kind of machine I got. I can't wait to get it... Whee! I just need a good microphone and then I can start recording the songs I've written so far and make a cd. I recorded a bunch of stuff on my computer back home, but it just doesn't work on my laptop here. The sound quality really sucks for vocals. There's too much background noise on the line, like if the hum and noise from the harddrive and the fan was wired to the line in. I've never seen that in any other computer I've used for music, it's just bad.

I've also started working on an all new website for myself. I'm not so happy with my current one anymore, as it only presents what I do with classical music, which is probably the kind of music I do the least right now. But that project is not going to take off for real until I've gotten some recording done. But it'll be cool... :)

Pool

2006-12-01T23:59:00.000+01:00

I'm feeling (more or less) human again. The antibiotics worked and my throat is back to normal.
I went climbing a couple of times too already, which was lots of fun. The first time went really well, considering I hadn't gone for almost three weeks. Maybe I should stop more often? It went better than before I got sick... The second time went just as well. I did pretty good on two 5.9 trails, though I didn't quite get them in one try yet. Next time they shall tremble before my feet... Mwuahahahaa!

I went to play pool with Nikki at the La Cachet bar in Sainte-Adele the other day. It was nice, we were playing and having a good time, when this local dude, a guy of around 60 and quite obviously drunk off his ass, started talking to us. He had some interesting opinions about stuff... This was during our first game and Nikki was leading. He told me that Nikki seemed to be pretty good at pool. I agreed. Then he said:

"But you... You're really not very good at this, are you?"

After this he proceeded to tell me that it was a man's job to always win at pool against a woman, and that me losing against Nikki would be somehow embarrassing. He and his drunken buddy were also quite flabbergasted by the fact that I was originally from Sweden and spent quite a while questioning Nikki about it. "Where did you find that guy?", "What's with you being with a guy like that?" etc. So yeah... Apparently Swedish people who suck at pool are not so popular amongst the local drunkards of Sainte-Adele. But the rest of the evening turned out to be quite amusing in my opinion, because none of them said a single word after I won all four games we played. Hee hee... :)

It's raining ice here today. Quite interesting, it's not like snow or rain, but rather clear droplets of solid ice falling from the sky. I kinda wish I had had a hat with a large brim on the way home from work. I feel like somebody whipped me over the face with twigs. I was supposed to catch a ride with Antoine to Montreal tonight to see Nikki, but with the icy weather, we canceled the trip. Instead, Nikki is driving up here. She's got balls... It might take her a while to get here though, I very thoroughly told her multiple times to drive reeeaaaalllllyyyyyy slowly. I don't care if it takes her hours. I'd rather have her late and in one piece, than on time but scattered all over the side of the road.

There's a party in town tonight. One of the Italian testers is leaving and is having a goodbye party. I'm considering going. Hmm...

Bitten

2006-11-19T19:43:00.000+01:00

This has been a pretty fucked up week. I was sick all week, had a sore throat, swollen lymph nodes, fever, muscles and joints aching... Sucks, right? Then I got bitten by a spider just in front of my ear. First there was a red, itchy bump. Then the bump got bigger and turned mustard yellow in the middle, then brown, then the middle fell off and now I have an itchy scab about the size of a penny. Pretty annoying... Anyway, the aching and pain in my throat wouldn't go away, so my friend Nikki took me to the Sainte-Adele clinic. When we got there, we found a note on the door saying that the clinic was closed today only. Sucks. So we were going to return the next day, but unfortunately Nikki's car got towed away during the night for being parked in a bad place. Before she got it back it was already past five and the clinic had closed again. So we decided to go to a clinic in Laval instead. We got there, only to find a similar note on the door, saying that the place was closed today only. So we went to a third clinic, but that one was full. We went to Nikki's place and went to sleep. The next day we went back to the clinic that had been full. According to the sign, we were well within opening hours, but the doors were locked. What the fuck, man? So we went back to the other clinic, but that one was closing in ten minutes. Starting to get seriously pissed, now. Five clinics and we hadn't gotten to see a doctor yet. Why would a clinic close at 2 pm in the afternoon? Are people only allowed to be sick during banking hours in Canada? So we went to a clinic we hadn't tried yet. Finally we got to get a number and start waiting to see a doctor. About three hours later I got to see this doctor. He walks in the room with a sour look on his face and goes "pourquoi?" I tell him I don't speak French very well. He tells me he doesn't speak English. Seriously, I can get the thing about why official documents and signs and all that have to be in French in Quebec and all that. The province wants to be francophone. Fine. No problem with that. But what the FUCK is up with doctors not even having the most basic skills in English? I am absolutely sure that I am not the only person in the province who doesn't speak French... This particular doctor was pretty rude, and didn't exactly give an impression of being very competent either. He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, squeezed my throat, and then decided it was tonsillitis and prescribed me antibiotics. Now, I know for a fact that there is a crapload of things that can cause tonsillitis, and only about 15-30 % of those things are bacteria that are treatable by antibiotics. So to just prescribe me antibiotics without taking a blood test or doing a bacterial culture swab to find out what the cause is seems pretty dumb to me. And that I had to go to a clinic six times before I got to see a doctor? Seriously... So far Quebec health care is really not very impressive.

Sickness...

2006-11-15T05:40:00.000+01:00

Yeah, so it would seem I am not going to be able to go to work for the rest of this week. My whatever-it-is disease has gotten a whole lot worse. I'm running a bit of a fever, my throat is killing me and every molecule of my body is aching. Kind of like having the flu but without the runny nose or the cough. Sucks monkeyballs. I'm all drugged up with pain killers and it still hurts. Bleh...

Time out

2006-11-13T15:23:00.000+01:00

I'm staying home from work today, my tonsils and neck are all swollen and it hurts when I swallow. Kinda sucks. So I'm calling in sick and staying in bed today. Now, the only question is what to do with this day... Watch movies maybe? Or maybe read a book? Or chat with some people? Ah, decisions, decisions...

I went to the Arcadia Festival yesterday with my housemates and some colleagues, but I must say that for that price the festival was a bit of a disappointment. And I didn't understand why the warderobe people insisted on charging you separately for your jacket and your bag, but then put them on the same hanger anyway. Total rip-off... There were some games that you could try out. I tried Gears of War a bit, it seems like an interesting game. I've heard that it's supposed to be really good, but I didn't really play it enough to get a good idea about it. I was also watching this other game, Lost Planet, that looks really cool. Both games are for the Xbox 360.
There were also some game competitions and random free stuff. They had a tournament on the game Table Tennis on a podium and threw out stickers, ping pong balls and t-shirts to gather a crowd around the players. People went completely nuts over these things, it was kind of insane. I saw five or six people play tug-o-war over a t-shirt. Seriously... Get a freakin' grip, people, it's just a t-shirt! And probably not even your size!
Overall, the festival really wasn't all that impressive. Some games to look at, but kinda boring.

After the festival I went over to Archambault music store to buy a shoulder strap for my guitar, and then over to Nikki's place. She had invited me for dinner and cooked me some Quebecois food. Mashed potatoes, baked beans with maple syrup and tourtiere. Oh, man... That was so good. I can't even remember last time I was that stuffed after a meal... We also watched Rejected by Don Hertzfeldt. That's some seriously weird-ass stuff, but absolutely hilarious! Rejected was nominated for the 2001 academy award for best animated short film and received 27 different film awards from all over the world. If you get a chance to see this, please do. It's sooooo worth the 9 minutes out of your life! :)

Devil, thy name is Cigarrette

2006-11-12T06:47:00.000+01:00

I was talking to the girl I've been dating, Nikki Brown the poet, last night. She told me she had a hot friend who was single and that since my roommates are single too, maybe we could match them up and see what happens. So we did. She came over with her friend and a box of beer. We listened to music and talked a lot. Antoine tried to make a fire in the fireplace without much success, most of the smoke came inside and the fire wouldn't stay alive. I think a chimney sweep should probably take a look at it before we try again. But overall it was a pretty nice evening, I had a good time. Had a bunch of beer and, unfortunately, smoked a bit. I usually don't smoke, I just have a cigarrette every six months for the hell of it. I really shouldn't, it gives me a hangover like mad. Alcohol usually doesn't do anything to me, I just drink a bunch of water before going to bed and I'm fine the next morning. But smoking... Blah. I was barely alive this morning when I woke up. I slept for most of the afternoon. Then Antoine made a most excellent risotto and our colleague Sebastien came over for dinner. It was a nicely mellow saturday.

Tomorrow we're going to Montreal to check out the Arcadia Festival. It's the third day of this festival that is all about video games. I'm not really sure about what's happening there, but we'll go have a look and see what's going on. I'll also meet up with Nikki and maybe go have dinner or something afterwards. Should be a fun evening. :)

Meetings

2006-11-07T07:13:00.000+01:00

I had a date on friday with this nice girl who lives closer to Montreal. After quite a bit of searching for a parking space, we went to this cool italian restaurant called Edouardos on the plateau. It's a nice place with great food for really decent prices. It seems pretty popular too. We had to wait in line for a while before they had a table for us, the place was packed. After that we went to casa del popolo, a cafe/concert venue, where we saw tune-yards perform. Awesome stuff, it's this lady singing and playing the tenor ukulele. If you have a chance to go see her, please do.
After that we went back to her place with a bottle of wine. It was a really nice evening. I'm going to see her again sometime this weekend. Maybe even tomorrow night. :)

I had a sudden flash of inspiration last night and wrote down drafts for three songs. I have a couple of more ideas but I can't quite put them down on paper yet. They need to float around in the soup that is my brain for a little while longer. Then I'll add some salt and lemon, a dash of poetry, a pork chop, some onions, a spoonful of tragic humour, a couple of witty observations, a piece of garlic and a slap in the face, and ta-dah! The song is ready to be served. Or at least ready to be written down so I can sing it to someone so they can stare at me in disbelief and call me crazy. People sometimes do that. Maybe I should get a t-shirt with a warning label across the chest that says "Warning! Contents may not be suitable for normal or overly serious people."
I have actually freaked people out to the point where they got up and left just by sitting down and listening to them without saying anything back. Heh, kinda proud about that, actually... :) But yeah, some people apparently can't handle silence very well. Weird.

Paint in my face

2006-10-29T05:33:00.002+01:00

Today I went to Mirabel for some Paintball. Some 40 people from Enzyme and friends were there for a whole day of sharpshooting fun. Unfortunately, the weather decided to be entirely crappy on this particular day. I woke up at about quarter to eight, looked out the window and saw that it was snowing. I dressed up in four layers of clothing to stay warm, and off we went. In Mirabel it wasn't snowing, it was raining. And it kept raining for most of the day. The forest and the fields that the game was played in were not much better than mud pits and swamps. I was completely soaked by the time we were done. But it was fun anyway, we played a whole bunch of different scenarios, from hunt down Bin Laden and his terrorists to defend the castle and capture the flag.
The precision of the paintball guns sort of annoyed me, though. You could aim at someone standing 20 feet away and still miss by 6 feet or more because the bullet would spin off course, so being a decent shot didn't help you at all. The bullets were all over the place no matter how you aimed, so you just had to fire off a dozen shots or so and hope that at least one of them hit something. Getting shot didn't really hurt that much, since I was wearing a pretty decent amount of clothes to absorb the impact, but I managed to get shot in the face once. Someone must have managed to shoot me at the exact angle to get the bullet in under my mask from behind me. It stung like a sunovabitch and I had purple paint all over my face. That stuff tastes like shit. Seriously, it's disgusting...

The picture above shows Carlos and myself all dressed up and ready to go to war.

Jello and a haircut

2006-10-27T04:05:00.000+02:00

Today was a somewhat boring day at work. I was supposed to work on one project, got moved to a different project, and then moved to a third project and finally ended up having nothing at all to do on that project anyway, so I did absolutely nothing all day. A bit weird, but hey... It's their money... My PM let me leave earlier since I didn't have anything to do anyway, so I went and got a haircut at the Concept Coiffure next to the Metro grocery store. They washed my hair and gave me a short but very nice scalp massage before they started snipping away with scissors and trimmer. Very nice and relaxing indeed, all for the humble price of $18,75. Haircuts are a whole lot cheaper here than in Sweden. The same thing back home would have cost me at the very least $45. And now my hair is out of my eyes again. Woohoo!
They didn't have time right away when I got there, so I spent about 20 minutes just walking around at Metro. I bought a whole bunch of jello that I'm going to send to Liza. Jello is kind of hard to find back home, and like myself, she loves the stuff. Yum... Tasty and fun all at the same time! :)

We went climbing again yesterday. My arms were still really tired from the previous session two days earlier so I got really tired quick and had to rest quite a bit between ascents, but it went really well anyway. I bonked my knee on a grip at one point though, so I have a colorful bruise now. But other than that, it was fun! The time before, I tried a red 5.9 trail without much success. It's really tricky because you have to make sure to be very well balanced to be able to get up. I tried the start some 15 times without getting it. I've done quite a lot of climbing in my mind since then, thinking about the start and how to get it. Yesterday I tried it again, and nailed the start on the first attempt. That felt great! 5.9 is still a bit beyond my abilities so I didn't get the rest of it yet, only a few steps further than the start, but I'm sure I will get it eventually.

Things are either simple or impossible. Everything in between is just a matter of practise. :)

Chilly day in Montreal

2006-10-22T16:28:00.000+02:00

A while ago I met this girl on the internet. She asked me out for coffee, so yesterday I went to Montreal to meet her. I met with her at a place called Tutti Frutti, which is a really nice breakfast place on St Catherine, right next to Atwater. I had the biggest breakfast ever, with French toast, crépes, cappuccino and a big bowl of fresh fruits. The girl I was there to meet seemed like a really nice person, friendly and funny. We had a long conversation about all kinds of stuff. After that we went to this big movie theater close to the breakfast place. On the way in there, we met this elderly man who started talking to us about educating the hopeless drivers of Montreal. He seemed quite upset about their quality of driving. That was kind of weird. We walked on towards the ticket vendors, when the elderly man came back after us and started talking about this British movie, Keeping mum with Rowan Atkinson that was supposedly really good, and that we might want to check it out. Even weirder... Anyway, all the movies were starting a bit late, so I wouldn't have had time to see anything before I was supposed to meet up with Manu, who I rode into Montreal with, so we left again. After that we just walked around in town looking at stuff and talking. It was quite nice! It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining from a clear blue sky and it was pretty chilly outside. After that she had to go meet a friend of hers and I needed to get back to Chapters, where I was supposed to meet Manu, so we said goodbye. It was a nice day, I had fun. I'm definitely going to see her again.

I found a book at Chapters while waiting for Manu and the others to show up, the definitive edition of the Tao Te Ching. I read reviews about this book before and I've been wanting to buy it for some time. It contains both a literary translation and a verbatim translation of the text. Quite interesting! I already have two editions of the book, but it's fun to read new ones because the translations are quite different in both wording and inherent meaning. If you read a lot of different translations, maybe you'll get an idea of what is behind the words, what the author(s) actually meant.

After meeting up, we went to the botanical gardens. There was a crapload of cars there, I think there was a hockey match going on at the stadium. We wanted to see the Chinese lantern exhibition that was going on in the gardens. It was pretty nice, lamps made of wire frames clad with silk in all shapes and colors. There were bird lamps in the trees, and big boats with soldiers in them in the pond. It looked pretty cool. We also looked at the displays of traditional chinese instruments in the showrooms. There was also a small Halloween land display near the entrance, where they had a few pumpkins and ghosts and such, though it seemed more angled towards the younger crowd.

Did you know that "Goodbye" is originally a contraction of the expression "God be with you" ?

I keep on falling...

2006-10-19T06:17:00.000+02:00

I went climbing again today with Antoine. It was really not the best climb I've had. I felt pretty tired already when we got there, but I figured I would wake up a bit once I got started. And at first it went ok, but after I while I just felt really drained and started falling off the wall. It didn't really get any better for the rest of the evening, I climbed pretty badly. I tried a trail I haven't managed to do before, but after about ten unsuccessful attempts at getting the start right I gave up. All I accomplished was hurting my left arm. Bleh...

And this goddamn motherfuckin' internet connection can go shove itself up a rabid monkey-ass! It blanks out several times a day for a couple of minutes at the time, it has stopped working every single night around midnight for the past week. I hate this crap... Grrrr...

Frozen grass

2006-10-17T04:14:00.000+02:00

It was pretty cold this morning when I rode off to work. The thermometer showed 0 degrees and the lawn was all frosty. It was really sunny all day. I spent my lunchbreak outside, just basking in the sun and enjoying the fresh air. It was really a perfect weather! It reminded me of a nice autumn day in the mountains back home. Quite nice!

Me and Antoine went grocery shopping after we got home. Apart from the regular food stuff, we got a big pumpkin. Antoine is going to turn the contents of the pumpkin into soup, and I'm going to turn the "shell", or whatever you call it, into a jack-o-lantern. Halloween is creeping closer, and I'm in Canada. It would be a serious sin not to carve a pumpkin in these circumstances, don't you think? Halloween is sort of starting to catch on a little back home too, but it's nowhere near as big as in North America, and we don't do the whole pumpkin thing. So when in Canada, do as the Canadians, eh? :)

I wrote some more music today too. I have a few great ideas, but I can't really make them come true on my laptop. I would need to record some melodies, but the sound quality is really crappy if I record through a microphone on my laptop. Bleh... That particular tune will have to wait, I guess.

Saturday, lazy saturday

2006-10-15T06:43:00.000+02:00

The last few weeks have been pretty interesting. Last monday was Thanksgiving, so I had a long weekend. Really nice after all the overtime, I must say. I went to the Mont Tremblant park on thanksgiving with Mikkel, Stephan and Antoine. It's the second time I've been there, it's a really nice area. We were away all day, so we didn't really celebrate thanksgiving in any way. Not that I would know anything about celebrating thanksgiving anyway, considering it's a holiday that doesn't exist back home... But I felt a little bit festive when I was having a turkey sandwich by a nice river in the park. There were some really pretty trees in the park that hadn't dropped their colorful autumn leaves yet. The picture of the maple with red leaves on the left was taken by Stephan with his new camera.

I went climbing again this week too. Climbing has been pretty sporadic lately, as either Antoine or I have had to work late a lot, but we managed to get one night in. It went pretty well. I climbed mostly 5.08 tracks, they are starting to feel quite comfortable to climb, so I guess I must be making progress. Feels pretty good! :)

Yesterday there was an Oktoberfest at the Hotel des Monts, which is really close to our house. There was a bunch of people there from work, having beer and playing pool. The place itself is kind of scungy, but it was pretty fun. I absolutely suck at pool. I managed to win against Antoine once out of sheer luck, as he messed up and accidentally dropped the nine in a corner pocket.
After a short visit to the Spanish people and Mikkel's place, a bunch of jelly bears and some food, we drove off to a place called Bourbon Street. It's a pretty cool place with bars and a dance floor where you can shake loose all night. I had some drinks and danced a bunch, it was lots of fun! I can't even remember the last time I went dancing.
There was some weird show on stage in front of the dance floor. They conferencier only spoke French, so I have no idea what he was talking about, but it looked like some kind of contest between four guys who were supposed to out-hot the others by dancing all sexy-like with a girl. Then four girls did pretty much the same thing with the guy who won. It was an overall pretty boring show. The four guys didn't seem to have much imagination, they all just did the exact same thing, one after the other.
"Oh, look, he took his shirt off and is trying to look buff. Now he pulled his belt out. And hey, now he pulled his pants down. Wow."
And the girls did even less. They just danced around, mostly looking a bit embarrassed to be there. But overall it was a nice evening with good music. I met a couple of girls who I guess seemed to like my dancing. At least they danced with me for a while, trying to dance the same way I did. They didn't have much success in imitating me, though, which is not really a big surprise since half the time *I* didn't even have a clue what the hell I was doing. I'm no dancer, I just make it up as I go and move around in a rythmical fashion because it's fun and because I like the music. Probably looks like crap, but hey, I don't care. It's fun!

Today was a really lazy day. I chatted with a friend in Sweden, talked to my brother and my mom on skype and had a pizza because I didn't feel like cooking. My brother showed me some songs he wrote. They were pretty good! The music he writes is pretty different from the stuff I write. He does more acoustic singer/songwriter kind of things. Anyways, I also did some laundry and played some games on the computer. A pretty laid-back day, I'd say. Whoo-pee.

Music by me

2006-10-02T04:32:00.000+02:00

I finished another song today. I haven't found a good way to keep them online yet, but this should do for now. If you want to hear the songs, just download them from the links below. They will be available for download for seven days from the date of this blog entry.

You may download these files for free and share them with anyone you like, but the copyright will remain mine. Do not alter these songs or any portions of them, or try to take credit for composing them. You may also not alter the written information within these files. These songs may not be published, sold or otherwise reproduced for profit or other monetary compensation without express written permission from me.

Septimbre

Solitaire

End

Enjoy! :)

Random ponderings

2006-09-30T02:38:00.000+02:00

Uselessness sucks. Fortunately, not much in life is completely useless. People are never useless. Some small ornamental items might be useless, but oh so much fun anyway. Actually, the only really useless thing I can think of right now is infantry units in video games. Those are useless. It doesn't matter which game you're playing, infantry units always suck. They are the units you throw at your opponent out of sheer spite after he has killed off everything else you had. They are pretty much always about as effective as an ant spitting on a cow.

Fish are good. They're tasty, they're interesting and they can be used as weapons. If there was a nuclear holocaust, I believe that we could build up an entirely new civilization based on fish. Think about it. You can eat them. You can take their skin and make clothes, you can use their bones as needles, you can whap people over the head with them, and in a post-nuclear freezing cold climate, you can stack frozen fish and build fish igloos. Or even cabins! Just imagine living in your very own cod cabin! And if you like small and cosy abodes, why not find a large tuna fish and hollow it out? Perfect one room apartment!
I'm pretty sure you could kill someone with a frozen trout. Those fuckers are solid! You could use barracudas for spears, eels as swords, and if you need a dagger, just find a minnow and start stabbing people. If you need a table, just find yourself a decent sized manta and yoink it up on land until it freezes. Then use three salmons for table legs to put it on top of, et voila! A stylish manta table! You could probably make a fire with fish too. I'm sure you could start a fire by rubbing two fish together if you tried hard enough.
And then a couple of millennia later, historians would look upon their sophisticated fish-based civilization and reminisce about how it all started with a frozen fish.

Tiredness again

2006-09-26T04:48:00.000+02:00

Hello again, dear readers. I'm not updating this blog as often as I would like to, but I'm working 12-hour shifts right now, and something needs to be postponed for later. Right now I'm just making sure to take care of the more important stuff, like sleeping and eating.
I got a cold on top of it all. Everyone at work seems to have it right now, it sucks ass. It makes me feel even more tired than I otherwise would be... I'm in a pretty cranky mood right now. I wish my head would stop feeling like it's full of cotton, and that my sinuses would stop hurting. And I wish this week would pass quickly so that I can go back to somewhat more regular working hours. 12 hours a day gets me lots of money, but it's pretty tiring. I can't imagine how the people who work 15 hour days must feel. Or my brother, who is doing his PhD in technical physics. He works 16 hour days and will have no vacations whatsoever for the next three and a half years. Sucks to be him...

But now I must sleep. More work tomorrow.
Overandoutro. Moo.

Long days

2006-09-20T05:18:00.000+02:00

I'm working on a new project this week, and we're doing 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week. Not quite as bad as I thought it would be (yet, anyway), but still pretty exhausting. I get home, do something else for two hours, then go to bed. Then up again for more work. I feel like I'm doing nothing but sleep and work. I really hope that it won't be like this for more than this week and the next. If I have no free time for myself, I'm going to go nuts. Call me crazy, but these two hours after I get home are not enough.

It seems I should stop caring about people and trying to help them. All it seems to accomplish is to piss them off and alienate them. This is seriously bothering me. Fuck!!

What to do...

2006-09-18T03:12:00.000+02:00

You know the way you want to help a friend feel better if she calls you and is sad or upset? You listen, you talk to her, you care, you pay attention and do your best to cheer her up, right? So what do you do when two people do that at the exact same time? That happened to me today.
I was talking to Manda on skype, when Liza popped up on msn. Manda was all sad, so naturally I wanted to talk to her and help in any way I could. But Liza was also all sad, so of course I wanted to cheer her up too. But you don't want to give either one the impression that you're not paying attention to them, because that would be disrespectful and they might think that you don't care. And I really do care. But you also don't want to tell one of them that you can't talk to them right now since you're talking to someone else, because you like them both a lot, and they're sad and you don't want to just turn your back on either one of them, right? So what do you do?
I talked to both of them. Typing to one and speaking to one, and let me tell you, that was quite the exercise in concentration and focus. Holy crap... Two different people with completely different problems and both want to talk to you about them, and you have to keep your brain sharp as a razor to get everything they write and say, and to not answer the wrong thing to the wrong person, and... Fuck. This must be one of those situations that the universe puts you in just to fuck with you. What do you do in a situation like that?

I made a traditional norse meal called "kolbullar" for dinner today. The name translates into "coal cakes", more or less. It's a meal that was very common among lumberjacks, coal workers, railway workers and others that had to do strenuous manual labour away from home for several weeks at the time. The men usually had little or no knowledge about cooking, but they needed food that was very easy to make, and would make them full and give lots of energy. Coal cakes contain lots of fat and carbohydrates, so they brought sacks of flour and pork when they left for work. The kind I made today is a slightly fancier version with eggs in them, and with milk instead of water. Here's how to make the traditional kind:

1. Cut the pork into tiny pieces and fry them crispy in a frying pan over an open fire.
2. Mix water and flour and pour the mixture over the pork in the frying pan.
3. Fry the whole thing until it solidifies, then flip it over so that it gets cooked on both sides.
Serve and enjoy!

Weekend at last!

2006-09-16T08:56:00.000+02:00

It's friday! W00t!

Work was long and mostly boring. Thank god I'm done with that game. If I hadn't played it through a million times already, it would be a pretty entertaining game, but alas, I have. I'm soo sick of those stupid creatures... I mean, if I have to test it, I will of course test it even if I don't like it. That's what work is all about. But given the choice, I would rather never see that game again. After work I had a nice, long chat with my Swedish friend Liza on skype. She's one of those über-smart people who can do double full time studies and hold down a job at the same time. And she speaks russian, french and latin. Pretty cool.

I went to a party tonight at Eric and Virginia's place. Not bad, it was a fairly small party with people sitting around a fire having beer and throwing pretzels at eachother. Y' know, as one does in Canada... I did a small fire show to try out my new, short firesticks. They work pretty nicely to twirl around but they heat up quite a lot, so it's hard to use them for very long times at once.

After the party, I got back to my room and found a daddy longlegs spider, Pholcus phalangioides, crawling around in my room. I caught it in a small plastic container. These spiders are not venomous enough to harm a person at all, and they are actually not so effective against insects either. They have large nets that they bob around it, waiting for bugs to drop by. I managed to catch a fly in the same container, so I was hoping to get to see some spider vs. fly mortal combat here. But they don't really seem to care about eachother. They just ignore eachother and crawl around in the container. How disappointing.
Oh, now something is happening! The spider and the fly stumbled across eachother and it seems the spider somehow managed to bite the fly! The fly seems all woozy and is laying on it's back all dead-like now. Cool! Spider vs. Fly, 1 - 0. I'll go let them out outside soon.

Midweek the gray

2006-09-14T04:59:00.000+02:00

Today was cold, gray and rainy. I didn't sleep much last night, so I was dead tired all day too. I dragged myself to the office and went to work at the project I'm working on. At about 10.15 I looked at the clock and thought to myself: "Oh, for fuck's sake... Not even eleven yet?" Yeah. For some reason this seemed like the day that would never end. But it picked up a bit after I got home and talked to my Swedish friend on skype for a while. It's always as nice to see her online when I start the computer. Tomorrow is her birthday. I wish I could be there to congratulate her in person. Grrr... fuckin' Atlantic...

And now, just for fun, a poem I scribbled down yesterday. I originally wrote it in Swedish, so this is a translation of it.

Twilight falls over amber hills
and flaming forests go out
The earth releases the mists once more
to watch over grass and stones

Stars come alive on the heavenly sea
and the moon picks up it's journey
on the well-known path over humans' nest
that she wandered for countless nights

She looks down upon me, and eyes meet anew
as so many nights before
when I sat down to think, and envied her
that she nothing misses or needs

How majestic and fair, how unmoved she is,
in her dress of timeless silver
So unearthily beautiful, so wonderfully cool
this queen of heaven is

She touches my cheek with cold, warm hands
and bathes my body in her light,
until my breath is relaxed and I fall asleep,
to wake to another dawn

Movies n stuff

2006-09-12T05:37:00.000+02:00

I went to the movies with Stephan and Antoine today. They saw Little Miss Sunshine. Apparently a really good movie, but it didn't look all that interesting to me so I saw Hollywoodland instead. It's about this private investigator (Adrien Brody) who is trying to figure out how George Reeves, the actor who played Superman in the old TV-series (Ben Affleck) died. Did he kill himself? Was he murdered? Not a very fast-paced movie, more of a drama. But the tale is told in a very interesting way. The movie got off to a pretty slow start, but then it picked up and the ending was actually really good. And Ben Affleck actually did a really good job with this part. Adrien Brody is excellent as the PI, and both Bob Hoskins and Diane Lane are great! Hoskins does not play a very big role in this movie, but he has always been one of my favourite actors. He's usually pretty intense and very convincing in the parts he plays. Much like Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is almost scary in how genuinely he portrays the characters he plays, perhaps most notably in the movie Shine, where he portrays Peter Helfgott, the father of piano genius David Helfgott. The piano genius himself if played by an absolutely amazing Geoffrey Rush. In the scenes where Helfgott is playing the piano, it's actually Rush's own hands you see. Pretty cool...

Another very good movie on the theme of musicians, is Hilary and Jackie, a movie about the life of British classical cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, played by Emily Watson. The film is based on the book A genius in the family, written by Jacqueline's sister and brother-in-law. The movie adapts the hell out of the book, portraying Jacqueline as quite the nutcase and a not very likeable person. But putting realism and historical accuracy aside, it is an incredible movie, both tragic and gripping, about the cello prodigy's decline into a devastating and ultimately terminal disease. Bring tissues if you decide to see it, as chances are you'll be crying a lot.

There are a lot of good movies and loads of good actors. Jet Li is a good actor. Now, I realize that that sentence will quickly remove any credibility I might have as a film critic in the eyes of some people, but keep reading, and I will tell you what I mean.
Jet Li is not likely to win any oscars for best male actor anytime soon. He's no Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep. But look at what he does. So far he has mostly done martial arts movies, straightforward things with relatively simple plots where the main idea is to display breathtaking fight choreographies and stunning martial arts skills. And with that in mind, Jet Li is incredibly good and successful at what he does! Anybody who knows anything about martial arts knows who Jet Li is. So in his own way, Jet Li is a great actor! Much the same way Arnold Schwartzenegger is. Arnie might not be the most expressive and flexible actor on the screen, but as the stereotypical action hero, who blows things up and kills people while spouting more or less lame one-liners, he's about as good as they get. In fact, he's one of the most successful action heroes on screen ever. So yup, he's a great actor too. As long as you remember that a great actor is not necessarily the same thing as an actor who can play any part given to him or her perfectly, and move the audience to tears with incredible skill and sincerity.

Work and toil

2006-09-10T02:34:00.000+02:00

I worked a lot this week. Nothing excessive, but more than I usually do. The last three days have been pretty intense. I went to Montreal for some testing on thursday and didn't get home again until 01.20 am. Then to sleep, then up again for more work on friday. And today I went back to Montreal again for some more work. It was nice to work somewhere else for a change, the variation is always welcome. I must say that it was a bit tough to get up at 6.30 this morning... But I should get a relatively fat paycheck next week. One can always do with a wee bit more money, especially with the not-quite-opulent salary that I have. I've found that the money is enough to live a decent life, but it seems nearly impossible to save any money. I'm not even spending that much money. All I spend it on is food, rent and bills, but still I have no money left at the end of the month. Hmm...

I played some more flute today. I only played for about half an hour, which is far from enough if I want to regain the level I had four months ago, let alone improve, but it's a start. Before I graduated, I was practising for about three to four hours per day on average. If you're curious about what I sounded like four months ago, you can check out my website. There are a few sound clips from my graduation concert there.
But now I'm enjoying playing again. Now I can play stuff I like because I want to and because I like to play, not because I have to. Though it kind of pisses me off how much I've lost during these four months. I sound like shit and feel like a beginner. Oh, well...

I've also gotten started with writing music again. So far I've only written a couple of songs in Swedish, but I'm working on some more electronic instrumental stuff too. I'll try to figure out a way to put it up online after I finish something more.

Music music music...

2006-09-07T05:31:00.000+02:00

I played the flute today for the first time in quite a while. I played for maybe half an hour, so not so long, but still. It was pretty nice, I haven't felt like practising since before I graduated. And I didn't really practise today either, I mostly just played. But holy crap have I've gotten out of shape... You really lose it fast when you stop practising. I'd need to play for a couple of hours every day for at least a few weeks before I would be anywhere near where I was before I stopped playing. Anybody know a good pianist I could play with?

My Swedish friend sent me some Swedish candy, I got it in the mail yesterday. Whee! Plopp... So good... And she said she was going to take one of those stiff cardboard tubes that you send posters in, and jam it full of lingonberry jam and send it to me. I have no idea if she was being serious or if she was joking, I really couldn't tell. I guess I'll find out...

I'm going to work in Montréal tomorrow and on Saturday. We're going to work on a game consol that we don't have here at the office in Sainte-Adele, so we need to go to the game developers' office and test the game there. I hear it's a pretty big place with lots of people. Should be fun!

Songs and stuff

2006-09-05T05:35:00.000+02:00

I talked to my Swedish friend again today. I finished writing a song to her, so I sang it to her on skype. She was typing something, and I was just playing around with my guitar while talking to her, and then I started singing without telling her anything about the song. When she realized what I was singing, she abruptly stopped typing and went dead quiet. She was completely stunned and didn't know what to say for several minutes. It was hilarious! I haven't seen her speechless like that before. She liked the song though, so good deal. :)

I feel like I'm starting to want to play music more seriously again. I haven't really felt that since well before my graduation concert in May. It might be time to dig out the flute and the sheet music and start practising again soon. I'm also going to start practising and singing more seriously with the guitar. Sucks ass that my work permit only allows me to work at Enzyme while I'm here. Otherwise I might start looking for gigs to get some extra cash.

I don't get that whole work permit thing. I'm already here, I already have a job. Why would it be a problem if I was working with something else on the side?

Tomorrow we're going to Montreal to listen to a concert with Matt Ward. I haven't heard any of his music before, but Stephan tells me it's good stuff.

Ow...

2006-09-04T08:16:00.000+02:00

I fell while climbing a little more than a week ago now and hurt my leg and my shoulder, so I've been taking it pretty easy lately. It seems now that I might have hurt myself a bit more than I thought. A couple of days ago I noticed that the scratches on my leg were almost healed, but that I had a big bruise below the scratches that wasn't there the days after I fell. I seems to have showed up several days after the initial injury. And my ankle is kind of swollen. I put some ice on it, and holy fuck did that hurt... Is it supposed to start aching like hell when you put ice on it?
My shoulder is also in not so great shape, it seems I might have gotten some kind of inflammation in it. It has been aching since I went climbing on tuesday, thinking it was ok. Now it aches even when I'm not doing anything. Annoying... I'm going to take it as easy as I can for a week and take ibuprofen to relieve the inflammation and aching. If it hasn't gotten better within a week, I'll have to get a doctor take a look at it.

Today was a pretty lazy day. My housemates went to the Osheaga festival in Montreal, so I was home alone. I cleaned up my room, talked to some people on skype and tried to write some music. I got some ideas for songs that might turn out to be useable, but I didn't finish anything yet.
I bought a new pillow yesterday. It's so much better than the one I had! Now I can wake up without pain in my neck every morning.

Poetry? What's that?

2006-09-01T06:19:00.000+02:00

There are huge amounts of poets in the world. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just plain weird. Some write songs, some write rhyming poems, some write prose...
I like Tankas. A Tanka is a short, originally Japanese form of poetry. It has five lines, usually with the syllable division of 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. They are often very interesting to read because of their brevity. They can contain an entire world of ideas, condensed into 31 syllables. A mood, an idea, an atmosphere... Kind of like the essence of a novel in five short lines.

Above the ocean
a feeling of loneliness
carried by the wind
Lost by someone long ago
Does it feel unloved and sad?

The Tanka has been around for about 1300 years, and is considered the most important of Japanese poetry forms. Every man and woman of class was expected to know how to compose a good Tanka to conclude special occasions with. It wasn't actually called a Tanka until after the Meiji era, or 19th century, when it was given that name to distinguish it from Waka poetry.

Poetry is a peculiar thing. What is it? I dare you to give me a good answer to that. Why is poetry poetic? What is the purpose of poetry? What makes good poetry good?
I'm sure everybody has heard the famous 18th sonnet by Shakespeare:

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

This poem is written in the form of a sonnet. A rather complex form, not so easy to write. Is this a good poem? I'm pretty sure most people would agree that it is. But why? Because it's beautiful? Well written? Thought provoking? Because it rhymes? Because it has some kind of emotional impact on the reader?
How about this one:

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

This is an excerpt from Dylan Thomas's And death shall have no dominion, a classic in it's own right. Now compare these two with this one:

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.

The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;

And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

Life, love, sorrow, death... Universal themes of life, from quite different angles, don't you think? This last text is an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire's Une Charogne, A Carcass, translated to English by William Aggeler. So what do these three poems have in common? What makes them good? Are they any good, really? I say three, the first tanka doesn't count since it's written by me. I wouldn't presume to compare myself with Shakespeare, Dylan and Baudelaire. Ha! What a joke... Anyways, think about it. I'm not here to give you any answers, only to provoke thoughts in you. Figure it out for yourselves!

Only thinking what others tell you to think is just as bad as not thinking at all. So start thinking! Have fun! ;)

Arachnid guest

2006-08-31T06:22:00.000+02:00

Today I spent most of the evening writing emails and letters. I like writing. It gives you a chance to reflect on things, think things through properly and phrase things much better than in speech, giving a more meaningful exchange of ideas and thoughts. A lot of conversations today are all about being witty and giving rapid-fire responses, often resulting in comments that are not entirely well thought through.

Huh... Cool! Just as I was typing this, a spider decided to drop by for a visit. It looks like a Yellow Sac Spider. The name is kind of weird, since yellow sac spiders are usually not yellow. It climbed down my wall from the open window, so I caught it in a plastic can to have a closer look. These guys can bite if cornered and are venomous, though not deadly. At most it hurts a lot and you get a swollen rash resembling a large pimple for up to eight weeks, which in some people with already existing medical conditions might cause tissue necrosis similar to that of the bite of a Brown Recluse spider, though there doesn't seem to be any documented cases of that in Canada. Yellow sac spiders are nocturnal hunters that crawl around looking for something to eat, and are often found indoors in homes. This particular guy only has seven legs. I don't think it particularly enjoys the plastic can full of salt and cashew nut crumbs, so I'm going to go let it out outside now.

There. Now my arachnid visitor is happily crawling around outside again. Thanks for stopping by! I completely lost track of what my original topic for this post was... Oh, whatever. I need to sleep now anyway.

Stupid...

2006-08-30T05:24:00.000+02:00

I went climbing again today, which was a rather stupid thing to do. I didn't give my shoulder enough time to heal, and after the first ascent it started hurting like hell again. I did learn a new technique though, so I couldn't keep from practising it a little bit anyway. If you have a good grip with your hands, you don't need anything to step on. You can climb up a flat wall with your feet for a little bit. It makes it easier to reach grips you would otherwise need to really stretch yourself or jump to reach.
Mwuahahahahaa... Progress is so much fun...

Not much else to write today. Same ol' stuff.

Ponderings

2006-08-29T05:33:00.000+02:00

So... I was thinking. Since heating stuff up to a certain temperature kills the bacteria in it, does that mean that you could eat rotting meat if you cooked it well enough?
Not that I would even if you could... This is just another example of the random kind of crap that pops up in my head. I have a strange brain indeed. I'm beginning to see why my friends so often ask me what planet I'm from... Yum... ellipsis points...

This day summarized: Woke up, talked to a not so cheerful swedish girl too long, got to work one minute late, tested an interesting game, came home, went shopping, bought ridiculous amounts of meat, cooked bizarre meal with Thai chili sauce, chicken, bananas and bacon in it, went to my boss' place and had a beer, came home, wrote stupid things in my blog and then went to sleep.

Note that the last part hasn't happened yet. But I wrote it anyway because I can see it coming. I can see the future. I'm psychic, you know. I dreamed of a candy bar once, and the next day I got punched in the face. See what I mean? Huh? huh? huh? Nah, didn't think so.

Yeah. I should finally get to sleep and dream in technicolor. Then think of all the insects that are sleeping, and wonder if the animals are dreaming.
Thanks, Brad. You rock, man. Keep on crashing.

Talkathlon

2006-08-28T07:23:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we went climbing again. Stephan came along this time to try it out and ended up doing pretty well at it. We dropped my brother's girlfriend off at the train station in Montreal, and then went to check out two comic book stores. I found two mangas that looked interesting, Death Trance and Jing: King of bandits. The first one also exists in the shape of a movie with the same title, which I saw last night. Horrible movie. The lead actor Tak Sakaguchi was pretty cool, his character 'Grave' had a funny but weird kind of humour integrated into the part. The action choreography was sorta almost decent in a few scenes, but a complete mess in most of them. Overall this must be one of the dumbest things I've seen so far. Swords with handles that look like big, throbbing dicks? What the hell is the point? No explanation whatsoever for that in the movie...
Anyway, climbing. We had a quick lunch in town before going over to Laval for climbing. It went well at first, but then I took a fall off the 5.8 trail and hit my leg against the edge of the side wall.
Nothing broken, I just scraped a bunch of skin off. I also pulled something in my shoulder in the fall. It hurt quite a bit, so I didn't do any more climbing after that. It's still sore, but should be fine with a couple of days of rest.

Today was a very lazy day. Got up at 11, went online and then spent the next eight and a half hours on skype, talking to the girl in Sweden. She finally got her webcam working. Last time I saw her was about two and a half months ago. It's funny how memories tend to get kind of subjective after a while. I remembered her being very pretty, but seeing her on the webcam again made me realize she's even more beautiful than I remembered. *sigh...* Grrr... fuckin' Atlantic ocean...

But yeah. Sitting in front of a computer screen like mine at a desk like mine, on a chair like mine... Just plain stupid. I had quite the headache afterwards. She's so worth it, though...

I finished putting wick on the second short firestick. Now I just need to wrap the handle and then I can start using them.

Roswell

2006-08-26T05:48:00.000+02:00

Actually not tired today, yaye. Slept well last night. Went to work and tested this flash game online. Not bad, a simple, yet fairly entertaining game. But buggy. Apparently I found so many bugs that the developers just went "Oh, fuck it... just tell the guy to stop testing, we're going to rewrite the whole thing..." I thought that was pretty funny when Alex the project manager told me. :)

Talked to my severely hot friend again. That's always fun, I like talking to her. Too bad she's in Sweden. Stupid Atlantic ocean... I did some juggling too. I'm getting better, my record stands at 46 catches right now. The starting and stopping are the critical moments. Once I get started I can keep it going pretty well. Still need lots more practise before it's solid, though.

I'm going climbing again tomorrow. I can't wait... I wanna try the red and white 5.8 again.

I bet you're thinking "What the hell has any of this got to do with Roswell?" Well, I'll tell you: Nothing at all, actually. I just wrote Roswell as the title because it sounded cool. It's my blog so I can do whatever I want with it. Take that...

Fatigue...

2006-08-25T06:05:00.000+02:00

Today was a long day. I couldn't sleep last night, I don't know why. Just couldn't seem to fall asleep. I got up at 7.30 and I really didn't feel like going to work, I just wanted to sleep more. Work was eventless, I worked on a game for about three hours, it had to be done by lunch. There wasn't really much to do on it, it was a simple game for kids. After that I didn't really have anything to do for the rest of the day. I sat outside, did some poi spinning, and just waited for five pm so I could go home. Tomorrow we're getting a new game to work with, I hope there's more to do on that one.

My brother's girlfriend and her sister are here visiting now. They're going on a 9-day cross-Quebec tour and are staying in Sainte-Adele for two days. We stopped at this restaurant in Blainville on the way back. I had lasagna. It didn't taste anything like any lasagna I've ever had in Europe. It was more like two layers of pasta with a slice of meatloaf in between. Very weird, but pretty good.

Sooo tired... must... sleep... now...

Funnyness

2006-08-24T06:00:00.001+02:00

A quote from a conversation:

-I wanna have a farm when I grow old, with horses and shit. Wanna move to Finland?
-Okay. Do grapes grow in Finland?
-No, it's too cold there. Why?
-I wanna grow my own grapes and make wine.
-Well, they have all kinds of berry wine in Finland. You could make berry wine?
-Okay. Does pot grow in Finland? It grows in Scotland and Canada...
-Pot grows in basements.

Yeah. I've been thinking about comedians. Comedy is tricky. You get up on a stage and talk about random stuff that people can relate to, but with a twist and in a really funny way. People can make anything funny if they just tell it the right way. I read this quote by the great comedian George Carlin:

New rule: just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you spiritual. It's right above the crack of your ass. and it translates to "beef with broccoli." the last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to god you weren't pregnant. you're not spiritual. You're just high.

It just cracks me up... Being funny seems so easy. 1. Get up on stage 2. Say something funny 3. people laugh. But have you ever seriously tried to write ten minutes worth of funny things to say? Like a short stand-up routine? It's freakin' impossible. You walk around all day with your head boiling with ideas, you see all kinds of things you think would be hilarious if you just wrote it down, and you're absolutely convinced you're going to become the next Robin Williams. But the instant you get home and find a pen and paper to write stuff down, your mind goes completely empty and you feel like a tourist in the sahara desert with a map made of sand paper. No clue whatsoever. Why is it so hard to write stuff down? You can talk to people on the phone or over a meal for hours on end, and sometimes you even feel like you've reached a really clever conclusion about something (which you of course can't remember the following day), but just try sitting down and writing something really clever. You know, the kind of thing you can put up on your website so you can nudge people and proudly say "Hey, how's it going. Oh, by the way, I'm the guy who wrote that." You'll draw a complete blank. It's like Murphy's law. Things will always go to hell in exactly the way they can.

So why is it so hard? Maybe I can't be hilariously funny because I don't really have that much to say? I don't really talk all that much, generally. Doesn't seem right, I think everyone has things to say. Some people go ahead and say it, while others don't. I don't know why the people who don't, don't. Maybe they think that what they have to say isn't interesting enough for someone to want to listen to. I dunno. Things don't have to be interesting to be funny, nor funny to be interesting. Sometimes things don't even need to be interesting to be worth reading or listening to. Someone might want to read it anyway. Take this blog entry, for example. I bet this probably isn't the funniest or most interesting thing you've ever read. But you still read this far, didn't you? So there.

Cats are often funny. And ducks. According to a survey, jokes are always funnier if they have ducks in them instead of other animals. Go figure...

About Manda

2006-08-23T04:20:00.000+02:00

So, some of the more avid readers out there (Ha!) might have noticed that a person named Manda sometimes posts really bitchy comments to my blog entries. I figured I might introduce her, as she is definitely a person worth introducing.

Manda lives in St Paul, MN, and is my best friend. I've known her for over eight years now, which is a lot longer than I've known any of the other people I call friends. She was also my girlfriend for about two years, but long distance relationships suck ass. We broke up on good terms, she has a new boyfriend now and we're still best friends.

Manda is crazy. Nuts, bonkers, insane, deranged, kooky and batty. And in a very interesting way, too. The first time I met her was at a music camp at the International Peace Gardens, on the border between North Dakota and Manitoba. I got to know her because she decided that since she hadn't gotten to know any of the foreign kids in the previous years she had attended that camp, she would by golly do so now. So one lunch break she confronted me, backed me into a corner by standing too close to me and staring at me, then started talking to me. I was completely freaked out by this loon at first, but then I noticed she was really cool and we became friends. I've talked to her on the phone quite a lot during the past eight years. In fact, I have probably spent ridiculous amounts of money on phonecards to talk to her. She is the reason I have a vaguely North Dakotan dialect when I speak English.

So if she posts mean or insulting comments to my posts, it's not because she's being a bitch. It's because she knows me really, really well, and well... is being a bitch to me, but in a friendly way.

In other news, I saw Bon cop, bad cop tonight. A lot better than I though it would be, though some of the dialog was kind of clichéed. But it was hilarious. I'll leave it at that. If you want a longer review of the movie, check out Matrixdancers blog. I'm going to bed now, I'm fuckin' tired...

Escalade

2006-08-22T05:00:00.001+02:00

I went climbing again today with Antoine, it was great fun. I almost made it up a 5.08. I had to stop and rest halfways and try a couple of times, but I got up. Next time I'm going to climb it without cheating, I hope. So much fun! Ha!

I finally have a bike. One of the German testers at work is going back to Germany on wednesday so he sold me his bike. Coolness. It's going to save me a lot of time. He also seems to have taken really good care of it and adjusted the brakes and gears. Judging by what little I've ridden it so far, it's in a whole lot better shape than the new bikes I've tried, even though they're the exact same kind of bike. Excellent deal. Thanks, Gabriel! And good luck in Germany!

My friend in Sweden sent me this link, check it out. It's about how to make a Kiwi dessert.
http://www.jhn.se/images/kiwi.jpg

Rain rain rain

2006-08-21T05:33:00.000+02:00

Today was a really nice and relaxed Sunday. It rained pretty much all day, I think it's the first time since I got here that that has happened. There was a thunderstorm at around one pm, but it didn't last very long.

I stayed home all day and spent about four hours on skype with my friend in Sweden. Oh, man... She's intelligent, funny, interesting, not to mention one of the most beautiful people I've met. And we have so much in common, I would think we were twins if I didn't know better...

Damn you, academy of music, damn you very much!

Ok, so that might need some clarification.

Before coming to Quebec, I applied for a teachers program at the Malmö academy of music. The program was set to start in January 2007, so I had to figure out something to do between graduating from the performance program in May and going back to school in January, assuming that I got in. So I looked around on the net, trying to find some kind of job. I found the ad from Enzyme testing labs. They were looking for linguistic testers with skills in scandinavian languages. I applied and got the job. This was at the end of May and the job would require me to start working on June 15th. Not knowing if I had gotten in at the teachers program, and even if I did, it still being 8 months away, I took the job and moved to Sainte-Adele, thinking I could always apply for the teachers program again after I get back to Sweden. If I go back to Sweden. All good and dandy. But about a month after coming here, I receive a letter from the academy in Malmö, saying that I was accepted to the program, and that they had moved the program to start ahead of time in August this year instead of six months later in January.

Words can not explain the explosion of rage that went through my mind that particular moment.

If the people at the academy had just let me know six weeks earlier that I got in and that the program was starting in August instead, I would not have come to Quebec. I would have stayed in Sweden and gone back to school instead. I could have stayed home, living in my own apartment, having a nice and relaxed summer vacation until school started. I could have gone to the Urkult festival with friends, and to the Medieval week festival on Gotland. And I could have spent the entire summer hanging out with this wonderful girl! Oh, cruel fate, pray tell: why dost thou torment me so? Oh, woe is me!

"Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord,
A bluidy man I throw thou be;
For mony a heart thou has made sair
That ne'er did wrang to thine or thee!"

Robert Burns, from Lament for Culloden

Storm damage in Sweden

2006-08-20T21:53:00.000+02:00

A friend sent this link to me. Check it out!

http://www.sterilecreed.com/weather/