Comparison no.2

Ok it is time for another comparison. This time it is a bit harder. When i lived in Poland I was struck with the (i'm sorry to say) lack of fashion sense. There was just too many bad looking for it to be a coincidence. With this is mind I thought it was going to be easy to judge but then i saw this, last time i went to a restaurant in Sweden:

So compared to Poland:

Then I'm not really sure anymore, a tie or if it's even 1 - 0 to Poland on this one.

Killer snails

Irony is one of the highest forms of humor. Especially when it come unexpectedly.
Swedens gardens is suffering of a plague called "the killer snails" (mördarsniglar) it is brown snails that eats everything, really everything in their way. It has gone so far now that the issue has been brought up in congress on how to get ride of them.

This summer I went to the botanical garden in Gotenburg. And this is what I saw, a tribute to irony.

Comparison no.1

Now that I'm back in Sweden, I can't help but compare Poland or should I say Warsaw to Sweden (Linköping in this case). I compare everything and in the back of my mind I keep track on plus and minuses for each country.
There are a lot of plus for Poland of course but just since I have picture evidence I will focus on one negative thing in particular that differs Poland from Sweden. And I know people might think but hey you can't compare a 2 million city with a 100 000 city, but I don't care I will.

The thing is toilette manner. I could never get use to the toilette manner in Poland, to be frank it was disgusting. And me being on several festivals with the worst toi toi (baja-major) ever should know. I have written a post about this before but to remind my small but faithful group of reader I will post the picture again of one normal sight in night clubs in Warsaw:

Ok so this is Swedens contribution:

Sorry Poland but this time it is 1-0 to Sweden

IKEA my second home

In Poland it became evident that I was missing Sweden like crazy, so I started to hang out on IKEA just to feel like a proud Swede once again. You must admit that it is pretty pretty cool that IKEA is such a big company from such a small country.
Anyway now that I'm back from Poland I still treat IKEA as a family member, I try to go there every Sunday to have my Sunday dinner there, and when I'm there I normally go around and touch the tables and sit in the chairs just to say.... -hi!
But now it feels like IKEA have entrapped me in a deal that I'm not really sure of. I do not really need anything from IKEA and I'm kind of a poor student but I got this cupon that gives me 150 kr off if i buy for 500 kr. I kind of have to spend those money I mean who wouldn't want to have more memories of their family at home but at the same time....mmm IKEA should have known not to trick me in to something like that....

What the f**k I'm sorry but what am I talking about. Had nothing to do so I thought of writing a post but this, this is just crazy and I study to be a psychologist I should know crazy...
Never mind, there is like three people that ever read this blog (including me) so I can just write what ever I want.
Over and out

A wedding for Tom

It is strange how time change. How you go from pitch black and white to some sort of gray scale.
An old friend accidentally reminded me of an old favorite singer that I had forgotten.
I remember when i bought his record, I was strolling down the shop street of Gothenburg and I had some time to kill so I went in to a record store. There is was a record that was quite modest. It was a picture in black en white (ahh nice symbolism) of a guy. I ask to listen to it and ahhh was blown away. I never get that blown away nowadays. It was soft music with hard lyrics that pinched me right in my adolescent soul. No one I knew at the time had ever heard of him, his name was Tom Mcrae. I kept him secret, he was only for me, and a swore a pact with myself that I would marry the first guy that new of Tom Mcrae....
It was that simple back then, if they knew and liked Tom Mcrae then they must be like me, know me, feel me.
I remember my dissapointment when it turned out that my new found boyfriend didn't knew of Tom. It ended our relationship, me and my boyfriends, maybe not becaus of that, but it had definatly something to do with it.
We, me and that ex are best friends now eventhough this was about 5 years ago, and we have talked about my black and whiteness after that. It was frightening for him, my eagerness to judge people only on their music taste. I'm not like that anymore. Still I miss that sometimes, life was so romantic back then. So much broken hearts and melancholy, so much tears so refreshing.
Life is good today, I have noticed that there is so much more to a guy then music, but I still miss it sometimes.

Written under the Influence of Tom Mcrae - first album

I did it my way

And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain. My friend I'll say it clear, yes it is decided I have moved from Warsaw. Instead of Warsaw I have now settled down in a small town in Sweden called Linköping. First time that I will live in a really small city (that does not have snow with off-pist areas). It is a big change and all in the name of psychology.
It turned out the the European Union had not come that far considering education over boarders after all. Staying in Warsaw for five years could have meant that I wouldn't be able to practice psychology in Sweden, and I'm the first to admit that Sweden may not be the best country in the world, with its cold weather and high suicide statistics but still it is my home country and I want to be able to live and work here if I please.
But that doesn't mean that I wont miss Warsaw, me new found love. It took a long while until I fell for this city but when I fell, I fell hard.

So good bye Metro Ratusz who welcomed my sorry ass every morning late for class. You always made me wait for bus 35 extra long time so that I got even later but had time to catch my breath while waiting.

Good bye ohh you ugly school that had so much history inbuilt in every stone. First time I saw you I hoped that I had gone wrong but your squeeky stairs and your good awful smell from the Bufet still took my heart.

Good bye you graffiti on the wall, that caused so much drama, so nice to realize where the focus of my fellow students where, on a graffiti painting!! Gone where the battle for a easy transfere to the Swedish system wich would make us be able to practice in Sweden, gone where the battle for a more fair school, but on with the battle for a good graffiti.....?

Bye bye all you beautiful looking people in Warsaw that was so fun to take pictures of.

Good bye to the coolest school library I have ever seen, with its fantastic garden on the roof.

Good bye you cheep good tasting beer, who I miss every day. Sweden has nothing on the polish beer. To bad you are so heavy so that I couldn't bring to much home with me, or too bad that the airplanes only have 20 kilos limit on the bags (all though I manage to get in 5 kilos extra by smart thinking...).

And a last good bye to all the old people that kept me so facinating with their stamina and "out-walking-gettin-angry-if-I-didn't-stood-up-on-the-tram-for-them" mentality.

I will miss it all, my Warsaw, my love, see you soon I hope.

Written under the influence of Frank Sinatra - My way

Absentness

Things has been just crazy for me for a while now, no internet, new town bla bla... I will write something more extravagant when I have settled down... I hope.

But while my absentness, here you are:

They mess you up your mom and dad
They may not meen to but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you

I want to stay naive

I'm at my job with nothing much to do so I thought to my self, why not write a post...and why not writing about something that has to do somehow with my work. Makes me feel like I'm kind of doing something useful instead of just sitting here and eating grapes.

I didn't think I was that naive, in fact some people have said that I am too cynical for my own good, but here at my job I'm constantly reminded of how naive I am.
I am working with drug addicts, and today a client and I was talking about this and that. He said that his main drug was crack, to be honest I didn't really know what it was so I had to look it up on wikipedia- thank you wikipedia (or wicki as one of my colleges call it) for excisting!
Outside our house are some kids, they are around 13-14 years old. We talked to our clients about them, if they knew who they were, and they told us that they are drug dealers trying to sell drugs...13! I hadn't even got drunk for the first time then!!!
Watching shows from Hollywood I actually think that what happens in the States stays there, but apparently not, stories are told about kids with blank eyes getting high on heroin in my neighborhood, where did youth go??
I didn't think i had to go cynical in this area as well...

Written under the influence of Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Its been gay week on channel 5 here in Sweden. One of the shows thats been on is "Queer as folk" a really good show, empowering not only for gays but for us strait as well, there are more than one way to have a different life style than most people, and you don't need to be gay to have that.
There has been some shows about "faghags" as well, never thought it was such a thing to be a faghag. I just thought that some people happens to have gay friends, others don't. But apparently it is a trend, or has become one after the show "Will & Grace".
So where is the attraction in being a faghag?
By the way they never talked about being a "dikehag" so i guess thats not existing.
Anyway why being a faghag?
I started to think about it; is the two sexes so far apart that we hardly do not know anything about each other, if so, maybe it is easier to approach the male society in the shape of someone that is stripped away from the heterosexuality. Someone that you can get to know in peace and quiet without the stress of putting out?
One women in this documentary I saw about faghags (who had "converted" a gay man, and was now married to him) said that it is so nice to live with a gay man, he treat me as an equal, he treat me as a gay man. Is it that hard for women to find equality in a heterosexual relationship. It makes me angry sometimes to think about it, that we women need to fight for an equal relationship.
I myself have found both sorts of guys, equal and unequal, and I have to my surprise found myself bragging about my equal boyfriend as though I have hit the jackpot instead of taken the equality for granted.
I see no reason against hanging out with gay friends, hell why don't we all embrace each other in a big hug. But it is sad if a women only can find equality in a relationship with a gay man and not with strait men.

Written under the influence of the splendid ending of "Queer as folk"

More power to queer shows, and more power to couples that fight to be equal in this unequal world.

When I know I'm wrong I'll say I'm wrong...

...said once a strickt father to his daughter, when he had been wrong about her boyfriend in a little movie called Dirty Dancing.

And I need to agree, I once lashed out on the way old people are treated and enjoying themselves in Sweden. Thinking it was just a wish to die after reaching a specific age because of the way they are treated here.

Well sometimes even I can be wrong, happens rarely though...and sometimes old people can enjoy life even in Sweden, this picture is a proof of that. I took it on my way to work.


Written under the influence of She's like the wind - Patrick Swayze

Handling a kayak

A friend of mine, my better "outdoors half" have been consistently nagging me about taking a kayak course so that we finally will be able to enjoy the west-coast of Sweden as it is intended to be enjoyed.
The course starts of at land, he goes really in to detail about everything, I now know the different models of kayaks, paddles, holes in the kayak to get in to it, appliances to the kayak, different maos of the sea...needles to say I felt as though I was back in school and my whole body screamed noooooo...until I realized that there will not be a test on this, no one will require me to write a 5000 words paper on this, I do not need to find any recent research or be critically assessing what he is saying...if I want to I can even stop listening and don't give a sh**t at all. It was such a relief to realize that, not so fun to realize that I am suffering from a post traumatic stress disorder because of my last semester though...
Anyway the course goes on and after a very long time on the beach it is time to finally jump into the kayak and try it out in the ocean. It is exhausting!!
While paddling my friend, even have time to look at the nice rocks sticking out from the ocean. I'm sweating like a pig, gasping for air trying not to steer my kayak right into the rocks. Our instructor then thinks it is time for us to start using the rudder (I have by then thought that we have been using it all the time!!) I put it in to the water and all of a sudden I'm just spinning, round and around:
- Press the right pedal
- The right pedal!
- Now left, no not so much
- Right again
My instructor had a busy time with me, he said that I was one of the first who said that it was easier without a rudder...
So moving on in the course it is time for the "friend rescue", one of us falls into the water, the other one holds on to the kayak so that the friend can jump into it again, needless to say me and my friend was not really a success, when trying to rescue my friend I tipped over as well. She was better at it though.
So it all worked out for the best, my friend will be terrified of tipping over the kayak next time we will go out, while I can be sure she will be able to rescue me :)

Me

My friend

Present time

A retrospection

My mom and me

In school I have just finished a course called Devolpmental 3, in it we talked about the importance with lullabyes for infants to feel connected to the mother, and the society it will grow up in.
I started to think about that, how was my mom to me when i grew up?
And then it just hit me why I study psychology...

In Sweden we have these nice lullabuyes; about Olle going to the forrest to pick berrys and finds a friendly bear there, or about a sqirrel jumping from tree to tree I guess you get the picture...
Well my mom sang song to me about this really sick girl who lies at the hospital an every day askes the doctor if she can go home to her mother, when one winter day "the snow falls over the little girls grave, she never saw her mother, she never saw her father", or the other favorite she sang to me about the rose of the alps, a spoiled girl would not fall in love with anyone except the one who picked now the rose of the alps for her, so a man tries and falls to his death, just inches away from picking the rose...

Hmm so anyone still wonders why I study psychology...

Written under the influence of singing I en sal på lasarettet in the shower.

Nuns; a rare kind!

I am so fascinated by nuns, in Sweden one of the most atheistic countries in the world (thank god for that!) we are not spoiled with nuns. Even though I'm not a big fan of religion, and all the hazzle it makes (against abortion, against homosexuals, against psychology, loves double standards) I love the nuns. For me it is one of the most exotic things in Poland.
Now I have even noticed that they have different kind of clothes, brown, grey, black. If i were a nun, I would definitely chose the convent who have black dresses and a purple rope around their waist, it just matches so perfectly.
Since they are so exotic for me I'm always surprised when i see them do ordinary things, like going to IKEA, talking in their cell-phone or being at a shopping mall. I tried to capture some of them here.

Nuns on IKEA
Nun at the busstop
Nuns at Arkadia

Does anyone see anything wrong with this picture?

Do you see an ordinary tram driver, driving us safely to our destination?

Or do you see a tram driver, reading the paper while driving...

...and taking a shot of Vodka now and then!

What is so frightening?

Feel free to comment if you think you know the answer or even disagree with me, but what the hell are we women so afraid off?
What are we so afraid of that we do not stand up as a unified group and demand equal rights of the rest of the society?
What are we afraid of losing and what are we afraid of gaining?
Is it not obvious that such a big group as half of the population should not have to have lower salary, work double as much both at home and at work then the other group.
Are women just to stupid? To scared? Are we not capable of organize us to a homogeneous group that demand such a self-evident thing as equal treatment?
I am ashamed to be a part of this, what are we so scared off?


Written under the influence of sleeplessness

Sweden - the equal society

Sweden this democratic, equal society...
He he yeah, I wish. The nurses is on strike now, thousands of them because this equal country can't seem to understand the value of female professions and therefore take for granted that they should be paid less then most other occupations.
But on the surface Sweden really wants to keep up the illusion of being an equal country, now they will even make female way marks on the roads, which actually is kind of funny and yeah why not, but please don't just be equal on the surface, my dear old Sweden.


Written under the influence of a heavy headache and a stiff neck.

A student's lunch

Six feet under

To you lucky bastards who still haven't lived together with this show, and therefore have a six feet under-lifetime ahead of you, watch it. The reality of the show is frighteningly real.

Thank my genes for blond hair

I may have blond moments sometimes, but they have taught me some valuable lessons on how to get out of difficult situations, so they are not all bad.
I'm a student of Warsaw University and therefor I'm entitled to a discount on the train, though this is only valid until you are 26 and well I'm not anymore. So when my parents visited me we decided to check out a town called Torun, and of course i bought a student ticket.
The women on the train checking tickets came, saw my ticket and student pass and started speaking polish in an angry voice. I didn't understand a thing but a friendly young guy told me that since I was older then 26 I had to pay to cost of a normal ticket.
I played of course dumb saying sure I will I didn't understand what was written on the student card about 26 bla bla.
So we go to Torun, a beautiful city by the way.

We are there for the day (not so big city) and when we are satisfied we go to buy train tickets home to Warsaw. I tell mom and dad that I can't possibly be that unlucky to have the same women controlling the tickets on the train again so I buy a student ticket.
Well I guess you can imagine what happened, of course it was the same women, she looks at me then looks at the ticket.
Ohh wait I shouldn't start there, we didn't find any seats in the train so we sat down in first class and there is where she finds us, dads asleep, me and mom comfortable reading in the nice cabin.
So back to the look she gave me, well it is not a friendly look, as you can imagine.
She starts talking in a fast and angry polish voice. I don't understand much but I understand that she says something about - I give you one chance but not two.
I think this is it, I see big fines flashing before my eyes, she wants me to come with her to a special room...
But i keep my cool, sits there and wait for her, don't really know what will happen.
So finally she comes back with two girls who knows English, and i tell them in my most blond voice that I wanted to by a normal ticket but "the lady in the ticket box looked at me and must have thought I was a student so she gave me a student ticket all though I said to her to give me a normal ticket" (helpless blue eyes looking at the ticket lady)
She melts when she hears this very incredible and unbelievable story, smiles to me, we get some kind of connection going on and she only makes me pay up to the amount of a normal ticket, which for me is a very good deal.
Once again my blond hair saves me, thank you.

Written under the influence of Leonard Cohen - Morning Glory

Old people

Old people are rare in Sweden. We have a tendency to lock them in to hospital like rooms, force them to go to bed at five so that the staff has time to put them all to bed before they go home from work. When you get old in Sweden you cannot take for granted that you can live with your husband since 50 years because you and he might end up on different wards in this hospital like home. When you get old in Sweden you can forget about the sun against your face or the fresh air because you might not ever be taken out again in the open. When you are old in Sweden you get hid away, so that everyone forgets about you even your children. As soon as you end up on a home you should try to forget you have ever lived because this will just be a long and lonely wait for death.

That’s why it is so nice to go out in a park in Warsaw and see old people still enjoying life; I’m not used to that from Sweden.

Written under the influence of The Cinematic Orchestra - Music Box

The infinite distance

Don't let emergency training become your whole life.

J. Luber

The result

So after hard work and long arms, this is the result:

Swedish cinnamon buns

American chocolate chip cookies

Unfortunately the cookies won over the buns so USA vs. Sweden, 1-0 :(

Again with the blond moment

So I'm at the tram stop.
Have just been buying all these ingredients, cause me deer American friend will teach me how to make chocolate chip cookies.
I told her before i left for the store that i will call her and leave the ingredients at her place (the baking is not to take place until tomorrow).
My hands and arms are hurting from all the carrying and I'm so relieved that i will be able to get rid of the stuff at her place and not drag them all the way home to me.
So I call her, polish guy starts to talk in the phone, ahhh, annoying.
I call her again, still this polish guy.
I try sending her a message, the message fails to be sent.
I call her again, the polish GUY!!!
I get home, with arms as long as gorillas (or orangutans, or whatever animal that have long arms)
I try calling her to tell her that i will not show up at her tram stop, but again with the polish guy.
After half an hour she calls me and wonder where I am.
I tell her about the polish guy and that there must be something wrong with her phone. We talk about possible faults for quite some time, I call her again to see if anything have changed, but no, still the polish guy.
Then something hits me...
...I check the money on my sim-card
0 zl
Hmm....!!!

My camera is so cool!

Actual color of shorts

My cool cameras work: