Today was groovy, upshot of the meeting (conducted munching bread and cheese, sitting on big pink beanbags) is that I'm off to Germany on Tuesday to be brought up to speed on a new project, all good. Plus I got more hours on some other projects as well, nice.

Well, this weekend will not see much of a blog nor monday either (I suspect) as it is Pingst (Pentecost) and we have the day off. Thus off to the Summer house, hazzah.

this gets better and better, I love the idea of the powder being called Forbid...further down the page someone talks about 'spanking their dog', please tell me someone else finds this funnyI have a 7 month old male Chihuahua, he eats his POOH!!!He... - Q&A

The schools are all finishing for the summer so the streets are becoming full of teenagers finishing their last year at high school. This means the wearing of white suits, or evening dress, sailor caps and lots of champagne - mixed with driving around the streets in open top cars, trucks and trailers - all jolly good fun.

Off to Copenhagen tommorow for a meeting which is nice, travelling across the bridge on a train, can life get any more exciting.


Just the first sentence had me laughing, but thats just me....I particularly like the bit about pineapple chunks, how do they know? Did someone test it? and how do you make feces (sic) more distasteful. My Pet Eats Really Strange Stuff

More lanquage course, usual line up of insane people, teacher with dangerous with dry and dangerous sense of humour, yep. All feels pretty normal to me. Amusing situation when the Irish girl ran through the alphabet and the teacher, after listening to her a talk a bit more, asked her if she would like to move up to the next class, suddenly every one who could speak a sentence was asking if they could move up too! I stocially stayed silent, dammit, I want to learn the alphabet again.

Woke up feeling a bit rough, either its lactose intolerance (finally), the chicken from last night or I'm getting a cold. I may even cancel climbing this evening, how mature is that!

weather: chilly and overcast.
last book: Timescape by Gregory Benford, old school science fiction from the Scifi masterworks series. Pretty good.
last movie: some dreadful shit with Tommy Lee Jones (was he born looking old) and a few minutes of Tango and Cash. That reminds me, finally saw Copland all the way through, very good and Stallones actually acting.


interesting and quite patrioticDoctor Who vs. Star Trek

Just a quick update on the new lanquage course, lots of new faces including Croats, Serbs, Nigerians, Hungerians, Londoners, Irish and Americans - once again all of lifes rich tapestry. Now this is a free course, sponsored by the Swedish government, and it seems to be really good. Nice teachers and free pencils, hoorah. The teacher explained where we lie, at present, on the A to D scale of learning Swedish. We can write and read our own Language so we automatically move to B, where we'll be assessed over the next few weeks (I guess) and then maybe moved up if required. Amazingly if you come as an imigrant to Sweden without being able to write or read your own lanquage they will teach you, for free, before you then learn Swedish - how cool is that.

On the bus on the way to Lernia (which is where I'm being taught) heard an English voice so kept an ear open to hear a fellow brit....Jesus, moaning about how shit the buses were here and how in London you did not get barged into or knocked about by people getting on or off...yeah, right, like maybe if your're dreaming and not actually on a real bus....so, this guys annoying me already because nothing sounds worse than a whinging pom, especially one who seems to assume that nobody understands him and then when someone gets onto the bus wearing a top with an English flag he's like, whys he wearing that, whys a Swede wearing the English flag etc etc. Numbnuts. Well, thats my moan out of the way - just a grumpy old bugger I expect, but hey, its a living. Incidentally, the moaning brit is in my punishment wardrobe, he's been there for a while now...........

kinda funny in that mad way people get when they can put any old shit on the internetT33n G1rl Squ4dx0rx!!

Monday. Day of Mon, the Greek God of Dough, Plant Pots and Aubergines.

Well, I should have been in Swedish III this morning but after waking up horribly early (after being up horribly late helping K format her thesis) got a phone call from the organisers saying it was postponed due to sickness of the teacher - bugger. Presumably they've got a bad case Stockholm Syndrome (see below). The weekend was very triumphant, started to get a tan after lolling in the sun for more than a few hours. Actually, it was about as loll worthy as I can get, so mowing the lawn of the summerhouse, working out in the rocky gym and running down the beach were all involved, one day I'll be able to sit still for more than a few minutes. Just spent the last hour trying to figure out how to get a Swedish driving licence, not too complicated and the pathway to learning to drive is pretty similar to the UK. I.e, permit (provisional) and then onwards to test and full licence. Only main difference is having an eyesight test before you even get into a car, not just a few minutes before your test as in the UK-I always thought that seemed a bit strange. Well up for learning to drive 4 wheels, after years of not being particularly bothered, after spending the weekend throwing K's mothers car around a beach - loads of fun!!

The other lanquage news is, however, that I will start my free government course this afternoon - its a 48 week course, every afternoon for 4 hours, crikey. Should be interesting to see what its like, probably a good mix of people on it.

Radio 4 is the background, the weather is overcast and the flat is a little chilly.

yeah well, this is something which Sweden gave back to the world - if you're at all interested in the dynamics of a hostage situation that isThe Peace Encyclopedia: The Stockholm Syndrome

So it was Ascension day yesterday and being a good Lutherian country we got the day off yesterday, which was nice. This has the added benefit of today being a 'squeeze' day (yep, the Swedes have a specific word for the day between a bank holiday and the weekend) which means that things are pretty quiet today to. We wandered off to the Summerhouse yesterday and then zoomed back for work today - I did not have so much, just database work but was all cool. Off to Copenhagen next week to meet the rest of the team and have a slap up meal, should be good. Copenhagen is basically one very large pub.

It occured to me the other day that I have been here for over three months, (3 months and 9 days, to be exact) gosh - time flies like a very fast flying thing........

trevlig helg!!

music: Faith No More
Weather, 12 degrees, windy and sunny. Theres been some chuffing great windy storms over the last few days.
Indeed....Kill Your Television

Why can I not stop thinking about Mork and Mindy?

more to come, but bloody hell - I hope this gets released in Sweden!
working title films official website

So, today saw the end of Svenska III. I only turned up to say good bye to fellow students as I've been working the last few days and had to leave early today as well. So farewell then, to P the Rumenian, P the Thai Mud Wrestler (titta ye not, its the truth) and I, the crazy turkish pizza maker. I'll be seeing some of the others at Svenska III in Malmö, which starts next week. Yeah, such is my thirst to understand what the hell people are saying about me that I'm repeating the course. No, its not because I'm a retard but the last one was supposed to last 4 weeks but instead only ran for two - hence the repeat. And today was my last lesson for a week or so at the school, after the tour de force of yesterday I found today really hard work, but never mind. Its the 12 years old next, should be fun. Going back to Svenska III for a minute, T, the Russian Au-paire was going to do course III but told me today that her family, as in the one she works for, decided that she did not need to - fair enough she works for them but it all sounds a bit too much like slavery to me. 'decided' indeed. Presumably they have her passport locked away in a nice safe place to.


Check out some of the MPEGs on this site, awesome sparks and stuff blowing up - perfect Plus, who can resist the title - Three Phase Disconnect Switch Opening Hot! High Voltage Sparks and Arcs, yeah and while we're on the geek phase of today let me point you towards Ghost Stations which is something that has always intrigued me.

In response to a few comments recently, note the above picture from the fine anime show Battle of the Planets. Please note that you can clearly see, as a result of princess wearing a very short skirt, the merest hint of knickers. Observing this does, in no way, make me some kind of freak (unlike the recently mentioned obcessive of breasts in the Day the Earth caught fire). C'mon you can't miss them - through me a bone here will ya! 

Oh yeah, this is the film I was trying to remember the other day
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) quality stuff, as I searched around the web for this I found a site where some strange sweaty person had devoted an entire site to a scene where you get a glimpse, and I mean just a peep, of Janet Munros breasts, odd to say the least.

After classes today, which were fun but my best group - the ones doing a marine biology module - were all rehearsing a play so did not turn up I wandered my way through the sunny streets of Malmö to the Nya Invandrare (new immigrants) job office to register myself in the system. I was very proud of myself as I managed to do most of the conversation in Swedish but managed to say, at point, rather than 'will you send me a letter' , 'will you shit me a letter', I think. Most amusing.
Yep, no pictures today, just good old fashioned text - we'll see how the new look feels. Still yet to get rid of the pop ups though.

Weather: 19+, sunny and blue skies.
Most recent movie: Madness of King George, bloody great it is.
Bizarre and quite funny, and also an example of viral advertising.....
Subservient Chicken

Most recent book: Memories of Ice, another truly awesome hack and slay saga - with more than a little wit and black humour thrown in. 

So, some format changes as well, don't know how long this one will last for but it will do for the minute. I think I like it. Perhaps some font changes, ahh, endless timewasting pleasure.

and did not that work rather well.......so, more picture fun in the future.

Something of a test this, just to see what happens....... 

Now this does not look half bad, I was really into the old style disaster moving starting from when I saw the, Jesus, forgotten the name...well, old black and white movie about two nuclear tests being conducted simultanously on opposite sides of the planet which throws it closer to the sun, fantastic stuff. Later on I was really into things like Earthquake and the Towering inferno. Yeah this movie will be effects riddled and the characters most likely reduced to shambling hulks of rotting cardboard but never mind, we want to see big waves and stuff.
TDAT High
Also looking interesting is Shaolin Soccerwhich seems to me the perfecy cure to Pitt taking himself way to seriously in the massacre of the Iliad, furthermore two comic book characters have wandered there way into celluloid heaven, Hell Boyand The Punisher which, as is usual for comic book translations to cinema are getting mixed reviews. Punisher looks like pants where as Hellboy looks fantastic, which is fine by me as I never really liked punisher anyway - I prefer my superheroes to be, well, super.

Well, the week staggers to a close, and I find myself stumbling like Willem Defoe at the end of Platoon out of the blackboard jungle, my clothing in tatters and my morals damaged. Yes, I've been supply teaching and have found new levels of respect for teachers. The life of the supplier is a strange one, an unfamiliar face in the teachers rum you are treated with mild contempt, a lackey if you will. They know you can smell the bitterness, and they know that you will soon escape-free from the tyranny of marking and adolescent filth. I've actually been lecturing on chemistry, which is a joke (given that I only remembered how to draw a benzene ring minutes before the class began) but the kids seemed to like the stuff on Polar Bears changing sex from PCB exposure - all good clean fun. I've also been working in my new role as an assistant web administrator and business support person up at the science park - lots of fun but very PC intense, not so keen to surf when I get home which is why the blog has not been so regular.

You see Bruce Willis character names don't even come close, John McClane (Die Hard 1,2 and 3) is cool, but the rest, Joe Hallenbeck (Last boy scout) is instantly forgettable......see.....whereas Harry Stamper (Armageddon) is, like the movie, just trying too hard.
Arnie, well, given that in some of his movies his name is his job description (Terminator, Mr Freeze) he's just not trying but, and its a big but, he does come close to Seagal like style with John Matrix (Commando), Dutch Schaeffer (Predator) and Douglas Quaid (Total Recall).


Look, I don't know why but it makes me laugh - and who buys stain resistant trousers, and do they admit it. "yes, these trousers are stain resistant, so handy during those intimate moments in the adult cinema" - never sit next to the man with a hat on his lap, thats what my dad said.
Men's > Dress Pants > Pleat Front - Lands' End

Without question Steven Seagal (him of the very quiet derision attracting ponytail and soft 'acting' voice, oh yeah, and the ability to pop your eyeballs out and crack your teeth with one buttock) has had the honour of some of the best action hero names, check it out.....Austin Travis (Execeutive Decision (notable as well as he karks it within the first 30 minutes-bravo, well done that man), Casey Rybeck - now theres a name, played twice in Under Sewage and Under Sewage 2. But these all pale into insignificance compared to the name which is Forrest Taft, the name of the film was ironically, On Dangerous Ground....I'll say. Oh yeah, the final one has to be Mason Storm...please stop it, my sides are hurting.

Come back Snake Pliskin, all is forgiven.




Last watched: an episode of buffy, the really cool one where their voices all get stolen by the freaky toothy floating guys - cut to hell though on the early slot.
weather: nice and sunny
something....
BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Swedish army underpants are MIA

Something of a phenomenon here is the use of Snus, a ground tobacco project if you want to be exact (check out
snus, swedish snus, sweden snus, swedish snuff for more information). Yep, the Swedes really like their Snus. For the uninitated its a fast delivery system of nicotine without having the irratation of lung cancer or heart failure. It comes in two forms, one is a little teabag like thingy which is inserted beside the gum (though contact with any membrane is probably sufficient though under the eyelid or up the rectum would probably sting a little) and the other is the black tar like stuff which is its true form. The latter is squidged between the fingers into a little pellet before being pushed between upper lip and gum, giving the user a kind of rat boy appearance. The advantages of this is that the user has none of the negative aspects of fagging (shivering in office doorways, setting fire to the bed or yellow fingers) while still getting their nicotine fix. I've seen chaps down the climbing wall using the stuff as they send another gnarly 6c problem, trying doing that with a fag on the go. Possibly as a result Sweden is the only country which has acheived the World Health Organisations goal of bringing its share of smokers down to less than 20% of the population. Further more, half of the Snus users are former smokers.

Now, in good old blighty and indeed in the rest of Europe Snus was banned because of the fear of the risk of mouth cancer. Now, if this were the case the one would expect to see half the population here shuffling around with half their face missing but this does no appear to be the case. Swedish deaths from lung, larnyx, mouth and bladder cancer are the lowest in Europe, which must be in some part attributable to the lower numbers of smokers, who have turned to Snus as a means of getting their nicotine. At the end of the day, if you introduce anything to your body which you know can affect it is not a good thing, but it seems strange to me that Snus, which would seem to be a safer alternative to fags is not made more commonly available. Something to think about. Here endeth the sermon.

music: none
last book: Ethal and Ernest by Raymond Briggs - same chap who did 'when the wind blows' and 'the snowman'. Very moving, very good.
weather: raining a little

well bollocks to it, no html then.

annoyingly, none of my links works-heres something close to what was supposed to be there.....

Woke up well nostalgic today, hence....The suns shining today, its 22 degrees and as I ate my lunch in the park, my back to the warm stone of the DomKryka I reflected largely on beetroot and meatballs, which I was eating at the time.
This afternoon involved me learning the new website and figuring out how to update it, its all pretty straightforward and my new chef (boss in English) seemed pretty happy - which makes me happy to!
No running this evening as my achilles is flaring up a little so more ab-glutes (probably the best exercise in the world for making you guff) and ultimate rules yoga.
So, a little more on Malmö and its environs. A good starting point is the bridge, all 7.85 Kms of it which stretches from southern Malmö to Denmark, about 5km east of Copenhagen. gives you an idea of what it looks like. It has trains and cars and the good people of the Oresund region use it every day, singing as they do so.

Today Swedish II ended, but never mind theres no need to panic as Swedish III begins tommorow......lawks a mussy, more adjective fun. Two casualties won't join us, one of them being my fellow expat which is a bit of a shame as the railway journey into Lund will now be a bit boring and lonely, but hey, thats okay, as I'll have Oinky the talking sock to keep me company.

I had a meeting this afternoon to discuss my impending work as a supply teacher, interesting. It seems I will be entertaining a bunch of kids with practical science experiments such as making soap, hmmmm.
Popped across to Denmark for dinner this evening in Kopenhamn to meet the parents before they had back to blighty tommorow, good to see them again.
More work tommorow as well with the biotech support job, I've been familarising myself with their internet site to which I have full admin access, spent a good twenty minutes of palm sweating fun when i thought I'd totally, and irrevocably, fucked it up - but no, managed to get away with it.

Recent book: Steven Erikson, House of Chains, bloody great. Lots of hacking and slaying.
weather:how can I tell, its dark...
music:none, but background television of some truly awful teen movie
Lazy I know, but still worth a look...more well found gems later
NEWS of the WEIRD - Current News

just a quickie.

the firefestival to scare winter away was cool, we arrived late and did not see the lighting of the bonfire nor the traditional songs but the subsequent lightshow was very cool. Imagine a clearing in the woods with about 2000 odd swedes, bloody great searchlights, strange trance music and a huge great fire and you get the idea.

saw a bonkers art exhibition yesterday by a Bulgarian chap called Nedko Solakov, bloody funny!

music: none, though I did listen to the Archers earlier, can someone please shoot that pretend geordie woman in it, 'oooooohhhhh Davidddd the cows have got mastitus again.......'
weather: splendid, just been sitting in the sun doing my Svenska homework
sorry sorry sorry, I'm probably going to hell....
LordCo Centre