Getting ready for some well earned R&R

Not long now... Another month, then I'm free. Not that I am in any way imprisoned at the moment, but I need at least a few weeks to chill and do absolutely nothing. This semester started out calmly enough, back to the old six hour weeks that I forgot existed. Then, a couple of weeks before Easter, all hell broke loose. Gone were the two or three lectures a week, instead we've been doing 9AM-4PM every single frickin' day. At least.

I'm not complaining, but I seriously don't understand how real people can function and manage full-time work, a family and/or a social life. Adjusting to getting up in time for school was hard enough, nevermind the actual work. For the last month or so we've been doing a television course, learning to shoot, produce and edit television-pieces, while still being journalists. Can't say I like it very much, too much to think about. Camera angles, lighting, editing, etc.

Almost had a breakdown because of it, mostly because I kept assuming responsibility for each group project we had. But I blame the other people in the group. One guy who was pretty good at shooting and editing, me - who did the on camera stuff and interviews, and the third guy, who is a total tool. Or no, I have no way of knowing if he actually is a tool, since he hardly speaks at all. Or does anything, for that matter. We tried our best to involve him, but he lacks any skill in communication, which can be pretty important if when doing something as a group. And he kept screwing up shots and stuff, so finally we just let him hold the camera when we weren't using it.

He still gets as much credit though. Anyway, the pieces turned out pretty well in the end. But yeah, no, TV isn't for me. Or well, it might in a professional setting, since I won't have to worry about every single thing.

It just takes too long. Our 8-hour days have turned into 10-12 hour days for the last couple of weeks, and I still have to be at the radio station a few nights a week to do the news and my show. It's really killing me. My free time during the weekdays consists of 4 or 5 hours a night of sitting on my couch. Staring at the wall, that sort of thing.

Oh yeah, I have a radio show now too. Me and a few others from the journalism class are doing a show on behalf of the Dean of the university. Nice guy. He wants to reach out to students or some such bullshit. Pretty fun though, and I love the fact that they wanted students who actually studied journalism to do the show, when all we're doing is basically ask fluffy questions about how good the university is. Whoring, is what it is, basically. But I don't mind, I'm not far enough along in my career to have principles. And I have a foot in with the dean, which can't be a bad thing.

And I now have my internship squared away for the fall. I was hoping to do my internship with the state radio channels, but those bastards totally stonewalled me, and didn't even bother to answer my e-mails. Funny, when I applied for a summer job there back in January, it was the same deal. Lots of other people at the student radio station at least got interviews, and me they didn't even answer. Not even a "thanks, but no thanks". Assholes. I'm gonna have to swallow my
contempt at some point though, if one wishes to be a radio journalist in this country, the state radio is the only option, since none of the commercial channels do anything remotely similar to journalism.

So no radio internship. I will, on the other hand, spend 10 weeks at the largest newspaper in southern Sweden, Sydsvenska Dagbladet. Really looking forward to that. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but they do have an local office here in Lund, and I might be dumped there. Which would save me alot of money for the commute. Not that money will be an issue. As I understand it, they'll be paying me half the starting salary, which is more than the student loans and grants. So I'll be pretty rich then, since I'll still be taking the loans. This will be a part of my studies, so shut up. Hoping to save up a little money, perhaps enough for a hop over the pond at Christmas?

Back to the student radio station. It turns out I won't be the news editor next year after all. They wanted me, but didn't feel comfortable with the fact that I'd be gone for the first 10 weeks of the fall semester. And I don't blame them, there's alot to do at the beginning of a semester, and I simply would not have had time for it. Unless I manage to give up sleep entirely. They told me that they'd get me in a years time, but hell, I might be long gone by then, considering that I graduate in late January. But who am I kidding, as if I'd be able to find a job. Most likely I'll be freelancing one way or the other, which leaves plenty of time for the student radio station. Even though I'll no longer be a student. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

All from me, for now. Watch out for crazed bunnies.

Working and knitting

So we haven't written anything for a while. As usual. But I guess that's just because we have at lot to do. I just saw Mats in the hall and he seemed to be directing someone from behind a camera. Big shot journalist who's going straight to CNN ... or something.

Anyway. I applied for another phd-position at our department and came in 2nd. Some may say that they hate coming in 2nd, just because it isn't 1st. But after reading a statement from the board saying it was a very close call and that the only thing that separated me from the "winner" was the fact that he's had more time to get things published, I was pretty content. It's just a matter of time before I get a few more things published (I hope), and if I did everything else right in my application, I'm happy. And it helps that the one who got it is one of my closest co-workers.

So hopefully I'll be staying at the department, working on other projects and with administrative things. I really like it here, and I'm not the type of person who likes jobs.

Apart from the world of working I don't really have anything new to report. Life moves on as always, and I stay happy about the small things, like spring weather, "The Daily Show" and having my poor mother help me with displaying my street art (if you can call it that). Check out the pictures below! (The first one is my favorite!)

I love knitting, and apparently my mother loves sneaking around in Lund at four in the morning, sewing my various knitted works onto the local infrastructure. The good thing about it is that it doesn't destroy what is underneath (like graffiti can do, although I mostly like graffiti). Rather, it protects what's underneath. Hope you like them!

Food, tree-decorating fights and tv marathons

Oh, my ... It's been a while since any of us has written anything here. Ah, well, we're getting older and more career-oriented I guess. Maybe Mats is starting to hate blogs in generel, becoming a journalist as he is.

And first of all: Congrats to the U.S. and their new prez, he has a lot to live up to, but he can (hopefully) hardly do more harm than Bush did.

Christmas was spent at the mother's, with the traditional food, tree-decorating fights and tv marathons. Nice cold weather, nature ... it was all very fitting for Christmas.

New Year's was, at least for me, spent at our apartment, where we hosted a small party with good food (always food), Guitar Hero (still the best game ever), drinking of course, and watching fire works outside in the cold, drinking fake champagne. It was also great.

After the holidays I started to panic a bit, since I started to think about all the stuff I have to do at work. I guess it's a sign of getting older and more mature. I can't say that I'm too fond of that part of it, though. Anyway, after I got some of the stuff squared away, it felt better. But for a while there I just wanted to stay a student for the rest of my life - only having responsibility for myself. Very grown-up.

I was originally staying at this job from September to January, but have gotten it lengthened a few times now, so at the moment I'll be here until March or April. If I were to bet, without being too positive, there will be more. If there isn't, the plan is to do my Master's thesis between April and June. In any case I will probably be applying for a new PHD-student position here soon too .

So at the moment, even though I know what the next steps will be the coming months, I'm still not sure what I really want. Or, yes, I'd like to be a writer, but that calls for things I may not be able to produce. Although I'm working on that too, not as intensely though. At my job here I will be co-author of some research reports I guess, so that will be fun, to be published is step one. But be a scientist? I don't know ... and how will I ever? Both my parents seemed to be confused about this up to ... well, older than I am now anyway. So why do I have to decide now? (You see how whiny I'm getting!)

I guess I'll just have to go with the flow and work hard at what ever I get the opportunity to do. In the days of financial crises and lay offs everywhere (even if we don't get the staggering numbers that the U.S. gets, we're well on our way percentage wise) you can't really afford to pick and choose to much either. And I really don't hate it here.

Next week I'm going to Stockholm to speak at a conference for people working with information in various energy related companies and agencies. For half an hour I am to ignore the panic that I know will be within me. Wish me luck! (Maybe my fear of public speaking will forever be banned! Hardly.)

Stay warm,
love to you all!

PS: I'll post some pictures from the holidays here soon.

Holy-Jesus-Sonofabitch-Bastard.

I'm of course referring to the numbing temperatures of the great Swedish North. Hells bells! Way below freezing, and frickin' snow. In November. I'll get back to that last sentence in a while.

So the time came for my air traffic controller buddy to move. To Arvidsjaur. So me and another friend decided to go with him, since we hadn't really been that far up in Sweden before. Off we went. We first took the train from Lund to a town called Halmstad, where we picked the movee up. Then onto Gothenburg and the night train that would take us up north proper. 20 hours later, we arrived in Jörn. What's Jörn, you ask? I honestly couldn't tell you, apart from the fact that they have an evangelical church there.

Anywho, we then got on the bus. And an hour later we had arrived. The entire journey took 24 freaking hours. Arvidsjaur is a small town by my standards, pretty large by local ones. 4000 inhabitants, it's also where the Germans come to flip cars in the snow. And there was snow. I'd been told that the snow wouldn't come until much later in the year. Apparently, anything below two feet is not proper snow. Last year they had a total of 20 feet of snow fall during the winter. I wasn't impressed until I realized that in contrast to my neck of the woods, the snow doesn't melt within a couple of day. Luckily I'd brought my big coat, so I didn't freeze. Had to buy new footwear though. Hiking-boot-like-very-grippy sort of thing.

And yeah. The Holy-Jesus-sonofabitch-bastard thing. It was so fricking cold! My beard froze. I actually had ice in my beard! And the locals would laugh to themselves at the southerners who didn't wear long-johns. One man looked at us and said that we looked as if we were going on a polar expedition. I wanted to smack him and point out that we were already on said expedition, but I kept my mouth shut. They're all hunters, you see. They have guns.

Anyway, it wasn't too bad, I had a good time and learned many a new thing about this long country. For example everyone has floodlights on their cars. And there are plug-ins at every parking space so you can heat up the engine. And mailboxes are all mounted on wooden stands that can be placed on top of all the snow. And of course the guns. And the snowmobiles. It was all very different.

Anywho, I came back home last week, longing for the damp, windy, and chilly fall of Skåne. And I was not dissapointed. Upon leaving the trainstation, it started raining.

Here's the kicker. We'd been going on about how the north was weird, with snow in November. Last Friday, it started snowing like hell down here. I slipped outside my building and ripped a pair of pants beyond repair. It sucks. The normal order has been restored now though.

Which brings me back to school. I'm gonna play the sonofabitch-bastard card again. They're working my ass of here. Right after arriving back in the land of the living, I decided to head to school instead of going home to get some sleeping. And yay, what followed in school was one of the most taxing assignments yet.

You see, we had what they call a "crisis-exercise" in which we were handed over to a team of people from various branches of government. They told us that Belarus had invaded Latvia, and that NATO and Sweden were going over there to help them. Our job was to act like a newsroom and write and edit articles on the subject, all while new "news" emerged on a regular basis. We had six hours, and the stories kept coming up until the very end of the exercise. Very stressful.

Then on monday this week it was time for the next assignment. The teachers assigned each of us 25 articles to write in four days. And I'm just now getting finished. I'm tired as hell. They do work us really hard, but you know what? I don't really mind. Sure, sometimes I'd like nothing better than to hear that the teachers had accidentally all impaled themselves on pitchforks, but on the whole, I'm pretty comfortable here.

And I haven't even considered that I might be in the wrong place, which is usually my natural reaction to stress... So I guess I'm actually in the right place, for once...

Following are some photos I took while in Arvidsjaur:


Origin and destination of the journey marked by arrows, and the route.


Me at around 2:30 PM. Snow. Lots of snow...

Be sure to check out

My boys' new songs on his MySpace page. They are really great, and give a taste of the self-produced cd that will be done soon, and available for anyone who's interested. I'm even singing back up on a few of them, although I'm not on any on the ones on MySpace.

Score!

You all know what I'm talking about. Congrats to all of the American readers (or readers residing in the U.S.). To all of us really. Ok, he's no Messiah, he's a normal guy. But still. I'm happy.

Election election election

So, life goes on. I'm working at the university and I am happy with it. It's a good job, pays pretty OK, the people here are great ... at my other jobs I've had to deal with racist, homofobic comments (not directed at me, but bothering me), and there is nothing like that here.

I'm watching "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart a lot. He is my new God. He's very funny and good at pinpointing exactly where the absurdity in American politics lies, or politics in general I should say. Although right now it's mostly about the American of course. I've heard something about there being some sort of election soon ...? If you don't have Comedy Central, you can watch the episodes for free on their website.

When it comes to the election, I must say I've been extra interested this year. Maybe it's because it feels like the good guy actually has a chance this time. I may have thought that Kerry had a chance four years ago, which he hadn't, so maybe it's just me kidding myself. On election night (which is actually night here, not evening) I'll be glued to the TV, watching our Swedish channels' coverage (two different Swedish channels are covering it, which they don't do with any other foreign elections to my knowledge) and BBC World, which is a channel I'm happy is included in our basic cable. Me and the mother are planning to sit through as much as we can, even if the results probably won't be clear until 8 a.m. our time. If it doesn't flip out like in 2000. The plan is to have an American theme, so I'll be going to this store that imports American brands which are not that common in the common food stores here. Maybe some mac and cheese? I dunno, but I'll say this: I'm happy that I get to decide my working hours myself, so that I can get at least some sleep after the whole thing.

Hope you're all going to vote - it's annoying as hell that I can't, haha.

Peace out.