Greetings from Paradise

Via Anna's iPhone

And we're off!

To the Maldives, that is! Away from the grey cold.



Via Anna's iPhone

New Bike!

Proof that spring is finally here!


Via Anna's iPhone

Annunziata Rees-Mogg or Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax

The British Tories (Conservatives) may in all likelihood be winning the UK general election in May (or early June; exact date to be announced soon), yet they struggle to overcome their image of a party for the elite and the posh. Recently one of the Conservative Members of Parliament (MP) spoke publicly on the "ghastliness of people in standard-class train cars" and said he was in favour of allocating funds to allow politicians to travel in first class. The Tory party leader David Cameron was quick to disassociate himself with the MP's opinions but with these party colleagues it may be difficult to completely shread the snob stamp:

Many old-time Tories are leaving Parliament this year, including the unrepentantly first-class-loving Sir Nicholas [the MP]. But there are more waiting in the wings. Last year, worried about how an impeccably pedigreed Tory candidate named Annunziata Rees-Mogg would go over with hoi polloi, Mr. Cameron suggested that she might want to campaign under the name “Nancy Mogg”

She refused, although, to be fair, another candidate, the spectacularly named Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, dutifully "de-toffed" himself by downgrading to “Richard Drax” on campaign posters.

Meanwhile, Ms. Rees-Mogg’s brother, Jacob, a banker who is also running for Parliament and who appears to believe he belongs to the “Brideshead Revisited” era, having once taken his childhood nanny with him on the campaign trail, went on television to denounce Mr. Cameron’s plan to get more women and minorities elected as the triumph of “potted plants” over “intellectually able people".

Blogoversary

Today I've been blogging for five years!! Well, I actually started already at the end of September 2004 but I only wrote two posts in 2004 and then took a break for a few months before I started for real in March 2005!

This is actually the first year I'm celebrating (read: remembering) so I have added a little gadget to help me remember it every year! :)

US Moves towards Universal Healthcare

Last night's vote in the US House of Representatives to approve Obama's healthcare reform bill was a major victory for the President but foremost for the American people. Most importantly, many uninsured will become insured, but almost as important, middle class Americans who have insurance but often not full coverage (and fall in the arbitrary hands of insurers*), will be much better off too. No more (or at least less of it) healthcare industry ripping off people* and driving up costs for the US economy (and taxpayers) (the US has by far the highest health care spending as percentage of GDP - 16% in 2006 compared to 9.1% for Sweden or 8.3% for UK).

Now Obama can concentrate on getting climate change legislation through Congress.

* This problem is not likely to be completely solved by this decision only, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.

Show & Tell: Longing

With the new snow that arrived today accompanied by strong wind, after a lovely spring day yesterday, there's just one thing on my mind...

Image from Bushbaby

(Apologies for the very short post)

(Adult) Hello Kitty Fans, Look Here!

Costantly buying Hello Kitty toys and clothes for your children (daughters?) but never anything for yourself? Now you can buy Hello Kitty wine!

Choose between red, white, bubbly rosé and bubbly dessert wine. (Apparently not sold in Sweden yet but it's probably just a question of time.)

Show & Tell: Time

Around New Year's and the turn of a decade many bloggers did a sort of summary of their noughties but I didn't get around to it then. So I thought I'd use Saltistjejen's theme time to do a little list of "the event of the year" during 2000-2009.

2000: Finished my BA degree and moved from London to Oxford to start an MPhil (Masters) in European studies in Oxford

2001: Studies hard but also had a lot of fun, for example at the annual Ball in June, which I co-organised with fellow students (photo)

2002: This was the year I attended FIVE weddings between April and September! Otherwise the highlight was finishing my studies (though the actual graduation ceremony took place the following summer).

2003: Started my first real job - this was the year of the beginning of my career you could say!

2004: Went to Kiruna and the ice hotel (didn't sleep there though) in March - all through work so I didn't have to pay a dime!

2005: Met Peter at the end of the year, what could beat that!

2006: Started my current job in January after almost 2½ years in my previous job

2007: Went to South Africa - still one of my favourite trips

2008: My aupair child (who's no longer a child but a young adult) visited me for the first time

2009: Went to see Madonna in concert, finally (but said goodbye to another great musical star, MJ)!

In terms of "tell" I wanted to show some photos from another highlight of the last year of the decade: our trip to southern and western Sweden in August 2009.

Some sort of sun clock (Åhus)

Some people argue that the Ale stone formation is some sort of clock

2009 was a year Peter and I spent a lot of time on "us" and that included travelling and doing a lot of fun things together



Time can also be distance; the distance "clock" in Smygehuk, the most southern point of Sweden



This was probably the view visitors to Skanör had 50 years ago too



Modern architecture for modern modes of transport while boats have almost always been around in some format or other



Stress-free vacation



No reference to time really, I just like this photo; makes me think "small man in a big world"



I like the fact that there is still trust, at least in the countryside, in times of mistrust

Zodiac Fun

When I was weeding our book shelves to make room for new (well, mostly very old books that come from Peter's grandmother's home) books I found an astrology book that I hadn't looked at before (Peter must have had when we moved in together). I'm not really a believer in horoscopes but this one was a little different; it had a sense of humour both in text and illustrations! The subtitle is "A necessary guide for all who want to maximise the possibilities of astrology and avoid getting lost in the zodiac".

So what does it say about Aquarius? Where I can relate in purple.

• * An aquarius is full of surprises. Be prepared for anything when you meet this unorthodox gal. (Eh..?)
• * She wants no harm. On the contrary she has a strong wish deep inside her heart to make this world a better place to live. We ought to have more of them.
• * Aquarius need freedom for herself and those around
• * For some reason her thoughts seem to be more in the future than in the now (nah, 50-50)
• * They are gentle and nice people with a somewhat vague and dreaming gaze
• * It is no surprise that she who is such a nice person have many friends... but not so many to confide in (I have a LOT of friends including some I can talk to about everything).
• * She always know exactly what needs to be done... but entrusts the carrying out to others (haha, no, I'm pretty bad at delegating actually as I only trust myself!).
• * The water carrier really knows how to surprise someone... with a sudden capricious explosion... or through her secret vice to shock conventional people (nah, no such need).
• * Sometimes one wonder if she's a genius... or a madman (the former of course!)

The male Aquarius

• * The freedom-loving Mr Aquarius tries to avoid marriage as long as possible
• * He must be left alone when he wants to be by himself
• * He completely detests an extravagant wife

The female Aquarius

• * Someone who is so beautiful as Miss Aquarius has no difficulties getting the attention she wants (no, but as I'm talkative I guess I can "take over" a discussion)
• * Although sometimes she chooses extreme methods (illustrated with a naked woman jumping over a watering can)... and when she shows up all work sometimes comes to a halt

Famous Aquarius: Charles Darwin, Paul Newman, Ronald Reagan, Mozart, John Travolta, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln

Snowy Beach

Only two weeks until we trade this for a sandy beach!


à la iPhone

Walking on Ice

Taking advantage of the last of winter.


à la iPhone

The Pramcycle

Peter thought I should blog about this - he loves all types of smart and technical gadgets!

The combined bicycle and push chair! It turns into the one from the other in 20 seconds. It's a bit pricey (€1,500) but buying a bike and a pram cost quite a lot too I guess. It's not that surprising that it's been developed by a Dutch company - I've always seen them as a biking people.





How it works?

Cook-Up

Tonight's activity: wine tasting and pasta making with Alexandra (Swedish chef and winner of Robinson, i.e. Survivor, 1998). Peter's work organised. Fun and delicious!


à la iPhone

Mathematics

Some stereotypical humour one day after Women's Day and a little joke at the end.

ROMANCE MATHEMATICS
Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy

OFFICE ARITHMETIC
Smart boss + smart employee = profit
Smart boss + dumb employee = production
Dumb boss + smart employee = promotion
Dumb boss + dumb employee = overtime

SHOPPING MATH
A man will pay $20 for a $10 item he needs.
A woman will pay $10 for a $20 item that she doesn't need.

GENERAL EQUATIONS & STATISTICS
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

HAPPINESS
To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman, you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

LONGEVITY
Married men live longer than single men do, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

PROPENSITY TO CHANGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, and she does.

DISCUSSION TECHNIQUE
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

HOW TO STOP PEOPLE FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED
Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, 'You're next.' They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Source: e-mail from a friend

Brits Swedish Crazy

Article in the UK newspaper The Independent about "the invasion of Swedish culture" in the form of Salander and Wallander.

International Women's Day

This year, celebrating 100 years of women's rights!

(Picture from my friend Åsa)

Show & Tell: Morning

Morning has broken. That's the first thing I thought about when I read Saltistjejen's theme (our hostess for the month of March).


Thought this particular version about lent/spring was fitting since I really hope spring (morning) comes soon after the long winter (night).

That song used to end all parties at St Antony's College (my Oxford college). The thing is that we had to end all parties at 1am due to the college's location in a residential area. Didn't really feel like morning at 1am...

We had a lot of fun at St Antony's Late Bar. We were considered the party college, at least as postgraduate colleges go. It used to be pretty crowded on a regular Friday bar night but it was especially so on Saturdays when there was a big party (about once a month).

Sometimes it would be a fancy dress party:

And every year there's a Ball (I was on the Committee one year):



The Hilda Besse, or the Hilda Beast as it's more commonly known, is not a looker from the outside (though listed and can't be torn down - it won an architectural price in the late 1960s) but it's functional, especially for parties.



The ground floor of the building houses the Late Bar (or Buttery as it's called during daytime when it's used for seminars), a TV room and a couple of smaller meeting rooms. Upstairs has Hall, i.e. the eating area/canteen, also used for fancy dinners (so-called High Table) and big parties, and kitchen.



The second upstairs (which is a smaller area, as Hall has very high ceilings and is open all the way up so-to-speak) has the Junior (JCR) and Senior Common Rooms (SCR), Junior for us students and Senior for professors et al. (at other colleges which have both undergraduate and postgraduate students - St Antony's has only the latter - the JCR is for undergrads and Senior for postgrads and the rest). Concrete doesn't look so good on the outside but inside the mix of cement and wooden floors is actually quite alright. Especially with some art and Persian rugs on the walls.

So despite its name I have some pretty good memories from the Beast!

Sorry if I digressed a bit too much from the subject... :)

All own photos except for the one of the Hilda Besse building which comes from Flickr and St Antony's College

Politics for Dummies

DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
You push for higher taxes so the government can provide cows for everyone.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.
(That could be called Bureacraucy, EU style too)

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You drink some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You drink some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan , which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegal.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Source: Facebook

US Road Trip 2009: People

As I'm starting to get really sick and tired of the snow* now (sorry Annika!), I've been looking at holiday pictures from last summer to remind myself that yes, summer does exist. Thought I'd share more photos from our US roadtrip with you, this time on the theme "people" (earlier themes are architecture, flowers and animals.

First out, a not so lucky guy in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I hope they arrested him for something real and not just for being homeless.

The San Francisco cable cars are very popular with the tourists. We decided to go on the less popular of the two routes and two hop on at another stop. I have done the other route before anyway (back in 1996).


Our guide on the three-hour boat cruise around Manhattan. Or is it Spiderman?!

New friends! Lunch with fellow bloggers Saltis and Petchie and Petchie's sister J.

Visiting Chelsea Market with Petchie and J (and Peter of course but he was behind the camera)

Walking in the residential area of Chelsea

Delivery guy doing a balancing act on a bike

Meeting up with friend Gabriella in Long Island City in Queens

Doing a bar round with Saltis & friends

Trying a crif dog before going bar hopping

New York's most famous guy?

* Today it's sunny though so the snowcovered landscape doesn't look that bad. But yesterday, when it was superwindy and cold... Brrr!

Reality Check

Yesterday Taina wrote about a father dying from cancer (and how his family was raising money to provide for his children - perhaps a problem we don't have in Sweden) and today I stumbled upon (through Elin) a blog written by a Swedish young woman who may only have a few weeks left to live. She has had a very sad life - mother with drug use problems, ADHD, own drug problems, you name it - but turned her life around a few years ago at age 25 and had a son in 2008. Then it hit her. An aggressive form of cancer. First it looked like she would pull through but now it doesn't look good for her at all. She's writing a will, making arrangements for her funeral, and most importantly, deciding what will happen to her son (she's a single mum). A few weeks ago I also found another blog by a woman fighting the same horrible disease though her prospects are somewhat more promising.

Reminds us all not to take things for granted.

Imagination as Few

Une adorable petite fille débordante d’imagination...

Public Transport's Deadly Sins

1) Someone standing on the wrong side on the escalator is a classic that is never acceptable. Count on it happening when you can hear your train rolling onto the platform and the next train is not until ten minutes later...

2) Children should not travel on public transport, especially if they are loud. It only takes one screaming baby for you to take the car to work for the next 20 years.

3) To listen to music is always nice - but only if you have chosen it yourself. A lively ring tone, accordion players and kids with a yearning for tinnitus and leaking headphones is a big no-no!

4) Body odour is another classic. Eat a lot of garlic, avoid showering for a week and wear something you found in the rubbish and you can guarantee a whole train car to yourself.

5) Something everyone should know: a bus/tube train is not the same as a moving fast-food stand. Neither kebab, pizza or beer smell as good as it tastes. Travel first. Eat later. That is how you do it.

6) Rush hour and Monday morning on the underground: person in large bulky jacket, with a ruggsack and bad body awareness who suddenly turns around. How many passengers get an elbow in the neck and a ruggsack in the face?

7) Okay, they are old and frail and do not know where they are getting off. But do they need to stand first in the queue, talk to the driver for 10 minutes and then hobble towards a seat at the back of the bus? Count on a 15-minute delay.

8) Everybody running towards the train have a chance to catch the train, but only one makes it. Despite the car only being half full. Why? This is what surely happened: the person who made it first threw him/herself in, realised s/he made it and stopped abruptly just inside the doors. Nobody else succeeded in getting inside the car since s/he was blocking the opening, the doors closed and the train started rolling with the rest of the group still on the platform.

9) Zero manners and etiquette in public transport: don't get up for elders, put your feet on the seat, brag about your latest shag or malarkey your best friend really loud on your mobile phone, cough without covering your mouth and do not let those leaving the train get off first.

10) Give your accessories a seat. Of course your doggy or your bag shouldn't have to be on the floor!

List found in Östermalmsnytt (my translation/interpretation).