Merry Christmas!!!



While other countries celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December, Sweden is celebrating it on the 24th. A bit odd, yes. But why be like everybody else? Why follow the norm?
I heard a comedian describing it as:

-“Since Jesus was actually born on the 25th, everyone else is celebrating then. But we choose to celebrate the journey to the big event. It’s like enjoying the taxi ride to a big party as the main event on New Years Eve!”

Another tradition we choose to rebel against is what food we choose to celebrate with. Most other countries have turkey for dinner, while our main dish is ham. But this is not because we are especially fond of pork in particular, but is a tradition that has remained from our pagan past before we were made Christians.

Basically we eat our pagan Gods’ pet pig Särimner, who used to live (lives) with them in Valhall and get/s eaten every night. It didn’t matter much and rumours say he didn’t mind particularly much either, since he was resurrected from the dead each morning. A pretty handy solution that suited everyone.

To be honest, I’ve always thought it was a bit…well, slightly provocative, to celebrate the main event of your religion by using traditions from the one you’re supposed to have abandoned. And at the same time, maybe just a tiny bit amusing…

Have a fabulous holiday!

I think I must have experienced some sort of a trauma with a vacuum cleaner when I was little. Some trauma that was so horrifying that I felt I had to repress it, because I have no idea of what it was that evidently must have happened. I can't explain it in any other way.



I feel relatively comfortable with doing the vacuuming myself. I guess that way I'm sort of in control and if the vacuuming should get out of hand, then at least I'm vaguely prepared. But having someone else doing it, especially without letting me know well in advance...I'd rather run off to lock myself up naked in a beehive until it's all over!

I hate the way it sounds. I hate the way it looks. Millions of pets can’t possibly be wrong! It must be the most aggressive of all domestic appliances! Why can’t anyone invent a silent vacuum cleaner? How hard can it be? Maybe one with a mechanism based on magnetism? Or laser beams? Or nuclear radiation?

There you go! I’ve done it! Now, until these things have been sorted out – go use a broom!

Brrr…………………………………………………………

It’s scary how short the process of becoming a potential megalomaniac really is. I was out hiking the other day and thought I could quite easily finish a “coast to coast” trail here in Sweden in three days.

Yes, I know that the initial spontaneous outbreak of a reaction from a geographically uneducated British person, would generally be something along the lines of:

-“But oh my God, you can’t do that! All across Sweden? That’s really far! No one can walk from Oslo to Reykjavik in just three days! That must be like walking all the way to Norwich or something… From London!”



Yeah, pretty much. But then again, not really. Scania is the most narrow part of Sweden so walking from coast to coast only adds up to about 120 km. (If you’re a bird and choose to fly instead, I reckon it would even just be around 100 km.)

And then while walking there I started thinking. What if I (at some other occasion obviously) walked through Denmark as well? Denmark is a small country. It can be done pretty easily. A bit each time I was over here visiting. Pack a few sandwiches and some tea. What more do I need. Well, a map possibly, but apart from that I’d be sorted.

Because, if I had done that…well, then, since there’s nothing but water on the other side of Esbjerg, it would be as if I’d walked from Sweden to England! Because you cant walk on water. (Unless it’s frozen, and the climate change has made sure that’s not likely to happen any time soon.)

Wait, hang on, that new rule means that I wouldn't just have walked from Sweden to England, but from Latvia to England, because that’s what there is on the other side of the sea east of Scania!
Fair enough, I haven’t even been to Latvia but that’s not here nor there really. I feel it’s important that we focus on what matters here now. That we pay attention.

Then I went home and started glancing through a few atlases. Turns out Latvia is not all that big, you know! Not too big to walk through at least. And having walked all the way to a former superpower has a completely different ring to it, than just to a Baltic state that isn’t very well known at all. I mean, no offence to Latvia, but if I told let’s say a Chinese or an Australian that I’d walked to Russia, they’d known what I was on about immediately and would straight away feel appropriately impressed, whereas if I’d just pointed out I’d taken the boat to Riga, they’d probably just feel confused!

Latvia could be done. Just a mere obstacle that could be taken care of. Not really a problem if you thought about it. And I did.

And then I thought that, well, I’ve already walked quite a bit in England already. Would be a bit of a shame not to include that in my victory, no? Walking through the rest of west England could be accomplished relatively easy.

But that means I would have walked from Russia to Wales. Well, that sounds a bit daft, doesn’t it? Unless I’m Welsh. Which I’m not.

Wales is not that big though. I was watching it closely when I was on a plane from Iceland once, and it looked not just small, but flat. Easy to cross. Excellent...

That means I would have walked to Ireland! And what’s pretty handy is that I’ve already been to Ireland – twice, so I wouldn’t even have to go there to complete the trip!

But Ireland…sounds a bit like Latvia, doesn’t it? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Ireland (otherwise I wouldn’t have gone back a second time, would I now?) No, I’m just saying, it doesn’t feel all that far away to someone living in London.

And all that water on the other side of it…

…that stretches all the way to…

…I’ve said I wanted to go to New York for aaages! And the second I got there and jumped off the plane it would instantly mean that I’ve walked from Russia to the US! (Because the aim would have been to walk TO the US, not THROUGH it…) Listen to the sound of that!

I would have walked around ½ of the planet!!! THAT’s something to put on the CV, I tell you!




PS. It’s a talent to be able to bend the rules and simplify things to the extreme.


PS2. Did I mention I used to be into politics?

Was planning to do a bit of hiking in the next couple of days, providing that the weather would be fine.

So I went to the BBC weather site to check the forecast.
So far, no confusion.
I was even humming.

Then suddenly I found myself getting talked into participating in a "brief" survey, since my "opinion was very important to them".

Oh, in that case...

The brief survey was estimated to last for 5 minutes. I could easily find ways to shorten it to about 2 mintes...tops!
In fact, it seems to me that a few of the questions have been added just to fill out space! I just can't comprehend how the answers the BBC gets, can possibly guide or enlighten them all that much.

Why have you come to the weather site today?
-To check the weather (!)

How do you plan on finding out this information?
-By using the site (?)


No, but come ON!!!

Huh?

Give me a break...

Have eaten a ridiculous amount of fish since I got over here to Sweden. Sometimes twice a day. And on one mental occasion, three times a day! Cod, mackerel, smoked salmon, grilled salmon, herrings made with Christmas spices, herrings pickled with onions, with mustard, with tiny little berries…and at the moment all I can think of is this delicious eel recipe I saw on the morning news show. They are really tasty things, eels.



Oh, and there’s something else that I feel that I’ve grown an obsession with. Take a look at this man:



He says he’s a comedian, but he’s so much more to me than that. I prefer to think of him as a potential future husband. Or at least an ideal future husband. What to aim for. Or maybe, rather what my boyfriends should aim for, so to speak. What's not to like! Yes, our lives would be perfect. We would whistle and pick mushrooms in the forest every afternoon and then, after feeding the ducks, we would retire to the attic for silent composing and poetry writing for the remains of the day. Yeah, that's pretty much how life with me would be.

Finally in Sweden, and God am I happy to be here this time! It's not that I'm not enjoying London, not at all! It's just that I've really needed a break and to get home for a bit lately. I got here on tuesday, and the first two days flew by. I didn't even admit to anyone that I was here. My friend Jonas has asked me about 18 times a day wether I'm in Malmö or not, trying to make me slip up and admit it. But I've been very mysterious so far.


I've just wrapped myself up in some sort of cocoon enjoying the peace and quiet. And silence can be incredibly beautiful at times. London is never quiet. There's always some idiot screaming, arguing with someone after leaving a party at three o' clock in the morning, a car alarm that is being set off by some cuddlish fox or a row of police cars racing down the street.
But now being in my parents house in Sweden, sitting by the computer in the middle of the night, I realize that you end up getting used to it, in some way and to some extent, but then when you go away you suddenly notice what you're missing - peace.

I can only speak for myself though. People need different things in life. I love living in one of the biggest cities in the world, but at the same time I need to escape it now and then. That's equally important to me. And then it's also nice to come home and speak your own language for a bit, watch swedish tv, read swedish news papers...stuff like that.

I was a bit dissappointed with my parents for not having got around to getting a christmas tree by the time I got here, but think we'll get one on sunday or so. They had valid reasons though, since they had both been to Oslo in Norway for a bit just up until the same morning as I arrived. And a tree, they meant, needs to be watered every day. (And it was only the 11th of december...) Fair enough. But they sure had made an effort with all the other decorations.

My absolute favourite part, is the garden. I feel like I'm automatically meditating just by watching it from inside. It's so incredibly beautiful and soothing that all I want to do is to wrap myself up in a blanket and drink hot cocoa for hours. (There's where the cocoon comes into the picture!) There are loads of tiny little amber lamps and lights covering the trees and bushes. And if you sit inside watching them in the dark through the curtains loosely weaved in cream with thin golden threads, the gentle wind makes the lights fall and move from the windows over the floor as a glittering stream of golden water in a magic forest (just that tree missing...) Makes it very easy to relax. :)

I think christmas lights in general are very important to scandinavians because another tradition is to have candles in all of your windows. Wherever you go and wherever you look, you see candles in every window in every house! I think it might be a bit hard to imagine if you haven’t seen it for yourself. That’s one of the things I’ve always missed about Sweden in winter during my years abroad.


Speaking of magic... Yesterday (well, actually it's way past midnight so I guess saying "two days ago" would be more appropriate) it was Lucia here in Sweden. This is when we celebrate the longest night of the year by putting candles in our hair, singing songs, eating saffron cakes and gingerbread, drinking glögg at six in the morning. To make a long story short.



But this year I saw something I've never seen before. When I went past the canal I saw severel wooden canoes passing silently with candles and full Lucia gear in the water. It looked a bit like a dream. Like something out of a fairytale. :)

But later I heard that last year they even had Lucia divers with white dresses and lights underneath the water! Even better. Brilliant! :D

My street is a weird street. Well, I guess it’s not really strictly speaking “mine”, but close enough.


This morning when I looked out through the window the first thing I saw was a man trying to sell a totem pole. I think he was even working in the shop across the road because he was repeatedly entering it. I was just thinking – shouldn’t totem poles go under what’s generally referred to as either warfare material or torture equipment? I mean, if I went down there opening a stand of my own trying to sell rifles, poisonous arrows or maybe a few homemade bombs I’m sure that I’d at least get an objecting letter in the post from the authorities? To be fair, the shop was also selling peaceful stuff like dvd’s and mirrors. But then again, that’s what I’d personally call a cover up strategy.

There’s been other things that have confused me as well. People still keep wishing me a Merry Christmas. Look, as I’ve explained in an earlier post, I started celebrating Christmas on the 17th of October! So that means that I’ve now been celebrating for 53 days. It’s getting a bit tedious to be quite honest with you. I don’t want any more greetings. I don’t even want snow anymore. I feel like it should be over by now. I’m ready for Easter! It was a great “weird-thing-to-do” (see earlier posts) but enough is enough. One more elf and things could turn dirty…

Speaking of my “weird-things-to-do” project, I’m really looking forward to New Year, which is a fantastic opportunity for me to take it to another level! I’ve got loads of plans but feel I can’t really start them until day 01-01-08! My friend suggested I’d start calling them “mental-things-to-do” but I’m just not prepared to enter that sort of territory. Yet.

I can warmly recommend my last year’s New Year resolution of doing 1 weird thing a week for a year! Trust me when I say it will enrich your lives. But today I had something of a reality check. I thought my endeavours of learning how to yodel, to build an igloo, being a vegan for a week, a vegetarian for another, blindly following obscure signs, going digging for Viking treasures, going trainspotting, stop using sugar, voluntarily living off £30 for one whole week, thinking like a guy for a week, being girly to the extreme for another, becoming a scientologist for a week, living off fruit for a week, starting a weird group on the internet, making them all go on an obscure trip, going to see a film I really didn’t want to see, going hunting for UFO’s, walking to Brighton, Windsor and Cambridge, celebrating Christmas in summer etc etc etc, were pretty odd, but today I found a guy who is clearly willing to take things one step further.

He’s started a project with an aim to make 1000 people happy. Well, at first that sounds pretty good and jolly in an easygoing way, but he’s decided that he’s willing to do whatever anybody wants him to do to in order to achieve it! That’s something I would never do. That, according to me, is what makes the difference between “weird” and “mental”. I mean, I guess it could be compared to some sort of random acts of niceness, but while things like those are all on your own conditions, he’s putting himself in other’s hands completely!

So I immediately decided I’d give him a challenge when I get back to London after my trip to Sweden. My friend Esther straight away suggested that we’d ask him to give her a massage (the saucy minx!), but I think we should aim higher. Nothing mean or demeaning, mind you, cos that wouldn’t be encouraging him in a long term sense. And trust me, weird people are to be encouraged! That’s the way to go. It’s in our interest as a community.

;-)

Just had a serious crisis. Ok, not a major major one but still big enough to be annoying. I was at home drinking tea listening to some song about flowers when I suddenly got a strange feeling that I had booked the "wrong" flight for next week. Or rather that I had memorized the wrong date. The feeling just wouldn't go away.


For over a month I've been sure that I had booked a flight for tuesday morning, but today, for no apparant reason I was suddenly equally certain of that I had instead booked a flight for monday. Unless I bought a new ticket that would have caused me a lot of problems! I managed to have a proper go at myself before I got online to check the booking, being pissed off about how I could be so incredibly disorganised. Then just now I checked it and apperantly my flight was on tuesday. Turns out I'm pretty organised after all.

Felt like I owed myself a bit of an apology for not trusting myself (and not to mention the namecalling...) so I bought myself some Doritos. Yum. So nice. The cheesy ones. Nice.

Also having a drink...Vimto...a fruitjuice made of berries with added vitamins. B, D and E apperantly. And was just thinking, why not add vitamins to all drinks? I mean, who would not want a few extra vintamins? Why would you mind them, going:

-"Oh bollocks, I would really have loved to buy this drink right now, but (and now looking incredibly disappointed) it's got vitamins in it...can't believe they don't have any vitamin-free option!"

In fact, come to think of it - even Diet Coke has now come out with two new options with added vitamins and antioxidants. That's great! That's fantastic! This has definitely changed the relationship between me and Coke. It hasn't been what it used to be lately so we really needed something new to keep the romance alive. And now after this we're feeling more passionate than ever!

Lazy today... And it's so comfy here in front of the computer it's hard to leave (cos that would lead to me having to do boring stuff like going to Sainsburys)

Yawn...

Speaking of weird feelings by the way, for some reason I've felt extraordinarily tall since yesterday. I can't explain it. Was out in a (large) bar with Nicola and some others last night and when looking around myself I suddenly felt really tall. There were quite a lot of people there but most of them seemed shorter than me. And then today walking down Portobello Road, again I had the same feeling! Everyone around me seemed so short! It's weird. I can't explain it.

Ok, I guess I am relatively tall, 1,76m, but still I felt much taller than usual. And, ok, yesterday I had heals that were about 8 cms high, but today I was wearing flats! And either way, it doesn't matter cos it's not as if I believe that I've mysteriously grown... (That would be silly.) No, I'm just saying I think it's everyone else that have somehow shrunk.
But it's great! I can see for miles.

Yaaawn... Ok, I better go.

Hey, my bugbite seems to have grown by the way! It hurts. Once Bart Simpson got stung by a mosquito with malaria that had been trapped inside some toy that had been made in China! Maybe the same thing has now happened to me? Should I worry? Oh bloody hell, why now? Why now?

Yawn...nah, can't sit here all day and talk nonsense. Me off to buy sushi! ! ! And some vitamin coke.

Have a nice evening!

:)

Such an annoying day! It didn't start off well. At all. Woke up and noticed that somehow during the night I'd got some sort of bug bite on my arm. It was itching. Still is. In fact there are 3 smaller bites in an area of about 1 cm. There is a fair chance that this is my own fault, since I'm insisting on always sleeping with the window open. Any other option seems weird.

But that's not the main problem. The bug had to eat. I understand. Whatever. But I've read that everyone accidently swallows about 100 bugs while sleeping during a lifetime (10 of them being spiders). So that means there's a dangerously big chance that I ate this bug last night. (Because it wasn't there when I woke up, was it?!!)

I mean, there's a much bigger chance that 1 of my 100 quota occurred last night rather than, let's say, the night before...when there wasn't any bug around to begin with (that I know of).

It's a bit like taking a bite of an apple finding a worm... What's worse? Finding 1/2 a worm!

But trust me I'm not exactly feeling any remorse. He deserved it. HE STARTED IT FOR GOD'S SAKE!

Then later I went to Tesco for one reason and one reason only - to get some croquettes (since we had some in the pub yesterday and I've been thinking about them all day).
Ok, I get to the shop and know exactly where they are. Easy mission - easy life.
Just that when I'm about 20 cm away from them this crazy, and supposedly really hungry woman manages to grab every package on the shelf. About 14 of them! Are you KIDDING me? Lucklily I found one that had fallen down to the shelf below and for a moment I actually thought she was gonna dive for that one as well...as in "oh pleeease let me have that one, I've only got 14 and would really really like to have just one more..."

That would have led to something of a conflict.

Saw a movie a couple of days ago, ”Number 23”, with Jim Carrey. I wasn’t completely sure what it was about other than it concerned coincidences. I like coincidences. I’m a bit obsessed with them myself on an on and off basis. But in a good way. In the movie the obsession certainly wasn’t of the pleasant kind, but full on paranoia!


To put it briefly, it’s about a guy who feels he’s being followed by the number 23. And then weird and bad things happen. (I told you I’d be brief.) But seeing the film made me feel as if I had heard something similar before, I just couldn’t remember exactly what it was. So I decided to quickly check it up on the internet. Apparently this is a well known phenomena! This fear of number 23 has been around forever! It sounds like absolute lunacy at first, but when you start reading about the “proofs” it becomes rather intriguing. Everything seems to add up to 23 in one way or another.

But at the same time, mankind has always felt a need to look for patterns in things as some way of finding reason and order. It’s in our nature. Having said that, even Jung (Freud’s college), has acknowledged the fact that coincidences do occur in inexplicable ways.
One of his example was a person sitting in a room thinking about a beetle only to find one flying in through the window the next minute. He explained that he had come upon a lot of these occurrences in his time as a psychologist, but meant that instead of it being a higher power throwing in a beetle in order to give the person a sign, it’s the person who’s able to “feel” or see it in advance.
I’ve studied psychology but haven’t yet looked into that specific area much. But either way it sounds as if Jung were quite open minded to at least the ability of having somewhat of a sixth sense. But I’ll have to check up on it further before I’m making any assumptions.

Maybe number 23 really is the answer to the mystery behind life, I don’t know, yet, but I did find some of it quite amusing…

The letter “W” is the 23rd letter of the alphabet. (Here you’re supposed to feel a rising level of expectations. You’re somewhat excited.)
The letter “W” has also got 2 edges pointing downwards…and 3 upwards. (Now, you’re probably uttering things like “I’ll be damned” and start fidgeting with a paperclip or nervously chewing on a pen.)
Now is where it gets really spooky.
Look at your keyboard…the letter “W” is placed exactly below the numbers “2” and “3”!
(You’ve probably fallen off your chair by now, or got a hiccup. Probably both.)

But to be fair, there are other “more convincing” arguments as well, like 2/3= 0.666

;)

I even found a guy who had written to a magazine for help explaining that his girlfriend had lately become obsessed with the number 23, and felt that it was following her. Only the other day at the same time as she was in a taxi explaining her problem to her friend, the fare turned out to be…23£!!! Now he was wondering if this could possibly be contagious and if he was risking ending up with the same psychosis himself?

It’s horrible, really, I feel sorry for them. But it’s hard to refrain from at least smiling gently.

Then yesterday I went swimming. Only two kilometres, but they say one equals a full workout so I figured two would be quite ok. Even if it doesn’t take that long, it’s easy to get just a little bit bored there and then while doing the lanes. At the same time you’re feeling incredibly relaxed! But your mind starts to wander. And I started thinking about what actually causes paranoia. While reading about it in the papers or seeing films about it, two comments seem to frequently occur.

-“You’ve got too much time on your hands! You need to distract yourself!”
-“You’re too busy! You’re simply stressed out. You need to relax!”

They seem to contradict each other somewhat. So does paranoia hit in when we’re either bored or overly stimulated? Or in both situations?I read an interview with Bill Nighy today, where he was asked

-“When and where are you happiest”?

And he answered

-“At work, because, like most people, I use work as a way of not having to do all the tough stuff – like life!”

Paranoia and all other anxiety disorders are about fear. And it made me think that, a lot of people, maybe even most, seem to have a need for distraction in order to keep themselves from facing life, which means they/we seem to have a fundamental fear of life in itself. That we unconsciously equalize life with fear! (But this is a larger subject that deserves a post on its own!)

Either way, while swimming I was thinking about the connexion between the boredom and the relaxation that I felt and thought about how differently people behave to feel relaxed.
And I thought that if something as repetitive and boring as swimming can make you feel so relaxed, then surely the best holiday for someone seeking relaxation would be to go somewhere incredibly boring, with no stimulation whatsoever! They’d come home mellow as cucumbers! Surely!
And it would work on other levels as well. Let’s say you’re spending your holiday on a beautiful paradise beach in Thailand, and then coming home to go back to a grey office in a rainy town somewhere in England, surely that’s not the happiest of endings? But if you went to the most horrible rat infested hellhole on earth, just imagine how happy you would feel to get home and get back to work! :)

Once, me and my friend went on a daytrip from Malmö to Rostock in Germany and were both agreeing on that that must have been the worst city we’d ever seen. When we got back home we were laughing in pure ecstasy! We were happy beyond belief!

But I don’t think this idea is something that is going to catch on. Honestly. I really don’t. And after all, fun and excitement can function as distractions from …life, which after all, I guess would be the most efficient way to relax of them all.

Anyway, I’m off to Sweden next week so am having a busy time at the moment. I’m trying to find ways to fit in as many friends as I can in my last week, which is not exactly easy to be honest. Tonight I’m going to some sort of party based on a Dutch tradition of having a scary Santa dressed in black going around freaking people out. Sounds promising. If you’ve been good, you get to sit in his lap and be fed candy and if you’ve been bad, you get spanked! :)

Sounds like there could be a fair few interesting police reports coming up.

Crime: Sexual harassment.
Surname: Claus
First name: Santa

:) :) :)

Oh, by the way, by using numerology (A=1, B=2, C=3 etc) my name – EVELYN NYSTRÖM equals…………………………………………………………………………….23