The final

There are lots of things which determine where you end up doing what you end up doing in this life. One of these lives in my building. He has some... issues.

To put this in perspective, let me inform you of my previous places of being. Starting out life on my own (first with one, and then two friends, kind of negating the whole "on my own" bit, but still), I lived in an apartment. Much like you, odds are. It was a fine apartment. 92 square meters , which if you include the attic and the balchony becomes over 1000 square feet! But that is not the point. The point is this: If you're going to live somewhere, you might decide to check out the place ahead of time, see that there are no bullet-holes in the windows, that there is a toilet, that sort of thing. But regardless of the result of this, most people neglect one important aspect.

The neighbors. If the laws of statistics say that you're likely to end up being surrounded by "normal" people, some of them are bound to end up being not-so-normal. This is not by definition a bad thing. There are different kinds of not-so-normal. But then there's what happened to us. First of all, we had a downstairs neighbor who was very... shall we say "noise-sensitive"? Complaints about the volume during parties I can cope with and even understand, but this guy really went above and beyond.

One peaceful Sunday afternoon, at around four o'clock, there was a knock on the door. Needless to say, I answered it. I was always the one who got yelled at, fitting perfectly with the principle of "I'm always the one you should feel sorry for". But what I heard was comical, in a very sad way. We got two major complaints:
1) We vacuumed too much. Think this through. We're three 23 year-old guys sharing an apartment. Vacuum? Really?
2) We laugh too much, and too loudly. The only way to take this attempted criticism is as a compliment. And then feel a little bad for the person who goes around telling other people off for basically being a little too happy most of the time.

And no, this guy was not living in the neighboring building, where they were attempting to "readjust people with psychological problems to a life in normal society". We never had any problem with any of those fine individuals.

Also in our area, there was a kid who came out during finals week. At LiU, this comes but four times a year, but you can bet your ass, or a prized possesion that he'd be there. With a great big whistle, able to distract even the most studious of, well, students. We named him "the whistle kid" and hated him fervently.

So now, living in the far closer-to-school and far filled-with-more-students area of Ryd, you'd think I'd be safe to study for my final final (a-HA!) in peace. Not so. There is no Whistle-kid. There is no Mojk, as laughs-a-lot guy was lovingly called. However, to compensate, I have two new acquaintances. One is "Screaming jackass", the other is "Idiot". Now as most of you know, I am a pretty peaceful person, but I am also prone to dramatic overstatements of fact, so bear with me.

"Screaming jackass" is the new Whistle-kid. Regular as clockwork and twice on Mondays, he opens his window and just screams. Maybe it's anxiety over finals, or whatever. I really don't care.

"Idiot" is the guy goes ape on the ads we have delivered some weekdays. If you don't want them, you can sign your name on a little list right there by the mailboxes, but this guy (I'm assuming it's a guy, I've never actually seen the process in action) avoids that like sin, and instead throws his - and all the other ads he can find - with complete reckless abandon on the floor. Creating lots and lots of work for the people who are nice enough to get paid to clean up, and making me feel bad that I think I'm important enough not to help out and clean it up myself on my way to school in the morning.

So yeah.

Finally (uhm), back by popular demand, is this:

This is due to actual popular demand by the strapping young man in the picture. He is currently as far away from Japan as I am, but the other way around. Sort of. Oh, and remember what I said before: I will not be held responsible for breaking the Internet by laughter. Loud though it may be.

The miracle

This thing is going to be about sports. If you only have three minutes before you have to leave for work, you might want to spend them elsewhere, perhaps with some professional sports-blogger-journalist-type-person. If you for some reason swing that way. I don't know. Hell, maybe you just don't care about sports at all. Although that would be shocking news, to say the least.

Yeah, I know I promised I'd be back on form this time, but that's just going to have to wait. Next time. I promise. Then again, you probably know what my promises are worth by now, huh?

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Sweden hasn't been in a war (officially) since a "short, dead dude" named Napoleon roamed the continent. Sure, people where he was born called him Nabullione, but that's not really relevant to my point. So yeah, a couple of hundred years without anything to get all hot and bothered about. Add to that the fact that the couple of hundred years before that had been spent gradually constructing a smaller and smaller nation, giving parts to the Russians and so on...

It all adds up to a lot of pent up adrenaline. Now we could all go beserk and rage out on the streets, but that wouldn't be very... Swedish, you know? We're all so civilized. Very nearly enough to make you sick, unless you consider things like daycare for the kids and auto insurance the stuff of dreams.

But then we go and do something like this:

On top of something like this:

No points for matching which photo to which triumph. However, points to the first and last one who can tell me the given names of the three identifiable players in the top one. Master class difficulty: No Googling!

Sweden is the first nation in the history of the world to win a World Championship and the Olympic Games in the same year!

No, I'm not talking U21 bobsleigh running for people over six feet tall. I'm talking hockey. As if anything else matters. The Czechs may have robbed us of another "dream final" agains the Finns, but I'm ok with it. Lets call it a different revenge, and leave it at that.

It's like the little guy in elementary school who sucks at all the cool things like running track (was that ever cool?) or smoking behind the bleachers (not that we had any where I went to school) but is great at geography. People may think that's a pretty useless skill to have (especially compared to the smoking), but to that little kid... So what if I could name the capital of Botswana before we got to multiplication, never mind, ok! Get off my back! Geez! Anyway, the point is, we all need something to be proud of, and if you live in a small country who can't be proud about a history of parents going out of their way to make babies or guns to take over other people's babies, you take what you get. Be it safe cars, crumbling social welfare, mobile communications systems (since we lost the edge in the much sexier "mobile phones" race), or an event that's probably going to be called "people chasing a tiny black rubber thing on ice because they don't have anything better to do" by future generations.

Right now, there's a man sitting naked from the waist up, two front teeth missing, and a tatoo of something unreadble on his chest, answering inane questions on TV. And I couldn't be prouder to know he's a Swede.

The glass is there

Lately, I find myself wondering. Do you remember too little, or actually too much?

As some of you know, my girlfriend (who's name shall remain hidden for reasons of intrigue and mystery. I will refer to her as "Toyomi") has been living with me for the past three months. She is not, anymore. Thankfully, this did not come about due to my inability to put down the seat, or how I never did anything but watch sports all day. Except for the Olympics, that was some fine hockey action. Ooh, and the curling. But that's neither here nor there.

The point is, that due to visa regulations and my upcoming trip to Japan to cap a career of 17 years in school with some sort of thesis right there at the end, she went home. And it got me thinking. It feels like time just flew by. This happens quite a lot, for example when you haven't studied enough for an exam which is about to start, or maybe when you spend time lying on the grass in the sunshine. But in this case, we're talking about a quarter of a year that somebody apparently just lived up, and now it's gone. This is feeling is not because "all I did was study". I have, on occasion, bemoned the fact that I had to go to school since I had a lecture that day. We've also been able to visit three Nordic capitals (points for all guesses that include Helsinki!), as well as the center of the universe, currently located in Älmhult, Småland. Population 8592. And a fair bit of more local places as well. Which means that things obviously happened. Somehow they just ended up doing it a great deal quicker than one might have thought.

I mean, if we've done all this stuff, shouldn't it feel like it's been a really long while? Thinking about it logically, this is the only conclusion. Doing stuff takes time. Ergo, doing lots of stuff takes lots of time. Right? But still, that feeling eludes me much like any deeper understanding of Laotian cinema.

Here I am, left to my own devices to come up with an answer. And it is this: It doesn't feel like "a long time" because we don't remember what happened on that Thursday afternoon eleven weeks ago, but rather because we do remember it, as well as what happened the next week, and the one after that. If we didn't, there would be nothing to compare it to. Everything would be happening "now", because we wouldn't remember what happened before. Somewhat akin to describing the distance to Cuba in nautical miles to somebody who measures stuff in "cats". Or something.

Completely nonsensical intermission time! (And no, sadly, it's not that kind of place, just a regular bar):


(If Da Pete is watching, I was looking through old... stuff, and found this, along with perennial favorite "Thanks, 40th Anniversary! Dynamic Performance of Mission!" But exposing that to the world? I doubt we as a society are ready just yet)

So yeah, in conclusion, I cannot tell you if the glass is half-empty. Or, indeed, if it is half-full. Only that you remember that it is there, and it's up to you to fill it up with stuff. Prefereably big, bulky home electronics. I like that. Better get me one of them thar American-size glasses, then.

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If you found this post a little stranger than average (even for me), you're probably right, so I'll give you this to think about: Going home from the airport yesterday, I had apparently booked my return ticket in the wrong direction. 17 years of Swedish education: 1 - Rest of World: 0. Just to show you that I'll be back on form next time; you can take that to the bank. (Which would probably result in a lot of strange stares and awkward conversations, but that does not detract from the fact that you could take it to the bank.)

The 放題

There is something which, were it spread to the rest of the world, would surely contribute to it becoming a better place. I am, of course, talking about the 放題 ("houdai"). For those of you who think that those squiggly lines are just a very complicated way of writing "houdai", well, you're right. Obviously, it is. But also, it's not. There's far more to it than meets the eye.

This is a Japanese concept, as you may have guessed, what with it being talked about by me. It means, basically "-as much as you want." Which is a pretty sweet deal, you must agree. The Houdai comes in abundant natural flavours. The original (and some would argue, the best) is the Nomihoudai, the drink-all-you-want. It's pretty straight forward, really. You pay the man or the woman at the place a flat fee, and then watch as your party desolves into drunken disorder. A process during which at one point, somebody will obviously find it a great idea to go yell at empty taxi cabs parked on the street below. At times, the not-at-all elusive Nomihoudai can be found at karaoke places, which make for a quite possibly lethal combination. Just ask your throat the next morning. You will get no reply. If you do, you'll have done something terribly wrong.

Of course, there are far more esoteric species in the Houdai family than the Nomihoudai, or even it's cousin, the Tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat. Hell, you can even find that in places which are not Japan!). Basically anything can be Houdai-ified, if you try hard enough. You might have met up with the Norihoudai ("ride", as on trains or giant coffee cups at some place of amusement), which can be very useful for going places (or indeed, around in circles). Then there's the general Yarihoudai, or -shihoudai, ("do") with the aid of which one can help even lowly nouns approach the sanctity of the Houdai. Here are two examples:


This would be the Cross-promotional-yarihoudai, for a Japanese mobile phone company, as well as a company making great big black capes and somewhat clunky armour to go with it. Then there's always the ol':


Which probably would be the Tall-building-houdai, or maybe the Cloudy-houdai. If you build something so high that it not only reaches the clouds but actually goes on to stab them right in the belly, that's probably your cue to stop, right there. Or just keep going, I don't really care. I like tall buildings, as long as I'm not the one building them. That would just be pathetic, trying to build a skyscraper on student loans using arms the girth of hotdogs.

Tripple word score to everybody who can guess what city that picture's from. Yes, even if you look at the comments after the first person got it right. Cheater. Hint: It's not the place I am from, and chances are, it's not the place you're from, either.

The reason for all this Houdai-ness? Man, do I always have to have a reason? (Hint #2: Uhm, no, just look at the rest of the posts, and you'll probably start to notice some sort of pattern forming). But yeah. The weather's good. I mean, great! I spent three hours outside today. In a row! Without my mom saying "You have to go out and play more". Not that she does, generally; that's just to make my point. Anyhoo, then I catch a glimpse of the weather on TV (yes, man has invented a thing which s/he can look at as opposed to look out the actual window), and see that Sweden had the highest temperature in all of Europe today. Feel free to make up a brand new Houdai to commemorate this day.

Think about it for a second, "The Highest in Europe". Taste it. This is big. Mainly because it's so unexpected. If you know something good's coming your way, its relative value depriciates accordingly. It follows that the opposite might also be true; if something great happens completely out of the blue, your joy is multiplied by a factor, lets call it Mike. The Mike Factor. Remember back in junior high when your teacher didn't show up for class that one time, and you suddenly had 45 minutes of free time? That's it. It was just so much more precious than the empty period you always had between math and English on Thursday afternoons, because you had no idea it was coming. It's like getting an album by a group you don't know, only to realise one of your new favorite tunes is on there. The one that's been going through your head all day; you just didn't know the name of the band.

That, my friends, is the magical power of the Houdai. The power which lets me go from Darth Vader via Swedish weather and junior highschool, all the way to a random analogy involving music. Fan-frikkin-tabulous.

Allow me to wax philosophical, for once

You can never go home again.

That's what they say. It's obviously a lie, but it's still what they say. As long as you have the will, the financial and temporal means, and are in good enough health to travel, you can go home. No problem. In fact, entire businesses have been built around the concept of people going home. Perhaps not even to their own homes, but to somebody else's home. Imagine the horror. What you can never do, however, is go back.

You cannot, thus far, go back to your childhood home, the way it was. Sure, some things will be the same, some of the buildings, some of the people, some of the furniture in your old room. But the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how much you might like to go back, you just can't. Live with it.

All is not lost, however. Even if you have been fortunate enough to be allowed the opportunity to see what life is like across the county line, hell, even in THE BIG CITY, there is still a cornucopia of things to appreciate in your hometown. Yes, no matter how small, or how large the difference between it and the place you work/study/watch too much tv in. You just have to accept the fact that the things won't be the same as when you came home from junior high on a Friday afternoon to go out an play football in the glorious sunshine. You may think it will be too tiny, now that you've "seen the world", but if you have any positive memories at all from your childhood, it won't be. It'll be "quaint". It'll be "within walking distance", "close to nature", "near good neighbors", or even, shock, horror, "a good place to settle down to raise the kids".

This is human nature. For some yet undisclosed purpose, we have been given genes. They have been packed with, as far as I know, lots of stuff I don't know. But somewhere deep inside, included in every human package, is the desire to explore. It's different in all people, which is why some peolpe go to the next block while others drive buggies on the moon, but it's there. It's in your system, there's nothing you can do about it. For most people, however, this desire can be satisfied. Some people get there when they turn 17 and realise running away isn't all it's cracked up to be, some not until they hit 108. Though most reach it by then. I mean, getting there at 109 just seems silly, really.


Which doesn't make for a very good opportunity to segue, but still. The reason for the above rant is that I went home this past weekend, and everywhere I looked, it was just idyllic. Completely! Almost shockingly so. Maybe it was because I was showing it and somebody I care a great deal about to somebody I care a great deal about. Either way, it was just perfect, a shimmering pearl on the edge of toppling into the lake-with-a-name-that-doesn't-really-sound-very-poetic-in-English. Or Swedish, come to think of it.

Time to say goodbye for now. Personally, it feels like I'll hit that point where my exploratory desire no longer dictates my life at some point right in between 17 and 108. Then I'll go back again.