The Question

When the world ends, it will not be in a cacophony of fiery explosions, nor will massive numbers of people scream unintelligible... things at the top of their lungs. No. Instead, it will be accompanied by the voice of a cheerful young woman politely explaining that "This is the end of the world. Please don't forget to take all your belongings with you as you exit this plane of existence." Or maybe I've just been in Japan a bit too long.

Not that that has anything to do with anything, really. If you haven't caught on yet, that's kind of the way we do things around here. Welcome. Anyhoo, in stark contrast to the previous post, I actually have some sort of... thoughts, one might even go so far as to call them "plans" for this post. I'll start by bitching about random things, and then move on to some pictures. After which come the explosions, obviously.

Complaint #1) Me. Some people apparently spend their Saturdays relaxing, or possibly even socializing (or so I hear). Me, not so much. No, instead, I go apartment-hunting. Of course, I won't actually be moving for several months yet, and Tokyo/Yokohama does in fact - in stark contrast to for example Stockholm - have loads of empty places just looking to become un-empty. Ok, so I started out thinking "I'll just look at some places in Hiyoshi, that'll be it", but of course, things happened. I had a brainwave. "The next station isn't that far away, I might just as well leg it." I had this brainwave nine more times throughout the day, and my calves will never forgive me for it. For those of you who know your Toyoko-line, I walked Hiyoshi - Motosumiyoshi - Musashikosugi - Shinmaruko - Tamagawa - Den-en-chofu - Jiyugaoka - Toritsu-daigaku - Gakugei-daigaku - Yutenji - Nakameguro. To those of you who don't know your Toyoko-line, that's eleven stations, "cities", if you will. 16 kilometers, in Google Earth-years. 10 miles, and no, I don't know how many calories. Not doing that again anytime soon.

Complaint #2) Me. I only get off the escalator at the floor for classic music at the Tower Records in Shibuya to go the the bathroom. This makes me feel disappointed. I really want to know things about classical music, but I just never seem to reach enough wanting to step over the boundry into actual doing. My threshold energy is thus... great?

Complaint #3) Traffic lights. Bet you thought it was gonna be "me" again, huh? Just keeping you on your toes. Maybe it shouldn't be listed here since my traffic light karma has seemingly improved over the past week or so, but the lights by the station must be the worst invented by mankind. Ever. It's like the God of Traffic Lights ("Jeff", to his friends) just took the day off and played... that there Playing Station the kidz are all talking about? I don't know, whatever. At least I've finally managed to get from the station to my home without having to stop at either of the five lights. Traffic Light Bingo, as we refer to it.

Complaint #4) Me. For actually finding a recent song entertaining. At one point, the singer goes off on a wild tangent and excitedly claims that "I'm a crazy crazy rainbow star". I would imagine so. Do you know any sane rainbow stars? Ok, sure, but do they right music? Well, do they?

Complaint #5) Japanese TV. Usually it's right at the top of my non-complaints-list, but when you wake up on Sunday to a show where celebrities have to guess how much the plastic surgery cost that turned these five men into these five very female-looking males... Maybe it was just pre-Monday-crankiness setting in, I don't know.

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And now, pictures! First of all, there is one of a Porsche. It's a fine car. You may wish to guess where I had to go to take its picture. If so, by all means, indulge yourself. Winner gets a free cupcake.

An old Porsche.

Hint #1: The Porsche was not parked near here. (5 points)

Hint #2: The Porsche was parked near here. (3 points)

Hint #3: The Porsche was parked nere here. As well! (1 point)

Now as if that wasn't enough of a picture overload, here are some others I found taking up space on the ol' HDD. Triple points!

Why do you need the second sign? Do we really want people who can't remember a direction for five meters actually riding the subway?

What's wrong with this picture?

Who would win a pie-eating contest, the Japanese or American NBA?

Nah, I don't have a question about this one, I just thought it was... funky.

Suppose that's about it, really. Wow, first post since I got here that didn't involve Fuji-san in any way. Kinda. Good to see I'm finally getting over that frikkin' mountain. Anyway, be sure to tune in next week as I try to top my previous post about Russian mountains secretly harboring wishes of redistributing wealth. It's got a shocker finish, let me tell you!

The Inconsistency

Well isn't this awkward. It's a little like meeting a friend you haven't met since elementary school, only it's not a friend but a blog and it's not since elementary school (because back then, computers didn't exist) but three weeks. So yeah, I guess it's not really anything like that.

There have been developments. I don't know what your personal image of Japan is, but chances are that it will fall into one of two categories. Most things tend to, really. The first one is the image of a very efficient society, all cogs working together, firing on all cylinders, that sort of thing. This perception is usually predominant among people who have never been here. For some reason, if you've spent any length of time here, you begin to notice things like four people refilling a soda-machine. And no, it doesn't take a fourth of the time it would have taken just the one guy.

The Guys

Nah, I'm joking! Or am I...? Intriguing.

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And now, some crowd-pleasing from the depths of the oh-my-that's-just-wacky-wacky-I-tell-you-archive. Ok, so it's not that wacky, but it is posted on the wall above my stove, and I hear there's a huge interest in things like that, so here you go:

I'm so taking it out for a spin once I finish writing this. Can you take flying stoves out for spins, though?

Also! It will soon be officially springtime in Japan. In Sweden, it's apparently spring when the average temperature has been above 10 degrees (Celsius, what did you think? Seriously?) for seven straight days. Here, it's when the cherry blossoms, uhm, blossom. And this year, the hype may be more intense than ever, possibly thanks to Al Gore. Spot that connection! But yeah, some people are worried because the frikkin' things are blooming before they planned for them to bloom. These people are mainly tour operators who are booked full for the first week of April, when they thought the blooming would reach its peak, and are now faced with calling a lot of disappointed customers to say they're very sorry they couldn't control nature. This time. I would suggest they check this. Man, the Googles, they've got everything! (for those not daring to look, it's a Google Map of where the things are blooming, complete with pictures! Fan. Tas. Tic.)

Did I just spend an entire paragraph talking about not only flowers, but cherry blossoms? I must recover my masculinity, somehow. So! Toilets. For at least three years now, there have been models available where you bring music on an SD-card, plug it in, and beautiful stereo sound erupts from the built-in speakers. And yes, the seat is heated, of course. We're not barbarians, after all. If they could only figure out how to use insulation to keep heat in/out of the houses too, the entire country would probably just implode under the pressure of utter perfection. Oh, and there's a jacket made to help people who have to sleep standing on trains. I'm so getting one.

Closing out the section: I have cereal for breakfast sometimes. And yes, I felt a whole lot of grown up when I got the turbo-fiber ones instead of the turbo-sugar ones. And no, it wasn't an easy choice. But maybe I should take it easy. The package I got, all 450g of it, says it's for "industrial use", like for company kitchens or restaurants. Eating like a factory worker might be bad enough, but eating like an entire factory of workers? Maybe I should look into that diet thing people keep talking about.

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And now, for something completely different! Over the past couple of weeks, there have been changes to my future life - something a lot easier to deal with than changes to past lives, it must be said. Anyway, these changes have then been changed (a sort of meta-change, I would assume?), but the end result is that I've finally found out what part of the company I work for that I'll actually work for once my training is over in July, where I'll work, and where I'll train, too. If you're reading this, chances are you'll already know, so I won't waste any more key-presses on it. Ok, I will. It has to do with furniture.

Incidentally! The other day - at said place of work - I heard someone call my name. This happens now and then. Only this time, it was a person of Thai origin. This doesn't happen very often. Even less often, it's a Thai person I studied together with three years ago, only for her to go back to Thailand, graduate, come back to Japan to work in Osaka, then come to Yokohama and run into me. It was, as they would have said three weeks ago, "kewl".

Thailand? Travel. Multiple segue points: I've been around a bit myself, too. Some Yokohama here, some Shinjuku there, and a freak visit to Yotsuya only to find my reason for going - the Best Ramen in the Known World, Yayaya - closed. And some other places, but I certainly wouldn't want to bore you. So! Spot that holy mountain, and the... holy-hell-that's-a-lot-of-red-bricks/taxis?

A holy mountain, and a girl who's actually taller than it

Red brick warehouses, housing fine exotic goods for centuries. Like avocado burgers

So sue me! Again! I like the lights of Kabuki-chou. And taxis. Surely I am not alone in this?

And in grand tradition, I shall close out the post with a little something about food. I guess I might have mentioned it up there with the cereal, but as you are no doubt already aware, if I were king, my motto would probably be something along with lines of "to hell with consistency". Or possibly something about donuts. By now, you must surely be wondering why I have not died yet. It is a combination of two factors:

Things I have not eaten:

The Fugu. Potentially extremely poisonous blowfish for you and your special lady friend, sir?

Things I have eaten (wihout chewing?):

The Yamachan. Potentially extremely thirst-enducing spicy chicken wings, Nagoya-stylee. Note: Actual chicken wings may not be present in the above picture. Void if removed, no purchase necessary.

To paraphrase a formerly underground British pop act: Beer always tastes better with a man dressed like a chicken printed on my glass. That will be all.

The New Black

I'm amazed at the velocity at which my body can create rather large amounts of mucus. If only it could manufacture Volvo saloon cars at a similar speed. I would so retire to... somewhere.

Yeah, I'm kinda sick. But it's all good. I'm just sick enough to feel sorry for myself, but not so sick that it actually registers, unlike some people I know. These people who have had surgery today after somebody stepped on their left arm. And that was actually in an attempt to set the bone right! Damn, these Japanese physicians and their... feet? Anyway, get well soon, Mr Tiki!

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A lot's happened since last we met. Not only has this thing gotten brand new sparkling threads in a vain effort not to give up too much distance to Mr Da Pete in our vicious blog challange, but I've also spent a day opening 19 bottles of champagne. Well, it didn't really take that long, but it was quite fun. I've also been to Shinjuku, Takadanobaba, Shibuya, Kamakura, and that's not even mentioning where I actually live, despite me having been there too. And! In one of those places, I met someone named Jeanne D'Arc. That's a fine piece of naming-devil-may-care on behalf of a couple of parents, right there. I applaud them for it! But I digress...

From the top: Attentive readers will no doubt (?) have noticed the new little list right there on the, well, right. It makes a pretentious claim about me liking "A rainy Shinjuku". It makes several other pretentious claims too, but I shall only justify that one, at least for now. So to do that, I offer the following: How can you not like a place that looks like this:

The Rainy Shinjuku of which I speak. Or spoke, at least.

And now, for something completely different! Construction worker sadism. Why is it that the people trying to build something across the street from me absolutely have to do their loudest work when I am trying to get my best sleep? On a frikkin' Saturday. I do not want to wake up at eight a.m. I did not call the front desk to ask for a wake up call, not that there is one to call. Nevertheless, these people see fit to wake me (me, I tell you!) with their... building. And just when I've given in, just when I've realised I'm not going to get any more sleep after half an hour's intensive banging, they stop, content in the knowledge that I am awake. Self-centered? Surely not!

Anyway, I'm sure they've all had this for breakfast. That surely must be the root of all this evil.

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So, work. Aside from the champagne, one interesting thing happened. I was standing outside the entrance, and then I hear a pretty impressive crashing noise, see some pretty impressive sparks, and react way to late to the tire rolling away from the Merc at rather impressive speed. Thankfully, I was about two meters away from its path, and equally thankfully, it was stopped by the door or a taxi and not the flesh and bone of a someone. But it was kind of... rad.

Find the missing wheel, win a prize!

I know this post's a bit picture-heavy, but all this multimedia hoo-hah of late means I have to give the kidz what they want. And that's not text. No siree. They want pictures. They really do. Actually, I'm sure they'd prefer the new-fangled type of moving pictures, but somewhere I have to draw the line. Anyway, what follows is what you can find in the fine coastal city of Kamakura, once proud capital of the nation:

A bamboo forest

A traditional Japanese avocado burger. From Hawaii.

A random guy trying to steal a star.

I guess that should satisfy pretty much anyones craving of colored pixels for now. But just in case, I'll give it one last try. Final sale, everything must go! Have no fear, the holy mountain depicted below was not actually having an eruption at the time. I think. Tune in next week as I dissect every single one of the twelve plates of sushi I had at the gorgeous Kappa sushi located 10-15 minutes away by foot from my current domicile, and also: The weekend! Yes!

The Omasum

I tend to talk to myself (more) when I have a cold. Maybe it's because it sounds like I'm talking to somebody else.

There is no toilet paper in my apartment. I don't think that's ever happened before. Well ok, now there is paper. I wrote that, and then finally reached the point where my need for the article in question outweighed my substantial but not infinite laziness, so I went out and bought some. Although I do kind of wonder what the lady at my local (super) market - the aptly named Fit Care Depot - thought of me when I came in to buy eight rolls of toilet paper, a bottle of Coke, and two packs of Instant Yakisoba (the "instant noodle" of the knowing consumer) while the Backstreet Boys were rocking the speakers in the store. Maybe I'll go back to ask her. Nah.

So! In order to amaze and astound, I present you with the following: A picture of a mountain I have climbed with a friend of mine whom I'm in a vicious blog challenge with, the other is a picture which has been given the honor of titling this post.

A mountain.

A dish.

Now, while I could speak at length about most things in general and holy Japanese mountains in particular, I shall focus my efforts on that... thing on the plate right there. You see, it is the "omasum", as I learned this morning when I looked it up. Good thing I didn't do that last night. Turns out (if you can't be bothered to read the six lines on Wikipedia) that it is the third compartment in the stomach of cattle and other happy four-compartmented-stomach-beings. If you aren't a vet (of the animal-loving, not napalm-dropping kind), that might not be very interesting, except that you can eat it. Apparently. At least you can at this little place in Yokohama I was led to. On the way there, one of the two people with me said we were about a block away from where "dangerous Yokohama" becomes "Dangerous Yokohama". I never did get around to asking how he drew the border so that a place that serves inside-out cow's stomach ends up in the "safe" part. As a final... something, not only do you have to pay for the privilege, you also have to cook the thing yourself. The lengths some people go to to get their omasum, I tell you. Suffice to say, I think it'll be a while before I come much closer to abandoning this carcass-centric lifestyle I'm leading than I was last night.

Moving on! In the haha-I-can-see-a-mountain-from-where-I-work category, I can mention that that shot was taken on the fifth floor of, well, where I work. Then again, I can also see a lot of dealers of pre-owned automobiles, so maybe I should downplay the location-angle.

Oh, but I have other completely non-connected pieces of news to dazzle you with:

1) In an interview on tv the other morning, a Japanese fella' by the name of Shigeru was interviewed. Questions in English, answers in Japanese, pretty standard fare. But of course, he was dubbed to English, as it was an American channel doing the producing. But of course, he was then dubbed back into Japanese again, as it was a Japanese subsidiary doing the broadcasting. If my current job doesn't end up working out, I'm so going into translating. Those folks seem to have a lot to do these days.

2) At an ATM near the near-fabulous station of Shin-yokohama, there is an ATM which, I'm near-certain, is equipped with a device that scans the vein pattern in your hand. Thumb-prints? Were you born in the year of the rooster, or what? Anyway, I'm so going to change my bank. Also, the name of the bank: MUFG. Which stands for Mitsubishi-Tokyo UFJ Ginko. And no, nobody really knows what the UFJ stands for, why neither "Tokyo" or the J in UFJ were deemed important enough to be included in the official abbreviation, or what the **** I'm doing writing about it in the first place.

3) A random Japanese person asked me about my real name this week, knowing my Japanese one. And she guessed correctly! Frightening. That's the first time that's happened. I'm so going to... I don't know? Get an even more secret alias?

In the words of a dear friend of someone dear to me: "Must drop off now."

The Change

Leonardo DiCaprio was just on TV, in an ad for some random property development. This was followed by a program where celebrities learn how to re-use a paper cup in various, wondrous ways. Yup, I'm in Japan again.

They say "the more things change, the more they stay the same." I don't know who "they" are, but I do know that they are, indeed, full of crap. I mean seriously, think about it. If things change, they do NOT stay the same, no? If things stay the same the more they change, then that would mean my coming to Japan actually is the same as me staying in Sweden, Loft in Shinjuku closing equaling it staying open, the third guy at the World's Finest Rameneria (Yayaya in Yotsuya, as if you didn't know) leaving would mean him staying, and the train I was supposed to take to the airport (Copenhagen, naturally) being delayed an hour would mean it arrived on time. So no chance of that, then.

Yeah, I had a bit of a run-in getting here (which for those of you keeping score is Shin-yokohama. Or "New Yokohama." Pretty much the same relationship with regular old Yokohama as York and New York, I would imagine). It ended up with me being driven to the airport instead of taking the train. The driver was none other than Anders Borg. You may know Anders Borg as the finance minister (or Chancellor of the Exchequer, collect the whole set of chancellors and get a free petri dish!) of the Kingdom of Sweden. Sadly, while I've experienced episodes involving previous holders of that office, this kind man bore very little resemblance to that Anders Borg. But he did get both of us to the airport. In time, no less.

As a fine character in an equally fine movie once put it: "I've been here a week, I've got my name on the door, a geranium in the window, but I'm still waiting for my secretary". What, if any relevance that particular statement holds for me in my situation remains unclear.

However! I have now taken the big - and as all other big things, scary - step into the world of working men. Or 60% working women, in my case. Thus far, the only thing I can say about work is that the people are quite excellent, and that I "only know that I know nothing", or however that went. It's gonna be fun though. I think.

Now, I could regale you with tales of my first week, but I don't think you want that. In all honesty, I don't think you'll prefer the following, but as they say on the Interwebs: Tough shit. As I have been busy working this past week (did you not read the above paragraph? It say so right there), not a lot of pictures were taken. Which means I'll test your identifying skillz using the following. You mission, which you have accepted by reading this far (see the above part about "tough shit") is to either tell me the location of the keypad - somewhere in the entire known universe! - or which one of the remotes I brought with me here, and what its role is. As that is deemed to be the easier task, you will only receive 4/5ths the immortal honor by solving that one as you would the top one.

A keypad. What did you think it was? Mustard? Ok, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so, well, mean. It must be the last of the jetlag. Or maybe the proximity to fermented beans.


Five remotes. There can be only one! Triple word score to anybody who can tell me what the small white one does. I've lived here a week and I have no clue.

There, that little bit of audience participation didn't kill you, did it? Good. Moving on, I can mention that we had a magnitude 4.2 quake here a couple of days ago. I hardly felt it, but the Intertron told me it was 4.2, so there's no denying it. The reason I hardly felt it either has to do with me being a total badass, or that the house here is pretty quake-resistant. You pick.

Also, I have a new friend. He lives on the same floor as me, and can open the combination lock on my mailbox without knowing the combination. Hell, I don't even know that combination. If you ever need a lock picked and Charles Ingvar Jonsson isn't around, feel free to give me a call. I'll pass him the info.

Be sure to tune in next week as... things will have happened! Trust me on this.

The Count-up

It's a frikkin' Christmas miracle.

As I can now (with some difficulty) count the number of days left until I leave for Japan and an actual Job on two hands, I spend my days doing just that, counting. Not like I did back in school, bless it's sweet heart, no. Since this is likely/hopefully the last month-long winter break I'll have before retiring, I'm counting media-consumption-achievements. How many books of how many chapters of how many pages can I read before going? How many CDs can I listen to and rate on the completely arbitrary scale of one to five stars? How many movies can I watch and how many times can I make friends have exactly the same pizza while we're watching them? How many games can I complete? How many tv-shows can I watch? How many annoying emails can I write? These are big and important questions to somebody who doesn't really happen to have a lot going on at the moment. One might also include "how many blog posts can I write in about a month", but the obvious answer to that is just one, so I won't include that.

However! It is not only I who am busy achieving stuff, far from it. Mother Nature too, has been at it. First with a storm that caused blackouts accross the known universe which for some lasted over a week, until the next storm came along. And apparently, the Swedish people (surely I'm not generalizing!) lost all sense of irony and/or sarcasm along with the power as a certain radio show host got inundated with irate emails after he'd made a joke about the size of this particular industrialized-nation problem. And yes, I did swallow a thesaurus prior to writing this paragraph. You should try it, it's not bad with a pinch of garlic and... soy?

Oh yeah, before I went off on that tangent, the above was supposed to segue nicely into the fact that the first snow has fallen, one week before I leave. About damn time, too. Curse you Global-Warming-or-natural-climate-variation!


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New and very-much-only-tengnetially-relevant subject!

I usually try to avoid mentioning current events in order to keep this thing as timeless as possible for all mankind to enjoy for ever and ever, but as I am currently spending way too much time doing very little productive work furthering the cause of humanity, indulge me this once.

You see, one of my "achievements" is that I've been watching Prison Break. It's quite aptly named, I don't think I'll have to explain the concept to anyone who's actually read the first sentence of this paragraph. The reason I mention it is that I have rarely come across a show which causes such contradictory feelings in the viewer (that would be me, for those of you playing the home game). This may be because other than Prison Break, I only watch the Muppets and the occasional episode of the Smurfs (you see, in their language, "to Smurf" can mean anything!), but that's neither here nor there. Getting back on track: the basic moral morsel provided by the - and I'm guessing here - severely overdramatized story is intended (surely!) to make pretty much any viewer in the entire world anti-death penalty, regardless of their previous stance on the issue. If you'd, say, grown up in Sweden and thus were almost (note the almost!) that way by default but hadn't really thought about it a whole lot, it does make you think. At least a little. Because at the same time, the antagonist is... Well, I caught myself talking to the TV, and that's never a good sign. I shall not transcribe what I "said to her", but suffice to say it was in Japanese, and very much contradictory to my stance on the death penalty. I would have loved to believe that a couple of million years of evolution would have been enough to widen the gap to our instinctive reptilian brain, but apparently, it'll take another couple of generations. At least in my case.

Seriously though. If you have 14 hours left over in the space of 22 weeks, watch it. You won't get more quality time with your reptilian brain this side of the summer's "blockbuster" movies. Unless you've got the entire Smurfs collector's edition DVD boxed set with the OST CD thrown in. Don't ask, just... don't.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to let me know.

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Finally, for those of you who made it this far, I can (almost) assure you that this thing will see more frequent updates from here on in. I'm not saying they'll be worth your time, but I am saying they'll be here. See, paradoxically enough, having lots of free time should mean I would be able to use more of it to write about random things, but apparently I need a bit of stress to get my ass in gear, as it were. Good thing that's what's just on the horizon, beginning February 1st.

Oh, and for those of you who enjoy things which are fun, you would do well to head here. There's dinosaurs over there! Thank you Mr. Da Pete for happifying my life with that one.

The End

Nobody's ever told me I have a face for radio. Then again, nobody's ever told me I have one for tv, either.

My iTunes Library with its magically crafted "smart playlists" now reflects my personality in both content and order. This is what I spend my days doing. Having managed to watch on in amazement at the Herculian effort produced by my partner in crime to get our thesis out the proverbial door not only in time, but actually almost a month ahead of said time (prompting some to proclaim it to be a true Christmast miracle, if you subscribe to such things), there's not a whole lot else to do, really.

Well, there was that thing a couple of days ago with the jolly bearded fellow with a possibly worrying BMI-problem went through close to every chimney in America and fathers across the land launched out to purchase newspapers they most certainly never ended up buying in other parts of the world, but that's about it, I suppose. For all intents and purposes, I have now "graduated" university, so what better way to celebrate that than to go back home and... make sausage and bring select pieces of wildlife into your living room?

But yeah, that only gets you halfway there. You see, as an aftershock of the health examinations for my new job, I was told to get a wisdom tooth removed. There is no logical rationale behind this. Seriously. I was not having any problems with it, and my dentist told me that we might well leave it as it is, since, well, it wasn't causing any problems. But then he upped and changed his mind and said the following, which I found startling in all its honesty: "But we might as well remove it, seeing as how you do have deep pockets." Now, I'm all for a straight-as-an-arrow take-it-like-a-man way of explaining things to the patient, but was this really necessary? Granted, he was referring to a completely different sort of pocket than the one I was thinking of when I walked out of the place some 2 200SEK lighter for it, but yeah. For my SEK-challenged friends, feel free to look that up, but know that it's basically my last month's rent. However, I should not have been surprised. Previous contact with the Swedish health care-system has left me with very few illusions indeed.

Last year's NYE. This picture will not be possible to reproduce tomorrow for a great many reasons.

So yes, this means that the last New Year's Eve I'll spend at home for quite some time, will actually be spent at home, as in not out gallivanting with my friends. As an aside, people do tend to gallivant a lot less these days, wouldn't you say? And isn't it sad? Anyway, if you're wondering who's going to be sitting at home (with a right cheek that looks like he tried to stuff a basketball in there and succeeded with room to spare) feeling very very sorry for himself at the stroke of midnight, look no further. Happy New Year to you, Interwebs, and all who visit you!

The Future

Back before even the time when the internet was spelled with a capital I, there was little doubt in my mind that I'd grow up to control the launch of manned space-flight.

STS-116 mission patch. Image credit: so not me.

However, as some of you may be aware, things never quite go the way you plan them. The first Swede ever to venture past the thin life-enabling veil of the atmosphere - Christer Fuglesang - of all people should know that, having had the first launch attempt scrubbed on Thursday night. Not to mention training and waiting for 14 years just to be allowed to make the attempt in the first place. So yeah.

Me, I had some problems in the present as well. Turns out that I'd probably been overly optimistic regarding my ability to wake up, or rather mistimed my sleeping so that I was supposed to wake up while in the deepest possible sleep known to man. Or that I forgot to turn the alarm on after setting it, I'm not sure. Either way, it does suck like you would not believe. Thankfully, through something certainly bordering divine intervention, I awoke at 02:59 a.m., 12 minutes after the launch was supposed to have taken place. So I grab my pants (never mind a shirt or a sweater, there's no time, people!) and run out to the TV, turn it on, secretly hoping that they'd scrubbed the launch tonight as well so I'd get another chance later, what with the weather not being very promising tonight either. But it turns out that they did launch, and that I'd thus missed the "near-heart-stopping tension of the countdown" itself. Which, yeah, might be a good thing, since I generally prefer my heart to keep going. At least I was up and about when the first Swede ever entered orbit at 03:05, four minutes before "passing over Stockholm", something which I can only assume means he passed over my head in equal measure, at that altitude.

The launch of STS-116. Image credit: equally so not me.

I may have missed the launch itself, but man... There is no end to what can only be referred to as the gorgeousness of the situation. While the media people were busy showing pictures from the launch over and over again (for which I am grateful) and talking incessantly about the new type of yogurt they'd eat and how problematic it could be to eat bread and go to the bathroom in space (in nearly the same sentence!), they also briefly mentioned the American plan to build a permanent base on the moon, starting in the year 2020 and being permanently settled from 2024. Using experiences from there, Mars will be next, with an attempt to be made by 2030.

In my head, I realize that the above is more political hyperbole from a president who's stopped loving the idea of being "the war president" than it is actual plans, or at the very least that priorities shift over time, and political ones tend to do so quicker than most. But even if they do, what I had just witnessed was a small step on the way to one of the events I would most like to witness during my lifetime: the first human setting his or her foot on Mars. Preferably followed by setting his or her other foot on that same Mars, but that's not a deal-breaker for me personally. And yes, once more I realize it's all about priorities, and that the 16 billion dollars that keep NASA afloat every year could go a long way to easing the much more life-threatening problems of many in the world. But quite aside from all the other ways that cash could help the world or the various organisms living in it, I want them to keep going. Naturally, this has more to do with me being raised in a corner of the world where the biggest problem is getting an email on your cellphone while typing an answer to an earlier email on the same phone than some deep-seeded human desire to explore. Of this, there can be little doubt. Hell, my current main method of exploration isn't even a bike, it's walking. But the eight year old boy inside me refuses to listen. He doesn't care or even know all that much about what's going on on this planet, he's far too busy thinking about how unbelievably cool it would be to venture forth to the next one. Maybe that's why, somehow, that that something happens to me when reading what Robert Zubrin said when proposing the Mars Direct plan a few years back:

"...Someday millions of people will live on Mars. What language will they speak? What values and traditions will they cherish as they move from there to the solar system and beyond? When they look back on our time, will any of our other actions compare in importance with what we do now to bring their society into being? Today we have the opportunity to be the parents, the founders, the shapers of a new branch of the human family. By so doing, we will put our stamp on the future. It is a privilege beyond reckoning."

I promise you here on all that is holy, I won't oversleep for that one.

The Pulse

Once, someone I would come to care a great deal about asked me if I understood Japanese music. I don't remember what I replied. Maybe it's not all that important.

I just spent a significant amount of time cleaning out my closet. This is one of the most exciting things to happen to me recently. Never mind the returning to Sweden, the thesis-writing, and the at times quite disgusting kitchen in the dorm I shall inhabit for another month or so, before I finally (or should that be hopefully?) graduate university. No, it's the closet, it's definitely the closet.

See, it was kinda full. So going through it in all its massiveness, I realised something. Being a self-proclaimed "Jeans-kille" (feel free to make up a meaning if you don't understand the Swedish bit), you can probably tell a lot about me over the past four years or so by the jeans lying in at the very bottom of the pile. Feelings of "wow, I can still get them on!" soon morphed into "wow, I actually wore those!? Regularly? Not to mention willingly?" But yeah, it was a fun five minutes.

Other things that have happened since coming back here include seing a shopping cart turned upside down, and put on the green, uhm garbage-disposal-pipe-thing outside my current domicile. Felt very artisitc.


Also, I was asked to take my clothes off. By a doctor, quite obviously. You see, and this is where the real point of this entry starts to become clear, I got a job. At IKEA. In Japan. Five years, starting in February next year. It's a pretty long time for someone who gets bored if there's 30 seconds of commercials on TV, but there you have it. I shall live there, I shall work there. I shall hopefully even enjoy it there, if I'm lucky. According to the old Swedish saying, "He who lives, shall see".

Anyway, that doctor. He was a pretty funny guy. In order to get the contract sent to me, the last stage is a medical examination. And a dental one, don't get me started. I'm working for a company selling furniture, not going to space here, people. But yeah. So I went and had all types of examinations known to man. I not only found out that I'd grown some .5cm at the tender age of 25, making me a hair over 6'3" (See what I did there, mixing the metric with the not-so-metric? Sit back and watch the universe explode, that's all I have to say), I also had my heart-rate checked. In various places. Such as the tops of both my feet. That was the first time that pretty experienced doctor had been asked to do that, and he did it laughing all the way at the anality (yup, that too is a word) of the form I'd been asked to get filled in.

...

I should really be doing something furthering my goals of graduating and job-starting instead of writing more stuff here right now. So yeah, I'll go and have a shower.

The Babarovsk

Those are some very Russian-looking mountains. I suspect they may secretly harbour a love of redistributing wealth.

This is not the first time I'm enjoying the sight of Babarovsk, up close and personal. It's a fine city, and by my calculations, I will have had a chance to bask in its glory some 10-15 times already, with more to come, hopefully as soon as the beginning of next year.

Well, I guess that might have been a bit misleading. While it's true that I am enjoying the sight of Babarovsk, and it's true that it is indeed up, it's not really close, nor very personal. But you can trust me on the bit about the mountains looking Russian.

I've never accessed the Internet (note the capital) from 30 000 feet before. It kind of makes me feel like I'm the first person ever to do it, like I'm live-blogging some press conference from the Moon where important things have been decided by important people, possibly regarding the recent boom in cheese imports. Sadly, I realise this is not the case, but that's never the less what it feels like.

You see, I am going somewhere. At approximately 568 mph, the friendly monitor informs me (can a monitor be friendly?) Like many other places worth going, it's going to take a fair bit of time to get there. I will be served food again. I will probably not love it, but that's what's going to happen. I will eat said food, as I am now someone who spends most of his time desperately trying to convince the world around him - in this case the city of Babarovsk in Eastern Siberia - how awfully grown up he is. Deep down, though, all I'll be thinking about is that Seinfeld bit when he mocks - mocks, I tell you! - airline captains for going on the PA right after liftoff to drone on about routes and weather. "Maybe I should do the same. Maybe I should get a bullhorn and just go 'I'm gently pouring myself a glass of cola. I'm taking up the bag of peanuts. But no, I won't eat them now, I'll save them for later!'"

At a point like this, when you haven't updated a blog in say three or so weeks due to endless social interaction with others of your own species and miniscule amounts of actual work thrown in for good measure, you'd think I'd try to sum up the past three weeks, four months, or any other arbitrarily chosen period of time. But there's a time and a place for that, and none of them are either here nor now. Instead, I shall just post some random pictures that have been left unposted, for whatever reason, and leave it at that. For now.

Possibly the last twelve payphones in all the land, gathered in Tokyo Station.

The place which serves the meanest Avocado Burger in all of Tokyo. Believe me, I've been around.

Behold! The Future!

A Tower, and not just any Tower.

One small part of one fine dinner. Just missed the smoke spewing out of that thingie on the left there by about three... minutes.

A different Tower from the one above.

My lunch. If only wishing made it so...

That's it for now, I guess. Have used up half my battery already, and since I'm not in Business or First, I'm gonna have to make do without Power. That said, it's not like I don't have anything else to do to occupy my time. There's always the in-flight movies, which of course are far suckier than the ones they apparently showed on the way here. Now with extra static goodness since my side of the plane apparently has some sort of problem. With the electronics. Not exactly what you wanna hear when your rocking out over the ol' Verkhoyanskiy Mountains.