17th July 2009 – Gothenburg, I came back to you…

I have during the two and a half weeks that I’ve been working from the Göteborg office been staying at Matte and Lotta’s place in Majorna, and they have completely embraced me as a third family member (occasionally referred to as the pet). When I first arrived Matte told me of his magnificent ideas of starting a collective out on the countryside, maybe buying an old farm with several dwellings, sharing all boring duties in order to maximize everyone’s free time. He was really excited about it. Since such an arrangement would require some planning and rules I’m quite sure that I would not be an optimal member, but I have been very happy to be part of the smaller prototype at Ostindiegatan. Matte has been in charge of the breakfast smoothie. I have been doing the washing up and as a second task I have (self nominated) tried to keep track of Lotta’s keys and occasionally her other possessions as well. (In any future collective I would though recommend each individual to have their own key.) I have spread my stuff(s) all over their living room and filled their hallway with my shoes. And still they have liked having me there. At least so they say…


During the evenings I have mostly met up with old friends. Last weekend the collective went on a quite improvised road trip driving back and forth in the rain over the island of Tjörn (seeing lots of cows, horses and small red cottages) and finally ending up in Ljungskile, where we had a great eating/drinking/playing boardgames night with some friends of Matte’s until the sun rose at four in the morning.

Being back in Göteborg has of course been a long walk down memory lane. I went past our old house and saw through the glass of the gateway that they have finally managed to build the balconies that we planned for. The 7Eleven at the corner of Andra Långgatan/Linnégatan has changed owners and done some internal rebuilding and does no longer make the best brownies in town/the world. They are out beaten even by the 7Eleven some hundred meters further up on Linnégatan, which used to be much, much worse. The Sorrentina at Vino Pasta at Plantagegatan was not as good as I remembered, but number 41 at Bombay at Andra Långgatan is still in the game. And my taste for salty sweets has completely changed and my new obsession is with Dumle Lakriskola, which is surprising. Well, well, everything changes, although it stays the same. I guess…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG64DmsSQH4

3rd July 2009 – And it’s all coming back to me now…

I have during the last days realized that my brain has been quite selective when it comes to remembering certain aspects of Sweden. I had for example totally forgotten about the mosquitoes. I cannot even remember them liking me very much before, but now they are all exited about the new blood in town and feast on me all they can. Maybe it’s all the antibiotics in my blood that makes them mad about me. Or they just prefer me older and wiser. Which is understandable.

Summer is not only mosquito time but also the time for building and rebuilding things. Swedes just seem to love doing that. A true Swede always has a façade to replace or an approach to pave. Since most Swedes are off on vacation in July most cities (especially Göteborg) take the opportunity to work on roads, tram tracks and train tracks during this period. I guess we are assumed to withdraw to a remote island or go sailing. We are definitely not assumed to stay in town. So, the city goes ahead and changes all the tram and train routes and redirects every second road which makes going anywhere even more confusing than it normally is in this city of one way streets.

I might also have slightly glorified the shopping in Göteborg. For a year now I have been constantly complaining about how impossible it is to find nice things in Sydney, and been bragging about how much better it is in Sweden. My master plan was to go back with an empty suitcase to be able to do some SERIOUS shopping. And so I did. For about 30 minutes. Then I panicked and headed home – disillusioned and confused, trying to avoid getting hit by every bus, tram and car in Göteborg on the way (they drive on the WRONG side!) – and ended up borrowing clothes from Lotta instead to solve the situation. It seemed I had completely forgotten about two small summer features; SUMMER SALE and TURISTS. Combined they turn every shop in Göteborg into a burning inferno. How could that slip my mind?

I’m now heading down to my parents’ place on the west cost 160 km south of Göteborg. The plan is to do a lot of nothing for the weekend. There will be no sale on since there are no shops. There will be no trams and hardly any cars. There will be no mosquitoes. Hardly any tourists. If I just stay put and not divert too much towards Båstad there will be nothing but family and food and ocean and a little bit of forest. And that is exactly what I need right now.

30th June 2009: Still somewhere between Hong Kong and Helsinki

Bored as I am without any battery in my camera I have arranged a little competition between today’s airlines. Ten extremely relevant categories have been carefully selected and the performance of the two airlines has been evaluated in a…scientific way. Sort of.

Food
Winner: Finnair
Well I’m not at all culturally biased here but any airline serving crumble pie with vanilla cream and cinnamon buns will get my vote. I felt back in Sweden already somewhere over China. The best Asian food ever!

Serving…material
Winner: Finnair
Scandinavian design, what more is there to say? The striped Ittala dinner set makes me feel at home. I just love it!

Movie selection
Winner: Cathay Pacific
Although I did not really see that many movies since I slept most of the SYD-HKG flight I must give this one to Cathay. There were quite a few that I would have liked to see. (Finnair only show films about women in their forties having relationships with teenage boys.) However, due to Cathay’s poorly planned flying (we arrived half an hour early) I did not manage to see the ending of the movie… Minus for that!

Snacks
Winner: Finnair
They gave me Fazer Salmiak pastilles! That is the closest to salty sweets I have been in a year, almost. (Which actually says a lot about my terrible situation since they are not really salty at all. But at least they are black. And salmiaky.)

Size of TV
Winner: Cathay Pacific
Well, it was just bigger. And closer.

Jet Engines
Winner: Finnair
They are blue. What more can I say...

Chairs
Winner: Qantas
(Eau, here Qantas entered the competition as a Joker. Who would have thought that?)
In addition to the fact that the Finnair business chairs cannot be folded down all the way there just isn’t any star trek feeling at all to the Finnair chairs. With Qantas’ egg-formed sky chairs you can at least imagine that you are on a journey to some far away planet, but with Finnair it is pretty clear that you will not leave Mother Earth. Those chairs simply would not handle the journey through the stratosphere.
Cathay has small individual cubicles heading sort of sideways. Very confusing not sitting in the direction the plane flies, at least at start and landing. I cannot really make up my mind about them. If the plane would crash it is however good to know that there is an airbag on the side facing forward. I felt extremely safe.

Travel kit
Winner: Finnair
The black case was esthetical yet functionally designed with an inside hanger. And inside – lingonberry products! (And I have lived my life up to now not even knowing of their existence!) As well as shoehorn and a protective bag for my new camera (How could they know? They are so good…)

Language
Winner: Finnair
Finlandssvenska (Finnish Swedish). Just sounds wonderfully funny.

Flight crew rostering system
Winner: Finnair
Well, it was me designing it a long time ago. Call me partial, but it just must be better.

Seems to me that Finnair won the first round. We'll see if Cathay gets a rematch on the way back...

30th June 2009: Ten hours on a flight between Hong Kong and Helsinki

I have during the last couple of days thought about buying a DSLR camera and two minutes before boarding the Sydney to Hong Kong flight last night that was exactly what I decided to do. Without the thorough internet research I know most of my (male, at least) friends would do (as well as the guy in the shop who did give me quite a patronizing look when I answered him that “No, I have not really checked out all cool features of this camera on the web”, when he asked) I had decided to go for the Canon 500D – purely on recommendation (by people who do not have this camera but love spending money on electronics) and my female instinct. (The latter possibly to be better trusted than the former.) So, I went into the shop, told the guy working there what I wanted, took the box without checking it (looking back this maybe was slightly risky, but it all turned out well. I think.), boarded the plane, put it in the storage space and slept for eight hours.

In Hong Kong I bought a memory card and as soon as I was seated on the Helsinki flight I started the mission of getting acquainted with my new friend. Now there are quite a limited number of things to take photos of on an airplane, especially if trying to avoid making unfriends by harassing fellow passengers while doing so. So I ended up taking landscape pictures of China, testing the focus points settings on clouds, taking portrait pictures of jet engines and waving my feet really fast to check out the shutter speed settings on moving objects. (When getting down on the floor to catch an interesting angle of my shoes people did start looking strangely, though.) I kept saying yes to everything eatable offered to me just to get new motives for my study and since I felt a little bad about not eating the food I had ordered I ended up much too full and feeling slightly sick.

Finally, somewhere over Irkutsk (where the hell is that?) I ran out of battery. I got a little more than half way through the manual. So, with this valuable opportunity gone there is a risk I will now never learn about white balance or lens peripheral illumination correction…

29th June 2009: Övergång / Transition

I och med att jag nu i sju veckor kommer invertera min tillvaro (jobba i Sverige och sakna alla i Australien istället för att jobba i Australien och sakna alla i Sverige) tänkte jag att jag ska invertera mig även språkligt. Jag börjar lite bilingualt (bilingual) så att alla kan vänja sig (get used) så att jag stegvis (gradually) går över mer (more) och mer (more) till engelska (English). Och till sist turnar det completely into English. For those of you who happen to be native English speakers and love pointing out all my errors and mistakes (Mat), please bare with me. Or stop reading...

24 juni 2009 – Och snart är jag i Sverige igen...

På måndag, den tjugonionde, åker jag hem till Sverige. Fyra veckor jobb, tre veckor semester, och jag ser nästan fram emot båda delarna lika mycket. Jag ska hem till Göteborgskontoret och reparera mitt förhållande med Jeppesen. Jag ska hem till Skummeslövsstrand och lära känna min brorson Alexander. Jag ska träffa familj och vänner. Och förhoppningsvis kommer Tim två veckor i slutet av juli.

Jag har gjort flera försök att skriva ett stycke som summerar upp denna australienska höst men varje gång blir det bara en självömkande svada av gnöl så jag ger upp det. Mycket har varit jobbigt (kontraktsförhandlingarna, VISA-problemen, fyra pencillinkurer på tre månader. En ständig ovisshet om vad som kommer att hända, en frustrerande känsla av att vara helt övergiven (professionellt) på andra sidan jordklotet utan någon fungerande organisation. Och så Henrik, förstås.) Andra saker har varit helt grymt bra (Tim.).
Förhoppningsvis reder allting ut sig snart så att det bara blir roliga bloggar händaefter. Helt utan gnöl.

19 juni 2009 – En träffsäker present

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – varför nämdes aldrig den på litteraturvetenskaps-lektionerna? Jag bara undrar...