My main man, Darren

We walk in to this bar, eager to get a drink and turn the party up a notch. Vodka shots all round and a long island ice tea for me.

Me: How much are the shots?

Bartender: Are you with Darren?

Me: What?

Bartender: Do you know Darren?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Bartender: The first round’s on Darren.

Me: OMG!!! (I didn’t really say that though)

As you can imagine, we all took the opportunity to order what we wanted, finish it and then get the hell out of dodge before Darren finds out and lays his vengeance upon us.

Moral lesson – We like Darren, he’s a champ.

Livsnjutare

That is one of the words, and I’m going out on a limb here, that the Swedish language is quite special in having. I like it. I aspire to be one. Basically it is just a person who seeks to enjoy every moment of life and takes whatever comes and makes the best of it. Me, Henrik and Rasmus had a real “livsnjutar” moment today. We went to the beach and hung out in the sun for a couple of hours. Me and Rasmus went for a swim and it was teeth-chatteringly cold. After that, we went up to the Cottesloe Beach Hotel and had a couple of pints in the afternoon sun. For some reason, we all got in a happy, carefree, almost giddy mood and nothing seemed to be bothering us. It might have been the intoxication of alcohol on an empty stomach, the pleasure of a warming sun in the surprisingly windy and mild afternoon or just the joy of being with friends that I like. It was the kind of moment that makes life beautiful.

Life is good. And if you want to, you can make it better just by accepting it.

I broke my sexy back (Yeah?)

The handball nationals are over and done with, and so is my back. We ended up 5th (might’ve sounded like a feat if you didn’t know that there were 6 states competing). Our best player busted his knee after 10min of the first game and we lost another good player in that game due to a broken arm. I managed to mess up my back big-time in the second game, then I played the third game on painkillers and made it even worse. I’m paying the price for that as we speak. The upside is that I don’t have to feel guilty for not giving up my seat to old ladies on the bus. Anyway, we could’ve done a whole lot better and two games lost by only a few goals gives the competition a bitter aftertaste. It was a great event though and I did have a lot of fun, even if it doesn’t seem like I’m overly thrilled about it.

I’m in the computer lab now and have recently handed in the last assignment for my Desktop Publishing unit. It feels great. I can cross that unit off of my list and I will hopefully never have to listen to my teacher’s rants about how cool the magazine business and celebrities that he has photoshoots with are, or how gay the evil publisher that tried to steal his copyrighted material is. Yes, he is a dick. Biggus dickus. He looks a bit like he’s on steroids though so maybe it’s more of a Dickus Minisculus. Anyhow, he is a douchebag, that’s what I’m trying to say. OK?

Summer was here in time for me to spend a full week indoors either working, studying or playing handball. Now it’s gone again. Last week was in the 30s. According to dasboard, tomorrow’s going to be 5 degrees and rain.

I could’ve been chillin’ on the beach this weekend, that was the plan. Fuck off, world.

 

Now that’s gangsta.

/J

The other side of the busyness coin

I’m back again on what seems to have become a bi-monthly update rather than a well written and frequent blog.

I see it clearly now. I told you about how good it felt being busy. Well, through these past weeks I’ve come to understand what most people consider common knowledge. That good, exciting feeling of busyness gets, not replaced, but maybe transformed into, or overshadowed by the bad and unsettling feeling of busyness.

Hopefully the reward of summer holidays (I’ll still go to work though) will be that much sweeter. I am also happy to say that some of that summer holiday will be cold and bitter, but in a good way. In the I’m going to Sweden for a month way.

Next up – Handball National Championships this weekend. It’s not much, but I like thought of sometime in the future telling my potential offspring that I competed in the Australian Nationals.

Holla (iPhone wants this to read Hillary, which is Hillaryous)

/iJ

Compensating for gayness and other trivialities

Along with the steadily improving weather, although backlashes into rainy gloom are annoingly frequent, I’m getting more and more into some sort of groove. What used to be weeks of unplanned nature and sporadic productivity have transformed into a tightly packed schedule of studies, work, handball and the occasional(!) inebriation. It’s exciting and although I feel I’ve still got a long way to go before I enter the world of real grown-ups it seems I am making some sort of progress towards it – it actually feels pretty nice.

I finished reading ‘Shantaram’ (Gregory David Roberts) the other day. Tremendously good read. An amazing story even if it turns out that only half of what the ex-con, prison escaping, drug dealing, jihad fighting philosopher of an Aussie writes is true. I picked up ‘Afrodites Tårar’ (Theodor Kallifatides) and it is nice to read something in Swedish every once in a while. In a moment of great longing for my home country I listened to Swedish radio on my iPod and read the simple yet thought provoking writings of the Greek-Swede. It has always interested me, how you can say so much by using very few words and simple means. I guess that is one big reason for why Copywriting interests me.

I’m getting a haircut in a few hours, at a place called Guys Grooming. It seems like a real good place – they offer every type of service that a metrosexual man could ever wish for. It is situated in Australia however, and with that comes a problem. In order to not scare away the manly consumers of the most macho country in the world, they need to compensate for the perception gayness that for some reason is linked to male grooming. They solve this problem in the same way they solve a lot of problems in Australia – with alcohol and violence. The customer gets a beer to accompany his service and a TV in front of him to watch sports on. Most likely a violent sport – like rugby. Say what you will, but it seems to be working. The place is as busy as a bee-hive and big brawny Aussies who otherwise might think twice about getting a facial treatment are now relishing the opportunity as they can drink beer and watch big men smash into each other while being groomed. Good on ya, mate.

That’s it, I better get back to my studies. I think this post was supposed to be longer from the beginning, but all of it disappeared when I tried to post it the first time so this is a re-write from memory and I probably missed a lot. Oh well, you’ll have to make do. Make it, I tell you.

/J

First day

Hot dang, it feels good to be employed. It also feels good to throw around southern-like expressions like hot dang. Try it. I could have chosen a british one, like ‘by George’, and probably have been equally satisfied, but in this case the southern charm won me over.

The job itself might not be to exciting, it’s mainly a lot of transactional work passing information between the advertiser, the media and the production department of the company. Still, it’s a step into the business that I want to work in when I graduate. It’s also a source of income. This is good.

Lots of stuff happening right now. One might even say that I’m happening and it is quite a thrilling experience, even though I will fall behind quite seriously in my slacking-off-activities.

I’ll manage.

/J

In the waiting line

In my eagerness to be on time for my first day of work at AdCorp I managed to arrive almost half an hour early. It doesn’t matter much, I found a nice bench in a little park and the view is not to bad.

/iJ

Breakfast

A good way to start off a Saturday.

/iJ

9.57

Im gonna be late for uni. Huge bean bag. That staircase leads to my room, or should I say suite rather as I have my own bathroom and walk-in-closet. Holla.

/iJ

The boy who lived

For the past 4 days, I have been on my deathbed. It might be swine-flu and I should probably go and check that out. I didn’t die though and that’s really the important part.

I snapped a photo from inside the kitchen, looking out over the bar counter into the living room. More will follow shortly.

/iJ