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.

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

Beans galore

Weekends come and go with surprising speed, as usual. I feel like though it was a surprisingly uneventful weekend, but thinking twice about it I’m not so sure. Friday I had handball practice and barely had time to shower before we went out to Hula Bula Bar. Their cocktails are ridiculously strong and large, but surprisingly good even so. We will return. Oh yeah, before that we also went to Big W, bought and stuffed 1100l of beans in Carl’s car. That’s 1.1 cubic meter of beans. They are now in Carl’s enormous bean-bag, currently the most comfy spot in The Pad. I guess I didn’t do much the rest of the weekend. Hung out with Sebastian and finished a 660 page book in 24 hours. Snap.

I might get a job giving handball lessons at schools every once in a while, hopefully a couple times per week. They’re paying really well, 3 hours per week would cover my rent with some to spare. Hustlin’.

/J

This and that

I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, because I’m good at it. I’m talking about promising to put up more pictures here, of course. Photographic evidence of my newfound residential splendor is high up on the list and a general upswing in visual representation of the life and times of yours truly is what I strive for.

Something that I am very pleased with, as should you be, is the more consistent flow of creative output that I can share with you. For some reason, it gives me more satisfaction if I publish it here than if I just stick it in some dark corner of my thumb-drive.

I’ve taken Moneybrother back to heart. Actually, I don’t know if I ever truly had a place in my heart for them. Not that I didn’t like them, I’ve always thought that they were great, I just never got as stuck on them as I have now. I remember that one of my sisters listened to Blood Panic a lot when it came out, but I think that I might have been to young and culturally pubescent to realize how good of an album it actually is. I probably shouldn’t go on about how good it is. Just listen to it again. And again.

 

 

Magic. Look out for the “Wooh!” that pops up around 2min into the song. One of the best Wooh!’s I’ve ever heard, and you should know that I’m a man who can appreciate a good Wooh!.

 

/J

Forgot

This is the building.

Pimpin’

iJ

The Pad

I’ve been busy. Among other things we have been hunting for apartments. And if nothing extraordinary happens, tomorrow we will sign a contract for a killer two story pad in East Perth. I am so excited I don’t know what to do.

For the moment eating porridge with chocolate topping while playing skate 2 seems to be the thing to do.

I’ll get pictures of The Pad (it will from now on be referred to nothing else but The Pad) up here ASAP.

Peace

iJ

DTP

I could mean Disturbing Tha Peace, as in DTP Records (Luda). It does mean that, but I don’t. I mean Desktop Publishing. My first class of the semester and, quite obviously (don’t know why I still write it, really) my first class of the week. I am to learn more about design in general and how to implement it in InDesign and Photoshop in specific.

Emergency. Coffee break over. Need to shut down, otherwise our hyper enthusiastic bodybuilder slash successful designer might get angry. I don’t want that.

Peace

/J